Newbie Guide
All credit goes to terror923!
In this guide i will try to explain everything I missed in my previous guide, as well as stuff I did mention. I will try to start from when you start the game to when you finish the game, the scenario I will be using is Dong Zhuo’s Rise. I will not be mentioning battle tactics, or battles in length but only briefly to hit some points.
When you first start the campaign Dong Zhuo’s Rise you are required to select a force. To select a force click on one a click confirm, however you should note some forces are harder than others. The forces are shown as how strong or weak they are by how many troops they have highlighter in force power 5 being the easiest, 1 being the hardest, this however is deceiving as some of they easy ones are hard.
My recommendations on forces are the following.
Yuan Shao
this ruler is probally the best for newbies, all factions surrounding you are friendly, tons of officers, and a free base to claim if your fast enough.
Sun Jian
If you can get enough officers quickly Sun Jian starts towards the south where there arent a lot of forces meaning free bases, and two of the 4 factions that border you have 1 officers which means a easy victory should you invade them.
Cao Cao
This is a force for people who like to be aggressive you start with a lot of great officers and a lot of cities around you to conquer.
Now that youve selected your force you have some options to toggle. The only notable ones are, Difficulty, How hard the game is. Growth, This effects how much population you get in your towns in year. Officer Lifespan, If you set this to infinite your officers will live forever.
Once you are done with these click confirm.
The first thing you should do now that you are in the town menu is appoint officials. At the bottom of the sceen, click Personal -> Appoint then goto councilor make sure all 3 offices have an officer in them. then goto rank and click auto setting at lower left then click confirm.
What you just did was the following. if you go back to the officials tab you can see the direct effects of the officials, officials NEED to stay in the capital, however they can do tasks freely.
Rank
Gives the officers that got appointed more stats, and the ability to hold more troops in battle so check back often and see if you can give more ranks to your new officers often, also giving a officer a higher rank will also increase his loyalty.
Now that you have officials its time to learn about search and spy.
- Personal -> Search … you want the officer with the highest connections to search.
- Military -> Spy … you want the officer with the highest scout to spy.
Search
Search is very important. When you start out you most likely will only have one box unlocked and the others saying spy level too low. This does not matter you always want search going. Search lets you find free officers you can recruit, as well as Items you can give to your officers. What is even better is Search is free. Take note however the officer that searches will do so until you recall him.
Spy
Spy is even more important than search, you want to try and get spy to have the highest spy power ultimately. Spy will uncover more places for you to search, as well as tell you whats in the neighbouring factions, such as troops,officers, etc. Like Search Spy will roam until recalled.
Next up we have…
Affairs -> Develop
- Security – helps against enemy strategies like rumor/alienate
- Commerce – gold gain
- Farming – food gain
- Defence – how strong your walls are
Flood control: Decrease damage from some disasters, and also increase harvest.
In the start i would recommend only doing farming/commerce until you have the gold to support doing the others, in the meantime there is a hidden way to improve the other areas of Develop. You probally noticed the golden O’s in your towns screen, those improve your Town as well as give you support. Your officers will also get Deeds from doing this which is a really good thing.
Support: How people support you. If you recruit more solider, you lose support. If you do good things for people, you gain support.
Deeds: lets Officers get a higher rank
Tech
All officers working on Tech need to be in the Capital.
Affairs -> Tech
Im not gonna go into which Tech is the best. Basically just click the tech you want to research then click the portrait to the right and select 2 officers, If no officers are present you need to check to see if you even have officers who meet the requirement.
Personal -> Move
If you dont have the Officers that meet this requirement you can use this to move some officers that do meet the requirement to your Capital.
Note: There is a hidden use for Tech some techs will produce items for you, if you goto city info (one of the buttons under your ruler portrait in town view) then goto features, youll see that all of your towns have hidden features that are unlocked through tech. Some are really good, some just boost your towns stats.
City Info -> Features
Personal -> Award
As you gain more officers you probally will gain items. Personal -> Award is a good way to give off crappy items in return for more loyal officers.
On the left of Personal – > Award is the officers on the right is the Items.
When you click the officers you either see hearts or — means the officer could care less if he gets it 1-3 hearts means he wants the gift 3 hearts is the highest.
Never Give Officers Medicine: Medicine can be used to cure wounded officers. All Officers Hate being given medicine as well.
Soverign – Policy
This command is pretty important, its your way of viewing what all your officers are doing, in this tab you are also able to stop whatever officer task you want as well. So if an officer goes missing always check Soverign -> Policy first.
Military
Onto Military
Military -> Recruit – lets you recruit more troops.
It is important to note that Recruiting will take troops out of your population.
When you start off you will most likely have the option of recruiting 3 types of units, Light Archer, Light Infantry, and Light Calvary. To acquire better troops like Crossbowmen, Heavy troops you need to do Research.
Military -> Drill increases – Morale/Exp to 100.
Your troops need to be at 100 Morale/Exp to be transfered between your towns.
Military -> Deploy – This sends your force to attack another force.
Deploy is very confusing you get sent to a world map, basically just look for the spinning red crosshair (this will be your town first) click it, in the case you have multiple towns make sure you click the right one, hovering over the cities will tell you their name and basic information. After you click your city click the city you wish to attack.
During battle troops will gain EXP everytime you attack.
Troop EXP: More EXP, higher troop attack and defend etcs.
But every-time you recruit more troops to join the current troop, it will average exp.
Battles Explained
Military -> Deploy This is how you attack. You probally will also Defend many times.
Basically there is two Objectives in a battle:
- 1) Kill the commander.
- 2) Destroy the Flag (Siege only 1).
To reach the flag you need to do one of two things.
- 1) Scale the walls (basically just go all the way up the walls (not the gate portion) and then a space should be highlighted on top of the wall, on your next turn move there on the turn after that move there and your unit will be on top of the wall. Note: the enemy can block you from doing this.
- 2) Destroy the gate then move your officers onto the arrows.
Some things to note about battles:
- The battles happen in real time, meaning that after each turn there are 30 days, it will take some time for your troops to march leaving you less than the 30 days. When the time is up you will be notified if you want to start affairs, always click yes unless you have nothing to do in affairs. After your done with the turns (if this happens) end it and you will be back in the battle.
You cannot control 2 battles at once, if you have 2 battles at the same time you can control one and the other will be done automatically.
Everytime a unit attacks it gains Troop EXP
Conquering a Enemy Faction
This is gonna be just a brief subject but when you conquer another Faction, most if not all his officers will be jailed, and factionless. Meaning all his officers are exclusive to you to hire, so have a lot of officers on hand before you conquer the final city to scoop up the rewards.
Diplomacy and Strategy
As of writing this guide, Diplomacy is only used as a “Do Not Attack Me Shield” However i still believe Diplomacy is fairly useless for the player, later in the game other factions will constantly be sending you gifts which you can accept or decline.
Take note that if you attack a faction that you have a high standing with you will gain Infamy.
Reputation lets officers wanna join you more. Infamy makes officers wanna join you less.
To battle gaining the dreaded infamy, spam Strategy options on the faction. Which is the only way i could find to lower their standings with me.
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