Also a tough strategy would be: sail east and find Liu Bei, go to war with Liu Bei, make peace and vassalize him. Annex him and make him our heir. What a wonderful story, might be tough to complete before 194 tho
Cutting down the nanman was really rewarding for the pre-inheritance period, I found. You get to pillage their lands for aspiration without irritating the emperor, and the level 1 nanman generals are usually so shit at duels that lou zhang can dispatch 2-3 of them with ease.
Yeah I gotta agree. Rushing Wutugu is really good early game. He's sitting on a port that gives you contact to other factions. This helps with one of the Aspiration missions (know 12 factions or something) and gives you trading partners. And you already mentioned being able to expand without getting Emperor penalties, but it really is key. Its hard enough with all the trade offs heh. Don't need to ruffle the Emperor's feathers too.
This is legendary^2. I saw a comment somewhere on other channels about meeting 15 factions. You can send out a general to go on a world tour by sail them thought the river and go north.
I like to send a spy out to get LOS on my neighbors and then my neighbors' neighbors until I can see the whole map. I find it the whole concept of 'uncontacted factions' really bizarre for Han rulers.
SeriousTrivia: "And now history lesson is over" Me: Wait what? No come on! Keep going Me at the end of the video: Aaaaah a lore series about Liu Yan. YES! Serious Trivia: *flexes brainpower* Me: *sitting on the edge of my seat whispering: Amazing!
I'd say Liu Yan tried to pull off a Liu Bang kind of manoeuvre that eventually made him emperor and he also started off in Shu. Letting the other warlords fight it out as he builds his strength, feigning weakness by putting himself in a hostile area of the empire that would make him seem tied down to be a threat. If he was younger he might have pulled it off.
There is a mod called “abdicate”, which gives you the ability to immediately let your heir become faction leader and set your current leader as the heir (manually of course). Let the shenanigans begin.
Every time I look at Liu Yan he reminds me of the stereotype of the old wise Chinese master. And also he is my mental image for wuxia/xianxia novels have those Sect Elders xD
This is like LegendTotalWar's Legendary Western Roman campaign in Attila. I love the strategy and depth you need to think at every stage of the game for these kind of campaigns, and its even sweeter because late game with your heir bonuses you'll just steamroll. I love early game Total War and making that more complicated while making the tedium of late game easier = my perfect campaign. I LOVE YOU SERIOUSTRIVIA
So the inheritance reward that says ‘local county’ you have to select a commander to get that bonus. It doesn’t goes around with Liu Zhang. The one that gives bonus to army like campaign movement will stick to one army, doesn’t have to be an army with Liu Zhang either.
If you want to do the three stack mission, this is how I do it. Unless you wanna figure it out yourself. Make three armies of only generals and keep 9 generals together. You can win Han territories this way without paying the high upkeep cost. Keep them happy with 2 filial and piety assignment at all time. Then, you piggy bank around a little more than 10 k(farm rebels) and in one turn recruits all 3 stacks with archer militias, click the mission tab to trigger mission complete and then disband all to avoid upkeep. Use general of the left to reduce cost.
Local county means Local County. You have to pick which individual county you want to boost. I managed this challenge with all the missions except for the 3 standing armies
Your knowledge of the history is outstanding. Really enjoying the content. You should start streaming on youtube doing livestreams and chatting with the audience
Btw Trivia, if you delegate on first battle vs Jia Long, Liu Zhang gets one duel. Apparently if you jump into battle, Jia Long doesn’t want to duel. There’s also one strange feature when you reset one character’s trait. The trait gets replaced with “Undiscovered trait” which does nothing until your character gets his new trait after some time and this place holding traits just goes away. It popped for me a couple times.
Trying to get max aspirations was quite a pain. I had to sell myself to Liu Biao for 11 turns just for lump sums of gold to upgrade cities and buy cheap armies. I got lucky with the duels, too, since I got a heavenly sword. I'm pretty sure they gave you two strategists with Reward the Filial just to counter the trade off, because that first strategist you can capture comes with flaming arrows and Wisdom of the River. That was also essential to get Liu Zhang to scam out some duels lol
Imagine if faction mechanics where character based so that you could get lu bu as your hair with liu Yan make lu bu even more overpowered and then have lu bu's faction mechanics
That's what I mean though if they developed the game so that when one leader joins your faction if they become the leader of your faction it should change the mechanics to the new leaders faction so in a way you could go with Liu Yan and then make lu BU your heir and then have an even stronger lu BU with lu bu's mechanics
I'm also glad you gave us the backstory for Liu Yan. It took me longer than it should have to realize, but Liu Yan is usually the first non-Nanman faction I attack, because if I leave him alone for too long he comes sniffing for Wuyang, and I can't let him have Wuyang, it's a powerful farmland, especially early. P.S. I lied earlier, I've beaten the game as Zheng Jiang as well. P.P.S do you know where I can find video or literature about the Nanman tribes? I didn't know Chinese natives existed until I bought "the furious wild" DLC.
Currently I am playing my own Liu Yan/Liu Zhang campaign and it's going pretty well (conquered all the Nanman tribes bacause they just won't stop declaring war on you), what I unfortunately realized too late (like in Summer 194) was how to get enough duels with Liu Zhang to finish that challenge: The "decrease public order" trade-off synergizes well with the duels challenge since you get more or less a rebellion every turn after a while, meaning if you constantly redeploy Liu Zhang together with a few other generals you can farm duels like crazy. At least it would work better I think because while conquering I fought too few generals who wanted to fight me while I have a gigantic army standing behind me. And in my experience the rebellion generals are more likely fo fight duels than regular army generals. (Didn't finish the video yet so if you are doing that strategy already I am sorry for the useless comment. :P But I thought I would rather write it now so that I don't forget to do so later.) And regarding the "local county income" buff: It is not a bonus put on your heir. Instead, when you click on the buff to activate it you get to choose a county to apply the buff to, more specifically, you can only choose *city counties.* Though I am not sure and have not yet tested if the buff then only affects the county income or if it is actually a commandery-wide buff and is just labeled wrong. If it really is only the city county itself I guess you have to keep in mind to put the buff on a city with more direct income even though its total commandery income might not be as high as that from another city.
every local county bonus, you have to choose in which county you want the bonus. same for the +35% campaign mouvement range, you can choose which army to give the bonus so overall i think the bonuses are good. Keep in mind that you have only 20 turn to complete the task and inherit, it's going fast. during this time i only built 3 building : 2 upgrade of the main town to get lvl 6, with the construction trade off, you'll finish lvl 6 just before inheriting, so get this going faaast. and in-between the 2 upgrade i built a school to upgrade my archers militia to archer after inheriting. that's all for the first 20 turn. i saved up all my money to get 3 full stack of archer militia before turn 20, and i had to colonise the armor craftsman to get my 10th county for the mission. Little ASTUCE : when you recruit your 3rd full stack, you get the mission achieve as soon as you finish recruiting the full stack to you can cancel the recruitment of the 3rd stack to get your money back and not pay the per turn cost. and for the duels, nanman rarely refuse a duel, and with wisdom of the river + the capacity that blocks special ability you can win duels. better doing some damage to the enemy before dueling.
I just did this on legendary. I found it not possibe to turn up all the trade offs all at once. Still barely managed to get all the inheritance in 194 thougn. looking forward to what tricks you will do in order for this to work!
How to know the map? if it steel works easy way would be to get a trade port and trade to Kong Rong or smt in the North. so all the factions that has a access to river will be founded
One way to meet other factions is to send out offensive assignments to reveal territory. Did that as liu bei to by sending one to dong zhuo to get ma chao when he came of age. Also the imperial favor does take matter before 197. That's why u have -8 faction and development instead of -10, you're above 50 so you are getting +2 from favor. You just can't do anything with it til he comes of age. I found out the hard way playing 194 Sun Ce trying to fulfill his ambitions I was constantly debuff from it. When emperor came of age I had 0 favor.
Als o I think the trade-offs so they don’t become useless should have scaling bonuses, for instance the trade influence one gives you at level 3 20% trade income. The building time minus one at level 3 gives you -15% construction cost or maintenance of buildings etc.
wutgugo is not a minior faction he has unique bones from his namnam lands i forgot whats its called its soo good its better many major factions mechnics! and unique ai behaviour witch is wierd why he isnt playable so he doesnt start with 2000 and he has the smartest ai regarding namnam
That’s a game design decision. I mean Zheng Jiang didn’t exist in history yet she is in the game. Ma Teng was a rebel and never a governor yet he is a governor
Three duels with heir is really easy. In four years, you will face both yellow turbans and generic Nanman generals. A better sword makes all the difference.
I almost got all of them except get 10 regions, know 15 existing factions and get lvl 6 city before the timely inheritance for 194 and it was a nightmare on very hard can't even imagine Legendary difficulty. Good luck 😅.
Oh, finally got to watch the Liu Yan lore series where you specify that. About your concern that Dong Zhuo may send an army, it is quite possible as I basically abandoned two legendary campaigns weeks ago turns 15-25 because he sent Jia Xiu with Lu Bu and one other down south while I was feuding with the Nanman. Campaign was 190 with Liu Bei in Shu through a one time unlimited movement cheat engine.
Does Kingdom of Xun (the king level title for the faction leader in Liu Yan's faction) make sense? Wouldn't something like Kingdom of Shu-Ba or Kingdom of Yi make a bit more sense? Idk where the Xun came so i dont really know.
Weird that none of your kids joined you. I must have restarted this campaign a dozen times trying to snag Sun Ce, and I had at least two of them by turn 5 every time. Maybe it’s because you fought the Han so early? I usually started by picking ip Jiangyang. Saved the breadbasket diplomacy for meng huo and *shudders* zhurong. Incidentally, there is a chance event that kills Liu Mao from sickness if you get him back early.
I have seen smartdonkey say the same so just to correct you: imperial influence does matter before 197. It doesnt show immediatly but if your influence is low you still get the statisfaction and diplomatic relations debuff even before 197. That is btw, also why sun jian or sun ce campaign are almost impossible to do now. As the sun you need to attack as much as possible, jet your imperial influence will drop and all factions hate you and declare war. Try if for yourself, you'll see. I think its a major oversight in this new update. you will see the debuff mentioned as "faction influence" in diplomacy if I remember correctly. Same for cao cao, yoan shao etc. All factions get the debuff on low imperial even before 197. After 197 you also get the embargo and forced to move to your capital stuff. Thats the only difference before and after 197. Also only liu Biao, cao cao and a few others get a buff enough from their unique faction resource to be able to fight a war without getting 0 imperial influence. This whole update seems rushed and calls for some major overhauls of other factions.
Or even worse: try the LU BU position in "a world betrayed" haha. Lu Bu mechanic depends on him doing 1-2 attacks per turn or otherwise your statisfaction is to low. Each attack loses you imperial influence so you are bound to be at 0 influence for ever. You lose statisfaction for having low imperial influence so that bonus from momentum is partially negated, and on top of that you get negative statisfaction from personal victories and negative diplomacy from imperial points. Basically you will have all officers wanting to rebel and all surrounding factions declaring war on you, next to that you will not have enough money for a full stack army while fighting all these full stack armies away, constantly forced to move between your few provinces. You will never be able to grow much (and what you capped early on will get lost by all those factions delcaring war) and just fight of 2 full stack armies per turn. in short: when not playing cao cao, yuan shao or liu yan just turn off the latest update.
so I am actually a bit ahead in terms of recording for the series and despite going after the Han early here and rebel farming like crazy, we entered 197 with around 54 imperial favor and everything is just fine =P
@@SeriousTrivia Well yeah with the Liu Yan campaign 5 settlements is about -35, and maybe a general or 2 comes to 54 imperial favor. Farming rebels wont change imperial favor. Thx btw for responding. But I was talking about the impact of imperial favor on sun jian, sun ce, lu bu etc. Of course everything is balanced for cao cao, yuan shao and Liu Yan, those where the ones overhauled :). also just launch the lu bu or sun ce campaign for yourselve and just do delegates to speed the test up. Within the hour you have a negative purple flag on imperial favor UI icon and you will notice a lot of factions declaring was and a negative diplomacy based on low favor, even before 197.
I had the opposite problem in my Cao Cao campaign. Almost everyone was at 100 imperial favor. It was the most peaceful game I had every played. No one really declared war on each. The only time I saw anyone really go to war was against the two "Enemies of the Han", Liu Biao and Yuan Shu, who were the only two who had low imperial authority. It wasn't until I declared myself emperor that the factions started declaring wars like usual.
one thing you should have done was build before you activated the trade offs then the first builds wouldn't have been effected by the increased construction time
Wouldn't Wutugu would be a good 2nd fraction instead of Han? 1 county fraction, plus you get a port to trade from. Which means you can stay peace with Dong Zhuo a little longer, maybe even get a trade with him, which will get you know all the fractions along the 2 rivers and coast, thus chance of the know 15 fractions?
As someone who knows nothing about chinese history is there a bodcast or a book or something that you would recommend. This sounds really interested but I was very confused behind the lore. Watching the video you put out about this specific character helped but I still feel that I don't know anything about the background needed to even understand the lore video.
Rewatching this series because I love playing Liu Yan, but navigating the early game feels super tough because Xi Ni and especially Wutugu always declare war. I don't know if you'll see this comment because the campaign's old now... but if you were to play a Liu Yan 190 campaign today without the challenges of using all the Trade-Offs, is there anything you would change in the opening strategy?
@@SeriousTrivia Damn. I'm gonna try it out again today and see if giving Wutugu and Xi Ni one food each every so often will keep them at bay long enough to get properly established. It's essentially the one thing I haven't tried yet.
Mabey having three armies could be done just by separating your characters in one army then they would be 3 separate armies I guess. And I suggest to quickly destroy Wu tu gu then make trade with dong Zhou then you will know 15 factions and also you will know sun jian which there is chance for taking sun ce hopefully
that farmer recrutment is not worth it man he is costing you waay too much money for only the 2 turns assinment when you dont even need food so your not in a hurry to apgread green buildings
getting duel: i did cheese the game by delegating because there is 2 stratigst+lu zhang so liu zhang always duels and duels in delegates count... however liu zhang died and i stopped playing lol ops
I just beat the game as Lady Jhurong, I'm trying to find what character I should play next, the only other character I have won with is Kong Rong, but I won his campaign as non-hostile as possible. I only fought nations that declared on me, and I bought peace as soon as I could, then got back to buying lands off everyone. Lady Jhurong's campaign is nearly full hostility, since the rival Nanman factions can only be trusted after you defeat them, and it's harder to buy lands, because you need a reform to trade lands with non-Nanman factions, and that reform locks you out of giving gold per turn, making it nearly impossible to trade lands with non-Nanman factions. P.S. are you chinese? your pronunciation is great.
@@SeriousTrivia that's cool, playing this game has gotten me into Chinese history in a big way, I watched the entire "war of the three kingdoms" T.V. series. Liu Bei is my favorite, but it makes me sad that he died before he could achieve his ambition, but then all of the big names from that era died before they could achieve their ambition. Death to the house of Cao.
Why would the AI not want to duel your weak heir, but they might consider it if your heir is much stronger? Does the AI care about 'famous'/stronger generals when it comes to decide if it's worth duelling? I presumed the AI accepted if they think they will win.
@@SeriousTrivia Np. You can't know it all! Btw, you can cheese some extra movement in turn 1 by getting another general and get the 5000 coin in turn 1. Probs worth.
Hey Serious I’m currently in the early late game of my play through with Liu Yan/Liu Zhang (190 start). I’m curious as to why Liu Yan/Zhang’s Kingdom is Xun and not Ba or Shu?
@@SeriousTrivia oh ok lol I had figured since Liu Bei’s Kingdom in game was Shu-Han, Ba would have been a better choice than Shu to prevent confusion between the two. Also didn’t know if calling their Kingdom “Xun” had some cultural or philosophical significance to Liu Yan/Zhang. Now I know! Thank you for the info, Serious!
I mean I have tried some of the visual mods before and I am just not that interested. Like when we had maybe only 20 uniques sure but now the game has over 100 uniques adding more has the issue where if everyone is “unique” then no one really is unique
also most of the popular mods are rarely just a visual change and often have balance changes, new weapons, etc which really farther changes the balance of the game. Like the game just gets easier since the player often ends up with all the resources.
@@SeriousTrivia Yeah I suppose thats a fair point, I personally like the portraits mod since the original ones CA made kinda became boring and I feel like since you know lot of historical characters and you mention that often in your various videos, feels like they could use some love to be more unique... Also the task to know of 15 living factions is pretty easy to do not having to be a vassal of Dong Zhuo, I did that with taking Wutugu out and since he is in the city with the port you get sea trade routes open hence you can learn of other factions trading with Kong Rong or someone like that. 3 full armies is not viable in any way as far I am aware unless you do some kind of really cheesy move but I dont know of any :D
@@SeriousTrivia Also regarding duels with heir, I had same issue but I somehow managed going with logic of letting heir take some damage to "even" the odds for AI thinking they can win the duel
I think Cao Ren could be an excellent choice for an Heir. Divorce your Wife, sail a character over to the central plains...It'll be a tough sell, but well worth it. The obvious choice is Ma Chao, but he doesn't actually do anything for you. Maybe worth just marrying him to a divorced wife for the powerhouse character.
can u explain how shi xie become governor of jiao province? i just realize that most of governor that time come from liu family. i wanna know how he make his way to gain the emperor trust.
Tao Qian got to be governor too. Most later governor were prefects who just got promoted. Like the court realized that they had military command already so why not butter them up and legalize it for them as long as they are paying tributes
@@SeriousTrivia ahh i see, by the way ST, i found i bug in liu yan campaign. if you use court mechanic to reroll a trait on your heir, you wont get timely-inheritance trait after you inheritance. i hope you check this out
@@SeriousTrivia sorry i mis-type previously, i want to say 'you won't get the timely-inheritance trait if u reroll liu-zhang trait with court mechanic BEFORE inherit'. It will only apply faction wide inheritance bonus (satisfication +10) but not General bonus like campaign movement range and stats. However, if u reroll liu zhang trait after inherited, everything will work normally.
Sack xi ni's town over and over until you get a nanman general. Make him your heir and then you can build his stats however you want. Best part is Liu Zhangs dopey face when you disinherit him lol.
This game looks really fun. Definetely want to buy it. Anybody know if this game gets any sales on steam? If so, would it be better if i wait for sale to buy the game and all those DLC in a bundle or just buy it seperately now?
the game gets sales periodically on steam so definitely wait for a sale. Sales are usually not bundled so basically each individual DLC and base game will have different amount of discounts. The last sale had the base game at 40% off too.
@@SeriousTrivia thanks for the reply. I will wait for discount. Any predictions when it will come? lol. As for the DLC stuff, if you had to pick 2 or 3 DLCs which you would consider must have for replayablility, fun and enjoyment/challenging, which ones would you choose?
A world betrayed, furious wild, and Mandate of Heaven probably adds the most right now! I also have a nexus store for steam keys which should have sales when steam does too. I believe the next sale will probably be the summer sale
Honestly the inheritance buffs don't even seem that amazing, considering how many tasks or trade off you might need to do. Compared for example to the buffs Sun Ce's faction gets for taking some regions or having high reckless luck.
@@SeriousTrivia Fair point, i guess the idea is to get everything you want by clevery compleating the missions before passing the torch to Liu Zhang. At which point the buffs are free, even if they are a little weak.
no real benefit really. Like you can imagine the cost of that is that most of our faction will lose satisfaction, disinheriting Liu Zhang will make him leave, and as a Vanguard, Ma Chao doesn't bring us much benefit. Inheritance bonus will be like 10 points of resolve and some melee evasion which doesn't make Ma Chao that much stronger
Once during childhood Cao Cao was asked by his friends how many wife's do you want.?
Cao Cao showed the map of China.
He was a Man Of Culture
Ah Liu Yan, the most fantastical faction not only because of his armor design but als he makes you a masochist :D
Also a tough strategy would be: sail east and find Liu Bei, go to war with Liu Bei, make peace and vassalize him. Annex him and make him our heir. What a wonderful story, might be tough to complete before 194 tho
Cutting down the nanman was really rewarding for the pre-inheritance period, I found. You get to pillage their lands for aspiration without irritating the emperor, and the level 1 nanman generals are usually so shit at duels that lou zhang can dispatch 2-3 of them with ease.
Yeah I gotta agree. Rushing Wutugu is really good early game. He's sitting on a port that gives you contact to other factions. This helps with one of the Aspiration missions (know 12 factions or something) and gives you trading partners. And you already mentioned being able to expand without getting Emperor penalties, but it really is key. Its hard enough with all the trade offs heh. Don't need to ruffle the Emperor's feathers too.
"There will be an emperor born in the Yi province". You d@mn right there was an emperor, a Han emperor, too
This is legendary^2.
I saw a comment somewhere on other channels about meeting 15 factions. You can send out a general to go on a world tour by sail them thought the river and go north.
I like to send a spy out to get LOS on my neighbors and then my neighbors' neighbors until I can see the whole map. I find it the whole concept of 'uncontacted factions' really bizarre for Han rulers.
SeriousTrivia: "And now history lesson is over"
Me: Wait what? No come on! Keep going
Me at the end of the video: Aaaaah a lore series about Liu Yan. YES!
Serious Trivia: *flexes brainpower*
Me: *sitting on the edge of my seat whispering: Amazing!
I'd say Liu Yan tried to pull off a Liu Bang kind of manoeuvre that eventually made him emperor and he also started off in Shu. Letting the other warlords fight it out as he builds his strength, feigning weakness by putting himself in a hostile area of the empire that would make him seem tied down to be a threat. If he was younger he might have pulled it off.
There is a mod called “abdicate”, which gives you the ability to immediately let your heir become faction leader and set your current leader as the heir (manually of course).
Let the shenanigans begin.
This is everything. Legend.
Every time I look at Liu Yan he reminds me of the stereotype of the old wise Chinese master. And also he is my mental image for wuxia/xianxia novels have those Sect Elders xD
yes finally, I was waiting for this campaign. if anything I'm already agonizing that more episodes aren't out!
This is like LegendTotalWar's Legendary Western Roman campaign in Attila. I love the strategy and depth you need to think at every stage of the game for these kind of campaigns, and its even sweeter because late game with your heir bonuses you'll just steamroll. I love early game Total War and making that more complicated while making the tedium of late game easier = my perfect campaign. I LOVE YOU SERIOUSTRIVIA
This is going to be super interesting.
All your years of min maxing have prepared you for this moment
I waited to fully get into a Liu Yan campaign just for this guide!
So the inheritance reward that says ‘local county’ you have to select a commander to get that bonus. It doesn’t goes around with Liu Zhang. The one that gives bonus to army like campaign movement will stick to one army, doesn’t have to be an army with Liu Zhang either.
A way to see 15 other factions is to take king Wutugu trade port and you can begin to trade as well
If you want to do the three stack mission, this is how I do it. Unless you wanna figure it out yourself.
Make three armies of only generals and keep 9 generals together. You can win Han territories this way without paying the high upkeep cost. Keep them happy with 2 filial and piety assignment at all time. Then, you piggy bank around a little more than 10 k(farm rebels) and in one turn recruits all 3 stacks with archer militias, click the mission tab to trigger mission complete and then disband all to avoid upkeep. Use general of the left to reduce cost.
Local county means Local County. You have to pick which individual county you want to boost. I managed this challenge with all the missions except for the 3 standing armies
the inheritance was super helpful for me, had the AI capture 2 emporer seats and was literally me vs the whole of china lol
you got some stones doing this - gonna be fun to have the looming chance that you may actually get into trouble in this campaign! haha
Your knowledge of the history is outstanding. Really enjoying the content. You should start streaming on youtube doing livestreams and chatting with the audience
Dude this is brutal good luck with the challenge!
Btw Trivia, if you delegate on first battle vs Jia Long, Liu Zhang gets one duel. Apparently if you jump into battle, Jia Long doesn’t want to duel.
There’s also one strange feature when you reset one character’s trait. The trait gets replaced with “Undiscovered trait” which does nothing until your character gets his new trait after some time and this place holding traits just goes away. It popped for me a couple times.
not always
Trying to get max aspirations was quite a pain. I had to sell myself to Liu Biao for 11 turns just for lump sums of gold to upgrade cities and buy cheap armies. I got lucky with the duels, too, since I got a heavenly sword.
I'm pretty sure they gave you two strategists with Reward the Filial just to counter the trade off, because that first strategist you can capture comes with flaming arrows and Wisdom of the River. That was also essential to get Liu Zhang to scam out some duels lol
Imagine if faction mechanics where character based so that you could get lu bu as your hair with liu Yan make lu bu even more overpowered and then have lu bu's faction mechanics
I mean nothing compares to how strong Lu Bu becomes with his own faction mechanic
That's what I mean though if they developed the game so that when one leader joins your faction if they become the leader of your faction it should change the mechanics to the new leaders faction so in a way you could go with Liu Yan and then make lu BU your heir and then have an even stronger lu BU with lu bu's mechanics
I'm also glad you gave us the backstory for Liu Yan. It took me longer than it should have to realize, but Liu Yan is usually the first non-Nanman faction I attack, because if I leave him alone for too long he comes sniffing for Wuyang, and I can't let him have Wuyang, it's a powerful farmland, especially early.
P.S. I lied earlier, I've beaten the game as Zheng Jiang as well.
P.P.S do you know where I can find video or literature about the Nanman tribes? I didn't know Chinese natives existed until I bought "the furious wild" DLC.
Currently I am playing my own Liu Yan/Liu Zhang campaign and it's going pretty well (conquered all the Nanman tribes bacause they just won't stop declaring war on you), what I unfortunately realized too late (like in Summer 194) was how to get enough duels with Liu Zhang to finish that challenge: The "decrease public order" trade-off synergizes well with the duels challenge since you get more or less a rebellion every turn after a while, meaning if you constantly redeploy Liu Zhang together with a few other generals you can farm duels like crazy. At least it would work better I think because while conquering I fought too few generals who wanted to fight me while I have a gigantic army standing behind me. And in my experience the rebellion generals are more likely fo fight duels than regular army generals.
(Didn't finish the video yet so if you are doing that strategy already I am sorry for the useless comment. :P But I thought I would rather write it now so that I don't forget to do so later.)
And regarding the "local county income" buff: It is not a bonus put on your heir. Instead, when you click on the buff to activate it you get to choose a county to apply the buff to, more specifically, you can only choose *city counties.* Though I am not sure and have not yet tested if the buff then only affects the county income or if it is actually a commandery-wide buff and is just labeled wrong.
If it really is only the city county itself I guess you have to keep in mind to put the buff on a city with more direct income even though its total commandery income might not be as high as that from another city.
every local county bonus, you have to choose in which county you want the bonus. same for the +35% campaign mouvement range, you can choose which army to give the bonus so overall i think the bonuses are good.
Keep in mind that you have only 20 turn to complete the task and inherit, it's going fast. during this time i only built 3 building : 2 upgrade of the main town to get lvl 6, with the construction trade off, you'll finish lvl 6 just before inheriting, so get this going faaast. and in-between the 2 upgrade i built a school to upgrade my archers militia to archer after inheriting. that's all for the first 20 turn. i saved up all my money to get 3 full stack of archer militia before turn 20, and i had to colonise the armor craftsman to get my 10th county for the mission.
Little ASTUCE : when you recruit your 3rd full stack, you get the mission achieve as soon as you finish recruiting the full stack to you can cancel the recruitment of the 3rd stack to get your money back and not pay the per turn cost.
and for the duels, nanman rarely refuse a duel, and with wisdom of the river + the capacity that blocks special ability you can win duels. better doing some damage to the enemy before dueling.
In my own campaign the trait rerolled from counsil gave liu zhang brilliant
(Seeing triva turn on all trade offs) this is serious triva and welcome hard core dante must die run of 3 kingdoms total war run.
Maybe send a general down the river to the east, and you'll discover more factions that way.
I just did this on legendary. I found it not possibe to turn up all the trade offs all at once. Still barely managed to get all the inheritance in 194 thougn. looking forward to what tricks you will do in order for this to work!
29:05
Our wife is free! - Serious Triva, 2021
Nice challenge. I hope you continue with your commitment to no looping or AI exploits. To make it extra different :)
I think everything is fail game with this max trade off...like the setback is too immense to not exploit here...
@@SeriousTrivia it's nice to see you struggle. Some of the other campaigns were too easy for you
How to know the map? if it steel works easy way would be to get a trade port and trade to Kong Rong or smt in the North. so all the factions that has a access to river will be founded
Managed to get everything, but the 10 counties and 3 armies, dont know how that can be posible without cheesing a little bit, before 95.
Pang Tong is Fledging Phoenix afaik not falling one
the greatest thing is the penny pinching for the extra 1 coin haha
One way to meet other factions is to send out offensive assignments to reveal territory. Did that as liu bei to by sending one to dong zhuo to get ma chao when he came of age. Also the imperial favor does take matter before 197. That's why u have -8 faction and development instead of -10, you're above 50 so you are getting +2 from favor. You just can't do anything with it til he comes of age. I found out the hard way playing 194 Sun Ce trying to fulfill his ambitions I was constantly debuff from it. When emperor came of age I had 0 favor.
Als o I think the trade-offs so they don’t become useless should have scaling bonuses, for instance the trade influence one gives you at level 3 20% trade income. The building time minus one at level 3 gives you -15% construction cost or maintenance of buildings etc.
Well it’s really just designed for people who likes pain lol
First youtuber to complete 3k nightmare mode?
if 40% replenishment in local county includes hostile counties it may not be the worst thing ever.
learning whilst watching video of a game i like....this is the future my friends
wutgugo is not a minior faction he has unique bones from his namnam lands i forgot whats its called its soo good its better many major factions mechnics!
and unique ai behaviour witch is wierd why he isnt playable
so he doesnt start with 2000
and he has the smartest ai regarding namnam
If Liu Yan really dreamed of becoming the emperor why is it that his faction mechanic is based around stepping down from power early?
That’s a game design decision. I mean Zheng Jiang didn’t exist in history yet she is in the game. Ma Teng was a rebel and never a governor yet he is a governor
Three duels with heir is really easy. In four years, you will face both yellow turbans and generic Nanman generals. A better sword makes all the difference.
It is really sad that Pan tong did not surcice for long after joining liu bei
beware of the supply penalty lol it'll kill you when you walk into nanman land
If you take the city near the river you will see most factions
This is beyond Legendary difficulty. This is Nightmare mode.
oooh this is going to be great! I enjoy it when it's tough and you have to scrap a lot for anything :)
I almost got all of them except get 10 regions, know 15 existing factions and get lvl 6 city before the timely inheritance for 194 and it was a nightmare on very hard can't even imagine Legendary difficulty.
Good luck 😅.
Am gonna be playing along with you, and trying not to die to the nanman factions.
This is great. Honestly would love to see a "restore the Han" series.
we just restored with Cao Cao
I think Liu Yan is like Huang zhong in the game ,I didn't see him die in any of my campaign,even in his campaign he was75 but alive☹️
I’m wrapping up a Liu Bei campaign rn. I’m in 218 and he’s still kicking as my vassal
He realizes that Liu Zhang is worthless lmao
would be nice to see you play on Records mode from time to time, I do hate 1 man army approach
Oooh yeah here we go !
Heads up: switching your heir will reset your duel progress!
How to prevent the Naman from attacking me
Serious Trivia: Give them food :)
Breadbasket diplomacy.
It doesn't work, they will attack anyway if they feel like it is better just to defend that single non-nanman mine
I wonder how we actually know Liu Yan had aspirations to the throne.
Great gameplay
He built a fleet a carriages in the specs befitting of an emperor
Which is an act of treason by itself and the setup where Zhang Lu was sent to take control of Hanzhong
Oh, finally got to watch the Liu Yan lore series where you specify that.
About your concern that Dong Zhuo may send an army, it is quite possible as I basically abandoned two legendary campaigns weeks ago turns 15-25 because he sent Jia Xiu with Lu Bu and one other down south while I was feuding with the Nanman.
Campaign was 190 with Liu Bei in Shu through a one time unlimited movement cheat engine.
Also, maybe it would be an effective way to meet new factions if you'd just send a lone retinue general downstream of Yangtze 😁
You can get the duels one easily. Auto battle gives you a chance to get a duel
Does Kingdom of Xun (the king level title for the faction leader in Liu Yan's faction) make sense? Wouldn't something like Kingdom of Shu-Ba or Kingdom of Yi make a bit more sense? Idk where the Xun came so i dont really know.
It doesn’t but like why Yuan Shao is Song. It is because where they start has the name taken by a real three kingdoms faction already
Weird that none of your kids joined you. I must have restarted this campaign a dozen times trying to snag Sun Ce, and I had at least two of them by turn 5 every time. Maybe it’s because you fought the Han so early? I usually started by picking ip Jiangyang. Saved the breadbasket diplomacy for meng huo and *shudders* zhurong.
Incidentally, there is a chance event that kills Liu Mao from sickness if you get him back early.
10:50 Wait why Liu Yan has a weird skill tree? Shouldn't Judgement be placed at the centre of the bottom?
I guess so
I have seen smartdonkey say the same so just to correct you: imperial influence does matter before 197. It doesnt show immediatly but if your influence is low you still get the statisfaction and diplomatic relations debuff even before 197. That is btw, also why sun jian or sun ce campaign are almost impossible to do now. As the sun you need to attack as much as possible, jet your imperial influence will drop and all factions hate you and declare war. Try if for yourself, you'll see. I think its a major oversight in this new update.
you will see the debuff mentioned as "faction influence" in diplomacy if I remember correctly. Same for cao cao, yoan shao etc. All factions get the debuff on low imperial even before 197. After 197 you also get the embargo and forced to move to your capital stuff. Thats the only difference before and after 197. Also only liu Biao, cao cao and a few others get a buff enough from their unique faction resource to be able to fight a war without getting 0 imperial influence. This whole update seems rushed and calls for some major overhauls of other factions.
Or even worse: try the LU BU position in "a world betrayed" haha. Lu Bu mechanic depends on him doing 1-2 attacks per turn or otherwise your statisfaction is to low. Each attack loses you imperial influence so you are bound to be at 0 influence for ever. You lose statisfaction for having low imperial influence so that bonus from momentum is partially negated, and on top of that you get negative statisfaction from personal victories and negative diplomacy from imperial points. Basically you will have all officers wanting to rebel and all surrounding factions declaring war on you, next to that you will not have enough money for a full stack army while fighting all these full stack armies away, constantly forced to move between your few provinces. You will never be able to grow much (and what you capped early on will get lost by all those factions delcaring war) and just fight of 2 full stack armies per turn.
in short: when not playing cao cao, yuan shao or liu yan just turn off the latest update.
so I am actually a bit ahead in terms of recording for the series and despite going after the Han early here and rebel farming like crazy, we entered 197 with around 54 imperial favor and everything is just fine =P
@@SeriousTrivia Well yeah with the Liu Yan campaign 5 settlements is about -35, and maybe a general or 2 comes to 54 imperial favor. Farming rebels wont change imperial favor.
Thx btw for responding.
But I was talking about the impact of imperial favor on sun jian, sun ce, lu bu etc. Of course everything is balanced for cao cao, yuan shao and Liu Yan, those where the ones overhauled :).
also just launch the lu bu or sun ce campaign for yourselve and just do delegates to speed the test up. Within the hour you have a negative purple flag on imperial favor UI icon and you will notice a lot of factions declaring was and a negative diplomacy based on low favor, even before 197.
I had the opposite problem in my Cao Cao campaign. Almost everyone was at 100 imperial favor. It was the most peaceful game I had every played. No one really declared war on each. The only time I saw anyone really go to war was against the two "Enemies of the Han", Liu Biao and Yuan Shu, who were the only two who had low imperial authority. It wasn't until I declared myself emperor that the factions started declaring wars like usual.
one thing you should have done was build before you activated the trade offs then the first builds wouldn't have been effected by the increased construction time
That would defeat the purpose of the challenge lol
i dont think you realise that you have until Winter 193 to have the timely Inherit not Winter 194
No you have until winter of 194....
The only downside to playing liu yan in 190 is that you don't get the new stratigest.
he might still show up later though
I quite like the arrow trail mod you used in the co-op campaign, ever thought about using it in your own campaign?
doesn't make too much of a difference for me personally
Wouldn't Wutugu would be a good 2nd fraction instead of Han? 1 county fraction, plus you get a port to trade from. Which means you can stay peace with Dong Zhuo a little longer, maybe even get a trade with him, which will get you know all the fractions along the 2 rivers and coast, thus chance of the know 15 fractions?
I want 10 territories and the Han ones are basically free where as Wutugu's first stack is a nightmare to deal with
@@SeriousTrivia yea, 10 territories, 3 full stacks with all the tradeoffs looks tough. good luck
As someone who knows nothing about chinese history is there a bodcast or a book or something that you would recommend. This sounds really interested but I was very confused behind the lore. Watching the video you put out about this specific character helped but I still feel that I don't know anything about the background needed to even understand the lore video.
Maybe try the fall of the Han lore series to get a feel for the setting leading up to three kingdoms
@@SeriousTrivia damn that was fast
Rewatching this series because I love playing Liu Yan, but navigating the early game feels super tough because Xi Ni and especially Wutugu always declare war. I don't know if you'll see this comment because the campaign's old now... but if you were to play a Liu Yan 190 campaign today without the challenges of using all the Trade-Offs, is there anything you would change in the opening strategy?
Probably plenty but it’s hard to talk about it without actually playing it out
@@SeriousTrivia Damn. I'm gonna try it out again today and see if giving Wutugu and Xi Ni one food each every so often will keep them at bay long enough to get properly established. It's essentially the one thing I haven't tried yet.
in my liu yan campaign Fa Zhang showed up as a looter around 193.Pretty weird tho
I mean he comes into shu as a refugee so that would make sense
Mabey having three armies could be done just by separating your characters in one army then they would be 3 separate armies I guess.
And I suggest to quickly destroy Wu tu gu then make trade with dong Zhou then you will know 15 factions and also you will know sun jian which there is chance for taking sun ce hopefully
3 full armies so 9 generals and 54 units...
Sun Jian dies on turn 5 and Sun Ce comes of age on turn 7 and if I want 10 territories the easiest way is to take Han territories
that farmer recrutment is not worth it man he is costing you waay too much money for only the 2 turns assinment when you dont even need food so your not in a hurry to apgread green buildings
getting duel: i did cheese the game by delegating because there is 2 stratigst+lu zhang so liu zhang always duels and duels in delegates count...
however liu zhang died and i stopped playing lol ops
I just beat the game as Lady Jhurong, I'm trying to find what character I should play next, the only other character I have won with is Kong Rong, but I won his campaign as non-hostile as possible. I only fought nations that declared on me, and I bought peace as soon as I could, then got back to buying lands off everyone. Lady Jhurong's campaign is nearly full hostility, since the rival Nanman factions can only be trusted after you defeat them, and it's harder to buy lands, because you need a reform to trade lands with non-Nanman factions, and that reform locks you out of giving gold per turn, making it nearly impossible to trade lands with non-Nanman factions.
P.S. are you chinese? your pronunciation is great.
I am Chinese
@@SeriousTrivia that's cool, playing this game has gotten me into Chinese history in a big way, I watched the entire "war of the three kingdoms" T.V. series. Liu Bei is my favorite, but it makes me sad that he died before he could achieve his ambition, but then all of the big names from that era died before they could achieve their ambition. Death to the house of Cao.
Why would the AI not want to duel your weak heir, but they might consider it if your heir is much stronger? Does the AI care about 'famous'/stronger generals when it comes to decide if it's worth duelling? I presumed the AI accepted if they think they will win.
To be honest I haven’t figured this out either lol
@@SeriousTrivia Np. You can't know it all! Btw, you can cheese some extra movement in turn 1 by getting another general and get the 5000 coin in turn 1. Probs worth.
Hey Serious I’m currently in the early late game of my play through with Liu Yan/Liu Zhang (190 start). I’m curious as to why Liu Yan/Zhang’s Kingdom is Xun and not Ba or Shu?
Cause Shu is set to be taken by Liu Bei lol like the same reason why Yuan Shao got Song. No real logic behind it
@@SeriousTrivia oh ok lol I had figured since Liu Bei’s Kingdom in game was Shu-Han, Ba would have been a better choice than Shu to prevent confusion between the two.
Also didn’t know if calling their Kingdom “Xun” had some cultural or philosophical significance to Liu Yan/Zhang. Now I know! Thank you for the info, Serious!
Why dont you try the mods you mentioned to me yesterday? Might spice up campaigns a bit with unique portraits just for visual aesthetics
I mean I have tried some of the visual mods before and I am just not that interested. Like when we had maybe only 20 uniques sure but now the game has over 100 uniques adding more has the issue where if everyone is “unique” then no one really is unique
also most of the popular mods are rarely just a visual change and often have balance changes, new weapons, etc which really farther changes the balance of the game. Like the game just gets easier since the player often ends up with all the resources.
@@SeriousTrivia Yeah I suppose thats a fair point, I personally like the portraits mod since the original ones CA made kinda became boring and I feel like since you know lot of historical characters and you mention that often in your various videos, feels like they could use some love to be more unique... Also the task to know of 15 living factions is pretty easy to do not having to be a vassal of Dong Zhuo, I did that with taking Wutugu out and since he is in the city with the port you get sea trade routes open hence you can learn of other factions trading with Kong Rong or someone like that. 3 full armies is not viable in any way as far I am aware unless you do some kind of really cheesy move but I dont know of any :D
@@SeriousTrivia Also regarding duels with heir, I had same issue but I somehow managed going with logic of letting heir take some damage to "even" the odds for AI thinking they can win the duel
I think Cao Ren could be an excellent choice for an Heir. Divorce your Wife, sail a character over to the central plains...It'll be a tough sell, but well worth it.
The obvious choice is Ma Chao, but he doesn't actually do anything for you. Maybe worth just marrying him to a divorced wife for the powerhouse character.
I mean what’s wrong with Liu Zhang ;)
@@SeriousTrivia Liu Zhang is a nice guy, I guess? That's about the only thing that isn't wrong with him.
can u explain how shi xie become governor of jiao province? i just realize that most of governor that time come from liu family. i wanna know how he make his way to gain the emperor trust.
Tao Qian got to be governor too. Most later governor were prefects who just got promoted. Like the court realized that they had military command already so why not butter them up and legalize it for them as long as they are paying tributes
@@SeriousTrivia ahh i see, by the way ST, i found i bug in liu yan campaign. if you use court mechanic to reroll a trait on your heir, you wont get timely-inheritance trait after you inheritance. i hope you check this out
Oh that is sick! But yea I guess I will report this
@@SeriousTrivia sorry i mis-type previously, i want to say 'you won't get the timely-inheritance trait if u reroll liu-zhang trait with court mechanic BEFORE inherit'. It will only apply faction wide inheritance bonus (satisfication +10) but not General bonus like campaign movement range and stats.
However, if u reroll liu zhang trait after inherited, everything will work normally.
Since you are making it as painful as possible, no trebs ;)
nice challange
Sack xi ni's town over and over until you get a nanman general. Make him your heir and then you can build his stats however you want. Best part is Liu Zhangs dopey face when you disinherit him lol.
I mean I intend to keep Liu Zhang and have him take over
@@SeriousTrivia True, but the dopey face tho lol
Oof, that's a rough start to say the least 🤧. Also,when is the turn that Fa Zheng usually spawned? 10? 11?
no idea because he didn't spawn for me in this campaign so I think he must have went somewhere else
@@SeriousTrivia well that's unfortunate :( good luck on your campaign!
Bro did u ever consider to play crusader king 3...coz for now u are my fav strategy utuber...i really wanna see how u play
I played two let’s play of it already (check the playlists on the channel or the other games section on the homepage)
@@SeriousTrivia oh yeah u did sorry i totally miss that...thx for telling me i will watch it now...thx again dude
How do you inspect general skill trees when looking at recruits?
right click on their icons on the turn they show up from the notification panel on the left
@@SeriousTrivia Woah, it's crazy how you can't do it from the court. Thank you
Is liu yans judgement and precision skill swapped on his tree or am i just crazy?
I think its normal but I have to double check for you
This game looks really fun. Definetely want to buy it. Anybody know if this game gets any sales on steam? If so, would it be better if i wait for sale to buy the game and all those DLC in a bundle or just buy it seperately now?
the game gets sales periodically on steam so definitely wait for a sale. Sales are usually not bundled so basically each individual DLC and base game will have different amount of discounts. The last sale had the base game at 40% off too.
@@SeriousTrivia thanks for the reply. I will wait for discount. Any predictions when it will come? lol. As for the DLC stuff, if you had to pick 2 or 3 DLCs which you would consider must have for replayablility, fun and enjoyment/challenging, which ones would you choose?
A world betrayed, furious wild, and Mandate of Heaven probably adds the most right now! I also have a nexus store for steam keys which should have sales when steam does too. I believe the next sale will probably be the summer sale
Honestly the inheritance buffs don't even seem that amazing, considering how many tasks or trade off you might need to do. Compared for example to the buffs Sun Ce's faction gets for taking some regions or having high reckless luck.
I mean technically the play should be take no trade offs
@@SeriousTrivia Fair point, i guess the idea is to get everything you want by clevery compleating the missions before passing the torch to Liu Zhang. At which point the buffs are free, even if they are a little weak.
Ma Chao?
Nice
:WangPain:
liu zhang didnt lead the 2nd battle oh no!
Yes!!
Way harder than this is total war
lol no way dude, not by a long mile. try yuan shu legendary without mods while trying to achieve this is total war
Depends on the faction
It's a shame that the UUs are limited, this campaign is pretty fun otherwise.
UU?
@@SeriousTrivia Unique Unit. Some Age of Empires 2 lingo carried over I guess. XD
@@SeriousTrivia Unique units I think
@@SeriousTrivia unique units, I believe
cant you steal ma chao and make him your heir?
no real benefit really. Like you can imagine the cost of that is that most of our faction will lose satisfaction, disinheriting Liu Zhang will make him leave, and as a Vanguard, Ma Chao doesn't bring us much benefit. Inheritance bonus will be like 10 points of resolve and some melee evasion which doesn't make Ma Chao that much stronger