You actually discovered the best tactic, building those towers to create a choke point that we've called "military gauntlets" over the years. Put some gates on the road inside the gauntlet and the enemy will tarry even longer there, knocking down the gates. While they are doing that, your towers are raining more arrows down on them.

If I suspect an early invasion I almost always will place the palace and administrative city right away, then adjust my workforce to channel workers to them, but only long enough to let me place two military units (I usually pick one cavalry and one infantry), then adjust the workers away from the palace and admin city and channel them to military. I usually couple this tactic with giving homage gifts to the hero Guan Di (if he's available). As soon as he arrives he can be used to bless your military units, which puts weapons right into them. An extremely good blessing.

Another tactic is to send early gifts to cities that seem aggressive and try to ally with them as quickly as possible. Once they are allied, they will call off their invastions towards you.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 05-14-2013 @ 06:10 PM).]

I have totally missed on the existence of that blessing... seems like a very valuable one. A couple of quick questions, if you don't mind.

I know administrative city and a palace is needed to place 2 early forts. Once that is done, is it possible to delete the palace and keep the administrative building unstaffed?

If both buildings run low on labour, does it affect the soldier training rate?

Does Huang Di fill the fort with weapons completely? Do I need to have at least one weapon inside the fort for this to work at all?

Guan Di's blessing is awesome to get weapons quick but just remember a couple of key points:

1. You should have perfect Feng Shui in order to get the most benefit from homage gifts given to Guan Di (or any other hero).
2. You must place a Daoist temple (not shrine) and channel workers to it as fast as possible so it will become fully staffed and start spawning walkers. Guan Di will only appear at a Daoest temple (not shrine).
3. If you know how to micromanage labor allocation to bring in a harvest in the first game year, micromanage to bring in extra hemp. The hemp makes a great homage gift to Guan Di, and your goal is raise his favor to a level at which he will appear in your city as quickly as possible. I'm usually able to get him to appear in my city by sometime in the second game-year.
4. Guan Di's blessing works fine on a military unit with zero weapons in it. His blessing will only put 4 weapons (max) into a military unit. So for example, if the military unit already has 2 weapons, his blessing will only put 2 more in there, for a maximum of 4. So for maximum benefit you need to watch the soldier training, and when the unit falls to zero weapons, have Guan Di bless it again to fill it back up to 4.
5. You should be able to get at least 4 blessings out of Guan Di before his favor drops to a level where he will disappear. If you are able to give him gifts after he appears and you use him for some blessings, he can be kept in your city even longer.

You can delete the Admin City and Palace after you have used them to place the two military units, but that's a waste of money. I usually just divert workers away from them and let them sit unstaffed until I get more workers in my city. Leaving these buildings unstaffed (or deleting them) does not affect the training rate of the soldiers in your military units.

We were talking about the Military Gauntlet tactic, and here is a screenshot of a good one that one of my playtesters used once. Notice all the gates laid out along the road, they draw enemy soldiers like honey, and doom them.

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/album13/aav

Thank you for the tips.

I confused the ancestral hero Huang Di with the Daoist hero Guan Di. The latter is not available yet but I will be sure to make use of him. Right now I have Huang Di and Sun Tzu.

My gauntlet was way simpler but effective nonetheless. I just placed the fort outside and the soldiers disappeared when the enemy knocked it down.

I noticed the enemies rarely (if ever) go for the walls or towers. Usually they will first look for the gates, knock them down, and then set fire to the nearby buildings. If more gates are around, they tend to attack them before doing anything else. A somewhat odd AI strategy that can be exploited.

A tip for non-ancestors heroes is that
1 ) their lowest level is " satisfied ".
2 ) Heroes only leave at end of month.
So just begin to bless as much as you can when month changes , and send a gift just before end of month , keeping him above the leaving level .

How can you know when the month is about to end?

For example by checking the % of product in a full staffed claypit ( is the same at every end of month , send gift a little before this % is reached ).

Interesting.

So if I start the clay production in the middle of the month, would it reach 100% at the end of it? And then go from 0 to 100% for the next piece of clay during the second month?

I always thought having a clay pit for half a month would yield around 50%. If this is the case, then you can't rely on the absolute production numbers for this. If you start once 1/5th of the month is passed, the production will complete on the 1/5th of the next month and so on.

But that's just my speculation, I never really looked into this.

--edit--
Well, I managed to get through Handan. Didn't build the palace, just the administrative center, good walls and lots of towers. Later summoned Sun Tzu a lot.

One good advice I didn't really follow till now was importing food (and/or hemp) to evolve the houses quicker. That allows to put the first labourers to weapon production and such.

Gauntlets and their variations work wonders.

One important weakness of the enemy troops is that they are not that disciplined and tend to scatter around a bit. Hiding behind the walls and picking smaller groups is a very viable tactic.
Also, if the enemy sends several types of troops, they each move at their own pace without waiting for the others. Cavalry and chariots arrive first, then the infantry and lastly the catapults. Somtimes it's better to charge and take out the front line before others catch up, then retreat behind the walls.

Catapults tend to kill infantry very easily, even at melee range. They miss a lot if the soldiers move but knock them out fast once they stop and start attacking the catapult. Best to send as many soldiers as possible to deal with them quickly.

And... different warrior heroes give different morale bonuses. Sun Tzu is a good leader for the infantry, so I recruited lots of those.

[This message has been edited by Anuovis (edited 05-17-2013 @ 03:50 PM).]

About catapults, you are correct in that they are the most deadly enemy unit that will invade your city. The best strategy for destroying them is to engage them as soon as possible, before they begin bombarding anything. My favorite tactic for this is to have one or two cavalry units pre-positioned about 20 or 30 tiles on the flanks of suspected invasion points. These cavalry units are set to 'turtle' aggressiveness so they will stay in place once enemy units arrive on the map. When the enemy arrives on the map, I do not immediately move the cavalry. I let the enemy begin to move forward. The catapult units are very slow, and I wait for them to fall behind the rest of the enemy units in their line of march. Then I move to attack the catapults with my cavalry units. I move my cavalry in flanking moves around the enemy line of march. I make sure my cavalry is set to 'open palm' formation so the catapult damage they take is less severe. Once they engage the catapults with arrow fire and melee, the catapults are doomed.

Infantry was the bulk of my force till now but chariots certainly have the advantage of speed. I can imagine all sorts of flanking that is possible with them.

Are arrows effective against the catapults at all? It might be possible to dodge the enemy boulders with more agile ranged units.

Also, do your own catapults help to defend the city? I don't remember where.. but I recall a discussion that player's catapults don't attack enemy soldiers and can only be used for sieges at the rival cities.

Arrow fire from all sources (chariots, towers, cavalry, crossbow units) will destroy enemy catapults just fine.

Prior to the game patch, your own catapults would fire on enemy troops invading your map. However, after the patch a bug was introduced and your own catapults stopped firing at any enemy unit. Your catapults are still useful in invasions on other cities, though.

I see, thanks.

One thing I somehow forgot to mention is bribery. If a city becomes hostile, even one good gift can improve their mood quite a bit and change their mind about attacking. I got the impression this is way cheaper than bribing the invading armies.

Sending gifts to cities that have dropped to 'Hostile' favor towards you can raise their favor enough to stop unscripted invasions from being launched at you, but any scripted invasions will still occur. Also, if you are playing at the higher difficulty levels, sending a gift to a 'Hostile' city is not garaunteed to work. Many times, they will simply execute your emissary.

Indeed, gifts might not always work. But bribes on the higher difficulties are so expensive, it's often worth the try. Especially with the usually apathetic rivals that got upset over unfulfilled requests and such.

Also, some cities seem to start hostile but then gravitate towards the apathetic level. A gift might just speed up the process and prevent any invasions altogether.

All of this assuming one would rather bribe than fight.

I apologize for bumping an old thread/posting in the wrong place. I am having similar issues as OP in the Zhou campaign on Spring and Autumn weather mission in the city of Loyi. I am playing on very hard difficulty and I cant seem to fend off early invasions. Within the first year or so, the nomad camps announce that they're going to invade me. I manage to defeat their force using military aid requested from Anyang and Qufu thanks to early formed alliances.


Not a few months after repelling the nomads, I get notifications saying that nearby cities such as Shu or Anyi (sometimes both in a span of one month) will invade despite not contacting them at all.

If I try sending them a gift of cash, other cities take their place in attempting to conquer my city (such as Pingyang or Yulin), but at this point I barely have any cash to operate.I would try the gauntlet strategy aforementioned,
but I do not have the man power to man my walls.


Does anyone have any tips/experience with this problem? I am running out of ideas. Thanks

Igp888, did you read the walkthrough for this mission here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/strategy/walkthru/zhou/zhou4_mere

It is a solid strategy but I'd amend it to speed up weapons production for 2 military units in game years 1-2.

those strategies are my instant go-to when I'm having trouble with the campaigns. Reading the one you linked, it seemed like the author of the guide (as far as I could understand it) didn't seem to face the same invasions I had early on in the game.

If you wouldn't mind explaining further on what you mean by amending it for military that would be appreciated. I haven't experienced invasions as early as the ones in this mission in any of the previous campaigns and I am not very strong in the early portions of missions.

I attempted to make a military during that point in the mission, but it didnt seem like I had enough population to sustain both an industry and military with enough employees. Would I have to fill my entire housing block with housing to do this during the first few months of the mission? I usually only build housing initially only on the inner ring of a block to save money/maintain a stable population with whatever early agriculture I have, if you understand what I am trying to say.

Before we go further, I don't seem to recall the rival cities having that level of hostility in that mission. Are you playing with a licensed version of the game? Or did you get it from some website? I ask because I seem to recall at least one report from a player who had an illegal copy of the game and its core missions had been altered to make the game almost unplayable.

Yes, I have a copy of the disc in my collection with a valid CD key. The only portion of my game that might possibly be illegal is the fix that I downloaded from WSGF that allowed me to play ROTMK at my monitor's native resolution

First, read this forum thread and see if you could be experiencing the same problem due to your unlicensed download for the game:

http://caesar3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/caeforumscgi/display.cgi?action=ct&f=19,7497,0,365

If that doesn't seem to apply to you, I suggest you still replay the mission set at 'normal' difficulty to see if the aggressive behavior of the rival cities still occurs. If it does, you have a corrupted game due to that download.

If you still think your game is ok, and you want to play at 'very hard', you will need to master the art of 'micromanaging' in the first and second game-years in order to begin producing weapons for military units at the same time your first harvests and arriving immigrants come. It's not easy but it does work. Micromanaging involves setting worker allocation priorities and then watching individual walkers, farms, industries, etc., for when they first 'spawn' workers. When they spawn the workers, you turn off that building and go to the next building. Rinse and repeat to force maximum production from a small worker pool. There is a lot more to micromanaging in the first years, but that is the essential strategy.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 10-07-2013 @ 06:29 PM).]

I just re-installed ROTMK without any downloaded fixes (other than the patch from your website) and unless the save files are tied to scripting, I still get the early military invasions. Would anything else trigger those, or are they purely scripted based on the mission campaign? It seems as if the game start at 771 BCE of FEB and by JAN of 770 BCE I get a message stating the nomads are going to invade me (consistently on each redo of this mission).

I'm trying to do a run through of all the campaigns on very hard (because anything less would not be challenging for me personally), but as I have stated before, I haven't experienced an announcement for invasion so early in any of the other previous missions starting from the tutorials.

I tried to follow your micromanagement tips on my fresh install on ROTMK but since it seems I only have a year to try to setup a decent military it seems rather unforgiving...


EDIT: I just reapplied the widescreen fix I mentioned before and set the mission to normal difficulty; no cities attacked me in the first few years ( I also dont have any problems that were mentioned in the thread about the corrupted game). This leads me to believe that possibly something I am doing in my city is triggering the invasions....will try again and post results if I am successful in winning the mission on very hard difficulty

[This message has been edited by lgp888 (edited 10-09-2013 @ 02:39 AM).]

Playing at 'very hard' difficulty does raise the possibility of the game engine launching unscripted invasions more frequently. That might be all that is happening. I just don't remember that mission having such early invasions from cities other than the nomads. It could be your diplomacy decisions that are triggering the other invasions. If you request troops or goods from other cities, it lowers their favor and they could eventually break their alliance with you, then attack. Maybe you could try requesting weapons from an ally instead of their troops. That is less of a favor drop to them. If you could get 6 weapons fairly quickly for a military unit and house it inside the city walls, you could possibly weather the nomads early attack. You have to remember to go to the military ministry and set the switch to 'man walls' so your workforce will be diverted to fire arrows from the gates and towers.

Good News!

After hours of meticulous planning and reloads, I beat the mission.

I deployed 2 main strategies: the first being to allow myself to be a temporary vassal state to the nomad camps; paying tribute was tough, but the mission had enough starting money for me to get by for about a year or so. In this time I developed my source of income (carved jade trading) and used it to build a small military. After building a rather sizable amount of cash and 2 xbowmen forts, I used the military gauntlet strategy and lured them in by refusing to pay tribute. I had to reload a few times because I had to figure out where they would invade from and because I kept "blocking the road to China." I defeated their invasion, freeing myself, and allowing me to grow a city with a military with 6/7 shields on it (even able to capture 2 cities near the end).

I also believe I got a bit lucky because in a previous save I had tried to be a temporary vassal state, but didn't have enough time to rebel before another city decided to conquer me.

I think this will be a good strategy for me to use from now on if any seemingly difficult missions come into play where there is prone to be early invasions.

Thanks to Gweilo and all the people who posted their tips on the forums

Quoted from lgp888:

I had to reload a few times because I had to figure out where they would invade from and because I kept "blocking the road to China."

Instead of reloading a few times, this I would do. Save the game when it announced that 2 more months until the invaders come to your city. Then continue to play until the invaders is here and check where they invade then reload the game and send your troops to where the invasion spot is. I've always do that in all of my campaigns.