Lunchmeat Larry fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 12, 2017

Nate RFB fucked around with this message at 22:05 on May 13, 2017

• Advisors will tell you to hire everyone. Advisors are idiots trying to tank your economy HARD. Pay close attention and watch out for seasonal variations in cashflow, selling supplies when you have to. More officers = good. Not being so broke everyone is trying to brutus your rear end = better.
  
• Personal cash is different from city cash. Officer wages comes from city cash.
  
• If jumping straight into Patriot/Brigand mode (i.e. unaligned, no control of cities) your Comrades don't seem to need pay, but you have to be Friends with them first which can cost a chunk in gifts.
  
• On city growth you get to pick two buffs (for a maximum of six). The choices are unique to each city, but the AI will still pick mostly bad ones, so you want to get a good ruling post ASAP. Patriots/Brigands need not apply, as they can't rule without converting into, or joining, a traditional force, and instead get most of their improvements through the fame / prestige trees.
  
• Outside of the cheating characters like Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, debates can be won by simply minimising the -'s on the right hand side of the screen; if you know you're going to face a cheater then savescum or accept defeat.
  
• In duels if you have enough WAR to see enemy skills and they pick defend, slam in an unbalance following by an attack or knockout. It'll beat the defence AND give the next round free.
  
• To level up a relationship to Friend you have to get to the cap (~80), get the other party interested (or grateful or whatever the other two attributes are; you can try giving them a gift, helping them around town, or probably some other stuff) and visit them - they then give you a mission, such as buying them an item (will be found within the nearest five or so cities), visiting someone for them, or a duel/debate. Sticking your unit alongside someone else can also help you level up a relationship, but I'd have the points capped out for the current relationship level first as battle seems to skip the 'do me a favour' stage.
  

• Heavy and Elite troops, gained when your training exceeds 1000 and 2000 respectively, cost 10 and (20?) gold for every HUNDRED men, not every single man as the interface claims. A couple of villages unlock better heavy or elite troops, and the same thing applies.
  
• Subcommanders are great for padding your combat stats, and can be worth far more than having additional units. The automatic force selector will frequently ignore subcommanders in favour of multiple small units. Whilst flanking is powerful, giving up one or two units for a god-blob is often better - especially if that blob is your own unit and you can use it to farm reputation.
  
• Spears beat Cavalry beat Bows beat Spears, but the advantages aren't enough to overcome good stats and abilities. Nobody McSpear has zero chance against Zhang Liao's cavalry, even with a slight manpower advantage
  
• Capturing camps on the battle map gives you morale for the capturing unit, losing a whole units loses morale for everyone in your army. Usually you're a little low on morale after a march so you'll want to grab a couple of bases at the opening of each battle if you can.
  
• Capturing the neutral points (like woods, ridges, plains) will annoy the AI a little, and can help you pull enemies out of position.
  
• Once you're not in the tutorial, you get to 'plan' battles which lets you pick stuff like traps to place on some of the natural strategic points. When you capture them you can then activate the traps when the AI is near for massive damage.
  
• Having zero morale = death. 6000 elite guys defending a camp from 1500 light spearmen? Will straight up evaporate if they're hit with sudden morale debuffs bringing them to zero. The AI knows this and withdraws its low morale units to the base camp when it can. Watch out for guys with [ - - - -Morale] as a skill.
  
• Bring ladders to sieges as they're actually permanent ramps that you can place and use for as many units as you want. Rams are much less useful, as destroyed gatehouses are still chokepoints and tend to be surrounded by catapults and bows.
  
• The AI is actually really good at spending troops on a near 1:1 basis and distributing the losses amongst all units whenever you're not on the battlefield. Whoever has the highest stats and troop count will still win but you can use this to your advantage by letting an allied AI army whittle down particularly tough enemies like Lu Bu before joining the battle yourself with a few full-strength units to mop up. In actual direct battle Lu Bu'd wreck anyone and everyone without losing a man, whilst his other units would be soaking up the casualties. He's much less of a threat when at half strength.