by agga » Fri Dec 22, 2017 6:59 pm
Man I am loving this game, only have time for it on weekend nights though, but looking forward to the holiday weekend, here is a procrastinatory report of my current game, first with a historical character (completed one game with a created character - from bandit to empress in just ~25 years!).
Guan Yu, starting in the Yellow Turbans scenario:
Of the three sworn brothers, Guan Yu is of course the one with all the initiative; it was he who led successful contingents against the rebels in the north - he and Zhang Fei each killed a brother of Zhang Jiao, and pushed the rebels south of the Huang He where Sun Jian and the imperial armies were simply standing their ground. Yet, mainly because of his personal fame and imperial connections, it was Liu Bei who was rewarded with Pingyuan after the rebellion was finally ended. Guan Yu was fine with this.
Once the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition had quickly disintegrated, things really went a-historical. Instead of focusing on Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shao decided to remove Liu Bei, maybe thinking this would be an easier preamble to a northern campaign, and also maybe seeing Liu Bei's group as a bit more threatening than in reality. Yuan Shao led the army to Pingyuan; Zhang Fei took his head along with Yan Liang's, leaving Yuan Tan in charge. Yuan Tan managed to hold on for many more years, taking over Liu Yu and Wang Kuang's territories; Liu Bei meanwhile tried and failed to take Jibei (it was taken by Cao Cao instead), eventually turning the tables on an aggressive Kong Rong and taking over Beihai.
From Liu Bei's Pingyuan base, Guan Yu led an army north to take Nanpi, expecting that Liu Bei might need territory to retreat to in case Cao Cao became more aggressive; Yuan Tan went all-out to defend his base and lost, allowing Guan Yu to continue his advance to Zhongshan and Julu (Guan Yu kills Yuan Tan's best general, Zhang He, in the process). Yuan Tan was now confined to Henei and Yie, west of Liu Bei's territory. By 195, the Gongsuns had also yielded to Guan Yu's armies, and Liu Bei was now in complete control of the northeast.
Personal sidenote: in taking Nanpi, Guan Yu captured Yuan Shao's widow Lady Liu - I thought Guan Yu needed a wife, and so he went after her with gifts et al, but instead she offers him two daughters, so now Lady Liu is his scary scary mother-in-law (being who she is, and also seeing Zhang Fei as her nemesis), and the surviving Yuan brothers are his in-laws. On that note: Zhang Fei kills Yuan Tan at Henei, Yuan Shang comes of age as a ward of Liu Bei, and Yuan Xi surrenders Yie to Cao Cao without a fight.
Now we enter a long struggle over Yie between Cao Cao and Liu Bei; Liu Bei launches two large-scale assaults in successive years, both repelled by Cao Cao, who now has full control of the Central Plains, from Luoyang to Xiaopei, and is successfully advancing south through Jiangnan, pushing Sun Jian into a struggle with Liu Biao. Guan Yu did not approve of either of Liu Bei's failed attacks, but participated anyways - Liu Bei's takings from the Yuans and the Gongsuns were underdeveloped and damaged by war, and his personnel was sparse. Guan Yu was finally made Viceroy around 197 or so, and committed to some restrained behavior, developing military and domestic resources. Finally, around 199, it was time: Guan Yu launched a full-scale assault on Yie, the biggest battle in northern China in who knows how long: as many as a hundred thousand men on both sides. Guan Yu prevailed of course, in the process killing Cao Cao's generals Xiahou Yuan and Cao Ren in dramatic duels.
With the exception of the bandit king Zhang Yan, sitting quietly in his Heishan base with 100,000 troops, Liu Bei is now in confident control of the North, and is looking south at Cao Cao's growing, but newly destabilized, territory...
造反有理!