Cao Cao Mandate Heaven Buggy?

[Kantermoose]

Hello, on turn 63 of Cao Cao Mandate of Heaven start.

I went the go my own way route, starting in Chen (didnt want my papas lands).

So after about my 10th restart, and on easy mode - other factions seem to be able to kill the Zhang brothers rebellion in the north. Any other play thru and they quickly kill off the north and zoom towards the 50 settlement win.

How on earth as Cao Cao are you suppose to prevent any of this going on when you have to start a fued with Yuan Shu or Liu Chong to get set up. Any other mode than easy, I just end up with huge fervor penalties due to all the Han land or Yuan Shu ignoring his rebellions - thus 3 - 4 turns later there are a few stacks of yellow turbans next land over negatively effecting my lands. Even if i send out troops to kill them, the negative effects bring the yellow turbans back to NPC lands a few turns later preventing you from ever moving troops any where else.

Now on my easy campaign, the rebellion has been stopped. All 3 Zhang brothers died, the yellow turbans have about 4-5 territories left. In Guangling and Yangzhou I still have a -33 and -45 fervor debuff. I am stuck keeping this areas tax free to prevent -33 to -45 fervor/happiness per turn. There are no yellow turbans any where near me. Is this a bug?

[Kantermoose]

https://imgur.com/a/sUemhm1

[RCMidas]

Yes. At the moment, Fervor DOES NOT reduce.

This means constant Yellow Turban rebellions, however note that a tier 3 garrison structure will make you immune to any normal rebellion even on Legendary, assuming you do attack and autoresolve it when it tries to siege the city.

Actual AI armies can still beat you, of course, but you can effectively farm rebellions for cash and garrison XP (making them even better against genuine threats) this way. It's even an established part of how to play Dong Zhou and constantly build up his Intimidation.

[Kantermoose]

Thanks for reply! Good tips and info

Still confused how an area can go 0 pop and can still make full stacks of yellow turban fervor rebellions pop up.

[Urban Legend]

When is this going to be fixed? I still have fervor in settlements post-Zhang brothers, but I can't get rid of it.

[Kantermoose]

not sure if it is.

you can build military garrison to delegate the battles and win, also if u go the -supply route they will cap with a bit less troops. can further up happiness with temple chain and granary and sending faction members out on assignments in that region.

once you get your army size you can also have a 1 general army roam around hot spot territory, can seasonal deploy other generals as you see fit as you have a few rounds if til end of timer before they siege.

if the hit your trade route/capital you will suffer huge income losses (somestimes -7k, so try to keep a 10k gold stock later on)

As you can farm endless gold from the uprisings tho, there is no huge motivation to get rid of them, on my last Lui Bei play thru was making sometimes 5k a turn off them delegating some battles. eventually youll want to slide the tax slider to max and forget about making people happy and farm some gold.

once you get further into the tree you can offset happiness, but gold is better and i found fixing corruption, esp as you grow into a kingdom/emperor much better for gold per turn. so you can demolish some +happiness buildings or upgrade cities further to get the -20%? or 15% corruption to area and surround areas. can easily get areas -40-80% corruption and make full profit off cities (try to avoid peasant income - if your in the north a lot of industrial income) as you usually have 0 population in these cities from constant rebelling - until you can over come the -pop from perks/governors etc.

TLDR:
its a period of rebellions, kill em for money, build military garrison in each city - until you 100% know u can demolish it. avoid peasant income in yellow turban rebellion hot spots best you can.
granary + military garrison + temple + perks can overcome happiness (not at max tax usually) (ive built like max 2 granary over 10 playthrus now)