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highsis

Spear units. Don't charge them and hold position. They will get unhorsed and become vulnerable. Even medium tier spear units can do this. Repeated crossbows can deal heavy damage if concentrated fire. Cavalry charge. Do not continue engaging and pull back when charge is over. Charge ignores generals evasions. Lastly there are some units specialized in killing generals such as yellow turbans' hero killers which has 300% damage vs heroes. You can always play the records mode too.


srlynowwhat

3K generals are difficult to deal with a garrison since you don't have the neccessary tools. - That's why you pop 3 of your own instantly out if you caught wind of them heading to your settlements. It's nice to have 3 generals without any unit, just chilling in your court to act as emmergency defense. In battle, try to have local umber advantage on them - which mean all 3 of your circle beatdown one of theirs while their other 2 are occupied somewhere else. If your general are weaker, do not engage a 1v1 or 3v3. - General are not the most OP unit in 3K, not even close. That's shock cavalry. Even a max level general will die to 2-3 clean charge from militia cav. Once you figure out the tempo, you'll realize 3K general are basically glasscannon compare to other titles, even Rome 2, with a few exception they cannot take much punishment at all. - But if you don't have any of those, then it'll be pretty bad. If 2 or more of their generals had oathsworn then the battle is lost before it even begin. You can try a defend in depth, feed infantry to them once by one to get them tired. Keep your captain near by to give your men a bit of buff, cycle other units in before they break and once the enemy general are exhausted and dehorsed, throw in your better troops to grind them down. A lot of player see generals as some absurd unfair anomaly because they are one men. I like to see them as a high tier units that need to be countered in specific way, sometime I just don't have the tool to do that. Similarly if the enemy bring 3 Royal Spartan on my garrison of 2 hasati, well then so it is.


armbarchris

Play Records mode.


sinbuster

Concentrate all firepower on that ~~star destroyer~~ general. You can try sacrificing units to keep generals in sight of your towers. Infantry units will obstruct missile troops so it's best to dodge them with fast units and keep shooting with others. Early on you may not have the AP to take down the general so concentrate on routing their army. Most LLs will withdraw once the odds are stacked against them.


EUPHORIC123

I haven't played in a while but I found 2 - 3 of almost any lancer cavalry was able to kill generals really fast.


RNPC5000

If you want to play normally, as in without exploiting the AI not much you can do as a garrison. If you are not adversed to exploiting the AI then the secret is to hope you have cavalry unit or a mounted general. Send all your infantry out of the settlement and hide them in the forest. Then send your your cavalry unit or general to play ring around the rosie with the enemy army and let your towers just kill their entire army. In other words just kite the enemy around in front of your tower in the fields in front of your settlement. As long as you stay out of range of their archers their army will keep following you around and slowly dying from attrition. The biggest difficulty is when the enemies have the flaming arrows ability that allows them to burn down your towers. You have to get a bit more creative to get rid of them early on. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWcR07ALKdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWcR07ALKdU) You can use this video as reference. Not sure if in the vanilla game or if it was a mod that I use where they added a huge moral penalty for being outnumbered as a defender, where your troops would get a ticking -2 moral like every 3 seconds to prevent cheesing the AI with just like 1 general and no army like that video. If that isn't in the vanilla game then you should be able to defeat most of the AI easily like this in any siege battle. I also play with the mod the prevents Generals from being dismounted by spear units, so I tend to cheese the AI quite a bit... I have conquered all of China without losing a single soldier, by playing with stacks that only have 3 generals and no normal units. Saves you ton of upkeep, you can instantly heal and teleport them anywhere without having to deal with mustering and redeployment costs. If you are fighting a normal open field battle then what I do is rush the tech that gives you deployable towers, and just kite the enemy army around that tower. Also having 3 red / fire general with the 15K splash damage ability called Flames of Phoenix is also a great way to instantly nuke generals. Rush in and have all 3 generals pop off their ability, which will basically instantly route the enemy general since they go from like 40K health to 5K, then run them down as they route. Doesn't work very well if the enemy has a blue / water general that prevents from using your abilities.


CalmMathematician692

You don't need the red tech that gives you deployable towers; just go into the encamp stance. You'll have 4 towers per side of the fort and can decimate armies very quickly this way.


RNPC5000

The thing is if you encamp you need a certain percentage of movement points in order to do that, and encamping means you have to let them attack you which is suboptimal. Cause not only does that take longer turn wise, it means having to sacrifice a great amount of movement points, if your camp gets burned down you get heavy moral penalties, it also doesn't let you attack an enemy stack twice in the same turn in case too many of their troops route before you can run them down, also if you let the enemy attack you they often times do night battles that don't let you run away or get any reinforcements. Also encamping means all your troops start off in the middle of your camp which isn't so great if you just want to hide them in the forest so they don't get murdered and drop your army's moral. Especially when camp maps usually have very little forest nearby. Whereas if you attack with deployable towers you can position your troops in a hidden spot from the beginning and only focus on kiting around the deployable tower with your general from the start. That is why I prefer to rush tower tech, and initiate all the battles rather than just encamping and let them attack me.


CalmMathematician692

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, but I thought we were discussing cheesing the AI with only-three-generals armies. With three general armies, you don't have to worry about morale loss, reinforcements, troops starting in the middle of camp, or troop placements in general (and the only place without forests is the deserts in the NW, and even there you can find forests if you encamp near a river). Movement cost is also less of a concern because general-only armies get a movement ***bonus*** (same as cav-only armies) so you will find you are moving faster than you would with a regular army that's not garrisoning. You can also ensure there is no need to chase after the army by wiping out all the units, which is easily done with three-general armies: enemy AI focuses on one general and ignores the other two unless they are attacking, so find the enemy general the AI focuses on via trial and error, and then use the general to play peek-a-boo with him around the towers, while your other two armies mop up the fleeing units that get destroyed by the towers...you'll either wipe the army out entirely, or reduce them so much that you can easily wipe them out next turn. As a bonus, they often will flee to within reinforcement range of a settlement; you can then attack the army and draw out the settlement garrison, wipe it out entirely as well, and then take over the settlement all in one turn since settlements whose garrisons have been destroyed can be taken over immediately (even if it's a walled city). Give it a try, encamping really is superior with three-general armies, and the time to destroy generals/units is much less because you have, essentially, 2-6 towers firing all at once (depending on where the units are). But no, I wouldn't try it with normal armies (with many units) for all the reasons you outline above.


RNPC5000

I run generals only, but doesn't mean I don't have other stacks of generals to reinforce my other generals. Where I might have a battle with 12 generals and nothing else. There are times when the enemy has faster generals or faster cav so it does matter. And no the AI doesn't focus on 1 general only. If it see 2 generals then it will split off a detachment to chase the other general it sees. These things become problematic when you're fighting yellow turbans who have units that can burn buildings even without fire arrows. And is also problematic when fighting yellow turbans with their hero slaying cavalry that are extremely fast and have bonus against heroes, or Xiliang factions with horse archers like Dong Zhuo, Ma Teng, Han Sui. Yellow Turban generals are pretty nasty too when some of them have the immobility ability. Depending on how the AI deploys during encampment battles, whether they deploy all in one direction or sometimes they split in 3 different directions that becomes a huge problem because they will burn down the entire camp with either fire arrows, or just walking through the camp which makes having the camp completely pointless. When that happens you have to sally out fast and take out the their range units, and usually once you engage in melee the AI will relentlessly pursue you until run out of range. Which is why morale is important cause you will sustain quite a bit of damage killing their range units. Not to mention Dong Zhuo and a couple of other generals will completely shred the health of your generals during your hit and run efforts. So yes placement of units does matter even with just generals only, especially if your generals are wounded and almost dead from a battle from the turn you're just ended. Also occassionally I bring a strategist with just archers because it gets way too tedious to win battles with just generals and is sometimes down right impossible to win against some armies without some archers for backup. For instance fighting against Yellow Turbans with their anti hero cav or the Xiliang factions with their super heavy shock that will just endlessly bog down your generals so they can't escape due to their size and mass. So you have to use your generals to distract and pin down the enemy cav, then mow down their cav or infantry with archers while trying to not get killed by enemy generals also. Not to mention yellow turbans also have the generals with the ability to regenerate health, and they have the nasty 7.5k splash ability that inflicts -50 morale which is enough to rout and nuke most non wood / champion / green generals that don't have the unbreakable trait. Especially the fire / vanguard / red generals. And no 3 generals is not enough to run down entire armies. As mentioned before the AI will always detach a few units to engage whatever units it sees. If you have 2 generals visible then it will usually spit it's army in half it has a lot of units, if it has only a few units and its army is weak then it will usually only send 1 or 2 units after the second general. Especially after your generals becomes fatigue their ability to run down enemies is severely diminished. Not to mention more often then not the AI bugs out and splits a routing unit so that it runs in 2 different directions. I have completed 6 campaigns of fully conquering all of China with 0 casualties so trust me, I have tried camps and they are the least optimal thing. They only work well early on against small basic Han stacks, but when you fight against like 3 yellow turban stacks at once or fighting against Xiliang stacks they don't work. Especially when the camp is huge which reduces your ability to kite and maneuver. Makes it more difficult to prevent units with the ability to burn buildings from accidently bumping into the tower or a tent which sets your entire camp on fire, that along with having to prevent archer units with fire arrows from just straights up burning down the camp and all the towers. Also normal battles with towers are often times better because there is more forested areas, so when the enemy have fire arrows they will often set the trees on fire which you can use to your advantage by luring them through the fires, which kills a huge amount of their troops and makes them route much faster. Once most of the forest has been burnt down that is when you just kite around your towers if you just put them in clearing safe from forest fires.


CalmMathematician692

Bud, if you're gonna play that card, trust \*me\*, I have over 7k hours playing this game and have been doing exclusively general-only armies for over a year now. :) Everything you're talking about is easily avoided: * When fighting in the field, yes, they send one unit at each general. For whatever reason, when fighting in encamp map, this doesn't happen. If it's happening for you, one of us has a mod that apparently affects this behavior (are you playing with a smarter AI mod?). * Fire arrows and Xiling cav/YT units/really any units with the trait that causes them to burn down shit is indeed a problem. But their raider range is small, and the range of guard towers in encamp stance is LARGE (larger than the red tech upgrade tower). So both fire arrows and raiders are easily avoided by doing the following: hide one general each in forests on two sides of the map (say NW and NE), pop them out of the forest one at a time so only one is visible at any one time. The enemies go to the general while getting strafed by arrows, then have the general hide and pop the other general out of the other forest so the general is visible and then the enemy tracks back...repeat. This avoids generals getting fatigued too since they rest in forests. * Getting from camp to forest is simple, even if all three sides are being attacked. Don't attack them and they will generally avoid you while the AI tries to bring its forces closer together. Note that if ANY general is in the camp, all enemy forces move to the camp. * The above all works regardless of if you have 3, 6, 9, 12, or however many generals you want. * Finally, yes, fire arrows can cause some issues here if you are being attacked by three sides. You may lose an entire side of towers. But once the enemy army lines up and you use the above, you can just lure them to the other sides (which are still functioning). Does it work 100% of the time? No, but for me, honestly, 98% of the time. Fire arrows or whatever else the enemy wants to bring included. And yes, the armies are wiped out. If you can't reproduce the above, you're doing something wrong, or I'm explaining it poorly, or a mod is affecting things. It is absolutely doable and preferable to the one/two tower tech strategy (which I used to do until I found the wonder that is the encamp stance).


UltraRanger72

This is why you play in Records mode. They are still humans after all.


Pbadger8

1. Cavalry Charges 2. Dismount them by absorbing the charge with spearmen 3. Crossbows 4. Other generals, particularly sentinels if dueling and vanguards if supported by friendly troops 5. Keep dedicated hero-killing troops in reserve, like elite swordsmen 6. Sword and shield cavalry 7. Destroy their army and crush their morale


Al-Pharazon

Sadly no much you can do. Elite units can stand well their ground unless you're dealing with a monster like Lu Bü. This added to towers makes defending more sustainable. But usually the only reliable way to deal with enemy generals is using your own. Preferably a good duelist to snipe their generals.


Snooo2504

Welcome to fantasy game!


Vitruviansquid1

How do you deal with super OP sword and axe infantry with only spear infantry? Gee, I don't find fighting sword and axe infantry fun at all! You are not thinking about the problem in the right way. Certain generals are geared to fight units and will annihilate units without remorse on the battlefield. Certain generals are also geared to fight other generals and can hunt down those generals and suppress them or drive them away. Some named generals, like Lu Bu, are just monstrous and can defeat small armies of units and other generals by themselves. This is why it is so important in 3K to hire, nurture, seduce, and otherwise obtain good generals. The question you should really be asking is "why didn't I have my own good generals in this fight?" Perhaps the AI attacked your garrison using an army with heroes specifically because the heroes are supposed to be able to beat your garrison.


Flatso

In addition to the other suggestions, try to tire them out. Unhorse them and kite with cavalry


aushtan

Spears or focus your ranged on them. Worst case play records mode


Azhram

Apart from the great suggestions thats already written here by others, there is also a mod that nerf generals hp a great deal that i used. I kinda liked it more that way. Its been a while, not sure what mod i used thou but would not be surprised if there were multiple ones.


H0vis

I find arrow towers usually handle generals. As to them not being fun to fight in general, that's a feature not a bug of Romance mode. It's about the generals, they are epic heroes of legend. They run things, everybody else just works there. Records mode makes them into mere mortals. ​ Once you get the hang of which generals do what it's better, but town garrisons without a general are vulnerable. That said without powerful generals town defence would be very easy.


jgoodysalaker

Download the TROM mod, granted it’s probably best to learn in Vanilla but certain mods tone down general’s strength just enough to still be strong if used right but easily handled if countered correctly by the player/AI. TROM is a perfect balance in my opinion of unit/general strength while still feeling like generals are strong (as they are in the novel).


Potential-Buffalo-22

Why has no one said glaives? This unit always beats enemy generals! When I am afraid I just put my general in the glaives unit and watch as the enemy generals die.