Mandate of Heaven Yellow Turban AI Question

[DuskNDawn]

So... I know in the end they kind of fall over and die but what the heck is up with the AI for the brothers? Are they programmed to just sit around doing NOTHING ALL GAME. Liang only had his three/four settlements playing ring around a rosy with Lu Zhi until Shao spawned and stole his building he was camping in for about 8-12 turns, Bao looked like he wanted to do something by taking out Liu Bei only to take a settlement south of the river and just sit there and no telling them to attack a place did NOTHING. Bao was in range of a area Chong took and I'm positive he had the ability to go and beat his army and take the area but after four turns of still not moving...

I had to quite my run I was doing I couldn't take watching them do nothing! Whats worse is when you don't play any of them then they seem to wanna pull their fingers out their @$$ and do something.

[yourstudgrampa]

The two times I have played as one of the brothers, I have had similar problems of them being extremely passive to the point I was the only one fighting the empire. My playthoughs as one of the brothers was basically me handholding them all the way to victory. I'd say it's best to think of them more as vassals than alliance members. One thing you could try is enter diplomacy with one/both of them and try to get the AI to coordinate attacks with your armies.

[Sneakimus]

Playing as the Han, I got the complete opposite experience.

No matter which Han faction I play as, I have to secure my borders ASAP then rush through the empire to start beating down the Yellow Turbans. Because otherwise, they will steamroll through everyone else.

Playing as Dong Zhou, I barely had time to kidnap the Emperor as I rushed over. As I was slowly but surely mulching through the armies and territories of two of the Yellow Turban factions, while the third had been pushed down towards Chen's territory with only a few cities and armies. Naturally I assumed my stacked coalition could handle a single yellow turban, but nop; that single faction started systematically kicking the ass of every single Han AI around it and rapidly carving out a large territory, meaning I had to rush killing the other two brothers even faster.

In my experience, the Han AI is completely unable to handle the Yellow turbans. They also don't know how to handle Fervour, and so rebel armies are going to be spawning in almost every single county of theirs.

[yourstudgrampa]

Originally posted by Master:

Playing as the Han, I got the complete opposite experience.

No matter which Han faction I play as, I have to secure my borders ASAP then rush through the empire to start beating down the Yellow Turbans. Because otherwise, they will steamroll through everyone else.

Playing as Dong Zhou, I barely had time to kidnap the Emperor as I rushed over. As I was slowly but surely mulching through the armies and territories of two of the Yellow Turban factions, while the third had been pushed down towards Chen's territory with only a few cities and armies. Naturally I assumed my stacked coalition could handle a single yellow turban, but nop; that single faction started systematically kicking the ass of every single Han AI around it and rapidly carving out a large territory, meaning I had to rush killing the other two brothers even faster.

In my experience, the Han AI is completely unable to handle the Yellow turbans. They also don't know how to handle Fervour, and so rebel armies are going to be spawning in almost every single county of theirs.

Oh yeah, when you play as Han, the Brothers are extremely aggressive and the buffs from their fervor ability are not to be taken lightly. Playing as Chen, I basically used my armies to secure the Yellow river and eventually gained a foothold in Henebie(? cant remember its name, right across the river from where Chen starts) so the other empire members could take their sweet time helping me push back the brothers.

I honestly believe the Mandate DLC is broken from the beginning. It seems like the devs designed it to have less aggressive AI on whichever side you choose (possibly so you dont lose out on capturing more territory) and accidentally/intentionally made it and hand-holding DLC where you are forced to babysit your allies while keeping the fervor under control in your territories.

[DuskNDawn]

I recall when the DLC first came out and playing as the Han was like a free win as you could sit around and watch as other factions wanted to do something about the brothers but now...

Like no matter what side you play it feels like the AI for your allies get turned off, brothers just sit around now helping with the zeal burn (if they even helped in the first place) or the Han want to sit in their own areas dealing with... I guess public order issues and rebellions? IDK what they do other then sit around.

[Sneakimus]

I definitely think they went overboard with the changes. Somewhere in the middle would have been better.

Historically, the Yellow Turban rebellion was beaten. In which case I think they could do with a 30% win chance as opposed to the seemingly 100% win chance that they currently have as Han, meaning ignoring them is a viable; if not entirely risk free; strategy.

It does get rather nonsensical when you can be playing as factions on the complete opposite end of China, yet still have to run Monty Python style across the map in order to prevent the inevitable Yellow Turban victory.

[Danke]

Well I had the exact opposite problem. My 2 Yellow Turban brothers were too good. The Han were falling over from just looking at them.

By the time I captured the West side of the chunk we start in, the 2 brothers had already captured the entire East side of the map (were Kong Rong and Liu Bei are in the normal campign).

The only moment when their bloodlust stopped was when Yuan Shao spawned. They declared an alliance war against him, eliminated him, and within 8 turns of him spawning they were back at it.

I just had to capture Luoyang to win.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion (the faction that has no Diplomacy options) had also destroyed Liu Yu, and captured the entire area northeast of were we started.

[Count D'Cinamon]

Originally posted by Danke～ です！:

The Yellow Turban Rebellion (the faction that has no Diplomacy options) had also destroyed Liu Yu, and captured the entire area northeast of were we started.

no diplo option? i can engage with them in the diplomacy screen. maybe you didnt scroll down enough?

[Danke]

Originally posted by D'Cinamon:

Originally posted by Danke～ です！:

The Yellow Turban Rebellion (the faction that has no Diplomacy options) had also destroyed Liu Yu, and captured the entire area northeast of were we started.

no diplo option? i can engage with them in the diplomacy screen. maybe you didnt scroll down enough?

The faction called "Yellow Turban Rebellion" has no diplomacy options for me other than to declare War. He beat me to capturing a city, and I already had a minor settlement from it. Tried to give it to him, but there were 0 options other than War.

Weirdly enough there's 2 "Yellow Turban Rebellion" showing up in the map for me. The first one that is part of the Military Alliance along with the rest of the YTR, and some enemy YTR which I assume it's just an ACTUAL rebellion of low happiness, but the game has no "normal" rebels so that's why, maybe.

[lugerluver]

They are probably busy with Liu Bei and bros and their militia doomstacks.