Liu Du 31. Ling Ling Strategy:
Out of the four crappy rulers in the RTK 3 208ad Scenario, Liu Du is probably sitting in the best position (arguably Jin Xuan if you consider that Jiang Wan at 42. Yong An can be recruited right away for a free city). Anyway, Liu Du is tucked away in 31. Ling Ling, away from Liu Bei, Sun Quan and Liu Zhang. So you won’t have to worry about dealing with an assault from them for a while.
Liu Du himself is the best ruler statistically out of those four (not saying much though). Decent war for a true Civil Officer, but you won’t want to use him in battle often. He does come with Liu Yan and Liu Xian, two decent Civil Officers. The real prize for Liu Du is Xingdao Rong, one of the rare military officers with a 70 Army (for the ever-powerful Simul attacks). Cool portrait too. Only downside with Xingdao Rong is that you cannot control a city he governs (being that he’s a military officer). Still, a great warrior to have especially in this weak region.
The region is weak but there stands two strong warriors, including one of the Five Tigers – Huang Zhong. Huang Zhong is stuck with Han Xuan in 29. Chang Sha, and he has a 70 loyalty so he can be recruited easily (though since Liu Du has Wei affinity, it is likely that Huang Zhong does not have a high loyalty for you either). Even still, he’s a great asset and you’ll want to get his loyalty up so you can have him be one of your top Generals (you may wish to use him as a Civil Officer early on to develop your Economy, what-with his mid-60’s Politic level). Also at Chang Sha are Chen Shi and Wei Yan, both at 70 loyalty. Chen Shi is just a generic military officer but worth getting for the soldiers. Wei Yan has a better chance of having a high loyalty to Liu Du, and like Huang Zhong he is a potent general with 90+ War. With Wei Yan and Huang Zhong in your army (in addition to Xingdao Rong), you should be able to build up the Economy and develop a trained army in no time.
Some lesser gems in the area. Gong Zhi is at 28. Wu Ling with Jin Xuan, and he has an 80 loyalty so he can be recruited as another Civil Officer. Better yet, Han Song appears in Wu Ling and if he either comes to Ling Ling as a Free Officer or is disloyal to Jin Xuan, I definitely suggest you recruit him because he has an 82 for Politics and would be a valuable Civil Officer for building Economy quick. Bao Long and Chen Ying are the officers with Zhao Fan at 30. Gui Yang. Each have a loyalty of 90 and are stupid + mediocre military officers. Not sure they’re worth trying to recruit as they’ll most likely only join with the Gold option (and every time you fail, 100 Gold goes down the drain).
Anyway, the moral of the story is this region is rife with disloyal officers looking for a new ruler. Be efficient and Spy early on to get these Officers, then focus on the Economy in Ling Ling. After a few years it will be close to 1000 and you will have a trained army with all the soldiers / officers you recruited nearby. The only officer nearby that you have no shot with is Yang Ling, who is a Civil Officer of DoaE fame that has a high loyalty to Han Xuan.
Stealing all these officers weakens your enemies incredibly. Zhao Fan, Jin Xuan and Han Xuan are no match for an arsenal including Huang Zhong / Wei Yan / Xingdao Rong. Just leave a small force at Ling Ling and group those officers to have them trounce Zhao Fan first to clear out the bottom area (ensuring you won’t have to worry about your back). Then Han Xuan and Jin Xuan will be left by themselves, and with no military officers to help they likely will have poor training levels and you can maul them with Simul.
So with little effort, Jing Zhou is yours. However that is the easy part. Now you have to take those Jing Zhou All-Stars and find a way to make a dent in some of the tougher enemies. Your next destination will be decided after you do some Spying on neighboring cities to see which is weakest. 42. Yong An had 50k so I put off attacking Liu Zhang. It is likely that Liu Bei is weakest as he is in the middle of Cao Cao / Sun Quan / Liu Zhang. Liu Bei and Sun Quan likely have been fighting around Jiangxia, Jiangling, Chaisang, etc so check out the officers to see if any were captured (and in turn disloyal). Pang Tong is disloyal to Liu Bei at this point so look for him in Jiangxia to be recruited and then give him War Manual of Sun Tzu to give him 108 Int and then he will always give you 100% correct advice.
So cutting through Jiang Ling is not too bad, but now you run the same risk that Liu Bei has been dealing with; opening your army up to too many fronts. Ally with Sun Quan and Liu Zhang to buy yourself some time to make some more progress against Liu Bei (preferably allowing you to take Jiangxia, Jiangling and Xiangyang). Sun Quan may betray you and attack but he’s busy enough with Cao Cao near Jianye, so he may just ignore you (if he does betray you, start recruiting his now-disloyal officers of course).
You are probably recruiting a lot of Shu officers from Liu Bei during your victories that are not loyal towards you. A trick for Liu Du (or any of these Jing Zhou rulers) is to take disloyal officers and send them to Gui Yang, Ling Ling, Nan Hai, then fire them. Just re-recruit them after that and they should have a higher loyalty (sometimes not, but definitely better than straight recruiting them after war). The idea is that these fired officers become isolated in the south so that there is no chance they can go back to Liu Bei or some other ruler; you are just getting them at a higher loyalty. This strategy works in any isolated area, assuming you have the neighboring cities occupied.
Zhang He was captured by Liu Bei at some point and then caught by us invading Chang Ban. Zhang he is Wei-alignment just like Liu Du so he’s naturally loyal, a good leader at the front of the army to join with Huang Zhong, Wei Yan and Xingdao Rong (and any other decent generals you may have captured / recruited at this point). However, at this point Cao Cao was starting to make a serious move on Sun Quan. After many failed attempts at He Fei, he finally won and captured Sun Quan in the process. With Sun Quan killed, Sun Lang took-over and of course he is not an imposing threat at all. Cao Cao took 33. Jian Ye and 36. Lu Jiang shortly thereafter.
It was time to move and use the soldiers that were built up to push through Cao Cao’s tired forces at Lu Jiang. Sun Shao had taken over for Sun Lang at this point (at Chaisang) and he was isolated with 50,000 soldiers but only 70,000 food. It was easy to go starve him out, and that way we got to use all those 500,000 soldiers (had to put them on loyal officers though and when troops start the Morale goes way low). With Lu Jiang and Chai Sang taken out, we withdrew from both cities and headed to Jiang Xia. Now there is nothing to the right as Cao Cao finishes up Wu (Lu Xun is now the ruler) in Wu City and Kuai Ji. All those extra soldiers gave us over 100,000, and with Liu Bei already tired from being pressed by Liu Zhang and Cao Cao, it was an easy job to lay waste to Liu Bei’s army.
After occupying Xiang Yang, Cao Cao is at 23. Xin Ye and Liu Zhang took over 25. Shang Yong. Liu Zhang however betrayed someone at some point, so all of his officers were 80 loyalty or worse. We raided the ones with max soldiers and left only Liu Zhang and his son Liu Xun (who no matter the loyalty, will stay with him). This made for a quick and easy push through Liu Zhang’s area, as only Shang Yong and 42. Yong An were well fortified. After that it was just slaughtering Liu Zhang’s peons and continuing to ‘free’ him after catching him (so that someone formidable like Zhang Ren doesn’t take over the throne).
With Cheng Dou, Jian Ning and Yun Nan taken, we look to 40. Zi Tong to finish off Liu Zhang. 100,000 troops here, but again most of them were disloyal besides Ma Han who always seems to love Liu Zhang. Wu Lan and Lei Tong were two of the top recruits for Liu Du’s troops. Fu Cheng was a tough battle, but then we had Liu Zhang running to 39. Xia Bian. The nice thing about Liu Zhang’s territory is that once you finish up through Cheng Dou, there is nothing at your back. So all the troops were at Zi Tong and able to take out Liu Zhang in quick order at 39. Xia Bian, and then move on to 38. Han Zhong to take over Zhang Lu’s middling force.
Meanwhile, Cao Cao was busy sending a billion troops over to Xin Ye and 22. Wan. He had upwards of 400,000 soldiers, with enough food to supply them too. It’s a scary sight and it’s definitely the biggest hill that you need to climb when you are using a poor ruler like Liu Du that takes a while to ascend; Cao Cao is creating a juggernaut while you’re trying to scrape by with a few cities. So even though we have 150,000 soldiers around Shang Yong and Xiang Yang, it’s nothing compared to Cao Cao. Without the allying + loyalty decreasing trick, you will be in trouble and will need to rely on efficient fighting. Win some personal fights and surround enemy captains when Cao Cao attacks you.
With the new troops from the Cheng Dou campaign, we were able to go through Cao Cao’s back door (13. Chang An) and put some pressure on him from that side. He went ahead and sent a bunch of soldiers over to 22. Wan so Xin Ye only had 80,000, and their training level was 65 so they were weak too. Cao Cao went and had reinforcements from 23. Xin Ye but fortunately they took a few days to come in. By that time we were in the Xin Ye castle doing battle with Cao Cao and the other officers here.
Now comes the turning point, with Liu Du and Cao Cao holding all of the land in China (well, almost; Ma Dai is still getting by in 15. Tian Shui). 22. Wan still has 200,000 soldiers and that’s about what we have, although not all those troops can be in battle at once. Attacking from multiple sides helps, as we can get more officers in battle (this is why the back-door route through Chang An is smart).