Romance of the Three Kigndoms: Won!

My greatest foe is dead. My next-greatest hasn't got half the forces I do. Time to finish this.

#37 goes down by the end of the month.Yuan Shu had been killed in combat, and his subordinate Wang Ping was already on the ropes.

 

I'm not going to spend any more time micromanaging provinces or babysitting generals. First thing, Sun Ce's red provinces in the middle are going down. I can mobilize crushing forces easily; I just need to get generals there and transfer soldiers to the loyal ones (i.e. away from the ones I won in battle) before going in. 

This can also be tedious.

Sun Quan's (Ce died) last stand

 

Next target -  Yuan Tan. Regrettably, he breaks through my wall, but I know he won't be able to expand quickly enough to escape a multi-point invasion.

Sending reinforcements to #50

Which isn't to say he (or his eventual successors) make it easy for me. Where he is weak, he withdraws into unoccupied territory when attacked. Where he is strong, he attacks where I am weak. Where he must defend, he utterly abuses smoke and fire to delay the inevitable. I have so many useless generals that I wind up sending them back into southern China for some personal development and recruitment. And one summer, Cao Ang dies, depriving me of a loyal general, and worse, 20,000 soldiers.

The state of China in 203AD.

 

But they're fractured in a few months.

 

Looking grim for them by September.

 

I finish by conquest of south China by winter, which delays my final conquest of the north a few months.

Spring 204 brings more disease, and Yuan Shao dies, leaving his son Yuan Xi in charge. So does one of my generals and another 20,000 soldiers with him. By now I don't really need them.

I begin mobilizing troops northward.

Summer brings poor omens - locusts for me, which are bad news, and rebellion for Yuan Xi, which I didn't even know could happen.

In May, I begin my final attack on the northeast. 747,000 soldiers against a combined roughly 200,000 between both remaining masters, and this time I don't need to reserve all that much to protect my own lands from counter-invasion.

The old monkey rice trap formation. It never fails!

 

Yuan Xi's last stand. He dies in September after foolishly charging into the rice trap.

 

Winter. So close to victory! The inaction is painful.

 

Finally, at the end of February, I catch and behead my last rival in his castle at Youzhou.

 

Sure! But not this one.

GAB rating: Average.

I am so glad to be done with this one. 

On paper, this is a much better game than Nobunaga's Ambition (the 1983 version). It's a more complete and cohesive game, better designed and balanced around its expanded systems. And you no longer get wiped out or set back irrecoverably in the first turn. War, in particular, is a massive improvement, with meaningful tactical options that give the underdog a chance, and the economic and diplomatic layers are meaningfully broader. There's still some illogic carried over from its predecessor (arms/training are independent variables of army size, provisions travel anywhere instantly but armies travel one state per rotation, etc.) but overall this aspect is still a major improvement.

It isn't a great game, not even at its best - even though it's deeper than its predecessor, the systems and their interactions are still more broad than deep, and outside of combat, many gameplay options just aren't worth using. Castles are the only decent revenue source, so you just build them whenever possible, and then your economic concerns become a lot simpler. I never saw any point in levying taxes, searching for gold mines, or borrowing from the merchant or rivals. I also never felt it necessary to explore diplomatic options beyond "pay/marry off rivals who you don't want to fight yet" (though admittedly these options - including some subterfuge strategies, might be underexplored on my part). And for all the stats on your generals, none mattered nearly as much as loyalty (both of the general and the soldiers), which is trivial to maximize.

But Romance of the Three Kingdoms' biggest fault is an incredibly tedious endgame, where you know you're going to win, but you still have to manage 30-50 states and make decisions for them every single turn. For the most part, these were extremely trivial decisions too, especially in winter when the game's already slow pace comes to a halt. I'd estimate it took me at least nine hours to get through the final twelve months.

The game is aware of this and gives you the option to authorize a state to make decisions for you, but the implementation is so flawed that I didn't want to do that.

• For one, only the master can automate (and de-automate) states, so you still have to wait for his turn before the option is available. And you might want the master to do something else, since there are options only available to him.
• Second, there's no way to know what an authorized governor is actually doing, so the option might as well be an auto-skip function. That's bad on a newly conquered territory, or one held by a general with even the slightest hint of disloyalty, because mutiny and rebellion are ugly things. Toward the end, that described most of my territories and generals, because I needed the loyal ones for war.
• Third, if an army moves through an automated state, that army ain't going anywhere else until you de-automate it.

The game was somewhat enjoyable at the start, but never all that satisfying. Building up a state isn't much of an accomplishment; only conquest actually feels like a major progress event, and even that part takes forever.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: First scenario won!

199AD

 

Dong Min, successor of the late master Dong Zhou, remains my most well-armed foe with 24 generals commanding 370,000 soldiers, and occupies both of China's capital cities Loyang and Ch'agan. I want them.

I have... quite a bit more than that, with 49 generals and 633,000 soldiers, but loyalties and arms levels are all over the place, and I do need to reserve much of my army to defend the regions I already have. By my estimation, I will need about 540,000 soldiers to take any of Dong Min's territory, hold it, and guard my own from retaliation, and the more equipped they are, the better.

Phase 1 of my attack plan. Spread out. Retake as much free territory as possible, and scour for weapons-grade metal and soldiers. A lot of it is territory I previously abandoned; it lies deteriorated, disloyal, and fallow, but meticulous redistribution of gold and rice and several months of maintenance gets it back into shape.

New generals are recruited too; Cao Cao has a field day charming Guan Yu's disgruntled servants in region 2 over to his side, and more free agents are found in the territories I've taken. With the playing field narrower, not to mention the inevitable victor of this conflict obvious, they're not in nearly as much of a hurry to leave my employ any more.

Phase 2 is ensuring that each general gets what they need from wherever it is available. The process is... not exciting.

It's three times longer than this and I have another one for provincial needs.

 

By spring of 200AD, I have 54 generals, mostly loyal, half of them fully armed, and more than enough metal to arm the rest albeit spread all over China. And almost 750,000 soldiers.

Phase 3 begins. I begin moving troops toward Dong Min's domain, picking up weapons along the way.

In January 201AD, I launch my first invasion, on state #18.

 

Even with all that fortification he can't hold out against my overwhelming forces, and I don't hesitate to use fire to keep him moving. It's a rout, and Dong Min's commanding officer withdraws before the end of the month.

Next, I invade #20.

This one's a bit disadvantageous for me, but liberal use of trick attacks followed by fire forces a lot of retreats and evens the odds.

It spills into the months to come, and Dong Min sends reinforcements, but this cannibalizes #21's defenses which I also invade with my spare generals.

I'm outnumbered, but now they truly have nowhere to run.

 

#21 runs out of rice and falls, and I immediately have the surviving generals, now in my employ, invade Yuan Shu.

I'm quickly reminded not to do that, as multiple generals defect during the fight, adding their ranks to Yuan Shu's and making the battle drag out far longer than it need be.

Before I'm done with Yuan Shu, #20 is taken by attrition.This triggers the victory conditions for scenario 1, and simultaneously, of 2, 3, and 4.