Espionage | Total War Three Kingdoms Game Mechanics Guide 

Spying was the one mechanic I never fully mastered. This tutorial explained everything I was stumped about really well. Also when I first bought the game I had trouble keeping my economy in check, I was always good at battles but managing the economy gave me troubles but your Better Commandery guide really leveled up my game and I won the next campaign I started after I watched it. Thank you for still making guides for this game, you're the true master of it.

This Cao Cao Fates Divided playthrough was a masterclass in destroying a faction with a Eunuch. Poor Yuan Shao got cleaned out by turn 5.

after playing 112 hours finally, someone explains to me the detail of espionage! Thank you Mr. ST :)

Not sure if you said this somewhere but if your army enters battle with an enemy army with a spy in it, you can pay money to extract the spy right then, preventing his retinue from entering the battle. You can also pay extra to have them fight with you as an ally. Mostly an early game thing, but it was super useful in Cao Cao's early game war with Tao Qian. It turned a scary full stack into a reasonable fight when Zang Ba took his retinue and ran. (This was when I still only had Cao Cao and Xiahou Dun as my main army.)

I've been waiting so long for an espionage guide I only started playing total war 1 month ago and you've been the only reason that kept me playing and enjoying this game with your videos so thank you so much and keep up the great work

A small tip, you can't do military revolt if army is inside settlement

There's been a couple small guides on spies, but there's surprisingly little in the way of in-depth info out there. Cheers, mate, this was well done. I've been wanting to do a spy-themed game, whereas typically it's a feature I just ignored because it was a little obscure.

I wish they added a global announcement for every unique character when they shift alliances, kind of like what they currently have for Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang spawning into the game. It wouldn't specify whether a character is banished, released, or sent out as a spy, but simply announce "Guan Yu has left Liu Bei's faction" to the whole map. Also make marriage announcements global for unique characters. And when an unique character is spawned into the game, like Guo Jia in 190 start, announce "A talented strategist named Guo Jia is seeking a master" to every faction, so everyone knows even if Guo Jia isn't in their pool.

This was so useful. If only the game told you why spying options were greyed out. Thanks so much, big big help!

I was searching for this for hours thank you so much for your efforts I learnt a lot from you ^^

Oh my god this worked! I got Lu Bu!! hahah This channel is a god send!

They should really add Strong Spy Options if your spy becomes faction leader. Like beeing able to do diplomacy in their Name. At least a huge bonus to whatever you are asking them for.

Just listen some chinese ambient cool songs during watching this video the synergy is very good :D

Civil war mechanic sound so interesting, any plan to make a guide for it on the future?

Nice video and thanks for all the help you give us. :)

Thank you. This was helpful.

Wow, this is really useful thanks!!

There's the Spies Have More Option Available mod you should try. It gives all options to the spy, rather than have those options unlocked at certain positions. It made sense.

Very thorough review. 👍

Damn I neglected this system until now... I thought ehhh fuck the spies don't need them... but didn't know there was this much in terms of layers in this game

I love this guide and your Let's Plays because it all really taught me how to use spies, and how powerful they can be. But I'm having some trouble in my current game. I have Liu Biao's wife and Liu Cong as spies but when I have the available points, the option for civil war is still greyed out. Is there some special condition that needs to be met that I'm missing?

I spy with my little eye...

Thank you for all the informative videos! Can you please do one on collecting unique characters and how to keep unique characters when confederating factions? Whenever I confederate factions, the unique characters will go missing and not join me.

What the heck how did I miss this?

wait what? that's an end game research tree?! 😲 so little unlocks n not even 1 green tech? i thought cao cao would need some green for his cities

How to detect and get rid of spies in your own fraction or armies?

If i recruit an enemy spy into my rank, and give him some position, good satisfaction. Is it possible that they could defect their previous master to fully join mine or is defect just mechanic for player only?

I am always frustrated because my spies liked my enemy faction so much that they turned coat, it was like me giving the enemy free generals, how to stop this?

Dunno if u still read these but i got a few questions for ai spying. Does the ai get spys without ranking up? Also does the ai have full map vision on legendary or do they need to discover me to spy on me?

1,200 hours into 3K and only now I've learnt there's a symbol in the spy menu that shows the effect and duration of Interference.

What if your spy becomes a faction leader?

In a coop campaign, beside picking character with low satisfaction on your friend faction, is there any way to hide your own spies faction in order to the other player not notice you send them a spies ?

Sometimes when I have sent my spies to another faction, instead of getting recruited they were sent to another faction as a spy, making them a double agent, so I think double agent concept is present in this game.

I am struggling with loyalty with spies. Plz help. :(