Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3 189 AD Wang Lang
Dong Zhuo’s Rivals Unite – 189 A.D.
Wang Lang – 35. Kuai Ji Strategy:
Wang Lang is another ruler that will take a long time to build up before you can worry about conquering the land. He starts off isolated in the southeast corner of the map, with only Yan Baihu of Wu in reach. Fortunately, Yan Baihu is feeble and probably won’t pose a threat to you in Kuai Ji no matter how long it takes for you to get Kuai Ji built up. The downside for Wang Lang is that he starts off with only Yu Fan and Zhou Xin (but, Xu Chang comes soon)…most glaring is the lack of real civil officers. In most cases I’ll turn Zhou Xin or more likely Xu Chang to a Civil Officer to aid in Economy with Yu Fan and Wang Lang. Another less-likely but significantly better option is to Capture a Civil Officer visiting you for Diplomatic reasons. It rarely works but when it does the potential is huge as the officer is usually of high loyalty upon joining for some reason. Of course, don’t do this to a ruler that will be in power later (ie Cao Cao) as you won’t want to ruin your diplomacy rating with that particular ruler.
Also keep in mind with Wang Lang that although he is positioned in the Wu part of the Wu / Wei / Shu triangle, his alliance leans more-so towards Wei, so that all the Cao Cao-type officers will be loyal to you and the Wu ones are less so. This is vital when looking for able soldiers to recruit.
As soon as you feel that you can take out Yan Baihu, do so. Try to Ally with him right away and ask for money in January so that you can drain his funds because he’s dumb and will give you money. However it will take Wang Lang a long time (probably up until 198-199) to have fully trained max soldiers with all your officers (including a good economy). You’ll still have no one with over 70 Army (Simul Attacks) until Zhu Ran comes in 200 ad so your battle with Yan Baihu will be a tough one and you’ll probably have to re-arm your forces afterwards. Other option would be to attack Yan Baihu early and come in with a lot of food and try to starve his troops. Either way, once you acquire Wu, work on building Wu up and leave Wang Lang alone in Kuai Ji to drop off supplies to Wu and leave the majority of your army in Wu to build it up and push towards Liu Yong.
By the time you get out of the corner, even Liu Yong could have a decent force. He’ll still probably be stuck in Shou Chun and Jian Ye, but Spy on Jian Ye first to see if there are any worthy officers to recruit.
Taishi Ci is probably the Governor here so you won’t be able to do anything about Jian Ye until Zhu Ran comes around and you can do Simul attacks on Taishi. The good news is that most of the other officers in Jian Ye are weak like Chen Heng, Ma Zhong and Wu Jing, so if you can isolate Taishi Ci with a Zhu Ran-led force, you should be okay. Jian Ye is the capital of the southeast so to speak, so station the majority of your forces there and work on solidifying He Fei and Zhun Yin. Tao Qian probably bit the bullet and Sun Qian is either ruling in Xia Pi or dead via Yuan Shao or Cao Cao or someone like that. Cao Cao is the big variable; he can be dead in 199 or he can be pushing north, east and west. Ally with him immediately if your army nears his.
Anyway, Liu Yong and Sun Qian should be easy to wrap up, and Xu Zhou / Xia Pi are bound to be high in Economy when you acquire them. Again if you run into a powerful force or even a force you’re not comfortable being near, Ally with them to prevent a potential loss. In our particular case above, we have Kong Zhou and Liu Bei near us and Sun Qian. Liu Bei took over Cao Cao and Kong Zhou has a surprisingly high amount of soldiers.
Some of them are disloyal so we recruit them and add to our army, moving westward and leaving Yuan Shao be for now in Bei Hai.
As you see, once you secure the southeast portion of Sun Qian, Liu Yong, Kong Zhou and the like, work on solidifying the center. In this particular case we have the Jia Xue-led force taking over for Dong Zhuo so we push him west a little and stop, as his sphere of influence is expanding southward and westward and we’re better served to avoid him for now. Liu Bei meanwhile has a slew of disloyal Wei-ites to recruit, so do so. Despite it being the year 200 ad, Liu Bei is in a position where he doesn’t have a lot of loyal officers and is weaker than you would think. Yuan Shao is in shambles with a poor estate in Nan Pi and Gongsun Zan is bumbling about as usual. So basically, take out Liu Bei and your way to the north will be right in front of you. Most of these officers you recruit along the way won’t be loyal but you have a good Wei base with Xu Chang, Pu Yang and Chen Liu at your disposal.
With Jia Xue taking over Yuan Shu and Liu Biao, there are only a few left.
As Zhang Liao and the Xiahou’s bust west through the weak interior of Jia Xue’s army, we manage to capture Jia Xue and execute him. Zhang Lu then takes the throne and holds it for a while in Han Zhong, but eventually gets captured there, leaving Sima Yi of Jiang Zhou as the ruler! The mass of their army is pushing Liu Zhang to Yun Nan and Jian Ning but the continuing ruler deaths has thrown the loyalty of the army in shambles, changing with each death. We sandwich Sima Yi and he dies, leaving Wu Xi of Tian Shui as the throne holder. That’s Dong Zhuo – Dong Min – Jia Xue – Zhang Lu – Sima Yi – Wu Xi if you’re keeping score at home.
Ma Teng and Liu Zhang are easy to wrap up in their respective corners but Sun Ce has a decent yet beatable force. Once we move the entire force over there we have around 500,000 soldiers! It being 208 means that we’re a little slow compared to most rulers so Sun Ce had that much more time to build up his kingdom and he probably has 100,000 of his own at least. Chances are they’re stationed all in Wu Ling or Chang Sha and our guess is correct, with the other cities being easy to take over.
Sun Ce gets captured in Wu Ling and then Sun Quan takes over, but he has no soldiers! We act on this before their turn goes and keep pushing him back, past Chang Sha and Gui Yang to Ling Ling. The next turn, Ling Ling and Nan Hai are ours.
Wang Lang doesn’t have a real hard quest, as Yan Baihu isolates him from the rest of China and therefore he faces no real threats (unless you consider Yan Baihu and Yan Yu a threat). Wang Lang’s 189 (and 194 for that matter) will take a really long time though and could potentially turn into a stalemate if another army emerges by the time Wang Lang asserts his power. In our particular Wang Lang scenario, there really wasn’t another dominant army as Cao Cao had died and the fluctuating leadership during Dong Zhuo’s army rise of prominence made his army that much easier to dismantle.
35. Kuai Ji Recruits:
Xu Chang (189)
Zhu Ran (200)