Chapter 6 : The enemies of my enemies
Song :
Majesty
Finally, I'm getting paid to not attack! 4 months isn't much of a time. That's about 12 turns. But free money is always welcome. You cannot break ceasefires in this game. But Alliances can be broken any time.
With this, we can focus on crushing Sun Ce's domination of the south. Also three cities are too much to manage on my own. I set one city on automated production.
Their job is just to produce troops and breed horses, as well as periodically transport gold and food to us.
Also, Cao Cao wants his relative back.
More gold
And we return to fighting off Sun Ce's attack. We let them advance to our city outskirts before engaging, taking the time to drill troops and save up on food. Then rush out as they set up their forces. Using two think tanks we paralyzed two-thirds of their forces.
Jia Xu takes another step towards perfection.
And our ground forces are victorious once more.
The battle of central plains is heating up. There's a 3 way struggle for the city of Chen Liu, currently held by Yuan Shao. Cao Cao attacks from the west, while Sun Ce marched from the south. This is probably why the Yellow March is halted. There will no more easy gains to be made.
It's time to make my move. Sun Ce's attacks has always originated from this dock. I'm starting up an elite naval defense force.
First, we supply it with additional soldiers and food.
Then we assigned our finest water generals to stand by at the dock and drill the men.
Heavier ships are manufactured in the city itself. These ships take less damage and move faster than regular boats. This force will also be able to intercept Cao Cao's navy should he attempts attacking us from the north. Because our 4 months agreement has lapsed.Time moves quickly.
We are prepared for Sun Ce's next naval invasion. This time he's sending around 30,000 by the river.
Spearhead of the invasion seems to be this unit. A 10,000 unit strong blessed with a skilled naval commander and hyper-intelligent deputy. Our think-tanks cannot pierce and intelligence of that magnitude. Zhao Yun is also another one that cannot be affected by Think Tanks. His special skill rendered him IMMUNE to all strategies.
So, we're going to have to do this the hard way. We'll burn 2,000 Tech. Points on Adept March. This Tier 2 research is not very useful, it allows shortcuts routes to be unlocked, and dangerous terrains no longer causes our units to suffer casualties.
It's a stepping stone to Tier 3 Military Reform, which increases all officers max troop cap by 3,000!
Baywatchers Assemble!
Gan Ning will take the lead, I'm attaching Jia Xu as anti-strategy protection.
He Qi will be deputized by Kuai Liang.
Xu Sheng launches without a deputy. I forgot to take a screen cap. They command 7,000 soldiers each.
I left a few thousand men behind on the dock to act as a damage absorber. A city / stronghold is lost if the troop count / structure is reduced to zero. We focus fired Han Dang's unit.
He's down to 3,000 men in two turns of concentrated fire.
The battle gets heated up after Han Dang's unit is eliminated, we captured him, but missed out on his deputy. By then, the dock has suffered severe damage.
We're pulling everything asset out of that dock to avoid losing much. Zhang Yan is summoned with Liu Qi as his deputy. Zhang Yan is terrible naval commander, but Liu Qi's naval aptitude can cover for that weakness. Deputy mechanics at work.
As expected, the dock fell.
And Sun Ce's forces foolishly occupied it, you know what this means?
Yep, we blew it up with a volley from our four ships.
Mop up time.
I scrolled over to the east to see if there's any more incoming troops and saw a wonderful scene.
That's right folks, Cao Cao's moving south to attack Sun Ce's weakened outpost! Three way battle is a bitch, ain't it?
I think we just raped Sun Ce's troop count with that naval victory. I counted 30,000 kills minimum and less than 3000 casualties on our side.
Glad we're finally playing a significant part in this war.
But is Sun Ce falling really what we want? From the troop count table, we can see that Cao Cao is leading at 350,000. I think we need to keep his power in check. We have no official alliances nor cease fire active. And our relations with Cao Cao is still at Hostile. Plenty of targets. Next update is going to be fun!