How to Get Started as Zhang Yan | Early Game Legendary Difficulty Playbook Patch 1.7.1 

The distant relative feature can be a bit annoying. I get the logic, to try to avoid incest, but it doesn't make sense that you can't have 1 character marry Sun Ce and then have their brother marry Sun Ren. It seems pretty historical to me that families that are very close would have multiple marriages for good relations (although I don't know if that happened historically or if they chose to marry into multiple families to spread their influence).

How I start my Zhang Yan campaign - cross my fingers and hope everyone on Earth doesn't declare war on me. (oh wait...they already did)

I was like "this video was probably uploaded by mistake and he will make a new one" than he did it LOL Never played with bandits, I will give it a try soon

The money trick threshold is 10x cash on hand to the per turn asking. For example if u want to get unlimited 200 per turn from another faction all he needs is at least 2000 gold if he doesn't have enough u can give him cash to reach the needed amount. usually I use it as a way to dump useless items with a good paying faction

How about we go a bit more exploitey? You can cut off a lot of variance and turns in this by keeping the wife and the red general from your army until turn 2 (banish the others, use titles/items to prevent defection if needed, don't divorce early). Turn 1: if you capture the Han general, recruit, don't release! This allows you to earn extra 800 if you get what I mean :D Disband all troops after fights and recall both guys. Feel free to mess with Liu Yu, but I probably wouldn't - getting locked in a merc contract for so long sucks. Turn 2, summon the red general in the capitol, summon Zhang Yan for the movement trick, move him to the border of your lands with Zheng Jiang, summon your wife and disband her troops. You can chase away the general at this point, he did his job. Then declare war on Zheng Jiang, split the wife off your army and send down south, preferrably to the edge ZJ attack range. You may need to move ZY a bit south as well, just outside of reinforcing his wife - can't remember... What should happen next is what I'd call a free divorce :D Make her bravely charge the enemies (maybe you can even duel your future wifey to give her exp? Can't remember). Even if she does run away/get released, you can still banish your current wifey to save on the divorce. Like this, Zheng Jian would end up with her army close to you, if she attacks ZY - just retreat. Turn 3: The rest in just fortifying with ZY anywhere in her range and skipping the turn. She will definitely attack you, and is actually very likely to come at you with two of her male generals, ensuring that your competition for Bandit Queen's hand disappears. Free waifu!

I had a weird thing happen when i tried this, well two things really. First one was with using pay tribute to secure marriage with Zheng Jiang where i had to pay tribute even though our factions joined up. The second time i tried using a mercenary contract to secure the marriage and it worked, however i was still under contract to her faction and when i took hedong and gifted it to mercenary lord i revived her faction under new leadership. Very weird.

I always wanted to get them both for my merc play-through

This is such a great idea! Well done Trivia

The meta for bandit factions is to simply abandon your starting settlement and sack the living shit out of everybody. The income is much better than any mercenary contracts the AI can give you. You can even cheese with 'Grant Independence' mechanic so that the entire map is populated by generic minor factions and the major factions are stuck with whatever leftover regions you want the AI to have.

ST forgetting to trade that standing 10K gold Zheng Jiang had for non-existant money. :( (No seriously, if you're going to cheesxploit with this do NOT forget to drain their coffers before confed-ing, after all, more money is more gold which is more cash - this is especially true when you can confed the Han in the campaign because they are just a money cow)

The famed turbo simp strategy IT IS FLAWLESS

New fact: CA stop update the game cuz they cant nerf ST

I started Zhang Yan campaign, was doing quite good. I tried to keep Gongsun Zan as a close friend so I can expand south and deal with Han Fu, Yuan Shao and rest of the bunch. Obviously I overextended because I felt safe with Non aggression pact with Gongsan Zan, who suddenly, out of blue, just declared war on me ☹️

One thing is driving me crazy, why don’t you just adjust the tax slider all the way left? As a bandit faction you get a +15 satisfaction AND a salary reduction. Perfect for a hero-only early game!

You will only needs to get her to best friends i.e over 150 opinion. Even if she doesn't accept issuing an ultimatum will guarantee the confederation. Only downside is that you will suffer a big trustworthyness You have always been able to this since launch of the game

When I play Yan Baihu and Zheng Jiang faction destroyed I always take her and married on her, but in both campaigns no kids from them.

Trying this old strat and the attitude farming still works, but there's a flat -50 negative opinion from Zheng that I cannot depress no matter how friendly we are and how positive she is towards me. I think they patched it dead, fellas. What I wound up doing to make it work was issue a war ultimatum, of which she accepted. Others may not have liked it, but it is what it is! Now we sack all of China!

Well the best thing to do for the bandit factions. sell everything dismantle troops. Make a mad dash to the Taiwan island by the time you get there you will have enough money to buy the settlement outright. have money to upgrade only person that is a pain in the ass is Shi Xie, he will make a play for you but if you beat his initial attack he'll leave you alone for the most part. the only person that can make an issue is Kong Rong, the game gets super simple if you can take the island and hold it and start from the south and work your way up. I did it for Zheng Jiang and if you can get her infamy up her troops dont break so you have to damn near wipe everyone out. I think she is the most overpowered faction once you can get her Infamy up. Zhang Yan is hard since he doesnt have any troops, the scare doesnt do much when its up against harden troops Yuan Shao is a pain in the ass for the half the game.

"We have a wife, and we need to get rid of her" Serious Trivia

Most cunning strategist in the game - ST👌🏼 I just use “Zheng jiang joins turn 1” ☺️🙃

Zhang Yan is one of the few campaigns I have not yet completed. I wonder what starting strategy he will use here.

How I do my Zhang Yan campaign step 1: flee west before Yuan Shao declares war on m- SHIT!!!!

Video ideal: using old units tier list( blue, green, faction unique...) as a starting point. Adding some new 1.7 units with quick overview( shouldnt give inttoduction to all units since the old tier lists have already done it). Cuz there are some huge buff/nerf to blue unit, calvary, fatigure system, this would be a best time to adjust our tier list. Another major plus point for this is CA have already abbandoned us, which make these tier lists wont ever be outdated xD

i tried this on 1.5 and it didnt work. From turn 1-11 you keep killing her husbands(which she has a few) and then after that she just hires new ones and marries them. I have had once that she even married the retinue leader from that town where you are looping. This might have been a bug. And the turn after she picked a different general to be married with. She is never single.

Don't think this one works anymore sadly, followed it to a T but she didnt show up the first time until turn 18, now killed her husband 12 turns straight and she just keeps recruiting new ones :D

Serioustrivia to his newlywed wife: ''Take it off!''

Do you have a link for the loot system explanation in your old vids? you have sooo many vids lol

She remarried after I killed first husband :/

I guess mine is broken. It just caps at 33 for Liu Yu after enabling the mercenary contract and countless little donations.

Hey man i did this but zheng jiang just marries congqian and he dont come after me

holy shit imagine having a -16k debt in the game without doing this

Quick question on the whole confederate marriage because i forgot it existed and its so cool, would this work on the side of the Queen?

Damn, I never though you could have a small town with legs, this strategy is even more broken. Only weakness would be fire arrows.

sometimes when an enemy general or cavalry charge me they literally never stop and we end up running laps around the map how do i negate their charge?

Is going downt the yello turban diplomacy building, vassalising them and spawning them everywhere trough raiding a valid strat?

ive never lost a LL campaign in this game but i am getting absolutely trashed in this one. i am either against the Liu Bei tide, Dong tide, or Yuan Shao tide.

Instructions were not clear. My wife filed a devorce.

You should play with the insane AI Mod

Sorry ST, your diplo is cheese. How many sent gifts of one copper coin do you think it would take before you only got the head back from your envoy? Certainly relations would go down, not up. Embrace the cheese man. You are the loop content creator. If peeps don’t like looping then they should follow someone else

does it have to be played on Legendary for her to attack you? I've sat outside her base and she never attacks. I'm currently playing on normal

When i tried the marriage it was like 144 neg opinion . then i tried to ultimatum and she waged war back on me

Does the wife trick work differently with MTU?

Hey Trivia. Do you know if the marriage strat was patched already?

Has this worked for anyone?

are you chinese by any chance? It seems that you don't butcher the names.

LOL,It not cheesy but Milking

Love your videos, but this one featured too much cheese and micro for this guide to be useful for me, personally. At this point you might as well use cheats and save hours of free time

Simp Kingdoms

This is simping on another level😂

What the......

Lol. Can’t into her pants easily.

I love exploits

Dude you ruined the game ;D for me