Zhuge Liang Plots Strategy – 208 A.D.
Zhang Lu – 38. Han Zhong Strategy:
Another Zhang Lu quest. Similar to 194 AD and 201 AD, he starts in Han Zhong with the same officers; Yuan Pu, Zhang Wei, and the Yang family jabronis. No one to search and find in the home city of Han Zhong, although it is a bigger city with a decent opening economy. There are a few officers nearby you can recruit (Yang Huai and Gao Pei from Liu Zhang in 40. Zi Tong) but not much else. Not a lot of ways to build up the city of Han Zhong as you don’t have civil officers. Combined with the fact that you are starting late in 208 AD with Cao Cao having a huge head start, we are going to try something different to get building faster.
We took the whole army and moved it to 25. Shang Yong. This is more dangerous in a way as you get closer to Cao Cao’s main army, plus you have Liu Bei near you and a strong castle of Liu Zhang’s in Yong An. Primarily the benefit to moving to Shang Yong would be to quick Spy on Yong An and recruit Jiang Wan, who is disloyal. He may still be the Governor, even if not (Liu Zhang made someone else the governor by the time I got there) he will have 6000+ soldiers to recruit which is a big help. Having Shang Yong also connects you to various paths which is good yet also susceptible to attacks on multiple fronts.
Continue to Spy on Yong An and 24. Xiang Yang. Liu Bei has some disloyal guys in Xiang Yang, like Liu Qi, Fan Jiang and Zhang Da. Also you can search and find Song Zhong in Shang Yong. This gives you the option to build up some economy and train the soldiers. Meanwhile, Liu Bei from Jing Zhou launched an attack on Yong An. We were asked for reinforcements but we just let Yong An get taken over (recruiting Jiang Wan hurt that city as he had most of the soldiers). The Liu Zhang officers recruited by Liu Bei were disloyal enough for us to recruit; this included Wu Lan, Dong He, Hu Ban and Liu Jun. Our army is starting to grow with some decent officers now, particularly Wu Lan.
Tricky thing about taking Shang Yong to start is that either Liu Bei or Cao Cao will move into 23. Xin Ye. Liu Bei did, and was quickly attacked by Cao Cao. Zhang Fei repelled Cao Cao’s attack, but we attacked Xin Ye the next turn because it was weakened. No real point in doing this other than to win the city, take the gold/food and move all the officers back to Shang Yong to build up that fort and leave Xin Ye empty.
Liu Bei meanwhile is getting action on several fronts. He takes Yong An from Liu Zhang, only to lose it again to Yan Yan of Liu Zhang’s army. Yan Yan’s loyalty is always in the 80’s with Liu Zhang, so we recruit him and his 6000 soldiers and move them to Shang Yong, leaving Yong An open.
Meanwhile, Sun Quan is attacking Liu Bei’s men at 26. Jiang Xia and he is having to use reinforcements from Xiang Yang to survive. Shortly after, he moves a few guys to 23. Xin Ye again. Sun Quan overcomes Liu Bei’s troops at 26. Jiang Xia, so this seems like the opportune time to take Liu Bei at Xiang Yang. With Xin Ye and Yong An empty currently, we can afford to send the majority of our troops and leave our backside relatively uncovered in Shang Yong. We send Wu Lan, Yan Yan, Jiang Wan, Zhang Wei and Hu Ban. Toughest thing about fighting at Xiang Yang though is that you can only do a simul attack with 4 guys on the Governor, so that slows progress a bit. But Liu Bei only has a few officers with any soldiers at all, so we easily take him down. He flees to 27. Jiang Ling, which is now his only city other than Xin Ye.
Next turn we keep following him and take Chang Ban (basically in a race to take this before Sun Quan does). We take Xin Ye from Liu Bei as well, he just moved Deng Zhi and some civil officers there so it’s not much. Although Zhang Fei is here with 13,000 soldiers, but he is not the governor so we take out Deng Zhi and capture the two thrones to win the city. We take everyone out of here the next turn so we have a space between us and Cao Cao at 22. Wan (although he only has Cao Ren there).
Before anyone else takes him out, we attack Liu Bei at 27. Jiang Ling. He has Zhao Yun and Zhao Guang with soldiers but little else, plus Liu Bei’s soldiers are still the same from when he fled at 24. Xiang Yang. We take them out and the majority of his group flees to the open 42. Yong An (Liu Bei had 59. Yi Ling so he was able to flee via there). Liu Zhang takes him out the next turn and kills Liu Bei. This is good because if we did that, all of Liu Bei’s officers would be in the 20 loyalty range or less with us since Zhang Lu is Wei-based. But with Liu Zhang doing this first, we are able to recruit all of these Liu Bei officers. This included Pang Tong, who we gave the Manual of Sun Tzu and he now has 108 intelligence and can predict everything accurately.
With our troops to the east, we took 26. Jiang Xia from Sun Quan to push him back a bit. He is starting to lose on his main front, losing 32. Shou Chun and now 36. Lu Jiang. He still has 33. Jian Ye though, for now anyway. At this point lower Jing Zhou is a mess, with Zhao Fan somehow coming out on top with 3 of the 4 cities. Zhao Fan asks me to invade 28. Wu Ling (Liu Du) but I capture Zhao Fan and kill him. Huang Zhong becomes the ruler! Fortunately even if he takes charge down here, there aren’t enough officers to build a real army. We take this opportunity to hold 63. Chi Bi from Sun Quan’s army and take all these lower Jing Zhou cities, clearing out Huang Zhong and Liu Du. 27. Jiang Ling is a good hub here because you can hold Chi Bi and Yi Ling with it, leaving all the other cities south of that minimally occupied.
Sun Quan isn’t having the best time with Cao Cao. Cao Cao finally overcomes Sun Quan at 33. Jian Ye, causing Sun Quan to flee to 34. Wu. He loses that the next turn, and then has the bulk of his army in 35. Kuai Ji with not enough gold/economy built up to support them. He quickly loses that, leaving Lu Meng in charge in 37. Chai Sang. Cao Cao awaits at 36. Lu Jiang so this should be fun to begin battle with Cao Cao. We are allied at least, so will plan to keep building up our force at 26. Jiang Xia and 27. Jiang Ling in hopes of Cao Cao betraying us (and us being able to resist him).
Cao Cao continues to leave nothing at 22. Wan, although with Sun Quan ousted we are sure to see his main force arrive in our way, hoping to expand west. With that said, we should move on Liu Zhang with our western troops at Shang Yong & Jiang Ling while we can (aka before the big Cao Cao fight). We went ahead and attacked 42. Yong An, but Liu Zhang had sent reinforcements. Last we checked Jiang Zhou did not have many soldiers but evidently Liu Zhang must have moved his forces from Cheng Dou there, because a ton of Jiang Zhou reinforcements came. This was a good opportunity to duel some of his high soldier officers because we have a bunch of loyal Liu Bei officers with high WAR (Zhang Fei, Guan Ping, Zhao Guang, Zhao Yun, etc).
With Yong An now ours, we continued the attack since we gained soldiers from dueling Liu Zhang’s reinforcements from Jiang Zhou. Liu Zhang himself had moved to Jiang Zhou, so we got him surrounded by 6 generals and he quickly fled to Cheng Dou. Cheng Dou, Jian Ning and Yun Nan all had 1 or 2 officers. They had high soldiers but it wasn’t enough to stop the momentum of our army. We took all of these cities in the ensuing terms, leaving Liu Zhang with only 40. Zi Tong.
At this point we continue to build up our army in Jiang Ling, Jiang Xia, Xiang Yang and Shang Yong. 23. Xin Ye remains open and we are not sure where the bulk of Cao Cao’s army is, but we do know that we are still allied with him.