Dong Zhuo’s Rivals Unite Strategy – 189 A.D.
Kong Rong – 8. Bei Hai Strategy:
Kong Rong is at 8 Bei Hai, with Liu Bei’s forces at 6. Ping Yuan and Yuan Shao at 5. Nan Pi nearby. Also Tao Qian’s forces are in 17. Xia Pi and this is where you should focus right away. Kong Rong only comes with Wu Anguo, a mediocre military officer. Have Kong Rong himself Spy on 17. Xia Pi on the first turn. On the second turn, try to recruit the Governor Che Zhou at Xia Pi. He may have been ousted of his governor spot in favor of Sun Qian but if not, Che Zhou should be easy to recruit and will give you that city as well as Mi Fang and Sun Qian as officers (although sometimes when you recruit governors, some of the other officers become free officers). Che Zhou is also loyal to Wei and this is good because Kong Rong is Wei-based.
With 17. Xia Pi, I usually take all of those officers and move them to 8. Bei Hai, leaving Xia Pi open. The extra money and soldiers from Xia Pi give you a nice boost at what otherwise would be a weak start in Bei Hai. Next plan is to Spy on Yuan Shao in Nan Pi and grab some of his nice officers like Zhang He, Gao Lan, Chen Lin and some others. He will have Xu You recruited soon and he is easy to recruit too. I would still ally with Yuan Shao pretty quick, because he builds up quite an army and he’ll either decide to invade your estate or Liu Bei or Gongsun Zan.
In this case, he invaded Liu Bei in the summer of 189 AD and completely destroyed him in one attempt. This is good though, because you can immediately Spy on 6. Ping Yuan and recruit Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Shang Long. They might not have the best loyalty with you though, but still they are all definitely worth grabbing and rewarding until their loyalty is high. Now you really have some formidable generals. Sort them by loyalty and give the higher loyalty guys the soldiers and train/rally them until they are maxed. In the meantime you can do some searching to find Xin Pi in 189 AD and some military officers like Bao Xin in 190 AD, Bao Zhong in 191 AD and Zong Bao in 192 AD. Build up the economy with Xin Pi, Xu You and Chen Lin (don’t make Chen Lin an advisor, he is more valuable as a civil officer).
As we get further into 191 AD, we find a time to pounce. 9. Pu Yang is taken over by Cao Cao, then attacked by Dong Zhuo (who loses) but then Yuan Shao invades from Ping Yuan. This leaves Ping Yuan with about 1000 soldiers, an easy target. Meanwhile in 5 Nan Pi, Yuan Shao has around 70,000 soldiers and 80,000 food. Time to starve him out. First we have to Threaten him to reduce the diplomacy rating, which we do and then we kill the alliance. We then invade 6. Ping Yuan with a small army and score an easy win. This cuts off Yuan Shao retreating south.
In the same turn, we take Gao Lan and put 4000 soldiers on him and have him attack Nan Pi with a horse unit. 4000 vs 70,000, good luck right. Well Yuan Shao starts alone, so we go ahead and knock down the first door. Even though Yuan Shao is out there by himself, his army is still eating up food at the rate of a 70,000 soldier army because he has them sitting in the city. Eventually after some turns and the food gets in the 40,000 range, he sends all of his soldiers out to kick Gao Lan’s rear end. You can either hide in the far northeast corner of the map, or in this case I went to the southeast with the marsh spaces to hide out for a bit. But Yuan Shao’s officers have 6 movement so they are able to attack me here. I got out thanks to the horse unit and got to the northeast corner of the Nan Pi map until they ran out of food and all of his troops had to flee to 3. Dai Xian (he was able to flee here as Yuan Shao had 50. Yi Jing).
3. Dai Xian is one of the poorest cities on the map, so Yuan Shao is in dire straits. January 192 AD rolls around the next turn and Yuan Shao doesn’t have the money/food to sustain his huge level of troops so a huge portion of that 70,000 soldiers is gone. But we quickly attack him again at 50. Yi Jing to take that territory and then again the next turn to clear out Yuan Shao for good. He has no food to sustain his troops so it’s a win for us and we recruit basically his whole army and the remaining 25,000 soldiers. They are starved out so despite having a high training value, we have to spend a year rallying their morale to get it back up to 100. But first we move everyone back to Nan Pi to leave 3. Dai Xian open.
Lots of the Yuan Shao officers are disloyal however, so we take the soldiers off of them and put them on our more loyal officers that we have had for a while. Many of the Yuan Shao officers end up leaving our army, only to be recruited by us at Ping Yuan or Bei Hai. Some leave for Gongsun Zan’s army in 2. Bei Ping but they aren’t very loyal there either so we re-recruit them and they have a higher loyalty this time around with us. Meanwhile, the last remaining member of Yuan Shao’s army is Wen Chou in 9. Pu Yang. Wen Chou’s reign as ruler lasts about 2 turns until Cao Cao takes back Pu Yang. But we are building up a lot of power in the north.
Still no opponent at 17. Xia Pi so we are open on that end. Dong Zhuo moves another group to 3. Dai Xian but it is a bunch of military officers totaling 3000 soldiers, nothing to worry about. Time to keep building Nan Pi, Ping Yuan and Bei Hai for a bit and see how things look. Not much else is going on around the map, with Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao building their own forces in the central area and not going after each other. Eventually, later into 194 AD we decide to take out Gongsun Zan. Not much resistance here although he does recruit Ma Yan from us in the middle of the battle which sets up back a bit. But we still win and then are able to threaten him the next turn and he submits.
Dong Zhuo still holds 4. Jin Yang and 3. Dai Xian, but they are easy cities to take, so we do so. Now we have a group at 6. Ping Yuan and 4. Jin Yang to build up both areas for the big battle against Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao. What happens next again is a benefit to us. Cao Cao attempts to defeat Dong Zhuo’s troops at 19. Xu Chang and finally does so. Dong Min, the governor and sole officer at 7. Ye, takes back Xu Chang from Cao Cao. Dong Zhuo then moves an army into 7. Ye, led by Yang Biao. Yang Biao though has 92 loyalty so we are able to recruit him thanks to Guan Yu and his 96 charm. We quickly take 51. Jie Qiao from Cao Cao and then move the Ping Yuan forces to 7. Ye so that it is not left unguarded.
With 7. Ye in our pocket, we have access to a lot of other nearby cities. We find Lu Bu at 19. Xu Chang now with Dong Min, who is the ruler currently since Dong Zhuo just died of natural causes. We get Lu Bu to Rebel which fails, but Lu Bu then goes to 11. Luo Yang as a free officer. He joins Dong Min’s army again there and we get him to rebel again! This drastically knocks down the Dong army soldier count at Luo Yang. After this second Lu Bu rebellion, he flees to Jin Yang as a free officer so we recruit him. Meanwhile, Yuan Shu’s officer Ji Ling takes 19. Xu Chang so Dong Min flees to Luo Yang with few soldiers. We take this opportunity to attack Luo Yang with our 4. Jin Yang troops and it’s an easy win.
Any time you take Luo Yang in 189 AD, you want to search every month until you find the Hereditary Seal. With this Kong Rong’s stats are really impressive with the 100 charm, 93 INT and 91 POL. His battle stats aren’t bad either but since he has an army less than 70 (can’t do SIMUL attacks) we keep him at 8. Bei Hai. Anyway, Dong Min’s army fled to 12. Hong Nong which is a relatively poor city that is not built up and has too many officers to sustain anything. So for now we leave them be since they aren’t a threat.
Time to focus on Cao Cao. 9. Pu Yang is his but he has 24 officers there and the economy can’t sustain it; very common for Pu Yang just because of the sheer amount of recruits there and few civil officers to build up that economy. Cao Cao had taken out Kong Zhou, so he also owned 20. Qiao and 21. Ru Nan. Not much for officers/soldiers in those cities though. 10. Chen Liu as usual for Cao Cao in 189 AD is his crown jewel and capital, so we focus on that. An epidemic ran through the region which along with his battles at 19. Xu Chang left his army that once had 45,000 soldiers with 20,000 plus his main general Xu Zhu was sick. So we attacked 52. Guan Du with the 7. Ye troops (led by Guan Yu and Zhang Fei) and won. The next turn we took some of our Luo Yang troops to defeat Ji Ling in 19. Xu Chang, with the ultimate purpose to set up a relief force attack to give us a little more juice to take down 10. Chen Liu in the next turn. We use the vast majority of our 7. Ye troops to attack 10. Chen Liu along with help from Xu Huang and Lu Bu at Xu Chang. It turns out to be a decent battle as Cao Cao unexpectedly got some help from Tao Qian at 18. Xu Zhou, who sent Li Kan and his 15,000 soldiers to battle. We had to focus on him before attacking Cao Cao in this battle. Li Kan was stupid enough to try to charge Guan Yu which took off 1000+ on Li Kan and maybe 100-200 on Guan Yu. Li Kan was eventually captured and then we took all 6 officers we had here to surround Cao Cao. He always is tough to beat and will take off quite a bit of soldiers from you, but eventually he flees.
Cao Cao went and fled to 20. Qiao. We continued to pounce quick and attacked 53. Ding Yao with the idea to cut off Pu Yang from Qiao. Cao Cao did have a decent amount of soldiers at 20. Qiao with Li Feng and Hao Meng, but they are weak officers and easy to win. We use the remnants of what we had at 7. Ye (since that city now is covered from all angles from any other enemies) and used a relief force from 10. Chen Liu to take down 9. Pu Yang. 9. Pu Yang was struggling with little food and no money, and only Cao Ang having around 2000 soldiers. Easy win and we recruit all 20+ of Cao Cao’s officers. Thankfully with Kong Rong’s Wei affinity, most of these guys are in the 60-80 loyalty range. It helped that with Pu Yang struggling, loyalty was beginning to drop slightly and all of Cao Cao’s guys here that are normally 98-100 loyalty were 88-91 loyalty. But now we own this struggling city so we need to build it up, fortunately we have other cities to the north with high economy and lots of gold so we send it to Pu Yang so they can survive.
Now we have three main citadels with our army; 11. Luo Yang held by Zhao Yun, 19. Xu Chang held by Gongsun Du and 10. Chen Liu by Guan Yu. Since we own the territories like 53. Ding Yao, no other city is near anyone. Meanwhile we are also training soldiers in 5. Nan Pi and 8. Bei Hai for preparation to expand back to 17. Xia Pi which still sits open from when we recruited Che Zhou early on! But not quite yet. Cao Cao doesn’t have much food at 20. Qiao so we decide to starve him out. But we attacked in June and the battle went into the next month, so he actually gained 20,000 food which will make the starving method take a little longer. While the battle at Qiao continued, we had Lu Bu at 19. Xu Chang single-handedly take out Cao Cao’s weak officers at 21. Ru Nan, ensuring Cao Cao couldn’t run there. After another turn or two of waiting Cao Cao out at 20. Qiao, they run out of food and submit. The rest of Cao Cao’s officers now are with us and we get all six of Cao Cao’s special items.
It’s mostly smooth sailing now that we settled the center, although Yuan Shu still has a formidable lineup in 22. Wan. For now we keep building up the front lines on the west end (Luo Yang and Xu Chang) while we take all the northeast forces from Nan Pi and Bei Hai and bring them to 17. Xia Pi. There will be some recruits here likely and a chance to build up the city. But the bigger plan is to use this force to act as a pincer attack on Tao Qian’s forces in Xu Zhou. Except Tao Qian has passed and the new ruler is Mi Zhu. This is always an easy castle to take although the economy here is insane. Mi Zhu and Zhang Kai do have full soldiers however, and Liu Yong sends his top officer Zhang Ying to help protect Xu Zhou. This is folly on his part though because we gang up on Zhang Ying and take him out, and eventually the Xu Zhou forces perish.
With Zhang Ying out, Liu Yong’s force is weakened. But first we take the 17. Xia Pi forces to attack 57. Zhun Yin and then 33. Jian Ye. Taishi Ci is here so it won’t be easy and he has 18,900 soldiers. But we have a force led by Zhang He, Lu Xiang and Lu Kuang. We use the Zhun Yin battlefield to surround him and lower his soldier count for the battle in Jian Ye. Jian Ye is always a pain because it is one of those castles where you can only get a 4-person simul attack going. But Taishi Ci will return eventually to Shou Chun which is what we want. Because next turn we attack 60. He Fei, cutting off Liu Yong’s retreat through the south as it is best to clear out this area first before encountering Liu Biao and Sun Jian down there. Speaking of which, Liu Yong is easily destroyed as he is the weakest officer in the game in battle and we are able to bring troops from Jian Ye and Xia Pi.
With Liu Yong out of the picture, only Yan Baihu and Wang Lang are left in this area. We are able to move of the good officers and soldiers to Jian Ye to prepare to wipe out these goofs. Yan Baihu and Yan Yu are always pretty close to max soldiers and they are trained too. They’ll roll over but take out some of your troops. Wang Lang is easier because he is so weak. Try to coax Yan Yu and Zhou Xin to duel in these battles to help them go faster/lose less soldiers. Once these two rulers are through, we move everyone to 33. Jian Ye to prepare them to move to 36. Lu Jiang.
First though we need to do some more work on the west end. Yuan Shu and Liu Biao are battling in Xin Ye and Xiang Lang which is keeping both of their soldier counts low. Liu Biao takes Xin Ye and that puts Yuan Shu at only 22. Wan with 20,000 soldiers, so we pounce on him. Wan castle is a little tricky to get all six characters around the throne to simul but Yuan Shu’s other officers are weak. With him out of the picture, we can recruit Wu Xi at Chang An and get to work on the territories between us and Chang An.
In the southeast, we move to Lu Jiang with a large swath of our army. Now we are involved in the battle in the southland between Sun Jian and Liu Biao. Liu Biao must have betrayed someone as his officers are around 80 loyalty. Plus many of them like Wen Pin and the Cai family are loyal to Wei anyway, on top of the Hereditary Seal making almost all officers like you. We also recruit Governor Deng Long in 23. Xin Ye to set up the pincer attack on Liu Biao’s territory.
Sun Jian has 29. Chang Sha and 37. Chai Sang but they aren’t much to speak about; kind of surprising especially with Chang Sha. Sometimes he can build that up pretty well by this point. He does have Sun Ce and Sun Quan at Chai Sang so that slows us down a bit but with only 23,000 soldiers to our 80,000+, they are no match. Chi Bi goes next and we have a good path to taking Jing Zhou. Liu Biao himself is at 26 Jiang Xia, and Fu Xun is holding 24. Xiang Yang with only a few thousand troops. Meanwhile, Wen Chou comes out of exile to take 25. Shang Yong.
At this point we have a greater army coming from Lu Jiang, so we take down 27. Jiang Ling. You can pretty much get anywhere in Jing Zhou from this city. Next up is Liu Biao himself in 26. Jiang Xia. Because of his disloyal officers, he doesn’t have much else besides himself there. After some fighting, he flees to Xiang Yang where he puts up a good fight but ultimately is toast to our 70,000 soldier army. We gang up on Wen Chou with our Xin Ye and Xiang Yang forces to take him down. Like just about every ruler coming out of exile, he has no other officers but has full soldiers himself.
We do still have some officers down in Jiang Ling, so we use them to attack Chang Sha. Sun Jian has 50,000 soldiers here and 65,000 food so we decide to wait him out a few months. He also has Wu Ling and Ling Ling but not much food in either spot (Chang Sha is really the only semi-built city he has). He runs out of food and flees to Ling Ling, where we attack him again and he goes to Wu Ling. They run out of food once more and flee to 42. Yong An, and from there we let Liu Zhang get the finishing blow (so he gets all of Sun Ce’s officers at a very disloyal rate).
Before we get too involved with Liu Zhang in what will be the last somewhat tough part of this quest, we take out Jia Xue in 13. Chang An. Chang An is another pain in the rear castle with several doors and only four spaces to attack the governor, plus Jia Xue litters the field with pitfalls. But he doesn’t have any military officers to support him so we do take him down and he flees to 14. An Ding where Dong Huang and the rest of his army are. An Ding is rarely built up well and usually is just another small city in the path of our huge army. Taking An Ding sends Dong Huang to 15. Tian Shui where we continue to chase him. This time he flees to 39. Xia Bian and this gets Liu Zhang’s attention in 40. Zi Tong, so he attacks and clears out Dong Huang.
Our army is already in Tian Shui so we decide to attack Ma Teng. These guys at this point often times are out of money and thus soldiers. In other cases they have upwards of 30,000 soldiers like in this scenario, but usually they have low food which is the case here. Good option to starve them out to beat them without losing too many soldiers, because Ma Teng, Ma Chao, etc can do a number on your soldiers if you try to win by brute force. Which we could have with our 50,000 soldiers but in an effort to maintain or even grow our soldier count, the starving method was the best option.
Next is Liu Zhang, which always seems to be the end of the game when you start with a ruler from the east. In situations like this where Liu Zhang comes from Zi Tong and takes out Dong Huang or a Liu Biao in Han Zhong/Xia Bian, his forces get too far extended. Yang Huai is a tough cookie and Li Hui will likely be in the area too and he likes setting up pitfalls. But by this point in the game, the key is taking the balance of your force and moving it to the front lines and simply overpowering Liu Zhang’s forces. We have the battle going on two fronts – at 42. Yong An and then 40. Zi Tong (after we take Han Zhong/Xia Bian from him).
Liu Zhang had brought most of his troops from Cheng Dou and Jiang Zhou over to Yong An, so he had nearly 70,000 soldiers. But he usually puts them on generic officers like Fu Tong or weak advisors like Dong Yun, Wang Lei or Huang Quan. This makes it annoying because they won’t be dueling you and will be trying to use tactics on you. But they are also easy to overpower and with these weak advisors and their low army totals, they consequently have low soldier counts. We have nearly 100,000 soldiers attacking Yong An with tough officers like Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun and some Wei officers. Zhang He, Zhang Liao and Taishi Ci lead our forces coming from Zi Tong. Liu Zhang pretty much left Cheng Dou open, so we came in through Zi Tong while Liu Zhang was focused on us in Jiang Zhou and Yong An. 45. Yun Nan and 44. Jian Ning aren’t very difficult either and usually have 1 or 2 officers, although since they have had the whole game to prepare for this they have high soldier counts and are trained. Still, they are no match.
We conquer China in early 200 AD. This scenario is much easier for Kong Rong than his 194 AD one. As you can see with the recruits in Bei Hai, there are some guys that come in to help Kong Rong early on. As is the case with just about any ruler, especially weak ones, the first few years are key. Recruiting Che Zhou and taking Xia Pi in the 2nd turn is crucial, because it means you don’t have to worry about battling on that front and you get Che Zhou’s 6000 soldiers to boost your troops early on. Then pilfering officers from Yuan Shao and surviving a potential onslaught from him. Watch Yuan Shao and starve him out when he starts to struggle; if he takes out Liu Bei early like he did in this scenario, recruiting Guan Yu and Zhang Fei obviously is a boon. From there, once you conquer the northeast with Kong Rong you are usually in good shape. The battle with Cao Cao tends to go well since all of those officers are Wei-based and are loyal to Kong Rong if Cao Cao betrays you. From there, Kong Rong basically becomes Cao Cao-lite the rest of the way.
8. Bei Hai Recruits
Xin Pi (189 AD)
Bao Xin (190 AD)
Bao Zhong (191 AD)
Zong Bao (192 AD)