Total War: THREE KINGDOMS Mandate of Heaven To hard

[Black Eye games]

Why is Mandate of heaven so dam hard played as liu bel and the yellow turban main leader hads 3 maxed armys a round turn 8 on normal game mode 72 turns later hes the only leader standing and i now fighting 5 armys but he only hads 20 lands at that point

[jozenone]

A combination of factors, many of which are poor AI scripts and questionable design choices.

The fervor mechanic assures that rebellions will begin to outstrip all the local Han ruler's ability to fight.

Yellow turban base units are considerably better than Han militia.

Yuan Shao spawns with a weak army and with bad luck can be eliminated the same turn (if you're playing as the YT, just camp Wei with a decent army until he spawns. Zheng Jiang can be roasted the same way)

He Jin does not enter the fray often enough, and sometimes just marches back and forth.

Lu Zhi and Huangfu Song should be reinforced by Liu Bei, Yuan Shao, and Cao Cao. They are not.

The rest of the Northern Han are incompetent

Liu Chong is often too wrried about Chen to go north

If Cao Cao does not go North, there is one less army to holdback the YT

For some bizarre reason, Kong Rong begins at war with the Han

There is simply NO WAY for Liu Bei to hold Pingyuan against the YT horde

The game's turn mechanics push the collapse of the Han too quickly.

Sun Jian will often not ride North, either

The end result is that the YT will almost always take the North and push into central China with nigh-unbeatable might. I've seen it in probably 60% of runs and the YT rebellion will succeed

[Fais]

Originally posted by Black Eye games:

Why is Mandate of heaven so dam hard played as liu bel and the yellow turban main leader hads 3 maxed armys a round turn 8 on normal game mode 72 turns later hes the only leader standing and i now fighting 5 armys but he only hads 20 lands at that point

Ride south somewhere safe with Liu Bei. As you know, you can annex Han castles as Liu Bei, so find a good spot south of his starting position, and build up a good empire there. Shouldn't be hard.

[Jerroser]

A lot of MOH's flaws (a lot of which jozenonecan bring us) can be attributed to the game trying to awkwardly replicate the situation in China as it was in 182 where the Han still mostly controlled everything but splitting it in to multiple factions. I believe the whole Empire mechanic was created mostly for this as its application in the late campaign for any faction aside from Liu Hong is rather limited based on my experience.

After a lot of people complained that the Yellow Turbans rolled over too easily when the chapter pack was released so CA has clearly buffed them so that the MOH start date actually revolves around fighting them rather than the playing being able to sit back and let the AI do most of the work. But for Liu Bei this really doesn't work well as he is supped to work as support for the other factions fighting the Yellow Turban's and stands little to no chance if forced to do the majority of the fighting himself.

Both Yuan Shao and Kong Rong have an issue where them leaving to create their own factions means that their aren't spawned as part of the Empire. Which is what causes every Han faction to turn on him immediately, while Yuan Shao's faction spawn location is too close to where the Yellow Turbans will be rampaging. Plus as they start with so little as independent factions they have basically no chance to survive the turn (or first few turns) they appear.

[Black Eye games]

question if you lose Mandate of Heaven does your game end?

[hmmm]

Yes if the yellow turbans control 50 territories and Louyang if you are playing as a Han faction the game is over and you lose.

Also when playing a northern faction in the north you just have to make smart decisions. Lu Zhi is my favorite campaign and I never have any issue dealing with Zhang Liang and Zhang Bao. Zhang Jue isn't really an issue but by the time I get around to him I've got Huang Shao up my ass and it just takes some time.

Liu Bei is quite a bit harder than Lu Zhi however. Its been a while since I last did a legendary mandate liu bei but from what I remember you have to take advantage of the super cheap militia units. You should also try and make sure that Lu Zhi doesn't die early and reinforce him when needed. Always try to ambush the YT armies, as even if they have more armies you can whittle them down one by one in ambushes. (Night battles work here too but ambushes are better as you can have reinforcing armies). You also have 3 fantastic generals with Liu Bei. Use them. Its a hard campaign but I wouldn't call it near impossible.

For reference everything I've said was on legendary difficulty

[RCMidas]

Yes.

[Nord400]

Of all my Mandate of Heaven campaigns only once after the buffs did the Al beat the Yellow Turban themselves without my help.

If you don't mind factions dying you can usually ignore it though until the Yellow Turbans have around 35-40 territories and then you should intervene.

[Nat]

Liu beis Mandate of Heaven start IS probably one of the hardest if not hardest in the whole game. Don’t worry so much about the missions, all they do is gift you pinguan for it and on the next few turns Zhang bad takes it with his doom stack. There’s ways to play you can figure it out. Challenges are fun in this game