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.