Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3 Various Game Play Suggestions
Romance of the Three Kingdoms III (Genesis) Tips
Getting a handle on the intricacies of RTKIII will allow you to better understand the walkthroughs, and before you know it you’ll be able to take over China with any ruler (with some luck, of course). These particular strategies generally can be used with any ruler, but it should be noted that your strategy will alter based on scenario, ruler, and other conditions.
– When you first start out, make alliances with those around you (if applicable). In some cases (like Cao Cao with Dong Zhou, Yuan Shu with Liu Bei, other Good / Bad relationships) alliances will never be able to be met, so keep that in mind. The purpose of alliances is to support eachother; however, one of the most integral parts of RTKIII is the ability to bait other rulers into betraying, an art that will reward you if you can sustain the initial betrayal. If an allied ruler betrays you (with a hostility rating of 40 or lower), their officers will drop in loyalty (from 100 to 80, 80 to 60, etc), allowing you to recruit all of these recently-disgruntled officers.
Better yet, recruiting a ruler’s Governor will net you the entire city (although some officers won’t convert over but instead will be free officers). One thing to keep in mind is that you can never ever recruit Cao Ren/Cao Hong/Cao Ang/etc from Cao Cao, Yuan Shang/Yuan Xi from Yuan Shao, and so on regardless of how low their loyalty goes.
In many situations when making alliances, you’ll grow to the point where you don’t want it anymore. Simply Threaten the ruler a few times until their hostility rating is over 40, and you’ll be able to Revoke the alliance without losing officer / popular loyalty.
Rulers you ally with will often times ask you for stuff, some more than others. Rulers struggling financially will ask you for money all the time, but never give in. However you shouldn’t just reject their proposals as eventually your hostility rating with them will go up and they can cut the alliance without it being considered a betrayal (something very bad that you don’t want). So when they ask for money, just give them a few Crossbows or Horses and they’ll go away happy. You don’t need to give them much, in fact you should try to pace yourself and just use that as your “Help” currency with beggar rulers.
– Know your officers and the officers around you. Some rulers start off with weak officers but are actually set up in a good position. For example, Kong Rong in 189 and 194 can recruit several disgruntled Yuan Shao officers (Zhang He, Gao Lan, Chen Lin, Xu You, etc) and can create a formidable army. In 189, Kong Rong can recruit Che Zhou at Xia Pi for another city after turn one. The moral of the story is to utilize the Spy function as much as possible and recruit low-loyalty Civil Officers, Generals and Advisors.
– The Art of Building Up a City – Economy should be the prime concern of any city. To do this, you ideally should have three solid political officers working on it in 2 six month spans. Flood and Land Development are to be done once your economy is in the 1400-1600 range (possibly higher depending on the amount of officers in that city). Because of this demand for economy (every city must have a good economy), good Civil Officers are vital. Again, Spying to get Civil Officers is a grand idea.
When starting out with a city, take note of a few things. First of all, if you have a lot of officers or too low of economy (it’ll be red or yellow, that’s how you know it’ll be bad), move a large portion of your officers to a nearby free city in December so that you can make as much as possible in your home city in January.
Obviously if there is no free city near you, you cannot do this. Also, Ally with some of the more rich rulers (Liu Zhang, Liu Biao) and ask them for money in January or February. They’ll likely be loaded (after a few years into the scenario). Other rulers that can be had are generally the dumber ones (and those without advisors). Rulers like Kong Zhou, Yan Baihu and Han Fu often times will give you large sums of money, in part to the fact that they don’t have advisors and also since they have so few officers that they generally have more money than they need. If you’re still low on money, refrain from recruiting more officers and get rid of some of the more expendable types (ie jobber Military Officers) or keep would-be Generals / Advisors as Military Officers / Civil Officers as it is much cheaper at the end of the year.
– Get a “Perfect” Advisor. What is a perfect advisor? Zhuge Liang starts as one, with 100 Intelligence (meaning that all the advice he gives you is correct). Anyone with an Intelligence as high as 90 can be a “Perfect Advisor”. In fact, you can have several. How? Well, there are several War Manual of Sun Tzu’s (I think there are ten of them and they increase INT by 10 and POL by 5) which you can reward to these advisor’s and their intelligence will go up.
As you would imagine, this is especially useful when trying to recruit officers, as they’ll NEVER be wrong if their Intelligence is 100 or better.
– In 189, get Lu Bu to rebel. And it can be done in any situation, no matter his loyalty. Most officers won’t do anything once their loyalty is greater than 90, and they definitely won’t when their loyalty is 95 or higher. Lu Bu is the exception, as he’ll rebel no matter what. With such a high success rate (and a good likelihood that he’ll join you immediately after) there is no reason not to get him to rebel (likely from Dong Zhou). If he joins you, his loyalty will be about 100.
– Find the Hereditary Seal. In 189, it starts off in Luo Yang (but you or whomever must Search to find it). In 194 it starts off with Sun Ce, who then gives it to Yuan Shu in 196. Lastly, in the later scenarios it’ll be with the Cao family. It is absolutely essential in running an army, especially for rulers with low Charm. It takes Han Xuan from 10 Charm to 100 Charm. Obviously that’s the most extreme case, but the loyalty of your officers is the most important aspect of taking over China.
– If you are low on Civil Officers, make advisors you recruit Civil Officers.
Yes, three Civil Officers are more important than one Advisor. You need that high economy. The best case example for this is Chen Lin from Yuan Shao, who should stay as a Civil Officer when you recruit him instead of promoting him to an Advisor. Advisor’s are more expensive to pay at the end of the year, and they aren’t that useful unless they are a top shelf Advisor (90 + INT) or a warrior type advisor (Zhao Yun, Zhang Liao, Guan Yu). This is especially the case if you don’t have a high economy. Why have an Advisor sitting around when they could be an above-average Civil Officer making your city money? Don’t make the mistake of making them an Advisor too soon as demoting them to a Civil Officer will destroy your trust with them.
– War Tips – Always fight with a fully-trained, fully-rallied army. If you have 100 / 100 and you fight a successful battle, it’ll be 100 / 108 and your movement will be up to 8 for each character. Walls can be scaled at a movement of 9, and this is very useful for doing things fast. Utilize the personal combat function. If you have a high-war officer, have them challenge enemies. If the disparity in War ability is too vast (over 30) then they will never accept. Also, if your soldier count is far lower than theirs, they’ll never accept. Conversely, if you have a high soldier count, enemies will be more apt to challenge you, especially if you’re a commander.
Sometimes when you duel a weak officer (or one that is 20-30 points lower in the War category), they will get slaughtered right at the start or will sustain a single blow that takes off over half their health. Often times in this scenario, you get a message that they were “eliminated”. This is code for they are now slain in the duel and you won’t be recruiting them after the battle.Â
As for defeating Governor’s / Rulers in a castle, use the Simultaneous option as much as possible with a General (or someone) with an Army over 70. This is your best bet.
– Watch Ambitious Warlords Implode – Yuan Shao and Cao Cao scaring you in 189 AD? First step, Ally with them. Second step, pray that they don’t break that alliance when you’re not ready for them. If rulers like Yuan Shao or Cao Cao can’t expand, they implode due to having too many officers and (more specifically) too many soldiers that they cannot fund. So if Yuan Shao is stuck in Nan Pi and Cao Cao in Chen Liu, you can almost expect this to happen. They’ll have upwards of 100,000 soldiers many times, but will also have 0 Gold and low amounts of food (about 1:1 soldier/food ratio). So what’s the answer? You can defeat Cao Cao’s 100,000 man army with 5,000 soldiers, if you do it right.
Bring lots and lots of food. You’re trying to starve the enemy. Having a Horse is even better. As the enemy’s food beings to drain, they’ll start to chase you all over the map. If the enemy can flee, they will do so when the food hits 0. If they can’t flee, they’ll go at you even with 0 food, until their morale drops to 0.
This is when they give up. When this happens, you’ll have the city and their 100,000 soldiers, but your food supply will now be rather low (unless you brought a lot). Still, this is the only way to defeat Yuan Shao and Cao Cao sometimes, so if you’re low on soldiers and are worried about a potential attack by these warlords, attack them first and drain their food. The soldiers you acquire will propel you into a long march to take over China, since you’re smart enough to support them. Although you will have to build their morale up from 0 (I guess when you’re starved to death, that happens) and that will take nearly a year.
The starve tactic is actually a good move for any ruler or commander stuck in a city that they can’t run from and has a low soldier total. For example if Yan Baihu has 18,000 soldiers and 22,000 food which is common, you can invade him with Wang Lang’s army with a weak military officer like Zhou Xin with minimal soldiers (2000-3000 maybe) and run around wasting time. If you can put a horse unit out there with 8 movement, even better. As long as you have food you can go month to month until Yan Baihu were to run out of food. In this case after 1 month 18,000 Food would be gone since he has 18,000 soldiers (assuming none were taken out that month). Then only 4000 food needs to be wasted in battle the next month and he’ll run out!Â
can anyone tell me why are officers suddenly destroyed during turns.. do they die or what???? and if they die why it says like for example zheng du an officer was destroyed..
Hey Arhum,
If they are “destroyed”, that just means they pass away. Either from old age or some officers that died early on like Hua Xiong, Li Ru, etc will die at an early age.
It also depends on if you play Historical or Fictional – Historical means if the character really died young like Sun Ce and the generals mentioned above, that they will die young. Fictional means everything is randomized and they’ll just die or be “destroyed” whenever.
And yet no one knows the exact requirements that is needed for a general and an advisor. The only thing ive seen on this is that a general must have an average of 70 on WAR , ARMY, NAVY. . But this is not so.
Someone skilled in this game please shed some light on thier requirements–
To become an advisor, the officer must have 80 in EITHER Intellect or Political ability.
In MOST cases, a general must have war, army & navy at 70 or higher. Some generals can have Army or Navy lower then 70, such as Zhang Xun who has a 69 army or Cai Mao
These are natural abilities also, books or weapons do not bypass this
Good explanation. The Generals that have 69 Army are weird, all of which it seems are Generals of a southern ruler. Annoying too for Yuan Shu since his forces are already pretty limited and one of his two Generals can’t even do Simul attacks.
I did some hex editing today, increasing the army & navy of all officers that had 70+ war to make them Generals (I play by only recruiting Generals, Advisers and 60+ political civil officers).
I noticed however, some officers STILL couldnt become Generals. I looked at the Lu brother, Xiang and Kuang from Yuan Shaos army. One was a General, the other not. After looking at their stats, seems 50 charm was needed as I changed a few officers charm to 50 and poof: General.
I now surmise that 70 is needed in War, Army and Navy as well as 50 charm. This is most cases, some officers are exempt from the charm requirement.
I will check most officers stats that i changed to make generals as the game progresses to see if the 50 is an absolute requirement. I may offer the hacked ROM as well. I hacked the officer creation to have young officers start with 85 stats, allowing for 100 stat officers and older officers start at all 80s for a Cao Cao type officer