Zheng Jiang is terrible

[Nyuk]

Zheng Jiang's faction is terribly made and isnt intuitive to play as.
Her starting faction sentinel hero in her army doesn't like her and should been rid of as soon as possible.
Zheng Jiang can easily develop many different traits that makes her faction hier dislike her.
She pretty much have to get rid of her starting sentinel hero due to the fact tyat she has negative satisfaction penalty early game.
Her starting heroes hating her might be part of the her difficulty setting but its pretty dumb.

ZJ recommended play style is aggressive expansion. She starts out really poor and can barely fund half an army. Sun jians base income is double of hers.
Her play style is focused on demanding tributes and sacking settlements for money and infamy. Sacking any city will slow you down since you'd have to rebuild the settlement later. This is extremely counter intuitive to what her play style is supposed to be.

She is supposed to be making a majority of her income through tributes, which is hard to come by due to her negative diplomatic relations and her slow strength gain early game. The best way to counter her early game diplomatic strength is to enter a coalition with the vassal king yuan shao or zhang yan as a good second choice. This way, she can have more diplomatic strength to be able to demand tribute. Her initial faction quest wants you to eliminate both zhang yan and yuan shao so thats another poor design right there. If the campaign goes south and both zhang yan and yuan shao are not available for coalition, the only viable choice left is to take over emperor xian and have the han empire pay tribute to you.

Her infamy ranks and outlaw ranks increases the bonus amount she gets from tributes but the most important part that she desperately needs is increased chances of demanding tribute from any faction.

In mid to late game, she cannot do anti corruption like the other factions as her useless bonus tribute building replaces the anti corruption administrator building. She is expected to receive most of her income through tributes and having diplomatic penalties make it harder to keep trade routes a viable option.

In a co-op campaign, she is not that bad as you can demand tribute from your friend and just pay you friend back how much they lose from paying tributes to you. Your bonus from tributes will be your extra income made out of thin air.

Is there anything good about Zhang Jiang?

She is probably the second best hero in game for killing enemy heroes, after guan yu and his one charge insta kill god of war move (rank ~7 skill)
Her weapons give her fatigue immune and she has high chance of getting unbreakable from traits or her infamy bonus.
Her non existant expertise makes her easily countered.

ZJ special faction units are pretty damn good but is expensive like most factions unique units.

She starts the game at the ripe age of 18, is female and not married. This means as soon as you rank up, you can truce with dong zhou and marry lu bu into your faction. You could also do it earlier and steal his items before he leaves you. A lot of good heroes in game are male and not married, so you can poach other heroes too like ma chao.

And finally, the best part about Zheng Jiang, her other unique faction building, global stackable replenishment building. In late game, if you can fund it, she can have 100% repleshment per turn for all her armies (if you can fund more than one army).