The Chaotic era Begins – 194 A.D.
Gongsun Zan – 2. Bei Ping Strategy:
Gongsun Yue and Yan Gang are no longer with Gongsun Zan in this one, but he does have Zhao Yun. Yuan Shao will be tough to ally with as he rejects all proposals. He does have a number of disloyal officers at 5 Nan Pi still. It will help having Zhao Yun and his high Charm to recruit them. You will want Chen Lin, Gao Lan, Wang Xiu, Chen Zhen, Xu You. You may also want to head to 1. Xiang Ping to search for Gongsun Du who is a good general. Send him back to Bei Ping and leave Xiang Ping left alone for a while. All the Civil Officers you took from Yuan Shao will help you build the economy up and you should have a few good generals for fighting as well. There are a few military officers you can get too like Shen Rong at 85 loyalty and some others like Ma Yan, Qu Yi and Zhang Yi that are around 90 loyalty and harder to recruit. Normally they are worth skipping but Gongsun Zan could use all the officers he can get. Other than Gongsun Du in Xiang Ping, you won’t find anyone in this area until the year 203 when you’ll get Gongsun Gong and Gongsun Kang in Xiang Ping.
The other variable is Cao Cao will likely move into 4. Jin Yang quickly. From there he may move to 3. Dai Xian which is what he did in this scenario. Fortunately for us it was populated by Civil Officers and then Xun Yu and Xun You (smart guys but weak), with not a lot of soldiers. 50. Yi Jing hadn’t been battled over yet with Yuan Shao, so we took this opportunity to attack 3. Dai Xian to claim the Yijing territory and push Cao Cao’s forces back. Even though we only have around 25,000 soldiers, this was an easy win as Cao Cao had 6000 at Dai Xian and not much help at 4 Jin Yang. We also captured a few civil officers like Xun Shuang and Liu Yan. After taking the city, we moved everyone BACK to Bei Ping to build up further. In fact with the extra Civil Officers, we sent Gongsun Du and three of the Civil Officers to Xiangping to build that city up for some extra $.
Fast forward a few years. We have allied with Liu Biao and Liu Zhang, asking for $ and food to build things up faster. Liu Zhang at 41. Cheng Dou doesn’t seem to want to help us much but Liu Biao is being good about it. Meanwhile Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Yuan Shao are attacking Lu Bu in a pincer attack. Lu Bu quickly loses Pu Yang, Chen Liu and then his last city is 7. Ye. It takes a few attempts but Yuan Shao defeats him eventually. But then Cao Cao attacks from Luo Yang and begins to take over the middle as he usually does. Yuan Shao is left with 6. Ping Yuan, 5. Nan Pi and 8. Bei Hai. Still too strong in Nan Pi for us to attack as they have nearly 75,000 soldiers, plenty more than we have. But our break is coming soon. Continue to Spy on Nan Pi so you can find the right time to pounce.
Liu Yong somehow took 17. Xia Pi from Liu Bei – actually Yuan Shao probably took it first and then Liu Yong took it back, because all of Liu Bei’s officers there are now loyal to Liu Yong. Liu Yong launches an attack on Bei Hai, and Yuan Shao sends Nan Pi officers to help. They repel the attack but in doing so, lost most of the Nan Pi soldiers that were used in reinforcements. Since we already own 50 Yijing, we can attack Nan Pi straight up. It is Yuan Shao with full soldiers and a
few others with a few thousand soldiers (the reinforcements that helped Bei Hai). It turns out to be an easy win and now we are going to work on expanding further.
Bei Hai was already weakened – not many soldiers other than Zhang Kai’s who had 6000 because he was captured by Yuan Shao, so we recruited him and then attacked Bei Hai. Another easy win. Yuan Shao in Ping Yuan was still weak from the previous battle so we attacked him and cleared him out – Jing Zhou now belongs to us. But so goes our buffer as we are now facing the huge Cao Cao army. They attacked the next turn and we lost Ping Yuan. But we took it back the next turn. We did some Spying from Bei Ping to see that Cao Cao must have betrayed someone as loyalty is low on a lot of his regular officers that are usually really high. Time to start recruiting Cao Cao’s army quickly. Before doing that we took our army out of Bei Hai to leave that empty so we don’t have to fight on several fronts (if Liu Yong moves there we can deal with him later).
About this time we had a few old wise men tell us that Gongsun Zan is about to expire. It was around the year 202 that he died. I would imagine it is near impossible to actually clear this scenario with Gongsun Zan still alive. Fortunately he has a natural successor in Zhao Yun. There are other options too since we have built our cities up a bit but Zhao Yun has the overall ability and like Gongsun Zan he is a Shu-leaning guy so all those officers will have high loyalty. We were able to recruit the governor Zhang Liao 7. Ye from Cao Cao and that was a big help because Ye can view/Spy on several cities nearby. We recruited the governor of 4. Jin Yang and then some other officers in Chen Liu and Xu Chang that had a lot of soldiers. With all the extra soldiers, we went back and attacked 51. Jie Qiao to win that territory and connect back with the northeast half of our land. Now we basically are fortified but just having the 7. Ye and 6. Ping Yuan strongholds, with 8. Bei Hai still empty.
Expanding further gets harder because there are so many different battle fronts. Cao Cao has repaired the loyalty levels of most of his officers, though some disloyal officers remain. As we work to take back the center area (Chen Liu, Xu Chang, Pu Yang, etc) from Cao Cao, Liu Bei keeps helping him from 18. Xu Zhou which stifles our progress further. Eventually we cut through Cao Cao’s forces by taking Ye and Xu Chang, isolating Cao Cao in 20. Qiao along with another of his cities in 21. Ru
Nan. We are able to take down Cao Cao within a turn thanks to all the nearby cities in our control and the ability to send relief reinforcements from other cities. In fact since many of his officers had to flee from other castles, he had few officers that were able to join him in battle in his final battle at Qiao. With Cao Cao gone we get all of his nice items. The Cao army is left with 11. Luo Yang, 12. Hong Nong, 22. Wan and some cities west of that. Cao Hong becomes his successor in 24. Xiang Yang as they had taken that city from Liu Biao.
Meanwhile we are allied with Liu Bei and Liu Yong further to the east. Liu Yong eventually went into the open city of 8. Bei Hai but it’s just one officer. Around this time at 1. Xiang Ping we got Gongsun Gong and Gongsun Kang (203 AD) so we brought them as well as some other forces to Nan Pi to build that up. Combined with other forces in the area we now have enough to make a push to clear out the rest of the east. On the other end of our property we are building up a force to finish off the Cao’s in Luo Yang and Wan.
Liu Yong actually went to request we invade 18. Xu Zhou, but Liu Bei is our friend so we captured Liu Yong when he visited and ousted him. Probably a bad idea because now Xu Shu took the throne. He is at 17. Xia Pi with a bunch of Liu Bei’s old forces (mostly Civil Officers though). So we took out Zhang Zhu at 8. Bei Hai and held that city in hopes of joining with our central forces.
This meant we had to take out Liu Bei at Xu Zhou, so we threatened him a few times to kill the diplomacy rating and then voided the alliance. It wasn’t an easy battle as he had upwards of 40,000 soldiers and it’s always tough to take out Guan Yu and Zhang Fei-led forces, plus we had to garrison a good portion of our troops in 7. Ye and 19. Xu Chang to ensure that side of the territory was fortified. The good thing is after taking out Liu Bei, most of his forces will be in the 70-80 loyalty range even though they were very loyal to him. Part of the perk of having Zhao Yun as the ruler.
Yan Baihu and Yan Yu had both died, so 34. Wu is held by the lowly Zhou Xin (who they must have captured from Wang Lang at some point). It is easy to mop up that city and 35. Kuai Ji from Wang Lang, so do so and then you can focus all of the troops in that region of the map at 33. Jian Ye. 36. Lu Jiang belonged to Liu Biao as Liu Biao had pretty much the whole southern area other than losing 24. Xiang Yang to Cao Cao.
In the meantime we began moving another arsenal of troops over to the Luo Yang region to conquer the capital. Now with our back covered, we can push forward to the south from Jian Ye and west from Luo Yang. Liu Biao at 36 Lu Jiang is weak plus has many disloyal Wu officers. Easy to push through here as we take most of the cities by force and a few by recruiting the governor. Cao Hong’s troops at Hongnong were disloyal so we recruited many of them and then took the city. For now we left 13. Chang An alone because Li Ju has a fair amount of soldiers, so we will keep a stronghold at Hong Nong and continue south to Wan.
The majority of our forces in Luo Yang and Xu Chang are used to take 22. Wan from Cao Hong. His army is mostly old Yuan Shu and Liu Biao officers, with only some Wei guys mixed in. We take Xin Ye in a big battle – he had 50,000 soldiers and we have 75,000. After this, he has only one officer in 25. Shang Yong so we take that. Liu Biao has 38. Han Zhong and 39. Xia Bian, while Liu Zhang has a huge army at 42. Yong An. So we took 24. Xiang Yang and then put a large amount of officers and soldiers at Shang Yong to prepare for conquest.
Meanwhile, it was time to take out Li Ju as we were able to recruit many of his disloyal officers, though he still had a fair amount of soldiers (albeit on weak officers). We combined forces from Hong Nong and Wan to take Chang An, which had an economy in the 2500 range. Money is no object at this point since we have transferred so many officers, gold and food from the eastern cities to the front lines. We let Li Ju survive at 14. An Ding for now as he is weak and the main battle now is with Liu Zhang.
Liu Biao rolls over in 38. Han Zhong and 39. Xia Bian, but then Liu Zhang takes Han Zhong from us as we get stretched too thin here. With Zhao Yun as our ruler though, we are able to recruit any disloyal Liu Zhang officer as they are Shu based and he must have betrayed someone as he has many of his classic generals with low loyalty. 42. Yong An has a ton of soldiers but we recruit many of them and then begin an all-out assault from 27. Jiang Ling and 25. Shang Yong. We win a few duels which helps but as usual, Liu Zhang has most of his soldiers on weak officers like Wang Lei, Huang Quan, Dong Yun and Fu Tong.
Liu Zhang had most of his guys at 42. Yong An, so once we took that he didn’t have much to stop us from marching towards 41. Cheng Dou. Yan Yan gets recruited at 43. Jiang Zhou which helps. 40. Zi Tong actually has a lot of soldiers to tend to and their training and morale is maxed, but still they pale in comparison to all the soldiers we have built up. After beating Liu Zhang at Cheng Dou, we capture him and “free” him as he runs to 44. Jianning. Since he has no soldiers we attack the next turn and he runs to 45. Yunnan, where we attack him on the same turn (and use some of the forces that just went to 44. Jianning as reinforcements). Ma Teng at 16. Xi Liang also rolls over despite having around 20,000 soldiers, because he has limited food/money.
So the key for Gongsun Zan is surviving the first few years when Yuan Shao has 5. Nan Pi built up well. Unlike in 189 AD, Yuan Shao already has a few cities and tends to not implode at Nan Pi in the 194 AD scenario. He does have many disloyal officers at 5. Nan Pi that you need to recruit to expedite the build-up process, and being able to take 50. Yi Jing when Cao Cao moves to 3. Dai Xian is a boon as an escape point (unless Yuan Shao takes the battleground against you prior to that). Having Zhao Yun to lead your troops into China is a nice help, as he along with some of the Yuan Shao guys like Gao Lan can quickly build a formidable army with any Shu officers you come across.
1. Xiang Ping Recruits:
Gongsun Du (194 AD)
Gongsun Gong (203 AD)
Gongsun Kong (203 AD)