Talk:A Three-Pronged Attack/@comment-27263122-20180421032303

A bit time consuming but relatively easy. Played on Hard.

As the user below says, Wang Tong's gate seems to be blocked due to some bug or mistake. Either way, your northern base is basically for show atm, so ignore that one.

The western base will be your main food/wood base. Churn out 2-3 villagers from there first and send them all to farms. Use your two villagers to build a mill in the close eastern lake and fish (fish is actually the fastest way to get food[?] and it's just good use of free food). With surplus food, build villagers in eastern base.

In the eastern base, set all three villagers on wood and build 2-1 villagers. Wood will be from this base in the beginning, but will switch later so don't go ham. Send out three Light Cavalries for scouting. There will be cattle in the eastern corner, a bit south-west of the base, and near the middle of the map atop the rice patty-like mountain cliff which are semi-climbable.

Once your food income outspeeds your villager production, you can start getting other resources. First is stone. There is one close cache near both bases, so 4-5 on each cache will do. This initial ston will tide you over nicely. All castles will be built in your eastern base, so yea. One to block the north-west of the bast, one to block the west, and one to block the south-west. Build them early and build them quickly. Preferably, build them so they protect your two gold caches in the eastern base (one west and one south of base). Trade some stone if needed if you want walls/extra castle. Should wall off the area north beyond the two elephants (more easy food). Purple would try to go around your castle and head from the north rather than north-east, so yea.

Research Imperial Skirmishers, Elite Battle Elephants, and Champion line. Get them upgrades. You can aim for one of two objectives now. Follow the missions or kill Cyan off first. If you're gonna kill cyan, then trebuchets, elephants with some cavaliers, and skirmishers are the way to go. Slow and steadily you can break through their lines and crush their base.

To kill blue, just build skirms, elephants, and champions. Enemy is easy to solve with the lack of castle. Towers and buildings go down fast. Only issue is the mass blocked army at Lu Sheng's gates. A skirm/halberdier rush there would probably work. Or if you have extra gold, then send in champions. Elephants are too meh against the enemy's pike so best not to bother.

Lu Sheng is even easier since your eastern base has castles for trebs. Crush their weak defenses and break through. Let your skirms protect your trebs, trebs can destroy the castle, and the elephants/cavaliers/champions can crush the enemy's army (onagers require the slightly faster cavaliers).

Notes:

1. You cannot build trebs at the central base, like what the strategy above says.

2. Do not scout too much with your western base. Just focus on food and wood and don't get greedy. Other than the one gold cache to the west, you can just hunker down in that base and not get touched by anyone. Venturing too far may prompt further quest advancement and the assault of Ai Lao, who is quite dangerous. He has trebs, elephants, champions, halberdiers, and etc. Splitting defensive resources is unwise.

3. With Cyan down, you'll have open access to more mineable resources without needing to expand your defenses (just another castle east of your north-east castle and you'll be fine). Gold and stone are easy to get if you dispatch them quickly enough.

4. Take advantage of your 200 pop. An army of meaty elephants, 10 trebs, and a swarm of skirmishers can crush basically anything.

5. The eastern base has no other use than mining, so keep villager count at a reasonable level there. No more than 15 should be enough. The western base is good enough at acquiring wood/food.

6. Bombard Cannons are also nice, though I'm not a huge fan of them. Either I let them cause chaos aggressively, or I put them on stand ground and use them surgically. Both require too much of my attention. Trebs

7. Cyan's market can be left for easy trading (so long as you built the market in the east). 80 a pop is quite the hall once you mine everything.

8. Don't underestimate imperial skirms. The range boost makes them phenominal for their cost and army potential...

9. Lakes in the west are buildable. Farms can be literally built anywhere and, with Crop Rotations, you should be getting loooots of wood and food. Trash armies even if you have lots of gold is smart. Use gold on siege and just build trash units. Be smart...