Romance of the Three Kingdoms: 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.

I also have to give some credit to the game's localization. I can't speak to its accuracy or efficacy in capturing nuance of the original, but this is, by my estimation, one of the first Japanese video games with a significant language element to be translated into English, and shows none of the awkwardness that plagued so many of its contemporaries and games released well beyond.

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 the two loyalty stats, which are 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.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Yijing

197-198AD

A few events happened over the year 197.

• I spent the summer and fall depopulating the east coast in preparation for a massive invasion of Yuan Shao's (yellow) territory.
• Winter put a freeze to this.
• In the spring, Yuan Shao, Liu Bei (green), and Gongsun Zan (brown? formerly region #3) started fighting.
• Gongsun Zan died, and territory changed hands between Yuan Shao and Liu Bei, fracturing both empires.

Those last two points actually align somewhat with history, only a year ahead of schedule and with Liu Bei's involvement. Coincidence, or semi-scripted event?

By March 198, I have 20 generals commanding nearly 400,000 soldiers stationed in regions #6 and #7, neatly divided between the well-armed (in #6) and the poorly armed (in #7). Yuan Shao isn't getting through to me. The poorly armed spend their time searching for metal. The well-armed go in.

Once again, the enemy just doesn't have enough provisions to support a defense. All I have to do is turtle.

We push on through the territory, driving Liu Bei out of #16, and spilling into #17 and #15 beyond.

Liu Bei puts up a long, flame-intensive defense, in which some of his own generals defect to me, and at least one burns to death in his own fire trap, but he too eventually runs out of rice.

He started with 14 generals.

I have him executed, and while his rule is succeeded by his top general Guan Yu, multiple officers below him refuse to swear loyalty. Such is the price of soldierly humility, I suppose.

Winter comes, and I know to stop pushing my luck. Guan Yu is absolutely furious, but there's not a whole lot he can do about it now. Yuan Shao is a bit cross, and several of my own territories are within striking distance of his, so I pay off his animosity with a bit of wuzhu, and hunker down until spring. During this time, I finally complete arming the generals in state #6, and also steal one of Guan Yu's former generals.

In spring, disease claims the life of Dong Zhou - formerly my strongest rival - and of another general whose name was unremarkable.

Nine down. Six to go.

 

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.

Game 471: Romance of the Three Kingdoms

 

A selection of screenshots of the PC-8801 version, which I won't be playing

 

My dad used to tell me tales of the far east at bed time, and taught me while feudal Japan did not tolerate misbehavior, there was just no surviving ancient China. There were, of course, famines, wars, disease, and earthquakes, but the real threat was execution. Didn't make rice quota? Death. Soldiers mutinied? Death. Told an unfunny joke? Death. Didn't listen to the teacher in school? Death for you and your parents so they don't make any more rascals like you. That last one came up more than once.

Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, inspired by Guanzhong's massively successful novel about historical Chinese characters getting hacked into historical little pieces, was their true breakout title, and the earliest game to receive an official English localization, although not until 1989 at which point Genghis Khan and the second Nobunaga's Ambition had already been localized.

In a lot of ways, the first Nobunaga's Ambition feels like a prototype for Romance of the Three Kingdoms - all of the systems from that earlier title are intact here, but everything is more detailed, more complex, more balanced, and, well, there's just more of it. The map triples in size from 17 provinces to 59, a year consists of twelve turns instead of four, diplomacy and combat are greatly expanded on, and a major number of new systems concern the addition of employed generals who are needed to carry out your orders outside your home province.

The original version was on the PC-8801, now written in C instead of BASIC, and a PC-8801mkIISR version followed in early 1986 with the addition of FM music. Releases to other contemporary Japanese computers came next, and in 1989, English localized ports to the Amiga, PC, and NES. I've decided to play the Amiga version, as overall it seems the closest to the original.

 

There are several options to select before playing - first there is the starting year, which determines the number of empires and how consolidated China is at the game's start. I pick the earliest period, 189 AD, in which the Han dynasty is deteriorating and regional officials with their own armies begin fighting over the pieces. The latest period, 215 AD, has the majority of China belonging to the kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu, and the goal to defeat your rivals and unify the kingdoms under your rule.

You can play with between 0 and up to 8 players (depending on the scenario) - zero if you want to just watch the computer play itself. The 189 scenario, with the most fragmented map, allows the full eight. 

If you say "Cow Cow" you're Rong, Kong. It's more like Çao Çao.

Next, you pick which of the eight masters to play as, and with those amazing stats, how could I not go with Cao Cao? The manual says that he is not available in the first scenario, but the manual is wrong about that. And this isn't the only thing the manual is wrong about.

The AI has two parameters - strength and personality. The former is an overall difficulty modifier that increases the enemy stats, just as in Nobunaga's Ambition. Personality can be "warlike" or "rational," and the manual advises that "rational" makes for a much more difficult game as they will not hesitate to attack when victory is assured. I'm not sure if that assessment is correct, but I select a strength of 5/10 and a rational personality.

Prior experience has shown me two things - war is costly, and the AI cheats. They will rally troops faster than what should be possible, they will turtle in their fortifications at a massive combat bonus unavailable to you, and they will spam fire attacks and caltrops with improbably high accuracy. My strategy for this real go bears that in mind.

January 189AD

First order of business - know the enemy, and know yourself! Half of that is easy; we have one moderately rich state #7 in the capital of Yanzhou, where summer flooding is a major risk. Our immediate neighbors are Dong Zhou, to the west, and Yuan Shao, to the north, but we're going to get acclimated to more neighbors very soon.

A quirk of ROT3K, somewhat reminiscent of the weird turn-wasting "order" mechanic in Kawanakajima, is that querying information outside of your own state counts as an action for that month. In some cases, even querying information inside your state counts as an action for that month. However, the game is perfectly happy to let you query all of the states on the map before your turn ends, so I do that.

Dong Zhou, with a combined 94,000 soldiers across four provinces, is by far my greatest threat, so I personally pay him a visit with a gift.

Gou Yu is being a worrywart. The messenger (me) will be fine.

 

This arrangement ensures a few months of peace while I pick territories around him, and in the future when I'm wealthier, I'll be able to pay off his growing animosity for cheap and at less risk to my pages so long as I don't let his contempt grow too much. However, accepting a bride is seen as a favor to me, not to him, and he may demand repayment some day in the form of one of my territories. If it comes to that, better that than having him take what he wants by force.

Next, I waste no time in having my generals expand and conquer the surrounding territory. Another quirk of ROT3K is that actions (such as moving) are centered around states, not generals, so if you are lucky with the randomized state order, you can move your generals pretty far in a single month.

May 189AD

 

Seven generals have taken seven states. I need more generals, and at this stage of the game the easiest way to recruit more is by scouting your territories for freelance leaders. Not every search is successful, and each state has a finite number of generals to be found, With Cao Cao's great charisma, I can usually persuade one each month with a personal visit. But they are freelance, and other masters can and do scoop them up right from my own territory.

Yuan Shao, being a distant second-greatest threat, also receives a bride of the Cao bloodline. 

July 189AD 

July is tax month, and by now most of the searches for new generals are unsuccessful. But I have ten in my employ and another five have been discovered, waiting to be recruited by someone. Hopefully me.

I still prioritize expansion, but also turn some of my attention toward developing provinces. Here, growth is a much slower process than in Nobunaga's Ambition. Cultivation and flood control are the main activities, and the manual advises investing no more than a few zhu per month, but this is bad advice; either put in just one, or put in everything you've got. There's a growth floor, so investing just one coin will always be beneficial, but you have to invest quite a bit more than that for a bigger benefit, and the better your state is, the more zhu it takes, so unless you have enough money to max out the region's value, you're better off doing the bare minimum and saving your cash.

Opportunities to develop, in my order of priority, are:

• Build a castle. The amount this takes is usually between 3,000z and 10,000z, and is randomly changed every turn. Each castle built improves your tax collections, so I always build one if I can afford it - and since the cost changes for every province every turn, I can usually afford one at some point during the year if I keep trying. And I'm going to need more money very soon.
• Buy rice. The merchants aren't always in town, but when they are, you can quickly fill up your stocks of rice on the cheap when prices are low. Prices fluctuate madly, though the number shown is misleading; a value of 83 means "83 units of rice per zhu" and hence you want to buy when the number is high. Just be sure to leave something in the coffers and stores for your soldiers, or you'll be sorry. Selling, sadly, is not as lucrative as you might wish, but you might profit a few thousand zhu in a year if you're lucky.
• Give to the peasants. Loyal peasants are more productive, and a maximal gift of 10,000 of the rice you took from them boosts loyalty nicely.
• Flood control. Floods aren't as devastating as you might think, but having them less often is a good thing, and with an intelligent governor in charge it doesn't take too long to get this close to zero.
• Cultivation. Slowly raises your land value unless you put in a lot of money. Peasant loyalty is a quicker way to get improved harvests, so this is only resorted to if I have nothing better to do.

Winter falls in October, and my expansion pauses for the season, as forced marches in the winter can be deadly.

 

January 190AD 

Spring starts, and my conquest of the path of least resistance continues.

July 190AD

Sun Jian, who controls region 41, commands seven generals and 9,900 soldiers. I have 22 generals and over 17,000 soldiers throughout my regions, so he doesn't really pose a direct threat, but might be a hindrance to my expansion into the south. I could spend a year training, arming, and mobilizing my troops to his doorstep to explain to him a little bit of arithmetic. Or I could just send him my last daughter and keep going. Guess which one I prefer.

With the funds generated from my newly conquered provinces and whatever castles I could build in a year, I also butter up the rest of my rivals, and give what I've got left to my less-loyal generals. You have a number of gift options for improving subordinate loyalty - gold, rice, books, horses, women, but why complicate things? Generals have their preferences - meatheads prefer women, eggheads prefer books, and warbros like horses, but everyone likes gold, and it makes the soldiers happy too. Generals of stronger moral fiber also tend to gripe when you traffic provincial girls along with the rape and plundering that goes with it, though brutish ones enjoy it.

I'm able to take a few more states before winter falls, which I spend building up my territories and continuing to recruit more generals. One defects in December, but I have plenty left.

January 191AD

Tao Qian, master of states #10 and #11, dies of illness and his favored general Mi Zhu takes over. Cao Ang also comes of age and serves me as a moderately strong but intensely loyal subordinate; he'll make a good governor, I think.

The aggressive expansion and recruitment continues, as I'm too broke to do anything else. This includes province #10, which Mi Zhu abandons in February.

 

July 191AD 

 

A few no-account generals left me, but I'd say I'm doing pretty well, albeit spread thin with each province allocated only the bare minimum of military force needed to control it - I have 29 generals distributed among 27 states, and soldiers allotted haphazardly. The recruitment of new generals is slowing down, too - I've probably found most of them in the territories I control. But now that taxes are in, I can easily pay my neighbors not to invade me, with cash to spare for my remaining generals.

Winter falls before I can reach state #23 with my free generals to complete my sweep of the white regions, and one disgruntled general leaves me, but I recruit another two.

The rest of the winter is spent building up the provinces. It seems a better use of my time than scrounging my territory for whatever freelance scoundrels are still lurking.

 

So far, I'm impressed with ROT3K's scope and attention to detail, and I can forgive some of the weirder gameplay mechanics, but I confess I'm not having a great deal of fun playing it. Perhaps this is partly my own fault for taking a safe approach, but the game does not reward reckless aggression, and slowly building up your territories isn't particularly exciting. Maybe other scenarios are more interesting, or maybe using a more challenging or "warlike" AI setting would have made things more fun, but I don't feel like starting over to find out.

To be continued!