Total War: THREE KINGDOMS – 100% Achievements

Playing as any faction, capture a region.

This should come naturally on your first turn.

Playing as any faction, win a single battle with one of each unit type (Melee Cavalry; Shock Cavalry; Melee Infantry; Glaive & Spear Infantry; Ranged).

Self explanatory, should come naturally if you fight a battle reinforced by a garrison.

Playing as any faction, make 8,888 income in a single turn.

Should come naturally. Tips to optimize money : Get trade agreements whenever available ideally with factions far away from you that you don’t plan to fight soon.

When building cities, specialize your cities depending on what resources are in the same commandery.

In commanderies with mines or toolmakers build purple/grey buildings to increase industry, in buildings with trade ports build blue buildings that increase commerce, buildings with farms build green buildings that boost food production so you don’t have to build farms in other places freeing up space. Try to have buildings that reduce corruption everywhere because corruption will hurt you badly in the mid/late game.

Playing as any faction, destroy any other faction.

You have to capture any faction’s last settlement and destroy their last army as well to get this. This should come naturally as you play a campaign.

Fight a battle with Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei fighting on the same side.

Start a campaign as Liu Bei and fight the first battle. You already start the game with your 2 brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.

Playing as any faction, capture 29 settlements.

Should come naturally in the campaign progression.

Tips to get there : Try not to make too many enemies at once. Check the quickdeal diplomacy often, possibly every turn to see who wants to deal. Get trade and non aggression pacts with factions you’re not planning to fight yet, some times you can even get them to pay you for it. Always take regular payments it gets you more money in the long run. Once you get to war with an enemy close to you hit them non-stop until they are destroyed, never sit down and let them recover because they can hurt you and can drag others into war with you.

Playing as any faction, breach a wall during a battle.

You need to have a trebuchet in your army to do this. Just set it to attack the wall and it will break eventually.

Playing as any faction, form an alliance.

You need to reach the rank of Second Marquis to form a coalition and the rank of Marquis to form an alliance.

Find the friendliest faction with you and do this with them.

Playing as any faction, kill 92,413 enemies.

Will come naturally as you progress through the game, its likely you will get this in a single campaign but its not necessary, you can get this over multiple campaigns.

Playing as any faction, declare yourself emperor.

If you’re playing as a coalition faction, you will get this automatically when reaching the rank of King and kicking off the namesake of the game, the Three Kingdoms period.

If you’re playing as a governor faction, you will get the Han Shot First achievement instead and you need to take over one of the 3 emperor’s seat of power marked by a star on the map to get this achievement.

In the Image the Kingdom of Wu has taken over 2 seats of power While the Kingdom of Ba in the bottom left has the remaining seat.

Playing as any faction, execute 24 captives.

Whenever you capture a general you have 3 options : Employ, Release, Execute.
You get this for executing 24 enemy generals you have captured in battle. You should get this naturally playing the game, it doesn’t have to be in the same campaign.

Tip : Its usually a good idea to execute generals who carry an item because you keep the item when executing them, the ones who don’t carry anything its usually better to release them because it gives you some money.

Playing as any faction, win 7 battles with a Healer-type Hero leading your army.

If playing as a Han faction : You need to have a strategist commanding your army, that means he has to be the left mod character. Easiest faction to do this with would be Kong Rong as your faction leader is a strategist himself.

If playing as the Yellow Turbans : The hero type is Healer so self explanatory. Easiest faction to do this will be He Yi as your faction leader is a healer himself.

Playing as any faction, obtain the maximum level in any one character attribute.

This is actually kinda hard to achieve. You need to have 200 in a single stat on any character.

You will need a legendary character who has a very high stat to begin with. Level him up and give him all gear which increase his stat and ideally pick skills which increase that stat too. I personally got this very late in the campaign with Sun Ren by equipping her all red items. Lu Bu should probably be easy to get this as well.

Playing as any faction, attack Xiahou Dun with archers.

Xiahou Dun is a Champion that Cao Cao starts with, so you need to face him in battle and set your archers to attack him.

Playing as any faction, someone else declares themselves emperor before you.

If playing as a Coalition faction : Someone else has to reach the rank of King Before you, if you play your campaign well this will usually not happen.

Easiest to do as a Governor faction : As a Governor faction(Ma Teng, Liu Biao, Kong Rong) you cannot declare yourself Emperor so you get this automatically when you reach the rank of King.

Playing as any faction, control a single spice resource.

See the “…Controls the Universe!” Achievement below.

Playing as any faction, control two spice resources.

See the “…Controls the Universe!” Achievement below.

Playing as any faction, control all 3 spice resources on the map.

The 3 spice resources are in the south west corner of the map all close together, you will need all 3 to get this achievement, it will usually be later on in the game as no playable faction starts close to this.

Commanderies names are :

Yunnan
Jiaozhi
Yulin

Playing as any faction, declare yourself Emperor of the Three Kingdoms.

You get this by taking the 3 emperor’s seats and winning the campaign.

Playing as any faction, become emperor and win the game.

You get this by taking the 3 emperor’s seats and winning the campaign.

Playing as any faction, control all jade resources on the map.

There are 2 jade mines on the map and they are relatively close to each other. Both in the middle western side in the commanderies of :

Chang’An
Nanyang

Playing as any faction, successfully ambush and defeat any opponent.

Good rule of play for any Total War games featuring ambushes, if you don’t have enough movement to attack a settlement directly from where you are and think there’s an army nearby, move to the edge of your territory and set ambush stance, there’s a good chance the enemy army will move in and fall for it.

The terrain on the campaign map where you set your army can give a bonus to your ambush chance, always check which terrain will give the most bonus. Forests and jungles are good, hilly forest seems to give the highest chance.

About minor settlements : Minor settlements in this game have 0 food reserves, meaning any garrison or army that is in a minor settlement will take attrition damage immediately if they get besieged and the AI chooses to starve you out. Not a good situation to be in. When defending minor settlements its a much better option to actually set yourself outside of them in ambush stance between the enemy and the settlement to bait the enemy in.

1) They might attack with an inferior force that would not have attacked if they saw your army there.
2) If the ambush actually succeeds you will be in an advantageous position.
3) You will not take attrition and they will not prevent your replenishment.
4) If they have multiple armies nearby and your ambush succeeds you can destroy the first army that moves before they move their second army, then they have to choose if they wanna take you on with the 2nd army alone, if you didn’t take too many losses during the ambush, they will usually not attack.

Playing as Cao Cao, trigger a proxy war.

Proxy war is one of Cao Cao’s special diplomacy options, it spends 75 Credibility, Cao Cao’s special resource.

You will find the option in the War section of the diplomacy screen. Simply play a campaign as Cao Cao and once you have enough credibility use this to start a war between 2 other factions.

Playing as Gongsun Zan, win 11 battles with White Horse Fellows.

You already start with a White Horse Fellows unit when playing as Gongsun Zan, they are his unique faction unit.

Win 11 battles keeping the White Horse Fellows in your army and you will get this in short order.

Playing as any faction, turn a friend into a rival.

This is part of the relationship system in the game, you need to have someone be listed as a friend and then have them turn into a rival.

I haven’t managed to get this yet but the easiest way I can see to do it would be to start as a faction where your leader is the friend of another faction leader at the beginning of the game, then attack that faction until their leader turns into a rival. If anyone has it feel free to leave how they got it in the comments. I know that Liu Bei and Gongsun Zan start as friends at the beginning of the campaign.

Playing as any faction, control all northern horse resources on the map.

There are 2 horse pastures in the north west corner of the map and 1 other in the middle north part, you will need all 3 to get this achievement, Ma Teng, Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shao, Zheng Jiang, Zhang Yan or Dong Zhuo are all factions that start relatively close to one or both of these areas.

Commanderies names are :

Dai
Shuofang
Jincheng

Playing as any faction, capture 9413 enemies.

You get this basically every battle as you will capture a number of enemy troops. You have no control over this achievement just keep playing campaigns until you get this. It doesn’t have to be from the same campaign.

Playing as any faction, progress a character to the maximum rank.

You need to reach rank 10 with a character to get this.

Ranks 8-9-10 take A LOT of experience and most characters will literally die of old age before they ever reach rank 10. Most of the faction leaders at the beginning of the game will not get this as they start too old.

Lu Bu could get it because he already starts rank 7.

I personally got this on my Heir because I got him in an army as soon as he was 18 and kept him during the entire game. The school building also gives experience bonus faction wide so if you have some cities where all the good buildings are already built and you have space left, build some schools, they make a huge difference in the long run.

There is a set called Scholar of the Future that gives 20% experience bonus faction wide if you equip it on your leader, heir or prime minister (10% from the Scholar follower and 10% from the set bonus)

Playing as any faction, win a multiplayer match.

See the “Frenemies” achievement below.

Playing as any faction, win 222 battles in multiplayer mode.

There are 2 ways to do this.

A) You like playing multiplayer : Simply play games against people and have fun, you will get this eventually.

B) You don’t like playing multiplayer : You can do this alone.
1) Start the game and go Battle then Multiplayer.
2) Click on Host Battle at the bottom. Enter random characters in the game name and password.
3) Set Lu Bu with his Warrior without Equal in your faction, delete all other factions on the left side and put any strategist on the right side as an AI opponent.

Lu Bu should have vanguard deployment, set him on Kong Rong and Wreck him, put the game in fast forward.

Depending on your loading times this should take you 1 minute or less.

Repeat until you are done.

I suggest you only do a few of these a day so you don’t die from boredom. You will get it eventually.

Playing as any faction, unlock an entire single element of the reforms tree.

You need to unlock all the reforms from a single color of the reform tree. You will get this late in the game likely after you have won the campaign unless you specifically decide to focus exclusively on one color, which isn’t a very good idea.

Playing as any faction, construct a faction palace.

Palace is a unique building that you can only build once in 1 city, its in the Administration Office chain of buildings. It requires a level 7 city and a special reform to unlock.

Note that you cannot get this achievement as Gongsun Zan as for him the Administration Office chain is replace by the Military Government chain and none of the buildings in it count toward this achievement.

Playing as any faction, maintain 8 trade routes.

You need to have 8 trade routes active at the same time. Reaching the rank of King gets you 5 possible trade routes and there are reforms that unlock more.

Playing as any faction, win 66 duels.

You will get this naturally playing the game as auto resolve even gets duels quite often. It will likely not be in a single campaign unless you actively try to duel everyone you can.

Playing as any faction, defeat Dong Zhuo.

See the “Diaochan’s Revenge” Achievement below.

With Lü Bu in your party, defeat Dong Zhuo in battle.

…In Progress…

Playing as any faction, win 100 battles launched from the campaign map.

Will come naturally while playing a campaign. Possibly needing multiple campaigns.

Playing as any faction, unlock every reform in a single playthough.

This will take a very long time.

I highly suggest you conquer the whole map so that turns will end up being very short and no one will bother you, just make sure you have enough food and public order everywhere so there are no rebellions.

Then simply press end turn until you complete the entire reform tree. You will get this on turn 404.

Playing as the child of Cao Cao, proclaim yourself emperor.

Don’t have this one yet, will update, not sure if you have to get Cao Cao killed before reaching the rank of King or if it still works if you’re already declared emperor and Cao Cao dies.

If Cao Cao has to die I guess you can just save your game before reaching the rank of King, then send Cao Cao alone to die against a settlement, then reach King and declare yourself Emperor.

Playing as any faction, kill a Hero with a special ability.

The special ability has to get the killing blow, so ideally you would want a high damage ability on a good dueling character and wait until the enemy is low on health then use the ability to finish him off.

I personally got this with Sun Ren’s Heart Seeker ability, not even during a duel, just target a strategist who isn’t full health and he is done.

Playing as Zheng Jiang, construct a bandit lair.

Bandit lair is the 3rd tier of Zheng Jiang’s special building chain in the green section.

Playing as any faction, win every battle (including auto-resolve battles).

You have to complete the campaign without ever losing a single battle, even when they attack your towns.

You will want to do this one on easy.

I haven’t done it myself yet so I cannot recommend a faction yet.

You will want to upgrade all your minor settlements so they have good garrisons, you will want to build a military building in every city so they have a good garrison, and keep multiple save files.

Save at the beginning of each turn and keep around 10 save files so you can go back in time if things start going down a path that would lead you to lose a battle.

Playing as one of the governor factions, become emperor.

You need to start the campaign as a Governor faction (Ma Teng, Liu Biao or Kong Rong) and increase your prestige until you get to King’s rank to trigger the Three Kingdoms period and late game.

Then when you take one of the 3 Emperor’s seat of power you can declare yourself Emperor and the achievement should unlock.

Playing as any faction, make your spy become faction leader.

The spy system is highly RNG so its very difficult to get this normally.

Higher level characters have more chances to get picked up by the faction you send to spy on.

The easiest way to get this would be to set up a multiplayer campaign with someone and they intentionally make your spy their heir and then kill off their faction leader.

Playing as any faction, have all 5 Tiger Generals (Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong) in your faction.

I have not done this one yet, will update, post in the comments if you have done it and have an easy way.

1) Start as Liu Bei so you have Guan Yu and Zhang Fei already.
2) Recruit any woman you can find in the character pool whenever you see one. Adopt them into your family when you can.
3) Send 2 generals, one north to discover Gongsun Zan’s faction and one sailing the Yellow River west to discover Ma Teng’s faction.
4) As soon as possible marry Zhao Yun and Ma Chao to bring them into your faction.
5) When Liu Biao dies you should get an event with an option to confederate him, this will get you Huang Zhong.

Playing as Liu Bei, make 6 allies.

Start the game as Liu Bei and try to get 6 factions in your coalition at the same time. Easier done at the beginning of the game because eventually factions will start to get wiped out or be in other coalitions.

Playing as any faction, have a spy successfully complete an assassination.

See the “Live & Let Spy” achievement above.

Playing as any faction, win a ranked match in multiplayer mode.

In the Battle section of the start menu select “New” then “Ranked”. You will play against another player, there is no way to boost this with a friend either.

Not much to say here, play ranked battles until you win one.

Playing as any faction, complete a campaign on legendary difficulty.

Tips for legendary :

Faction : I haven’t played all factions yet, so this might change.
Gongsun Zan.
– He is a pretty powerful vanguard himself, and starts with Zhao Yun who is one of the best characters in the game and also starts very young so he will be with you almost all the campaign.
– He is the only playable faction who literally starts in a corner of the map, as any Total War player knows, the edge of the map is the ultimate defense, no one can attack you from there, so you won’t have to fight on multiple fronts.
– He has access to very good farmland and some choice locations with trade ports and mines very fast.
– You can secure yourself a nice little corner protected by the Yellow river and once you have that you will be pretty much impossible to dislodge from there.

Reforms : Get both replenishment reforms first as replenishment is terrible in the early game, this will let you fight more often and expand faster.

One is in the green tree called Disaster relief systems

The other is a bit deeper in the red tree called Regional Levy. Getting this one will also get you most of the reforms needed to get Jade Dragons Cavalry, the best cavalry in the game.

General gameplay tips : Always check every turn if other factions want to quickdeal something, if you don’t plan to go to war with them in the immediate future, try some deal with them, basically any deal that they are favorable to can get you some money for it. Always choose to receive regular payments, you will get more money overall. Try to get non aggression pacts and trade with factions far away from you.

Army composition : Initially all militia until you get a good economy. You start with Gongsun Zan and 1 unit of white horse fellows, keep them. Fill the rest with sabre cavalry militia (yellow unit), they have shields unlike the initial lance cavalry so they won’t get completely wrecked by archer fire. Fill Zhao Yun’s retinue with sabre militia.
For your 3rd slot get any strategist that gets along with your 2 characters. Fill his retinue with archer milita, they are the cheapest unit in the game and also the most efficient unit for its cost.
Every single army should have a strategist, range is extremely powerful in this game.
Once you have a better economy replace the sabre milita with Jian Sword Guards.
Replace 2 archer militia units of the strategist with 2 trebuchets.
Keep the sabre cav militia untill you get Jade Dragons, they are expensive but very powerful.

As for other armies, my composition of choice is similar except I use a champion instead of a sentinel unless I have a special Legendary sentinel like Taichi Ce, Sun Jian, or any other.
Use Ji militia on the champion initially and once you have the money for it switch to spear guard or heavy spear guard once he’s rank 6.

Late game composition : Jade Dragon Cav, Onyx Dragon archers (Heavy crossbowmen are very powerful but have a very low ammunition pool, I prefer the Dragon archers). If you’re playing as Kong Rong for some reason use his unique range unit the Thunder of Jian’an, they are simply put the best range infantry in the game, wearing heavy armor, have a very large ammo pool, insane range and a ton of armor piercing.

Skills : This could take a very long time but I’ll keep it short : On the everyone you will want the 3 active abilities.

Then on the champion or vanguard who is leading your army important skills to get are the 25% movement range when commanding called Reach.

And the 5% replenishment when commanding called Flexibility.

On the strategist you will want the flaming shot and flaming arrows ability that unlocks night battles. Also pick any skill that increases range damage. Best spec for a strategist :

Battle strategy : Set up your archers and trebs and infantry together, hide your cavalry on the sides in the woods if there are any. Use your champion and vanguard to go behind the enemy army and harass their archers and trebs if they have any, don’t let them get swarmed in a long melee. Hit and run and let them come to your army to get shot down. Use your cavalry at the opportune moment.

For settlements both minor and major, stay out of range of towers, run in with archers, set their towers on fire with flaming arrows then run out and let them burn. You can use the trebs as well but I would keep most of their ammo to break 1 spot in the wall and to kill masses of troops. Always watch the settlement carefully and attack from the direction where there are the fewest amount of towers, some times you can get away with just breaking 2-3 towers.

Play every battle unless it says its going to be a decisive victory, you will lose a lot less men this way. Exception to this is at very beginning of the game if you attack a settlement without trebs and don’t have fire arrows yet you are better off auto resolving instead of playing it because towers especially in minor settlements are incredibly powerful on higher difficulties and can kill entire units before you even get near the city.

When defending minor settlements you should always play the battles you can usually win even if it says you are gonna lose. The technique I use is I set up archers a little bit behind the choke point entrance with the arrow towers, once the enemy gets in range move your infantry in between the towers to defend the choke point, this way the enemy archers won’t stop to shoot your infantry to pieces before they ever get in range of your own archers. You can usually win or at least inflict so many losses that you can retake the town in very short order.

Playing as any faction, win a multiplayer co-op campaign.

Find a friend to play with an set yourselves to share the mandate of Heaven so that it becomes a coop campaign, then win it.

Playing as any faction, trigger a civil war in another faction.

See the “Live & Let Spy” achievement above.

Playing as Dong Zhuo, raze 11 settlements.

Dong Zhuo has a special choice when he wins a settlement battle where he can burn it down for an increase in intimidation.

Burn 11 towns and you will get this.

Playing as Dong Zhuo, raze an emperor seat.

Same as the “Humble Beginnings” Achievement above but you need to play as Dong Zhuo and you need to choose to burn the city instead of capturing it.

Playing as any faction, win a campaign having declared war on every faction as soon as you encounter them.

Haven’t done this one yet, will update.

Play on easy.

Basically you need to check your diplomacy screen at the beginning of each turn and every time you move an army to make sure you are at war with every single faction that you see, if you aren’t declare war immediately and never accept any peace from anyone.

As for faction, maybe Yellow turbans as they are pretty much at war with everyone at the start anyway.

Biggest problem is you cannot trade with anyone so you will make a lot less money than everyone else.

You also cannot track this achievement’s success or failure during the campaign so check your diplomacy screen often and hope for the best.

Possibly you can do this in multiplayer where 1 player starts and declares war on everyone. The 2nd player plays as Liu Bei or Zheng Jiang and disbands all his troops on turn one, then attacks a minor settlement and gets killed by arrow towers. The first player should get the achievement.

Playing as Yuan Shao, form 6 alliances.

Same as “No Small Deed Left Undone” above but this is done playing as Yuan Shao instead of Liu Bei.