All missions have a turn limit, and for a while it will be one of twenty turns. Usually they are more than enough. From what I remember you only have problems with the turn limit when you try to heavily change history. For example, winning the battle of Xingyang will leave you dangerously close to the turn limit, but doing it 'properly' will leave you with five or more turns to spare.
Not suspicious at all, I tell you.
Of course. Totally. What's to doubt?
Really trustworthy guy.
And now we are finally in control. As you can see Cao Cao is a Level 3 Warlord. Liu Bei and his bros are all Level 7, and the imperial dudes are Level 1. In this battle we only control Cao Cao himself.
The blue field indicates Cao Cao's range of movement. You can take action after moving but you can't move after taking action. He can only attack enemies that are inside one of the red squares at the moment of attacking. Different unit types have different, uhm, red square thingies. Units can also counterattack as long as the enemy unit attacking them is inside one of the red squares. You can cancel moves by right clicking before taking action, but you can't cancel actions.
You can also check both the movement range and the red squares of enemy and allied units in the same way you do your own. The movement range however can be confusing until you learn how it works. I'll explain a little bit: A unit can't pass next to an enemy unit. If there is a gate three squares wide and an enemy unit in the middle square Cao Cao would not be able to enter the city right away. You will have to finish that turn next to the enemy unit, and then in the next turn move inside the city. If the enemy unit where on one side of the gate the same would happen when you try to enter by the middle tile, but you would be able to enter normally through the tile in the opposite side. This can be pretty important when a battle turns into a messy melee and all of a sudden you are, like, why the bleep can't I move there?! My plan is ruined!
Anyway, the yellow question marks that did appear once the fire began indicate the unit in question is confused. As long as a unit is confused it can't do anything, not even counterattack.
Before attacking an enemy dude you can check your chance to strike and how much damage you will do to the target. This is not a certainty, though. An enemy may block your attack and receive no damage, or the attacker may score either a critical hit or more than a single attack.
Cao Cao scores a critical hit, and thus when Liu Bei goes to finish the job the Yellow Turban dude has 26 HP instead of the expected 48 HP.
*facepaw*
There's not much more to explain for this first battle. The enemies are confused and even if they were not the super sworn bros would slaughter them all without breaking a sweat. And we also have a 'hidden' advantage in this mission beyond the super sworn bros being OP and the enemies being all confused: The game has a rock-paper-scisors system in place. Cavalry pwn foot soldiers, foot soldiers pwn archer, archers pwn cavalry. Other variables like level, equipment, buffs, special character rules, etc, can muddle the waters more than a little bit but in general it works like that. The part about archers beating cavalry in particular is pretty important in the early missions as you have only one, then two, archer generals, the enemy uses lots and lots of cavalry, and the difference in damage between 'smack them with footsoldiers' and 'turn them into pincushions' is BIG.
Anyway, the two guys in the middle of the camp, the ones we have to kill, are not Level 1 Yellow Turbant dudes but Magicians. They have some debuffs and the Poison spell.
The Poison spell not only does damage over time for a random number of turns but also an amount of damage on impact. I don't really use Magicians if I can help it so I don't know much about them beyond the basics, I like the other 'pure casters' more. In the rock-paper-scissors thingie pure casters (Geomancers, magicians, strategists, etc) get pretty much pwned by everyone in REAL MAN COMBAT. This does not apply to hybrid casters like Warlords (Cao Cao, Liu Bei, etc), whatever Diao Chan class is, and others.
Anyway, Cao Cao charges the tents on the lower right corner of the camp. When you finish a turn on a building the character will loot it. In most cases you will obtain recovery items of some kind. Ending a turn in a building will also heal the character a bit.
And that's pretty much all for this battle. Or, say, slaughter.
When Zhang Bao falls we obtain a Book of Healing. I asume this book to be the Taiping Jing the three brothers who would later start the Yellow Turban rebellion (Zhang Jue, Zhang Bao, and Zhang Liang) received from the immortal of the southern lands at the beginning of Teh Romance, but that's just me. A character equiping the book will be cleansed of all status effects at the end of each turn. It's not terribly useful.
This is a good time to mention that anything your allies loot both from enemies and from buildings goes to you just as if you had looted it yourself, so you don't have to worry about your 'allies' stealing your shinies.
Anyway,
NyanNyan can also tell. :3
