Liu Bei’s Forces Scenario – *** Difficulty
Target 1 – Take Fu Jiang North Watchpost and Fu Jiang South Watchpost in 10 minutes
Target 2 – Take Third Gate, Second Gate and First Gate in 10 minutes
Target 3 – Pang Tong does not withdraw
Strategy – The majority of your army takes the center route going northwest, but Pang Tong goes west. You’ll need to watch him as when he gets ambushed, you need to be there. It’s a big morale hit if he goes not to mention Target 3.
Take Gate 1 and then Zhang Yi will be right around the corner. Then you will have access to Fu Jiang South Watchpost to the east. After you take that you’ll see Wu Lan and Fei Guan closing on your army to the northeast, and Fei Yi / Meng Da in the west base. By this time your allies probably have taken Second Gate, which case Gao Pei and Zhuo Ying have appeared. Take them out along with Liu Xun nearby.
After the third gate you’ll come to Han Sui and a powered up Yan Yan. Careful here as he can kill you quick. Deng Xian and Liu Ba are in the next base but just hurry on towards Pang Tong as you don’t have much time left to get Fu Jiang North Watchpost but you need to save Pang Tong once Zhang Ren / Yang Huai surprise him at Luo Feng Po.
You should be left with just enough time to fly north to Fu Jiang North Watchpost for Target 1 completion. Lei Tong is to the east but he’s not really important to defeat. Just south of here though you may wish to clear out the enemies for Huang Zhong and friends. Leng Bao and Liu Han have some tricks for your allies.
Back in Cheng Du Southeast Fort where you left Liu Ba and Deng Xian, you’ll likely have Deng Zhi, Wu Yi, Ma Dai and Ma Chao roaming around. Ma Chao is the tough one in this stage so you may want to save and use caution around him.
After his defeat there is not much to defeat except lay siege to Liu Zhang. Only Lu Yi should be left for his subgenerals. You’ll even get some really late reinforcements in Zhang Fei and Zhang Bao, which I suppose would be useful on harder difficulties if the battle is long. Overall this is one of my favorite mid-level stages for building up characters. It goes fast enough and there are not many dangerous moments save for dealing with Ma Chao.
