The Chaotic Era Ends 194 AD

Liu Yong 32. Shou Chun Strategy:

Liu Yong is about as close to an average ruler as you can get. He starts off with the same two cities he had in 189; Shou Chun and Jian Ye. This, along with his decent charm, are his best points by far. Oh, and that Taishi Ci fellow.

Liu Bei is occupying the same two castles that Tao Qian had in 189, and Sun Ce is just below him in Lu Jiang. Yan Baihu is still at Wu, no more of a threat than he was before. Liu Yong himself is tremendously weak, one of the weakest characters in the game. Rarely use him in battle, try to have him govern from away. Fortunately he has a great warlord in Taishi Ci. Overall though your army lacks firepower, and only have one established Civil Officer (Ze Rong). You need firepower before long, so ally with Liu Bei and Sun Ce for a time while you build up.

Don’t panic when you hear Sun Ce is near you. Really, he is pretty weak in this scenario, and your success (or rather, how fast you reach success) depends on how fast you can manipulate Sun Ce’s overzealous army. It doesn’t benefit much to wait as there aren’t a lot of great warriors that join in Shou Chun or Jian Ye in the years ahead. 

Ally yourself with Sun Ce at first, as he has the Hereditary Seal and he tends to build up his soldiers to vast amounts right away. If you can spell this time and avoid attack, it’ll mean he’ll implode after a year or two. In fact, he was near dead at the end of 195 when I played, both times actually. With no money, little food, and a huge army, attack him with a general that has a horse. Now run away, and waste all their food. You’ll be tremendously outnumbered, but that’s the idea; Sun Ce will flee Lu Jiang when this happens. Attack him in Chai Sang now, and send your whole army, so that he retreats back to Lu Jiang; you can corner him here, instead of chasing him all around south Jing Zhou. Hopefully you can get his troops to give up via lack of food, because then you can get the massive amount of soldiers that Sun Ce had built up. The one thing about all the starved soldiers, when you starve a ruler and they lose due to running out of food, the army morale goes to 0 for all those soldiers and takes a long time to recover that. His generals won’t like you at first, but once you build up your cities and reward them, they’ll be useful. Oh, and you have the Hereditary Seal now, which raises your charm roughly 80 points. 

Now I’d ignore Liu Biao and turn your concentration to Yan Baihu and Wang Lang. With all these new Lu Jiang soldiers (give them food!), have them take out eastern Wu. If you bested Sun Ce in a year or two, chances are Yan Baihu and Wang Lang haven’t built up at all. 

Send a mass force to destroy them, and then use those two cities as backdrops to Lu Jiang, Shou Chun, and Jian Ye. Currently, I’m still allied with Liu Bei who is still in Xu Zhou and Xia Pi, and Liu Biao who is near me also (Jiang Xia).

Eventually, Liu Biao can’t take it anymore and he betrays me. What a fool, he has plenty of troops in Jiang Xia, yet now they have no loyalty, and thus the city was taken shortly thereafter (with no force, mind you). Sun Ce popped up from his Exile in Wu Ling and actually took out Liu Biao at Jiang Ling. However, we take that castle from him, and are now pushing west.

Meanwhile, everyone not with Liu Yong is concentrating on Liu Bei, who holds Xia Pi and Xu Zhou once again. His officers are loyal and his cities are built up nicely, but he lacks soldiers, and is forced into Xia Pi after we take Xu Zhou. Yuan Shao decides to take Xia Pi, which suits us well. All of the Liu Bei officers he recruited hate him, so we raid his army and get Zhang Fei and Guan Yu with high loyalty.

Fabulous, but Yuan Shao ends the alliance shortly thereafter, and we take Xia Pi after he does.

Yuan Shao is caught at Bei Hai, and killed. Yuan Shang takes over, only to lose one of his main castles, Ping Yuan, the next turn. His army is spiraling and we’ve caught off Cao Cao from pursuing Yuan Shang, which is good. Currently, we are allied with Cao Cao and it’s going to stay that way, with the juggernaut he is creating. Meanwhile, we’re eyeing Xiang Yang in an attempt to circle around Cao Cao’s army, seeing as he’ll obviously be the one (and only) threat left. Surprisingly we’re moving ground pretty fast; Nan Pi is soon captured and Yuan Shang is executed, leaving Yuan Xi in Bei Ping and Xiang Ping. Obviously, that “threat” is over. Cao Cao looms, but we’re still in an alliance with him so we don’t want to break that until either we get better position (circle around, taking Liu Biao) or he betrays us. The latter hasn’t happened, so we focus on the trip to Xiang Yang. Liu Biao is defeated easily with the Wu troops (we’re basically the Wu army with Liu Bei’s officers) that are loyal, and he flees to Shang Yong. Xin Ye and Wan are lightly guarded, so we’ll aim for those next.

By the way, we moved out of Jiang Ling, leaving Sun Ce along in Wu Ling. Look, we don’t have time to be chasing him around southern Jing Zhou as he flees from province to province. Let him dwindle away down there with Gong Zhi and Jin Xuan as his only recruits in the city for the next 30 years. Anyway, Xiang Yang is usually one of the best castles in the area, so grab it and move everyone in that area there. From here, you will either split off into two and two Liu Biao’s four territories this way, or get Xin Ye and Wan quick and then chase Liu Biao. Chances are, Cao Cao or Zhang Lu will interfere at some point, which is fine as this just makes Liu Biao’s captured officers more loyal to you when you destroy whoever they go to.

Eventually I backed up Liu Biao all the way to Han Zhong and Yuan Xi to Xiang Ping. Unfortunately, Cao Cao invaded Ping Yuan (which I had lightly defended, purposedly trying to coax Cao Cao into betraying me). I sent troops to Jie Qiao and won despite having 10,000 less troops. I had Zhang Fei alone and his morale was very high from chasing the Yuan family north, so his movement was 8, thus allowing me to run all around Cao Cao’s slower and less trained officers. Regardless of the victory I allied with Cao Cao the next turn.

Why? Because we were at a 0 and even with the betrayal it wasn’t that high, so I re-allied with him in order to buy myself some time to recruit his Governors that just turned disloyal because he betrayed me. You see, it’s a key element in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, maybe the most important; baiting the enemy into betraying you and then re-allying with them while you scour their force. Keep in mind the ruler if they have money will work on fixing the loyalty problems, so best to be quick. If they do betray again and the diplomacy rating is around 30 or less, they loyalty goes down again (characters in the 80 range go into the 60 range for loyalty).

Smashing Liu Biao is easy, and then it’s time to turn our attention to Zhang Lu quick, and then on to Cao Cao. Zhang Lu is messing around in Xia Bian and Zi Tong but is getting attacked by a beefed up Liu Zhang in Cheng Dou. His force is easily mopped up, and we recruit Wu Xi of Chang An to take the first dent in our relationship with Cao Cao. But hey, he betrayed us first right, so we might as well do the same and not ruin the loyalty of our army in the process.

As you can see, we overcame Cao Cao and his 267,602 soldiers. Luckily, officers like Meng Tan and Hu Ban were leading those soldiers, instead of un-recruitable Cao relatives. After this massive army was cut down to 40,000 or so, we took Luo Yang.

The snowball then started rolling down the hill, and Cao Cao was dead before we knew it. Ma Teng was next and he put up a surprising amount of resistance, compared to his usual roll-over strategy. Sun Ce has a few Sun relatives but not enough to stop your juggernaut of a force. Liu Yong is just relaxing in Xiang Yang, while instructing an army to go to Zi Tong and Yong An.

We said Liu Zhang was beefed up earlier, but it appears he is not. For whatever reason, Liu Yong had no trouble uniting China. Those initial Sun Ce soldiers started the campaign, and early betrayals from pretenders like Cao Cao and Yuan Shao allowed the rise to power to happen sooner than it should have. Yang Xiu is somehow Liu Yong’s advisor. Anyway, Liu Yong wasn’t really a challenge but it wasn’t really a breeze, just try to keep him personally away from anything War related (or Civil matters too). Liu Yong’s best trait is his position on the map and ability to parlay Sun Ce’s failure into a head start. 

32. Shou Chun Recruits:

Xue Li (196)