Overview
A short guide for Liu Hong for a good opening in order to win the Mandate Of Heaven campaign within 20 turns. By taking these measures within the first three turns, the rest of the campaign should feel easier. What you do in the first 3 turns can make the world of difference, If you’re aggressive, and with a little luck & foresight cornering the Three Zhang brothers, it is possible to beat it within 20 turns. It is possible to beat it alot sooner, but alot of thing have to go right for this to happen. A more realistic time frame is around the 18 turn mark.Goodluck!!
Turn 1
Most important Turn
By the end of Turn 1, the state of play will wanna look something like this
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– Place Empress He in this court position for the extra assignment
– With your two assignments, use these two characters. Liu Hong is essential for the extra political power, the other is optional, you will end up later releasing Cao Ding. Although something to note later is that if you can keep him around, you can have him follow the Imperial army around doing replenishment assignments, although its not necessary to win the campaign within 20 turns & can be a trap in of itself. Or put someone in that boost food instead.
Can always put this guy in instead of Cao Ding
– Force March He Jin to Rebel stack below your capital
– This guy needs to go on Turn 2, but first make use of his reduced redeployment cost by raising the armies you need too.
– Now recruit another small retinue army at the gate pass. The ai stack will smell blood and attack him, so try to pick a good green general, equip an item may in-case you have to duel an enemy green general. There a chance the rebel stack guarding the port will be a strategist, vanguard or champion. You can delegate the first two, but if its a champion you’ll need to play the battle & then challenge the enemy general to a duel which should instantly win you the battle.
– Recruit a stack at your capital – i chose these guys because they have good traits and the replenishment will be decent even when on the march, compared to Imperial Troops. Then build the units, you want these guys marching out by Turn 3
You can try for this guy Chen Dan, but would not recommend it if you have trouble managing the deficit, since the upkeep per turn may be too much and replenishment will affect him more outside of your capital.
– Destroy this building since it will suck up your public order and make life harder for Liu Hong while his preforming the assignment. A rebellion at the capital can be avoided quite easily. Just requires not letting the capital starve.
– Now to fix the food problem & shake down diplomacy for cash. Every little bit helps. So peddle that military access away for cash. But first do a trade deal with the Han to boost your food and build food reserves at the capital.
– Also just sell military access to Dong too, pay him a bit if you have too, to improve relations. Don’t want this guy breaking away from the Empire. Its not really necessary, but doesn’t hurt to cover your bases.
and don’t forget to go around selling military access where its viable to do so.
You have completed Turn 1
Hopefully you should see that this is priming your opening for a easy life and a quickly executed campaign win.
Turn 2
Slightly less stuff to do in this turn, but all the same, just as important.
– This is what the state of play wants to roughly look like at the end of Turn 2. Has you can see, your coffers will support your armies for about 5 turns here. Don’t worry, things will continue to get better from turn to turn.
– Now with that small retinue, kill the rebel stack that will approach the pass. This will give you the 80 political points to clear your first court position. Ransom the captives here, grab that extra cash where you can. Only choose replenishment option when using the Imperial Army.
– Then move to the port and establish a port there so that you can begin to trade globally later
– Quickly recruit this guy too but don’t build any additional units for him yet
– Now remove Cao Ding, this is a vital court position and replace him with this guy that will give 10% replenishment globally. This will help the Imperial Army when on the march. You can just dismiss Cao Ding from the court position and keep him following the Imperial Army doing assignments if you wish, but getting rid of him is better to start bringing down expenses overall.
– Now unlock your reform that give you a trade deal and then conduct a trade deal with the Han. Its worth trying to also get food from the Han since they’re sitting on a bunch of surplus food & so you’ll get a better deal. Can also do it with Tao Qian too. If wanting to do it with the Han, complete the next step first.
– Now connect up with the Han, so that you can later trade with them, while also completing your commandary & mission. Send He Jin to assault them, you can delegate if you wish.
– Since Cao Ding is gone, get someone else doing an assignment, focusing on food production.
– Replenishment for both armies should be decent, first army should be able to move out on the next turn
This is Turn 2 over now.
Turn 3
You’re pretty much set now. This turn is just about moving the armies in the direction of the 3x Turban brothers. You kill these guys you win the campaign. Declare war on all the Zhangs, before the mandate war kicks off, this way the ai will behave slightly different and take your forces into account slowing their expansion.
– By the end of Turn 3, State of play wants to look roughly like this. Hopefully you can see the deficet is slowly decreasing and should continue to do so, so longs you keep spending that poltical power clearing out any Enunch that aren’t needed. If you do it from court postions you can bring down their power within the court and start to grow Dynasty or Warlord. Warlord may be better to go for in the short term if wanting to squeeze that replenishment.
– Make sure to move He Jin to the capital to complete the mission.
Tips & Tricks
If Tight for Cash
– Sell any adjacent regions to a nearby friendly Han region. This can be useful to do if there a possibility you may lose it anyway.
– Hold off constructing buildings, they will be too costly until enough eunuch have been released.
– Make use of diplomacy from selling items, food when you have enough, and signing trade deals.
– Take reforms that give extra trade deal slots and then later decrease to salary income.
– Keep an eye on Political Power and continue to clear the court, just double check it isn’t anyone that is vital to this setup in the past 3 turns or you may wish to use later.
– Keep an eye on those court postions. Assing Shi here will give an extra trade deal on Turn 5
Armies
– Try to build up your coffers and deploy any additional armies required to chase down battered stacks or reinforce a region. Try to keep the main two armies on the march aimed at killing the Three Zhang Brothers.
– Sometimes its worth starving them out, to force them to assault you mid turn. Try not to attack into towers if possible.
– Try to Aim your Imperial stack at Zhang Jue if possible, but in the end you need to be able to react to the flow of the campaign. Ideally you wanna batter the main Turban stacks hard so that Liu Bei forces will have an easier time. If you sell regions to Liu Bei it will actually help him to strengthen his armies & his pretty pro-active when hunting them down. A smaller enemy stack for Liu Bei to deal with will make his life easier.
– Make sure to kill Zhang Bao first or humbug him really badly. I personally rate him the most dangerous of the Zhangs & if his allowed to field a full stack can set you back some turns.
– Zhang Liang is easiest of the three brothers to deal with. Can probably use the non imperial stack to take him out.
– Check faction council missions! you never know what you may get that can really help out.
– Chasing down battered stacks can be a pain and can waste quite a few turns, so try to plan for where they’re going to be and have a stack head them off, but initially you want to smash all three brothers first and let the rest of the Empire warlords mop up. The campaign map is fluent so it will never play out exactly the same. But if you follow the first three turns, especially the first two turns, it should be a comfortable ride.
Possible Achievements
Turn 4 – 18 summarised
Its actually possible to beat this campaign by turn 12 with alot of luck, if managing to catch the Zhang brothers in very good positioning. but regardless, it should be doable by turn 20. Here I’ve completed by turn 18, with 3 of those turns just chasing around a single last stack along the river.
Ideally if you can smash the Zhangs quick enough, the rest of the Empire will not have enough time to fall apart and so will gain an easy win. After about turn 20, the Empire can begin to start fragmenting.
Below is just the State Of Play, if wanting to look at positioning or expectations of campaign flow.
Turn 4
