History Betrayed – Early Sun Ren

A World Betrayed is in my opinion the best of all Three Kingdoms DLCs so far, and it comes with a very good quality free patch and new content. Many thanks to CA for working from home with so much dedication, please stay safe and hopefully our applause will make these uncertain times merrier for you.

The new 194 campaign brings many fan-favourite characters to the center stage… except perhaps the best-liked of all: Sun Ren!

She is so popular that she recently appeared on the cover of Total War Elysium, looking sideways at a troubled Napoleon with a triumphant, knowing smile ( https://www.totalwarelysium.com/en ).
However, she was born so late that players never get to play with her in the initial, most interesting stages of the campaigns.

With A World Betrayed, I thought we may take the liberty to tweak history a bit and bring Sun Ren on the stage before the public falls asleep.

With the help of a time machine, this mod:

• Changes the birth years of Sun Ren and Sun Quan, so that they are 18 and 17 when the campaign starts and an 19 years old Sun Ce finds himself head of his family.
• Makes Sun Ren heir to the faction instead of Sun Quan, how is now the youngest of the Wu siblings.

This way, we get to play Sun Ren in the early game and she will help us keep her reckless brother alive. I recommend using this mod in combination with others that make the game more challenging.

This mod is very light and contains only two folders:

• campaigns/3k_dlc05_start_pos/
• db/character_generation_spawn_age_ranges/

It is compatible with many popular mods such as Radious or Havie’s collection.
It is NOT compatible with mods that change start positions, such as MTU, since there can only be one startpos file active at any time.

If you want to try making a mod similar to mine or you wish to merge my mod with others, you can follow these steps. Please note that in order to merge mods that alter startpos and CEO you need the author’s command file to import all their changes into your Assembly Kit local changes.

1) Download the Total War Assembly Kit for Three Kingdoms from Steam’s tool section
2) Launch it and open DAVE, the table editor
3) Open the character_generation_spawn_age_ranges table
4) Use filters to isolate the correct row (use lady_sun as keyword)
5) Change the values birth_year and min_spawn_year to your liking (use sun_ce or sun_jian as reference to help you)
6) Apply changes (!) and close the table

— This is all you need to change the age of a character and will affect ANY startpos file that you create later with BOB. So a single change can give you an early Sun Ren in all campaigns if you so wish.

7) Open the star_pos_characters table
8) Use filters on faction to find the correct one for the campaign you wish to edit
9) Add a filter on templates to find the character you are looking for
10) Editing the ministerial_position you can assign a new heir
11) Take a minute to review you changes and make sure you aren’t making silly logical mistakes such as two heirs or no faction leader
12) Count to ten, check again, apply changes and close the table

— Congratulations, you are all done editing tables! Now you must export your changes into a mod

13) Inside DAVE select Export –> Export changes to binary
14) Close DAVE and open BOB
15) In the middle section, named Working Data, select the campaigns/3k_dlc05_start_pos/ folder and check All in Provider action (do not check Consumer actions)
16) Press Start and wait patiently while BOB creates the startpos files. This will trigger the Three Kingdoms launch screen a few times.
17) Don’t interrupt and wait until all is complete. Exit BOB

— Now all the files you need are in you assembly_kit/working_data/ folder and can be added to any mod pack

18) Start RPFM (download it here https://github.com/Frodo45127/rpfm and follow the setup instructions carefully)
19) Create a new PackFile
20) Select Add –> Add folder and navigate to your assembly_kit/working_data/ folder
21) Add all the folders you need from the campaigns and the db subfolders
22) Check your folder structure and save your PackFile
23) Select Special Stuff –> Three Kingdoms –> Optimize PackFile
24) Select PackFile –> Change PackFile type –> mod (or movie if you have compatibility issues, but it’s more of a hack than a good practice)

You may reuse and merge this mod into your own, provided you:

• Act like a gallant person and reference me as your beautiful, inspiring muse
• Do not rename my tables inside the pack