Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Eastern provinces

195AD

Loyal generals are your most precious resource. Money comes in reliably every year and castles basically print more of it. Rice is harvested every year and if you don't have enough you can buy more. Soldiers can be recruited as long as you have enough cash and rice to support them - and the calculation to determine how many you can support is simple.

All the soldiers in China do you no good if you haven't got enough generals to lead them, and they are named, finite in nature, and rival masters love to hoard them. You need a general in every state you own, or else it produces nothing for you and can't be defended. But then you also need several generals to conquer any territory claimed by a rival. I had to abandon the southern states in order to fight Ma Teng and take the northwest, because there just wasn't enough manpower to hold everything and take more.

Finding more generals is a frustrating exercise, as well. Most of my recruits come from searching my own territory, but there's no way to know if a region has a free general until you spend several turns searching and find nothing, and even then you might not be sure. And if you do find a free general, you can't actually hire him until it's Cao Cao's turn in the month; another master might have snatched him from your own territory first, and usually do. And when you have Cao Cao recruit, he might refuse (even though he usually doesn't). And a freshly recruited general tends to not be very loyal; you can't do anything about it until it's his turn next month, and he could very well leave you before then.

Cao Cao can try to bribe generals employed by other masters, sure, but so far this has yet to work for me, and the manual suggests this antagonizes their employers, which I really don't want right now. The other way to recruit generals is by defeating them in battle, but generals hired this way tend to defect VERY fast. Never leave them in charge of the rice.

As for boosting loyalty, the easiest and most reliable way is gifts of money. A maximum gift of 1000z boosts loyalty 40 points, and you want it maximized to 100. 99 is not enough; a general with anything under 100 will leave you when you least expect it.

After the fall of Ma Teng, I recruited three of his generals, but two left me almost immediately. And I found several free generals hiding in his states, but I could only manage to recruit one and hold onto him. Nevertheless, I am better off now than I was before the conquest; I can withdraw from the northwest states without fear of losing them, and focus on my weakest rivals, who are inconveniently situated on the east side of the map.

In April, I begin moving them across the map, picking up whatever soldiers I can recruit along the way. This takes me over a year, but by winter 196, I have nearly 200,000 soldiers at the doorsteps of some weak rivals, and I bring 180,000 lead by my nine dumbest generals into the peninsular domain of Kong Rong, who only has 60,000.

It's not even remotely fair.

The limited winter mobility, combined with the mountainous terrain, does mean I have to be cautious of fire attacks and ensure that every unit engaged in a siege has a clear escape path. But Kong Rong's units aren't terribly mobile either.

The battle takes me two months to win, and during this time, Kong Rong's neighbor Wang Lang, for reasons I can't begin to understand, leaves his territory and wanders into mine.

The royal guards ensure he does not survive this.

In just a few months we regroup and invade the marshy province #11 to the south with a likewise massively overpowering army.

Efficient conquest demands careful attention to the generals' ability. Only some of them have the naval skills needed to cross the Yangtze Delta, and only a few can be positioned on the north bank (even though we are invading from the north).

But victory is mine before the end of the month. Shang Chong does not have enough rice! His generals, territory, and head are mine.

Yuan Shao, watch out. You're next.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Emergence of Cao Cao

January 192AD

 

Spring is here, and the last unoccupied states of China are mine by the end of January. There can be no more expansion without violence.

Smart generals make more efficient governors, so I'll want to find the strongest, stupidest bully to send to pick on someone weak, and the natural candidate for that is Xiong Rong, who just took province #24 and boasts a strength of 80 and an IQ of 16. Low intelligence does have some drawbacks in combat, but low strength has no disadvantage in governance.

And it just so happens that he is right next to one of the weakest masters on the map; Ma Teng in the northwest commands only two provinces, with a combined 22,702 soldiers. I'll need more, but I'm pretty sure I can muster enough force to steamroll them, and add a few more generals to my employ.

Over the next few months, I recruit soldiers from the various states - about 100,000 in total - and employ a relay of free agent generals to maneuver a good chunk of them to Xiong Rong. My stupidest generals, Xiong Rong included, search for metal to craft into weapons, and train. Another bit of strangeness here, carried over from Nobunaga's Ambition, is that the ability and arms stats are attached to your generals - not their armies! The size of a general's army has absolutely no bearing on what it costs to train and arm it, and you can recruit fresh men into a seasoned army without lowering the overall experience level.

It takes more than a year to relay a good 60,000 men all the way to the northwest, and by then, Ma Teng has mysteriously grown his army to over 90,000. But he made a crucial mistake - state #25 hasn't got nearly enough rice to support it! I invade, and just sit there in the mountains until he runs out.

His generals willingly defect to me, and you have the choice whether to hire them, behead them, or set them free. I don't know why you'd set them free, and I do need all the help I can get. Too bad they're not the most loyal, and they all re-defect before I even get a chance to do anything about it, but most of them don't go back to Ma Teng. A wise choice.

Ma Teng does not make the same mistake with state 26, and it takes me over two years until I can get enough manpower to take it.

 

Sieges are grim business, and the AI has some major advantages, except one. They're really stupid. They'll either turtle, or go for your rice supply - it's an instant loss for the attacker if the rice is stolen - and the valley in the southwest mountains is a great kill spot.

I set up my troops.

I begin to encircle the killzone as they send one hapless general, Zhang Liao, with 68,000 soldiers my way.

 

And like the suckers they are, they walk right into my open jaws.

Unlike Nobunaga's Ambition, where giant stacks were unstoppable bulldozers, medium-sized swarms win the day in ROT3K. The most efficient way to kill an army quickly is with the "simultaneous" attack, and the more units you have adjacent to the target, the more efficient this attack is. And big units can split into two smaller ones, which is exactly what I've done to completely encircle this stupid general.

In desperation, he uses an incendiary attack on my commanding officer, who is also guarding the rice.

Incendiary attacks are nasty, nasty tricks, which have an unpleasant tendency to work with high reliability for the enemy and low reliability for you. The hex is set on fire, sometimes it spreads, and any unfortunate soul in a burning hex who doesn't leave in one turn is instantly killed.

Only one thing I can do - bust out with a charge attack, which always has high casualties on both sides. Thankfully, Zhang Miao is 91,000 men strong, and Zhang Liao has only 7,000, so this is all but certain to work.

Also, thankfully, the rice does not burn.

The battle exceeds a month, so the turn ends and continues into the next.

They never learn.

The battle extends into September, but the walls are closing in on Ma Teng, and reinforcements are inbound.

 

Even with a 2:1 numbers advantage and near total encirclement, besieging castles is no picnic! But I have a trick. A trick with a low chance of working, but I can keep trying until my supplies run out, and it only needs to work once.

A "trick" attack, if successful, prevents the victim from moving for one turn. This in itself is not all that useful; Ma Teng wasn't going anywhere anyway, and from his fortifications he can still inflict far more harm on us than we dish out. But, if we can successfully set fire to the fortress on the same turn with a different unit, then he's screwed!

And this works!

He flees to state #26 (how?), and his underling Ma Wan hightails it across the mountains to the northwest corner of the map, where he will find no safety, and be forced to withdraw in October. 

I do not lose my momentum. We push through the winter to state 27 and finish the job with similar tactics. Ma Teng is burning to death in his castle by the end of the year, and the Ma legacy is mine by the end of the (Julian) year.