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Jincheng and Shuofang main cities are also ports, giving you significantly greater access to trade routes - though you could always press into the mountains over the river to Xihe province (the fishing port would do well for an aquatic trade route opener) and ravage the bandit queen some more. That'll make loads of people like you if you mainly stick to sacking.
Also, it means you can park your armies at the Chang'an/Shangyong chokepoints in case anybody else wants a piece of you and just hold the mountain territories against all comers. All the time you need to build up.
*Ideally, wait until he moves north to start paying the occupation costs for some of the abandoned Wuwei and Shuofang provinces himself.
I knocked over Zhang Lu around Turn 8 in this game.
I believe I'm still at war with what remains of Dong. He's got two full stack armies floating near Chang'an, one of 'em led by his amazing Tiger Dragon General fella whom I'd love to recruit (and whose name escapes me...), Zhang Liao.
Considering whether I want to try to fight them, or go for a temporary peace. Wang Yun still holds that whole circular chunk of territory north of Chang'an... Anding, I believe it's called. Between Han Sui and Zheng Jiang. Would be nice to eject him if I could, but the money is super tight right now. I can't even maintain two full armies yet.
I'll have a look at breaking off at least my Military Alliance with Han Sui (he hasn't responded to ANY of my war coordination efforts since the start of the game, anyway!)
But I absolutely cannot afford to lose the trade agreement with him until the last possible moment. Haha.
You're playing a faction against it's strength and intention, and it's background. I'd recommend just choosing a faction that suits this playstyle rather than trying to strong arm one into this style.
I'm currently working on finishing off Dong Zhuo's old faction (who's spread up north and paid for Shuofang for me). After I hit the northern border and finish off Dong's old gang, I'm going to turn my attention to Han Sui and take THAT Pastures as well.
I don't see why I can't have a massive standing army of awesome and free cavalry and still be peaceful. I might even be peaceful because of the massive cavalry army -- No one wants to attack me.
I'll sit, I'll grow, I'll raise ponies... Then someone'll declare themselves emperor and then I'll come galloping in.
The only downside of cav-heavy armies is that the autoresolve absolutely HATES them when even the slightest number of spears show up in an enemy army. You are fighting and micromanaging a LOT of battles as Ma Teng. Sieges are a nightmare too. Still, the sheer amount of money you are saving gives you a decent edge for paying more salaries for more generals with infantry forces...
You definitely want to focus on upgrading the Horse Pastures to the max as soon as possible, because Ma Teng is not a young man and when he dies, your Qiang cavalry will suddenly cost 15% more than they did previously. Of course, if you can sweep up through the mountains and grab the last of the Horse Pastures in Dai province, you can literally get free recruitment and upkeep on Qiang cavalry (once you get the -10% army upkeep reform).
His only strength is in offensive expansion. So why not play to that strength rather than just do what everyone else can do better?
As for auto-resolve... Eh! That's fine.
I didn't really use cavalry much in my previous playthroughs. As Kong Rong, my armies were all quite simple: 6x Fury of Beihai (4x on Strategist, and 2x on a supporting character with decent Cunning), 2x Trebuchets, 2-4 Shielded Cavalry for hunting down enemy archers with their 85% ranged deflection, and the rest Spear Warriors.
Micromanaging the fights with the horses is pretty fun. I'm even trying out using the Qiang Hunters exclusively instead of putting in Onyx Dragons that I unlocked and never used. :p
His campaign was the easiest I played yet because those horsemen are so dang powerful and his eco is just insane down south.
I pushed south and kept the Han, Dong Zhou, and Han Sui as allies and meat shields. No point it fighting vs allies and opening multiple fronts. Horse pastures really arent worth it unitl late game and getting the spice, weapon and armor factories early is the best, the armor and weapon fully upgrade without tech points needing to be spent. Everyone is fighting Dong and the Han so staying friendly with them is alot easier then other factions because they are happy with who ever you kill. Also all those northern faction are way stronger then the southern factions until you border Wu. Kill the Han when dong falls and they stand alone no longer his Vassel. Han is always weak even mid-late game.
The southern region is a gold mine. My eco was the best with Ma Chang as apposed to the other 8 factions i played. Spice and silk bonus's all stack faction wide. Most of the spice in the south are free or held by weak southern faction. You wont need horse pasture because you wont need large armies to defeat them. I used all early game units besides the horsemen until the 3 emperors rose up. If your fielding enough cav to make the horse pasture pay off early to mid-game you are doing something wrong with your military.
Horse pastures are really really not worth it. A horse pasture up north can save 14% of your cav cost, thats under 100 gold for a full 6 cav retinue. On legendary I didnt field more then 4-6 cav units until turn 75. A spice factory in the south can make around 1.5-2k a territory.
Spice is very eco powerful. They dont need any bonus from the settlement and will generate 2k even if you dont own the main settlment. They also allow for other buildings to be built because they all faction buff themselves. Combined with spice markets in your trade ports they really produce alot of income. My imperial spice settlments are making 6k each fully built up. And thats with having schools instead of another source of income.
Make sure you have circle formation, its pretty vital as it make horse charges way easier. Ax men with the shields where my main unit with medium archers.
My legendary playthru is the exact opposite of this. His spice and silk bonus made development much easier and his eco insane. Eco is what you build up for in this game, out of the "hard" factions his eco is the best so far. Even when compared to Kong Rong.
Horse Pastures are really terrible. They only save money when you have cav units fielded vs spice that produce large sums every turn. They also dont effect redeployment, which is needed just to move troops. Redeployment is the main cost of cav for me and is reduced outside of horse pastures.
I went to war with all factions for fun after turn 90. With 10 full late game armies my 4 horse pastures are saving me around 6000k per turn. 4 of my spice settlements are producing 7-8k per turn. Horse pastures will never save you more then spice will produce. If you consider all the turns I didnt have armies fielded and spice still was producing the difference significant in $$$. If they made horse pastures effect redeployment cost, then maybe they would have a purpose.
Ma Teng eco was so good down south I fed half my 10-15k every turn to Wu so I would have a challenge late game. I probably gave 500,000 to Wu before turn 130.
I am now in a coalition with Sun Jian and see his territory is mostly around southeast China.
I am considering snaking my way south along the west coast, through Liu Zheng, and taking the spices down south now...
But yeah, it's kinda sad. Turn 80 and the only unique characters I have are the ones I secured in my early game: Ma Teng, Ma Chao, Lu Bu, Sun Ce, and Zhao Yu. Boo.
Is 7K ur ecos gross or net?
The best way to get characters is via arranged marriaged. I think about one out of every four is legendary. They can also have gold items. There really isn't too much of a benefit from having faction specific characters. Age is a really important factor in character development. I prefer young generals the arranged marriage or being born for my six adopted children rather than an aged faction specific character.
Also Mary off all your family as quick as possible while adopting as many of your generals as possible. Family Ties, fondness, and close bonds all give combat bonuses which will turn your average character to something better than the special named ones.
Adopting generals turn one is pretty important. Because it allows them to start contributing to your family tree right away. This will give them bonuses in combat and give you a new general nearly every turn by mid-to-late game.
This will also completely prevent spies from getting into your ranks.
My reforms have been spent heavily into blue and red... Enough to get Lv.5 Pastures as well as Lv.5 Commerce, Trade, and Silk buildings.
I wrote some stuff about character building in an edit within my last post. You have a pretty good amount of faction specific characters for turn 80. I'm usually happy to get that many in a hole playthrough
You dont need to upgrade the horse pastures and you certainly don't want to be going out of your way to do so. There are other things that diminish retinue up cost so it's just redundant. I'm not looking at my game at the moment but I'm pretty sure I'm around a 50% reduction retinue upkeep without horse pastures to start.
I'm not saying this to be rude to you but just for common info. Horse Fashions are the worst settlement in the game and upgrading them in mass is a literally pointless as you only need 50% reduction which three of them will offer with only basic upgrades. Also the cataphracts are worse then may tangs horse units so you don't even get a benefit of a good unit.
If you aren't playing on legendary and have the ability to save you can go back
And see how many of your horse pastures you can downgrade before you start seeing retinue cost again.
The prize of the north is the animal trainer