As a plurality of you voted in favor of domestic improvements, that’s just what we’ve done over the past year. This mainly means that we’re spending money on enhancing agriculture, commerce, and barracks. It’s starting to pay dividends: under the wise leadership of Sauce, Jianye is now a medium-size city. This is good for both commerce and military size.
We’ve also spent some time building fortifications along the river at likely landing sites. There are now a series of pit traps and arrow towers just east and south of Jianye, and a supply camp near Port Poyang, where any army from Chaisang would likely try to cross the river.
But wait! It doesn’t look like Liu Biao is in any position to defend Port Poyang, so Princess Diana Memorial Ballpit Poster slides into town with his army. This means we now have a clear supply line across the tributary leading to Chaisang.
What else can you do when you’re focusing on domestics? Well, you can forge an alliance with Shi Xie, which we’ve done. He hasn’t made any moves towards Jianan yet, so we could take the city without opposition.
You can also try and recruit more officers and train the existing force with new tactics. This is a good idea even if the officers are people who would never go into combat, because every time an officer learns a new tactic, the ruler gets XP, and XP can be spent to expand the advisory council.
I’ve added A Meat to the council to help with domestic advancements, and
Dong Xi is helping Princess Diana Memorial Ballpit Poster develop naval technology. We now have assault ships instead of regular ships, which will be helpful if someone tries to fight us on the water.
By October of 194, our cities are profitable and we have a comfortable troop advantage over everyone in the country.
Elsewhere in China, Yuan Shao remains the guy to beat, as he now controls one Large city, two Mediums, and two Smalls. He and Yuan Shu are putting the squeeze on Cao Cao.
Tao Qian is also on the move with a few well-defended cities: however, he’s 63 years old and was recently wounded in battle.
Our alliances with Sun Ce and Zhang Chao are set to expire this year, though we can renew them if we don’t feel like fighting them. (Sun Ce is west of us and in red on the map, Zhang Chao is north and in purple.)
We’d face no opposition if we moved against Jianan. The city is small and the terrain around it is mountainous, so it would take some time for the city to become profitable.
It would be a long march to get to Chaisang, consuming a lot of supplies along the way, but we’d likely overpower the city once we got there. Liu Biao has 25,000 men waiting on Jiangling to the west, but it would take them some time to arrive in Chaisang and reinforce the city.
Lujiang is poorly defended, awkwardly positioned for reinforcement and just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Jianye. However, Tao Qian has 30,000 men at Shouchun to the north and we don’t have an alliance with him yet: he could see an opportunity and strike.
Any more questions? What should we do next?
