Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV guide: Diplomacy and plots

As mentioned in our official review, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV (RTK 14) only has a handful of options for your scheming plots and diplomatic needs, far from what you’d expect from a strategy game. Still, you’ll have to master these mechanics if you want to succeed in your conquests. Here’s our mini-guide to help you out.

Note: For more information, check out our Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV guides and features hub.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV: Diplomatic ties

Here’s what you can expect from Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV‘s diplomatic options:

• Goodwill – Give some gold, resources, or unique items to boost your standing with another faction.
• Alliance – Have an alliance with another faction.
• Dissolve – Dissolves your alliance.
• Prisoner Return – Asks a faction to return your captured officer. There’s no option for returning an enemy’s officer that you’ve imprisoned unless it’s via the Sanction -> Suggestions panel (more on this later).
• Attack Request – Only possible once you reach a higher rank; asks a faction to attack a specific settlement.
• Submission Demand – Only possible once you reach a higher rank; forces a faction to capitulate. This is quite hard to do and you’ll need to whittle down a faction to its last city.

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV, your alliance with a faction is independent of another’s, and you can’t manually transition that into a coalition. Coalitions are either from an event/scenario (Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition) or are formed by the AI against the strongest force. You might be asked to join one, or you could be the target of one if you expand too freely while disregarding alliances and diplomatic niceties. Lastly, there are no diplomatic options to arrange marriages, exchange territories/cores, vassalize, or request/demand resources.

Sneaky plots and schemes

As for plots and schemes, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV‘s system is also fairly barebones. Here are the actions you can undertake:

• Hidden Poison – Decreases public order in a city.
• Estrange – Lowers an officer’s loyalty; use this repeatedly to make an officer disgruntled and ready for poaching.
• Placation – Gains control of a free or enemy-controlled core; you can read more about the cores mechanic in our empire management guide. Likewise, as mentioned in our combat guide, this can also help cut off supply lines.
• Unattended Home – Coerces a governor to go independent. This option isn’t easy to do, but it can pay dividends by causing a ruckus deep in your enemy’s territory.
• Dual Destruction – Lowers the diplomatic relationship between two factions. This won’t be possible if two factions are allied. Also, the screen won’t show the diplomatic relationships among factions, so you’ll need to check the Information -> Forces -> Foreign menu for that.

Note: Succeeding with your schemes will cause a drop in diplomatic relations with the target faction.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV is available via Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.