Playing as any faction, capture a region.

This should come naturally on your first turn.

Playing as any faction, win a single battle with one of each unit type (Melee Cavalry; Shock Cavalry; Melee Infantry; Glaive & Spear Infantry; Ranged).

Self explanatory, should come naturally if you fight a battle reinforced by a garrison.

Playing as any faction, make 8,888 income in a single turn.

Should come naturally. Tips to optimize money : Get trade agreements whenever available ideally with factions far away from you that you don't plan to fight soon.

When building cities, specialize your cities depending on what resources are in the same commandery.

In commanderies with mines or toolmakers build purple/grey buildings to increase industry, in buildings with trade ports build blue buildings that increase commerce, buildings with farms build green buildings that boost food production so you don't have to build farms in other places freeing up space. Try to have buildings that reduce corruption everywhere because corruption will hurt you badly in the mid/late game.

Playing as any faction, destroy any other faction.

You have to capture any faction's last settlement and destroy their last army as well to get this. This should come naturally as you play a campaign.

Fight a battle with Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei fighting on the same side.

Start a campaign as Liu Bei and fight the first battle. You already start the game with your 2 brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.

Playing as any faction, capture 29 settlements.

Should come naturally in the campaign progression.

Tips to get there : Try not to make too many enemies at once. Check the quickdeal diplomacy often, possibly every turn to see who wants to deal. Get trade and non aggression pacts with factions you're not planning to fight yet, some times you can even get them to pay you for it. Always take regular payments it gets you more money in the long run. Once you get to war with an enemy close to you hit them non-stop until they are destroyed, never sit down and let them recover because they can hurt you and can drag others into war with you.

Playing as any faction, breach a wall during a battle.

You need to have a trebuchet in your army to do this. Just set it to attack the wall and it will break eventually.

Playing as any faction, form an alliance.

You need to reach the rank of Second Marquis to form a coalition and the rank of Marquis to form an alliance.

Find the friendliest faction with you and do this with them.

Playing as Liu Bei, make 6 allies.

Start the game as Liu Bei and try to get 6 factions in your coalition at the same time. Easier done at the beginning of the game because eventually factions will start to get wiped out or be in other coalitions.

Playing as Yuan Shao, form 6 alliances.

Start with Yuan Shao.

You need to form 6 different alliances.

Once you form an alliance you can leave it and then try to form a new one.

Playing as any faction, kill 92,413 enemies.

Will come naturally as you progress through the game, its likely you will get this in a single campaign but its not necessary, you can get this over multiple campaigns.

Playing as any faction, capture 9413 enemies.

You get this basically every battle as you will capture a number of enemy troops. You have no control over this achievement just keep playing campaigns until you get this. It doesn't have to be from the same campaign.

Playing as any faction, declare yourself emperor.

If you're playing as a coalition faction, you will get this automatically when reaching the rank of King and kicking off the namesake of the game, the Three Kingdoms period.

If you're playing as a governor faction, you will get the Han Shot First achievement instead and you need to take over one of the 3 emperor's seat of power marked by a star on the map to get this achievement.

In the Image the Kingdom of Wu has taken over 2 seats of power While the Kingdom of Ba in the bottom left has the remaining seat.

Playing as any faction, execute 24 captives.

Whenever you capture a general you have 3 options : Employ, Release, Execute.
You get this for executing 24 enemy generals you have captured in battle. You should get this naturally playing the game, it doesn't have to be in the same campaign.

Tip : Its usually a good idea to execute generals who carry an item because you keep the item when executing them, the ones who don't carry anything its usually better to release them because it gives you some money.

Playing as any faction, win 7 battles with a Healer-type Hero leading your army.

If playing as a Han faction : You need to have a strategist commanding your army, that means he has to be the left most character. Easiest faction to do this with would be Kong Rong as your faction leader is a strategist himself.

If playing as the Yellow Turbans : The hero type is Healer so self explanatory. Easiest faction to do this will be He Yi as your faction leader is a healer himself.

Playing as any faction, obtain the maximum level in any one character attribute.

This is actually kinda hard to achieve. You need to have 200 in a single stat on any character.

You will need a legendary character who has a very high stat to begin with. Level him up and give him all gear which increase his stat and ideally pick skills which increase that stat too. I personally got this very late in the campaign with Sun Ren by equipping her all red items. Lu Bu should probably be easy to get this as well.

Playing as any faction, attack Xiahou Dun with archers.

Xiahou Dun is a Champion that Cao Cao starts with, so you need to face him in battle and set your archers to attack him.

Playing as any faction, someone else declares themselves emperor before you.

If playing as a Coalition faction : Someone else has to reach the rank of King Before you, if you play your campaign well this will usually not happen.

Easiest to do as a Governor faction : As a Governor faction(Ma Teng, Liu Biao, Kong Rong) you cannot declare yourself Emperor so you get this automatically when you reach the rank of King.

Playing as any faction, control a single spice resource.

See the "...Controls the Universe!" Achievement below.

Playing as any faction, control two spice resources.

See the "...Controls the Universe!" Achievement below.

Playing as any faction, control all 3 spice resources on the map.

The 3 spice resources are in the south west corner of the map all close together, you will need all 3 to get this achievement, it will usually be later on in the game as no playable faction starts close to this.

Commanderies names are :

Yunnan
Jiaozhi
Yulin

Playing as any faction, control all jade resources on the map.

There are 2 jade mines on the map and they are relatively close to each other. Both in the middle western side in the commanderies of :

Chang'An
Nanyang

Playing as any faction, control all northern horse resources on the map.

There are 3 horse pastures in the north west corner of the map and 1 other in the middle north part, you will need all 4 to get this achievement, Ma Teng, Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shao, Zheng Jiang, Zhang Yan or Dong Zhuo are all factions that start relatively close to one or both of these areas.

Commanderies names are :

Dai
Shuofang
Wuwei
Jincheng

Playing as any faction, declare yourself Emperor of the Three Kingdoms.

You get this by taking the 3 emperor's seats and winning the campaign.

Playing as any faction, become emperor and win the game.

You get this by taking the 3 emperor's seats and winning the campaign.

Playing as any faction, successfully ambush and defeat any opponent.

Good rule of play for any Total War games featuring ambushes, if you don't have enough movement to attack a settlement directly from where you are and think there's an army nearby, move to the edge of your territory and set ambush stance, there's a good chance the enemy army will move in and fall for it.

The terrain on the campaign map where you set your army can give a bonus to your ambush chance, always check which terrain will give the most bonus. Forests and jungles are good, hilly forest seems to give the highest chance.



About minor settlements : Minor settlements in this game have 0 food reserves, meaning any garrison or army that is in a minor settlement will take attrition damage immediately if they get besieged and the AI chooses to starve you out. Not a good situation to be in. When defending minor settlements its a much better option to actually set yourself outside of them in ambush stance between the enemy and the settlement to bait the enemy in.

1) They might attack with an inferior force that would not have attacked if they saw your army there.
2) If the ambush actually succeeds you will be in an advantageous position.
3) You will not take attrition and they will not prevent your replenishment.
4) If they have multiple armies nearby and your ambush succeeds you can destroy the first army that moves before they move their second army, then they have to choose if they wanna take you on with the 2nd army alone, if you didn't take too many losses during the ambush, they will usually not attack.

Playing as Cao Cao, trigger a proxy war.

Proxy war is one of Cao Cao's special diplomacy options, it spends 75 Credibility, Cao Cao's special resource.

You will find the option in the War section of the diplomacy screen. Simply play a campaign as Cao Cao and once you have enough credibility use this to start a war between 2 other factions.

Playing as the child of Cao Cao, proclaim yourself emperor.

Start a campaign as Cao Cao.

Play the campaign until you get relatively close to the rank of King, stop gaining prestige now.

Battles give prestige so don't get too close, you hit King at 500 prestige I would advise to stop around 490. Ideally you want to be at peace when this happens.

Save your game.

Press end turn until Cao Pi comes of age. Save your money.

Suicide Cao Cao on whatever you want, arrow towers on a minor settlement work well.

Cao Pi becomes your faction leader.

Increase prestige to hit the King rank and the achievement should unlock, you should just be able to instant build cities or minor settlements with the money you saved to get it right away.

Playing as Gongsun Zan, win 11 battles with White Horse Fellows.

You already start with a White Horse Fellows unit when playing as Gongsun Zan, they are his unique faction unit.

Win 11 battles keeping the White Horse Fellows in your army and you will get this in short order.

Playing as any faction, progress a character to the maximum rank.

You need to reach rank 10 with a character to get this.

Ranks 8-9-10 take A LOT of experience and most characters will literally die of old age before they ever reach rank 10. Most of the faction leaders at the beginning of the game will not get this as they start too old.

Lu Bu could get it because he already starts rank 7.

I personally got this on my Heir because I got him in an army as soon as he was 18 and kept him during the entire game. The school building also gives experience bonus faction wide so if you have some cities where all the good buildings are already built and you have space left, build some schools, they make a huge difference in the long run.

There is a set called Scholar of the Future that gives 20% experience bonus faction wide if you equip it on your leader, heir or prime minister (10% from the Scholar follower and 10% from the set bonus)

Playing as any faction, unlock an entire single element of the reforms tree.

You need to unlock all the reforms from a single color of the reform tree. You will get this late in the game likely after you have won the campaign unless you specifically decide to focus exclusively on one color, which isn't a very good idea.

Playing as any faction, construct a faction palace.

Palace is a unique building that you can only build once in 1 city, its in the Administration Office chain of buildings. It requires a level 7 city and the Mandate of Heaven reform to unlock, its the last reform in the yellow tree and requires a ton of other reforms to reach it.



Note that you cannot get this achievement as Gongsun Zan as for him the Administration Office chain is replaced by the Military Government chain and none of the buildings in it count toward this achievement.

Playing as any faction, maintain 8 trade routes.

You need to have 8 trade routes active at the same time. Reaching the rank of King gets you 5 possible trade routes and there are reforms that unlock more.

Kong Rong is a good faction to get this because he starts with more available trade agreements.

You will want to get this as soon as possible because this achievement will become increasingly difficult/impossible in the late game.

More factions will start hating you or go to war with you.

More factions will get wiped out and there might not even be 8 factions left in the game eventually making it impossible to get from that point onward during that campaign.

Playing as any faction, win 66 duels.

You will get this naturally playing the game as auto resolve even gets duels quite often. It will likely not be in a single campaign unless you actively try to duel everyone you can.

Playing as any faction, defeat Dong Zhuo.

See the "Diaochan's Revenge" Achievement below.

With Lü Bu in your party, defeat Dong Zhuo in battle.

Credits to Nyuk who came up with the solution.

We will be getting this in 3 turns. Its very important that you follow the steps to the letter because something can go very wrong if you don't and if you don't have enough gold.

Turn 1
1) Start as Ma Teng on Easy. You get 8000 Gold to start.
2) Check the ancillaries/follower you got(You get 4-5 randomly at the start of a campaign). You need to have any combination of any ancillary and follower that give + 6 or more satisfaction, if you don't have any that gives + 6 or more this will not work and you should restart the campaign now until you get enough. Ideally you want a combination that gives +11 as you will save 1600 gold that way, (more on this later).
3) Attack the army next to you, you can auto resolve kill it, select ransom to get money.
4) Force march your army towards Hanzhong silk trader.
5) Divorce your wife, costs 1000 Gold.
6) Set up trade agreement with Han Sui, also sell him all followers and ancillaries that you don't give + satisfaction, keep the combination that I spoke about in step 2. Get him to pay you the highest immediate payment you can for it. You should have around 9000 gold now.
7) Do diplomacy with Dong Zhuo and select receive marriage between your ex wife and Lu Bu so you get Lu Bu into your faction, add that you will become his vassal so you get a nice boost, request immediate payment, you should be able to get all of his 2000 gold out of this, if its not enough also give him the maximum of regular payments that you can in exchange for the largest immediate payment that you can get out of him (should be all his gold). Don't worry you are going to war with him very soon and won't pay him a dime.
8) Declare independence from Dong Zhuo to go to war with him.
9) Lu Bu will now be at +75 positive satisfaction but -116 negative satisfaction and you cannot make him heir untill next turn.
10) Equip him whatever ancillary you got, I was lucky/unlucky and got a Classic of Filial piety book that gives +10 but no follower that gives satisfaction.
11) So now at +85 VS -116, you need to get him to at least 5 by promoting his rank, he starts as an officer, promoting him to senior officer gives him +5 permanent and +10 for 10 turns, so +15. It will cost 400 gold and that's gonna make +100 VS -116.
12) Note that you need to close the character window to promote him a second time or it won't work, seems that's a bug in the interface.
13) Promote him from Senior officer to Patrol commander for 800 gold.
14) Should now be at +115 VS -116, promote him again from Patrol commander to court officer for 1200 gold (ouch). Note that the recently promoted bonus does not seem to go beyond +20 so this 3rd promotion will actually only give him +5 satisfaction.
15) This should be enough to bring him to 4 + 120 VS -116, Lu Bu will lose 4 on turn start so he will leave if we leave it like that so you need to promote him a 4th time for 1600 gold unless you got at least +11 satisfaction from ancillary + follower which would put him at +5 just now. If you have a combo that gives +6 like I said at the beginning he will be at +5 satisfaction after 4 promotions which is the bare minimum you can have for this strategy to work.
16) So make sure Lu Bu has at least +5 satisfaction. If this takes 5 promotions you did not read step 2 and this WILL NOT WORK, you better restart now.
17) End turn 1. Don't worry other turns will be simpler.

Turn 2
1) Put Ma Teng in normal stance.
2) Make Pang De the general of your army because he gets +5% replenishment when commanding.
3) Move the army to the edge of your territory close as you can to Hanzhong silk trader.
4) Go into your family tree and make Lu Bu your heir and take off the satifaction ancillary.
5) Now you need to recruit Lu Bu in your army and he costs a hefty 8225 gold. If you had to do 3 promotions on turn 1 you will straight up have enough gold to do this right now easily. Depending on what you had to sell for ancillaries on turn 1 you might have enough. I personnally only had 8064 when I did this. If that happens, you can either sell the remaining ancillary to anyone who will take it (Sold mine to Cai Mao for 450 gold) or banish your wife for 800 gold.
6) Recruit Lu Bu in your army.
7) With Lu Bu now in your army, end turn 2.

End Turn 2
1) Dong Zhuo's army should come out of the fog of war on end turn 2 and attack you.
2) Play the battle and its important that you kill all their generals during the fight, do this however you want, duel if you want, this can possibly work if just 1 dies but better safe than sorry and kill all 3.
3) DO NOT KILL ALL THEIR ARMY, don't chase or wipe their troops, you need the generals dead but not the army so that Dong Zhuo replaces the dead generals.

Turn 3
1) Dong Zhuo should replace one of the dead Generals.
2) Attack his army and get the achievement.

Playing as any faction, win 100 battles launched from the campaign map.

Will come naturally while playing a campaign. Possibly needing multiple campaigns.

Playing as any faction, unlock every reform in a single playthough.

This will take a very long time. There are 81 reforms in the game, you get the first one on turn 4 and then you get one every year (a year is 5 turns in this game). So it will take 404 turns to get this.

I highly suggest you conquer the whole map so that turns will end up being very short and no one will bother you, just make sure you have enough food and public order everywhere so there are no rebellions.

Then simply press end turn until you complete the entire reform tree.

This achievement unlocks for both Han and yellow turban factions. Yellow turbans have a different tech tree so the number of turns is going to be different.

Playing as any faction, kill a Hero with a special ability.

The special ability has to get the killing blow, so ideally you would want a high damage ability on a good dueling character and wait until the enemy is low on health then use the ability to finish him off.

I personally got this with Sun Ren's Heart Seeker ability, not even during a duel, just target a strategist who isn't full health and he is done.

Playing as Zheng Jiang, construct a bandit lair.

Bandit lair is the 3rd tier of Zheng Jiang's special building chain in the green section.

Playing as any faction, win every battle (including auto-resolve battles).

You have to complete the campaign without ever losing a single battle, even when they attack your towns.

You will want to do this one on easy.

I did this one as Cao Cao. Fist off, keep multiple save files, when I don't play legendary I usually keep 9-10 save files and save at the beginning of every turn, so I can go back 10 turns in the past in case some things go wrong, this method serves well for this achievement. Obviously you will want to reload 1 or more turns before if an army comes outta nowhere and gets you into an unwinnable battle.

You will want to upgrade all your minor settlements so they have good garrisons.

If delegate seems like it will take too many losses then play it and you should be able to play most battles with little losses on easy.

On easy the AI is stupid with its archers, they will shoot at your generals and can't really ever hit them, so you should abuse this for close battles and let them waste all their ammo. Just stand back with your army and send 1 general in to soak all the missile damage, then once they are out of ammo move in, use your own archers to shoot their strongest melee units, and then move in with your infantry and cav.

If starting as Cao Cao I would rush the green tree and research the Azure Dragons : Glaive and Missile infantry(Very expensive but very powerful unit), this will also massively boost your food output since all the area around Cao Cao is farms, this will let you upgrade your farms to the max level and they will have very good garrisons, use the farm fortress camps (Cao Cao Special building).

Try to make as much friends as possible so you don't have to fight too many people at once. Keep the yellow river to the north and the Yangtze to the south as natural borders.

Sell the massive amounts of food you will have for whatever you want, trade it for lands or deals or regular payments. If you can, try to sync up when you set up another faction to proxy war against another faction they hate, if you get a positive deal, add a lot of food and trade it for land or vassal them. I was able to eventually vassal Liu Bei and then 10 turns later annex him so I had the 3 sworn brothers in my faction in addition to my own legendary characters.

As for army setups, the retinues make it simple.

1 retinue of range units, so the only choice is strategist.
Use initially 6 archer militia, once you have the money for them, replace 2 archers for 2 trebuchets.

1 retinue of infantry, preferred hero would be a champion with spear infantry. Sentinel is a possible choice but not as good, unless you somehow manage to grab a legendary character like Zhao Yun.
Use all spear guard, switch them for heavy spear guard once the champion is rank 6 or for Azure Dragons if you research it.

1 retinue of cavalry, preferred hero would be vanguard but a commander is also possible. Use sabre milita cavalry initially, they have very cheap and an extremely efficient unit for chasing down light armor infantry like archers, they cost less than early game lance cavalry and they have shields.
Once your character hits rank 6 you can replace these with the heavy tiger and leopard cavalry, Cao Cao's special elite unit. They are extremely expensive but are proportionally powerful, these guys will completely demolish anything they charge into, and if you have the diamond formation they can last very long in melee. They are not as powerful as the Jade Dragons special cavalry but their advantage is that they don't require any research at all while the jade dragons need like 10+ reforms to get.

You can get the "Son of the Tortoise" achievement and "Though the Tortoise Lives Long" achievements during this run. Just make sure you save your game before killing Cao Cao so you can reload after.

Playing as one of the governor factions, become emperor.

You need to start the campaign as a Governor faction (Ma Teng, Liu Biao or Kong Rong) and increase your prestige until you get to King's rank to trigger the Three Kingdoms period and late game.

Then when you take one of the 3 Emperor's seat of power you can declare yourself Emperor and the achievement should unlock.

Playing as any faction, make your spy become faction leader.

The spy system is highly RNG so its very difficult to get this normally.

Higher level characters have more chances to get picked up by the faction you send to spy on.

The easiest way to get this would be to set up a multiplayer campaign with someone and they intentionally make your spy their heir and then kill off their faction leader.

If done in single player, the way to increase the odds would be to send all your 3 spies into the same faction, then fight that faction's armies and try to kill as many of their generals as you can and their faction leader too. They will have to replace their characters often so there will be a fair chance of your spies to get picked up and maybe put into the ruling family.

Just make sure you know the names of your spies and where they are, if you capture one of your spies in battle you will obviously want to release him and not execute him like the rest.

Playing as any faction, have all 5 Tiger Generals (Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong) in your faction.

Thanks to wild_man for his step by step on how to do this one precisely.

https://www.nexusmods.com/totalwarthreekingdoms/mods/75

1 - Use 190 Campaign start with Liu Bei on easy, capture Dong as asked.
2 - On turn 2, create another army, send Liu Bei and his 2 generals down the river to Widu area (MA Teng) will take a couple of turns, once there secure a region so you can build up. Ignore most of the quests presented to you.
3 - Start playing as normal, accept treaty with MA Teng for non aggression and build up the relationship. Also pick up females and put them into your family.
4 - Zhao Yun will join you after a few battles won defecting to the clan around turn 7-10 so that will give you 3 out of 5 Generals as you auto get 2 at start as they are with Liu Bei....Marry him into the family
5 - Send an army to scout out Liu Biao area - this can be done 2 ways, i went friendship path / vassal him or knock him down to 1 town and then treaty/vassal... You can't attempt to vassal him till your Marquis anyway which will take some turns...You can make him like you more by taking on his enemies which is what I did but still vassal him and keep building up the like until you liberate him.
6 - I left MA Teng alone vassaled with autonomy since MA Chao doesn't show up at start, kept building my friendly stats with him and concentrated on Liu Biao's Huang Zhong which is the 4th General, as soon as he appeared with Liu Biao I liberated Liu Biao then sent a unify request with an ultimatum attached to that request. If you are high enough with Liu Biao (I was +400) they will accept the request and you now have your 4th General. Marry him into the family as well as he is the oldest char in the game,
7 - By now you should be around turn 60 - 70, check how MA Teng is doing, you may find MA Chao has now appeared as a General, put to MA Teng a receive marriage proposal, once accepted you now have the 5th General, promote him into your council
8 - Your achievement should pop when you either end turn or fight another battle against another enemy.

Playing as any faction, have a spy successfully complete an assassination.

See the "Live & Let Spy" achievement above.

Playing as any faction, win a multiplayer match.

See the "Frenemies" achievement below.

Playing as any faction, turn a friend into a rival.

This is part of the relationship system in the game, you need to have someone be listed as a friend and then have them turn into a rival.

Easiest way to do this is play as Dong Zhuo.

If you haven't unlocked Dong Zhuo, see the "Diaochan's Revenge" achievement below.

credit to Kuroiman for the tip.

Takes around 16 turns to get this.

- Basically start as Dong Zhuo, who begins as friends with Lu Bu at the beginning of the game.
- You don't have to actually do anything just press end turn constantly, if anyone attacks you just delegate, doesn't matter.
- Around turn 10 or 11 you will get a dilemma and you can choose between employing Diaochan or not.
- Select follow the story so you will employ Diaochan and she will be a character in your faction.
- Keep pressing end turn until you get the second part of the event (was at turn 16 for me).
- Again select follow the Story so you will keep Diaochan for yourself.
- This will make Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu Rivals and the achievement should unlock.

Playing as any faction, win a ranked match in multiplayer mode.

In the Battle section of the start menu select "New" then "Ranked". You will play against another player, there is no way to boost this with a friend either.

The way I did this, obviously this will be subject to change with patches, I took 3 Xu Chu(Champion) with the Tiger Fool setup, then fill the roster with 7 heavy tiger leopard cavalry and 1 archer militia.

Use your 3 champions to pile on the nearest/weakest enemy general. Once he's dead find the next weakest one, and then the last one. Use the earth shattering strike when you can. Don't use the condemned howl, like ever.

Get your cavalry to chase down their missiles if they have any.
Obviously don't charge into walls of spears, you can charge spearmen if they are moving or rear/flank charge them.

You might meet players who have also similar setups and will be difficult to beat, keep playing ranked battles until you win one.

Playing as any faction, win 222 battles in multiplayer mode.

There are 3 ways to do this.

A) You like playing multiplayer : Simply play games against people and have fun, you will get this eventually.

B) You don't like playing multiplayer : You can do this alone.
1) Start the game and go Battle then Multiplayer.
2) Click on Host Battle at the bottom. Enter random characters in the game name and password.
3) Set Lu Bu with his Warrior without Equal in your faction or Guan Yu in his God of War, delete all other factions on the left side and put any strategist on the right side as an AI opponent.



Lu Bu should have vanguard deployment, set him on Kong Rong and Wreck him, put the game in fast forward.

Depending on your loading times this should take you 1 minute or less.

Repeat until you are done.

I suggest you only do a few of these a day so you don't die from boredom. You will get it eventually.

C) Battles done in multiplayer campaigns also count towards this trophy, so if you play multiplayer campaigns this should come naturally.

Playing as any faction, complete a campaign on legendary difficulty.

Tips for legendary :

Faction : I haven't played all factions yet, so this might change.
Gongsun Zan.
- He is a pretty powerful vanguard himself, and starts with Zhao Yun who is one of the best characters in the game and also starts very young so he will be with you almost all the campaign.
- He is the only playable faction who literally starts in a corner of the map, as any Total War player knows, the edge of the map is the ultimate defense, no one can attack you from there, so you won't have to fight on multiple fronts.
- He has access to very good farmland and some choice locations with trade ports and mines very fast.
- You can secure yourself a nice little corner protected by the Yellow river and once you have that you will be pretty much impossible to dislodge from there.

Sun Jian can take the south of the map nearly unnoposed, he gets replenishment from his special building and gets quite a few very good characters.

Cao Cao can manipulate diplomacy, can get crazy replenishment if you can grab some rice garrison fortresses.


Reforms : Get both replenishment reforms first as replenishment is terrible in the early game, this will let you fight more often and expand faster.

One is in the green tree called Disaster relief systems



The other is a bit deeper in the red tree called Regional Levy. Getting this one will also get you most of the reforms needed to get Jade Dragons Cavalry, the best cavalry in the game.



General gameplay tips : Always check every turn if other factions want to quickdeal something, if you don't plan to go to war with them in the immediate future, try some deal with them, basically any deal that they are favorable to can get you some money for it. Always choose to receive regular payments, you will get more money overall. Try to get non aggression pacts and trade with factions far away from you.

Army composition : Initially all militia until you get a good economy. You start with Gongsun Zan and 1 unit of white horse fellows, keep them. Fill the rest with sabre cavalry militia (yellow unit), they have shields unlike the initial lance cavalry so they won't get completely wrecked by archer fire. Fill Zhao Yun's retinue with sabre militia.
For your 3rd slot get any strategist that gets along with your 2 characters. Fill his retinue with archer milita, they are the cheapest unit in the game and also the most efficient unit for its cost.
Every single army should have a strategist, range is extremely powerful in this game.
Once you have a better economy replace the sabre milita with Jian Sword Guards.
Replace 2 archer militia units of the strategist with 2 trebuchets.
Keep the sabre cav militia untill you get Jade Dragons, they are expensive but very powerful.

As for other armies, my composition of choice is similar except I use a champion instead of a sentinel unless I have a special Legendary sentinel like Taichi Ce, Sun Jian, or any other.
Use Ji militia on the champion initially and once you have the money for it switch to spear guard or heavy spear guard once he's rank 6.

Late game composition : Vanguard with 6 Jade Dragon Cav, Strategist with 2 trebs and 4 Onyx Dragon archers (Heavy crossbowmen are very powerful but have a very low ammunition pool, I prefer the Dragon archers), Champion with 6 Azure Dragon Heavy Glaive Infantry Archer Hybrid. If you're playing as Kong Rong for some reason use his unique range unit the Thunder of Jian'an, they are simply put the best range infantry in the game, wearing heavy armor, have a very large ammo pool, insane range and a ton of armor piercing.



Skills : This could take a very long time but I'll keep it short : On the everyone you will want the 3 active abilities.

Then on the champion or vanguard who is leading your army important skills to get are the 25% movement range when commanding called Reach.



And the 5% replenishment when commanding called Flexibility.



On the strategist you will want the flaming shot and flaming arrows ability that unlocks night battles. Also pick any skill that increases range damage. Best spec for a strategist :



Battle strategy : Set up your archers and trebs and infantry together, hide your cavalry on the sides in the woods if there are any. Use your champion and vanguard to go behind the enemy army and harass their archers and trebs if they have any, don't let them get swarmed in a long melee. Hit and run and let them come to your army to get shot down. Use your cavalry at the opportune moment.

For settlements both minor and major, stay out of range of towers, run in with archers, set their towers on fire with flaming arrows then run out and let them burn. You can use the trebs as well but I would keep most of their ammo to break 1 spot in the wall and to kill masses of troops. Always watch the settlement carefully and attack from the direction where there are the fewest amount of towers, some times you can get away with just breaking 2-3 towers.

Play every battle unless it says its going to be a decisive victory, you will lose a lot less men this way. Exception to this is at very beginning of the game if you attack a settlement without trebs and don't have fire arrows yet you are better off auto resolving instead of playing it because towers especially in minor settlements are incredibly powerful on higher difficulties and can kill entire units before you even get near the city.

When defending minor settlements you should always play the battles you can usually win even if it says you are gonna lose. The technique I use is I set up archers a little bit behind the choke point entrance with the arrow towers, once the enemy gets in range move your infantry in between the towers to defend the choke point, this way the enemy archers won't stop to shoot your infantry to pieces before they ever get in range of your own archers. You can usually win or at least inflict so many losses that you can retake the town in very short order.

A note on rebellions :

Right now rebellions in the game are incredibly weak, not sure if this is a design oversight or if its just intended the way it is. You can basically just crank your taxes all the way to the max and ignore public order entirely if you build the garrison building in every city to buff up your garrison, eventually a rebellion will spawn, it will replenish a little for 3-4 turns and then siege the city. Once they are sieging you can attack their army with your garrison and immediately destroy them, it should be a decisive to close victory every time that you can delegate. Some times the army won't be killed outright, that's fine, just keep doing it untill it is. This will get you between 200 to 1000 gold from the battle depending if you play a faction that has post battle loot bonuses and another 800 to 1000 gold from ransoming captives, so this will get you a lot of extra money, plus the fact that you are making more money because you don't have to leave taxes low, don't have to skip taxing to bring up public order, and don't have to spend building slots on public order buildings.

Playing as any faction, win a multiplayer co-op campaign.

Find a friend to play with an set yourselves to share the mandate of Heaven so that it becomes a coop campaign, then win it.

Playing as any faction, trigger a civil war in another faction.

See the "Live & Let Spy" achievement above.

Playing as Dong Zhuo, raze 11 settlements.

Dong Zhuo has a special choice when he wins a settlement battle where he can burn it down for an increase in intimidation.

Burn 11 towns and you will get this.

Playing as Dong Zhuo, raze an emperor seat.

Same as the "Humble Beginnings" Achievement above but you need to play as Dong Zhuo and you need to choose to burn the city instead of capturing it.

Playing as any faction, win a campaign having declared war on every faction as soon as you encounter them.

Just finished this.

I tried to do this on very hard for fun, I did manage to get pretty far but eventually switched to easy in the mid game once I had conquered everything south of the Yangze because I wasn't making enough money and the AI keeps sending stack after stack against you and I hit a stalemate where I pretty much didn't get anywhere for about 20 turns.

So : play on easy unless you really want to have a hard time.

Basically you need to check your diplomacy screen at the beginning of each turn and every time you move an army to make sure you are at war with every single faction that you see, if you aren't declare war immediately and never accept any peace from anyone.

As for faction, I did this as He Yi, check my tips on the Yellow Turbans in the Yellow turbans section for how to play them properly, they can be very powerful especially their heroes.
He Yi's faction bonus is 10% replenishment right from the start, and both He Yi and He Man are incredibly powerful heroes. With some levels and gear they will destroy armies by themselves.

Now as to how I did it.

Basically there is little chance that you can hold your starting territory in the middle even on easy, so, abandon it.
Move south west as far as you can.
Get He Yi and He Man together.
Soon as you can find a Veteran that has the flaming shot in his skill tree and get him in your army.
Fill up with cheap units initially like peasant archers.
Loot and occupy every city you can on the way.
Secure the south west corner.
Don't colonize stuff by yourself initially, it costs way too much.
AI armies will come for you, they will most likely colonize stuff around you to replenish and rebuild armies, let them colonize an take it after, so that saves you thousands of $$$.
You should be able to capture everything south of the Yangze river without running into too powerful enemies as they are busy up north.

Right now rebellions in the game are incredibly weak, not sure if this is a design oversight or if its just intended the way it is. You can basically just crank your taxes all the way to the max and ignore public order entirely if you build the garrison building in every city to buff up your garrison, eventually a rebellion will spawn, it will replenish a little for 3-4 turns and then siege the city. Once they are sieging you can attack their army with your garrison and immediately destroy them, it should be a decisive to close victory every time that you can delegate. This will get you between 700 to 1000 gold from the battle and another 800 to 1000 gold from ransoming captives, so this will get you a lot of extra money, plus the fact that you are making more money because you don't have to leave taxes low, don't have to skip taxing to bring up public order, and don't have to spend building slots on public order buildings.

****NOTE ON YELLOW TURBANS****
You have to start at 190 to get most of the Yellow Turban achievements. It seems they do not unlock if you start in another year.

Some pointers on how Yellow Turbans play, they are a bit more chaotic than regular factions, they only have 3 classes : Healer, Scholar, Veteran.

Their classes don't necessarily have dedicated roles like regular han faction, they don't have a dedicated missile guy like strategist for example. Also their skill tree is random, within a few set abilities.

This is both good and bad, the good part is that all your characters can fight and are actually quite powerful, the bad is that it can be more complicated to make the army you want.

You might have to check between a few recruits of the same class to see which one (if any) has the skill you want.

From what I have seen so far, all characters can get the fire arrow skill but its not guaranteed, best classes to get this on are either scholar or veteran, more on this later.

All classes seem to be able to get the night battles skill but again its not guaranteed.

Only veterans can get the flaming shot skill for trebuchets, and they are also the only character in Yellow Turbans who can recruit them. Yellow Turbans cannot recruit trebuchets at the beginning of the game, you will need to get to the Healed faction rank and research the Martial arts Practice reform to unlock trebuchets.

Best Yellow Turban faction so far is He Yi :

- He Yi is very powerful himself despite being a healer.
- He Man his friend that he starts with is basically the most powerful character in the game, he starts with over 80% melee evasion and can eventually get over 100%. At the beginning of the game some people will try their luck dueling him but very soon no one will want to duel him because he's so strong. In my game even Lu Bu and Guan Yu didn't want anything to do with him.
- His faction bonuses are 10% replenishment(that's right 10% right off the bat! regular factions need to spend over 50 turns researching reforms to get that) and -10% corruption.

One thing to note and that seems a little wierd, Yellow Turban factions are basically rebels out to remove the current corrupt Han government, for some guys out to remove corruption they are incredibly bad at actually dealing with corruption, as they have basically 0 way to actively remove corruption like regular Han factions. You can use followers and ancillaries but since you only have 1 faction leader, no heir nor any prime minister position, you can only use those ancillaries on 1 character. They have no reforms or buildings that reduce corruption of any kind. The only way to reduce it is with administrators, so only in 1 province. From the 10% He Yi gets at the start, you get a little less corruption from faction ranks but its a really small number, and you can use the tier 5 copper mines that reduce it for 4% each. This does seem like a massive design oversight as it would have made a lot more sense that Yellow Turbans would have poorer production buildings but no corruption whatsoever as you could surmise that any sign of corruption in their own territories would be dealt with very harshly.

Skills :

First off, on all characters you will get the Tranquility skill, this skill is incredibly powerful and makes your character almost unkillable. There are no exceptions, if you don't get this skill you are doing it wrong. With this skill you could technically win every settlement battle you attack with just your characters, without even bringing troops, you don't have to do it this way because that would take a long time to move in, kill troops, move out, heal up, and move back in but its possible. I usually sent in the characters first to break their lines and mess up formations or to duel and kill their characters then charge in with your troops.



Next, you will want 1 character in each army, doesn't matter which, with the Subtlety skill. This enables night battles.



Now I've spoken about the trebs before, Veteran is the dedicated treb guy of the Yellow Turbans, but not all of their Veterans will necessarily have the Resourcefulness skill, which enables flaming shot, make sure the ones you pick in your armies have it.



Finally for flaming arrows, the skill is called Opportunism, either scholars or veterans can get this. I recommend getting this on your scholar (more on this in the army composition below). Unfortunately the 2 legendary Scholars of the Yellow Turbans : He Man and Huang Shao, don't have this skill, seems like a stupid design decision but there it is.



Army composition used :

First few turns : keep whatever units you start with, fill out with mostly peasant archers as they are dirt cheap and will still do some damage.

Healer was my dedicated infantry guy, early game it was just yellow turban warriors, once you have the money and reform, upgrade to Youxia, heavy armored, heavy hitting, unbreakable sword and shield infantry.

Scholar is the dedicated archer guy, early game all peasant archers, once you have the money for it upgrade to yellow turban archers, (you could technically just skip using peasant archers on him and right off recruit better archers, yellow turban ones aren't that much more expensive). Eventually when you have the reform you will upgrade these to archery masters, best archer unit the Yellow Turbans have.

Veteran is obviously the treb guy so he will use 2 trebs once you can research it, and being the only one left he has to be the cavalry guy as well. Veterans get access to the Yellow Turbans best cavalry unit: Virtuous Noblemen. Fair warning, these guys are insanely/ridiculously expensive to recruit, around 5K per unit, which is a stupidly high amount and I can't really find a reasonable explanation for it. You will be only using these guys near the end of the campaign because they need a very high tier reform and because of the cost. For most of the game you will be using regular Yellow Turban Horsemen (Yellow medium sword cavalry), they are very good for a medium cav unit and accessible pretty much from the start, they have shields and function much like a sabre cavalry unit.

Note on yellow turban end game units, they are mostly very small in number compared to regular faction units, why CA designed it like that is a mystery, historically the Yellow Turbans were a huge movement that had hundreds of thousands of troops(possibly a million, not confirmed), it would have made more sense to actually make their troops individually weaker but a lot more numerous with a larger health pool than regular factions as they are rebels they wouldn't necessarily have a lot of professional soldiers but there would be a lot of them, it seems that CA has actually done the opposite and Yellow Turban troops are generally more powerful individually than regular faction troops but there are a lot less of them. For example on extreme unit sizes, Youxia and Archery Masters only have 120 men instead of 240, the Virtuous Noblemen, their best cavalry, only have 42 men instead of 60.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, complete a campaign.

This unlocks when you win the campaign as the yellow turbans.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, become the Yellow Sky Emperor.

See the Huangdi achievement.

Yellow Turbans play like a governor faction, meaning when the 3 kingdoms period kick off, they cannot declare themselves emperor. You will need to capture the seat of one of the 3 emperors to declare yourself emperor and the achievement will unlock.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, unlock all Heaven reforms.

Yellow Turbans have different reforms than other factions, they are divided into 3 sections, divided with the way the world is.

Heaven
People
Land

Each corresponding Lord of achievement needs you to research every reform in the corresponding section.

Note that initially you will only have access to the left most reforms in each section, as your faction rank increases new reforms will be available. You will require the faction rank of "Ascended" to have access to research all reforms.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, unlock all People reforms.

See "Lord of Heaven".

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, unlock all Land reforms.

See "Lord of Heaven".

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct at least 8 Prosperous Farming Estates.

The Prosperous Farming Estates is the tier 5 of the Farming building chain you can build in cities.

- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Prioritize Infrastructure" reform to be able to build tier 4 Farming.
- You need the "Build to Last" reform to be able to build tier 5 Farming.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct at least 7 Communal Squares.

The Communal Squares is the tier 5 of the Communal Inn building chain you can build in cities.

- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Improve Undesirable Neighbourhoods" reform to be able to build tier 4 Communal Inn.
- You need the "Flawless Construction" reform to be able to build tier 5 Communal Inn.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct a Grand Fishing Port.

The Grand Fishing Port is the tier 5 of fishing ports you can build in cities.

- It requires first a city with a port building slot.
- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Communal Maintenance" reform to be able to build tier 4 ports.
- You need the "Efficient Administration" reform to be able to build tier 5 ports.

This will NOT work in fishing port minor settlements, it has to be a major settlement.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct a Yellow Turban Headquarters.

The Yellow Turban Headquarters is the tier 5 of the Headquarters building chain you can build in cities.

- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Prioritize Infrastructure" reform to be able to build tier 4 Headquarters.
- You need the "Build to Last" reform to be able to build tier 5 Headquarters.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct a Garden of Divine Peace.

NOTE : You can only get this achievement starting the campaign as Huang Shao.

The Garden of Divine Peace is the tier 5 of the Gardens building chain you can build in cities.

- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Spreading of Wisdom" reform to be able to build tier 4 Gardens.
- You need the "Harmonious Architecture" reform to be able to build tier 5 Gardens.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct a Concealed Fort.

NOTE : You can only get this achievement starting the campaign as Gong Du.

The Concealed Fort is the tier 5 of the Guerrilla Warfare building chain you can build in cities.

- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Prioritize Infrastructure" reform to be able to build tier 4 Guerrilla Warfare.
- You need the "Build to Last" reform to be able to build tier 5 Guerrilla Warfare.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, construct a House of Compassion.

NOTE : You can only get this achievement starting the campaign as He Yi.

The House of Compassion is the tier 5 of the Healing building chain you can build in cities.

- The city needs to be tier 7.
- Your faction will need to be at least of the "Healed" rank to be able to unlock the necessary reforms.
- You need the "Improve Undesirable Neighbourhoods" reform to be able to build tier 4 Healing.
- You need the "Flawless Construction" reform to be able to build tier 5 Healing.

Playing as a Yellow Turban faction, recruit at least 7 Youxia units.

Youxia are a top tier heavy sword infantry and pretty awesome at that.

- You will need the "Call for warriors" reform to unlock this unit. He Yi starts the game with this reform already unlocked and is a healer so he's the easiest choice if you just want to get this achievement but you can do this with any Yellow Turban faction.
- Only the healer class can recruit these units so you will need 2 healer characters to recruit 7.
- They are very expensive to recruit and maintain so depending on how you are in the campaign these guys can cost around 1 to 2K to recruit and around 220-230 each a turn to maintain.



Finally, have to put it in there.