How to Get Started as Cao Cao | Early Game Legendary Difficulty Playbook

[@whydnot]

Eight year old me referred to him as “Cow Cow”. A tradition I uphold to this day.

[@elikuykendall4348]

Stopped ten minutes to drop a like and tell you i like the job you've done. Especially i like the fact that you speak on the history, which definitely enriches the experience. I dare say the type of people who play this sort of game love history and Would definitely enjoy content like this.

[@fernandoderell4987]

Your dedication to this video is incredible, and your pronunciation is spot on. I've checked out your recent videos, and they were fantastic. Please continue making these types of videos. I hope you achieve great success. Thank you for the very detailed guide.

[@kyledelsan7024]

Thanks for this. I just got the game and having a hard time switching from shogun 2.

[@yijunlin2995]

As much as I appreciate your nicely done video, I admire you can pronounce Chinese so well that most of them can't

[@7503funkymonkey]

Cao Cao's rice farming garrisons make his faction one of the best at fielding armies of Imperial Guard units, assuming the economy can support it. He can counteract the replenishment penalties that Imperial Army units have and by late game, you won't even notice that a penalty exists. As a result, the Cao Cao faction probably has one of the best late games.

[@jukeban646]

What are the relationships with the other factions ? Ennemies, allies

[@ben10lol]

Awesome guide. I went from knowing nothing to having an OP strategy and tons of knowledge of things to exploit. Thanks for this.

[@yafuri1]

Time for a Cao Cao playthrough! I got wiped by the end game of my Sun Jian playthrough lol. I followed your early guide and it worked really great, but towards endgame where I'm up against Cao Cao and Yuan Shao for emperor. I've decided to conquer all of my eastern fronts up until the sea, because they sided with Cao Cao, but while my main force was there, the furious wild factions decided to attack me with 5 full stacks. I had fun defending while it lasted. I guess I should've conquered all of the south but I hesitated conquering all of them for trade agreements, but I should've at least destroyed those barbarians.

[@General-Doge]

I've read Three Kingdoms since I was young but I never knew of Yuan Huan since I only read the romance. Did some research and found out how amazing this guy was. Thanks for the info.

[@joofbing]

"You also want to marry off your dad." Yes.. yes like any good kid would do.

[@Zackistania06]

I mean like when your dad tries and find you a good wife, you'd offer up the same thing to him as a sign of thanks you know.

[@khoifoto]

Literally sold his dad for some copper , lol

[@nightseeker226]

"Do not kill Yuan Huan" Me on my first playthrough dueling him: oops

[@kpatterson7009]

I can’t capture him to save my lifw

[@eric_wiley]

@@kpatterson7009 yeah, I've tried this 10+ times

[@philthethotdestroyer4194]

i just execute lol

[@icranberry8660]

im quite sad they didnt make cao cao's background Hero of Chaos, sounds way cooler

[@leoli960]

Because people will make silly jokes related to Warhammer games.

[@charlesbirdsong6782]

I prefer Strategic Mastermind.

[@alfredzhao6680]

Could you also do one on Cao Cao for the World Betrayed DLC potentially? I think his gameplay for the 194 start is significantly different (quite challenging imo) with the emperor available for urs to take so early and the huge pool of legendary characters you have at the very start really change ur strategy and management. Hes definitely under-appreciated because of the noew factions if lu bu and sun ce.

[@anthonyortiz7924]

Love these Total War Three Kingdom videos man, this is *exactly* what I was looking for! It's too bad that the patch changes Cao Ren so he no longer has these bonuses and therefore nerfs this initial strategy.

[@jxslayz6663]

So basically Cow Cow is all about farming. Farming commanderies, farming characters, farming experience, LOL...

[@jxslayz6663]

MOOOOOOOOve! Get out my Wei! Get out my Wei Beitch! LOL

[@aziyasanders5952]

Loved all the explanations for everything. Subscribed!

[@leoli960]

Regarding two trebuchets on Guo Jia, like I commented in your Ma Teng guide, I don't think the ideal early army comp should have two trebs. The only reason to recruit two trebs is that you can level them up early. The upkeep for one treb is 320, that's three crossbows or 5 archer militia. And even if AI is too dumb to let you fire at them, one low level treb can never kill more than 5 archer militia or 3 crossbows do. During many of my campaigns after patch 1.5, there were many battles when one treb couldn't kill more than a unit of archers. Also, I see someone commenting on cheesing, I personally don't mind them at all, but I saw a thread on reddit the other day when someone wants to watch 3K content without cheese. And people say you cheese a lot. I think for these guide videos, a more standard approach (without general running around towns to let the towers do the job) might be better because these videos tend to attract more views than the let's play ones. I know you almost never cheese during let's plays.

[@SeriousTrivia]

It is not about killing people. Two trebuchets forces the AI to march to you and it alters battles like no other unit. In regards to “cheese”. The game is designed in a certain way, I don’t add any mods to alter the design of the game, I don’t save scum, I play on legendary where the AI pays 30% for all buildings, 50% for all units, and receive hidden buffs where their identical unit will out-stat check my unit so I think I am entitled to some of their stupider behaviors.

[@leoli960]

@@SeriousTrivia Sorry I didn't make myself clear. I don't agree with having two trebs but I do think having one is essential. With one treb, AI will come at you most of the time. Sometimes they won't come at you no matter what. It depends on the terrain of the battlefield and whether they have access to deployable towers. I use more chesse strats than you and I enjoy them lol. I just think maybe including non-cheese strats in these guide videos might be good for the channel. The first video I watched on your channel is Dong Zhou's playbook and I then subscribed. It was recommended by KZbin. I don't consider you cheesing during your let's plays, but there might be people who come to the channel because of your guide videos and think you "cheese" a lot. And there are many people who don't like cheese strats.

[@SeriousTrivia]

my question in particular with this guide here is where did I cheese? and also, I am never going to let reddit guide how I approach things and I am not here to appease everyone. I mean the people complaining the same people who would claim Cao Cao cheesed Yuan Shao at Guan Du and does not deserve a win if he had fought straight up in a fight.

[@leoli960]

@@SeriousTrivia I mean there's one guy in the comments says farming rebels is cheesing/exploit. I'm not saying you should listen to reddit, but I know many people don't like cheese strats such as looping around the town. This is true for all kinds of games. You do you but there's no harm to include non-cheese strats in the future. Because you're the only quality channel covering 3K atm, appeasing more audience is never a bad thing.

[@councilofflorence4896]

@@leoli960 I'm the cheese trebuchets guy and I'm telling you not a single match has ever not had the enemy come to me, so long as they have vision or see me. Furthermore I can tell you I've won battles with only 1000 men against forces 4 times the size just because of trebuchets and careful planning. This isn't possible without them. It's why I will never field an army without a strategist. SeriousTrivia in my opinion made the right choice.

[@ghostslinger3148]

Hi, great video, your tutorial helped alot. Wondering about tax offices or rural administrative office, it makes public order go down fast. How do we counter this? Is it better to build other buildings rather than the tax office early on?

[@SeriousTrivia]

You have to understand that the punishment for bad public order is just rebel spawns which is actually a great way to farm items, experience, and gold so you should welcome it

[@ghostslinger3148]

@@SeriousTrivia I see, Thanks. Regarding commandaries, do you have a guide what to build on it based on the resources present? What if I want a military focused commandary to defend against attacks, what should i build?

[@SeriousTrivia]

there is a whole playlist called a better commandery that does exactly that

[@Zackistania06]

Serious Trivia you should get the mod that allows you to play as the 'Han Empire', it should be a fun gameplay.

[@gabe75001]

Martial Emperor himself!

[@Doragonkuraudo]

The Central Plains are dangerous. And that's why I left for Southern Jing province in my Liu Biao campaign

[@leroiratonus]

Nice !! Love your content man

[@LordMaximus77]

Great video! But do you have footage (or a description) of the battle for Yangzhou livestock farm? @SeriousTrivia. I'm having trouble winning that with the same army composition.

[@SeriousTrivia]

Check out an upcoming episode of the tutorial series in two days where that battle will be featured

[@LordMaximus77]

@@SeriousTrivia Thanks man.

[@apostolosboutos2727]

This is a fine start but it is very suboptimal and you actualy lose a lot of potential by taking this route. I will describe a much better route. On turn one you capture the livestock farm. You can either recruit or duel the argicultural general for the exp. I duel him because he is not that good anyway. 30% discount on farms is not a big deal if you really think about it. If you duel him you can autoresolve the next fight without doing the tiring exp manual grind. After you take the livestock farm build your special concription building in Chen and set Xiahu Yuan to reduce recruitment cost assignment and make Xiahu Dun commander. Make trade with Liu Chong and keep dad unmarried. On turn two move your army to Chen and recruit sabre militia and archers. Make a diplomatic deal with someone to proc the completion of the replenisment quest. Your special building should be complete now. This building is very important as it gives you enough extra movement range to capture the farm on turn 4 instead of 5 and that is very important. On turn 3 move your army to the closesnt edge near your border to the farm while staying inside your borders. Recruit Yue Jin, summon him in the field and recruit all his units. Recall Xiahu Yuran from assigment as you no longer need him and put Lady Bian from peasantry income. On turn 4 you should have a complete army almost fully replenished. Take the Farmland now and micro the fight to not lose any men. Because you now have 3 towns and a full army Yuan Shu will give you a +10 to +12 deal to marry your dad to his daughter and this can net you ALOT of gold along with supporting his legitimacy and some food. You can also pick the trade reform and trade with him as well to block him from trading with Liu Biao. Get military access as well if you want, because you are about to move into his lands. Next you can move into Yuan Shao lands and try to fight the Han army going to defend Luoyang giving you a chance to capture two superb generals Huang Xu a great sentinel with a superb weapon and the white horse geneal who gives -10% army upkeep as prime minister. After you capture them go south and take out He Yi and his fine industry commandery. You can proxy war either Yuan Shao for money, or Yuan Shu to fight Liu Biao and keep him busy. As you can see this way is very superior. You get the chance to capture two great characters, you gain a wealthy industry commandery, you gain a lot more money from marrying Yuan Shao than Liu Dai, you get to pick the two trade reforms instead of the admin slot which means a lot more cash and you get to take out He Yi early instead of having him as a bad neigbour who you cannot deal with diplomaticaly. Then you can go east to follow your quest. Plus, Cao Cao is a diplomatic faction with shit commanderies that rely on selling food. Having a strong army allows you to make better deals and earn more money while disbanding and building up makes no sense because you dont have any good commerce or industry commanderies to build anyway. It is much better to rush and expand to capture all that food. Going for Tao Qian early thus is quite suboptimal. Maybe you can make a vid to showcase it.

[@SeriousTrivia]

Thanks for the super long post, but I don't agree that your method is better. What if you did everything that you mentioned and in the battle against Xu Huang, you don't capture him....Then the early rush for an army and expansion into the suboptimal Chen farmland is all for naught. I am currently doing a entire tutorial let's play on the channel using Cao Cao which runs with strategy. If you want, you can check it out, as the point of this start is not to wipe out Tao Qian but to expand south for the more lucrative commandery and the rice garrisons for the faction wide replenishment.

[@apostolosboutos2727]

@@SeriousTrivia You don't have to go and capture him, I just do it cause I like him. You can take out He Yi immidiatly instead of going for Xu Huang. The best settlements around Cao Cao is He Yi's and Huang Shaos. Isn't the factionwide replenishment nerfed?

[@SeriousTrivia]

The faction wide replenishment on rice is not nerfed. Huainan is the best commandery close to Cao Cao and then Danyang being the second best in the game is after that so expanding south towards them is going to be better. There is no rush to eliminate He Yi just for Runan

[@fandy4898]

hey btw whats the replenisment quest? i tried to make a diplomatic deal but no events trigerred?

[@ErenJager-ut5cu]

Thank you!!! I was hoping for that One Love

[@nyblam3380]

u make the microing in the first two battles look so easy, i keep getting knocked off my horse by the halberd units

[@SeriousTrivia]

Got be real careful on those charges

[@foursapha]

Awesome! Do you have a lets play that heads northeast to kill Tao Qian?

[@SeriousTrivia]

The first Cao Cao let’s play I did

[@kazuto7768]

Will you be doing a guide on any of the newer characters?

[@lloydar]

Hey, Thanks for the guide. Its helping me understand this game. Its my first Total War. Just a quick question, have all the trades been nerfed? I'm only getting 0.9 to marry off Cao Song.

[@SeriousTrivia]

yes this version of the guide is on an older patch with different diplomatic values. You can check out the more recent updated version of this guide

[@skychefnugen8491]

If I do not go to war w/ Tao Qian & Chen Ruyang is available for the taking what could be the problem? Liu Biao could be a potential problem but I still can play Yuan Chu against him. Thanks for your many guides as I was really lost on how to play this game cuz I just bought it about a week ago.

[@khoifoto]

I once started Cao Cao with a Jade Snake item and trade with Liuchong the builder item... oh dear that -2 construction time is amazing.

[@SeriousTrivia]

With this start you basically have -2 on all your green with sentinel assignment and admin

[@khoifoto]

Serious Trivia on top of the -2 from the set, ended up with -4 construction time with your build... that’s why I always search for the builder set in the beginning.

[@sushishogun2486]

Cao Cao 155 A.D-March 15, 220 A.D was a great hero in Chinese history not a villain

[@raffygrullon9426]

He did his fair share of evil behavior, such as murdering Kong Rong and his entire family.

[@nightseeker226]

Not to mention, it was ultimately his legacy that won the war of the three kingdom and united China as a whole. History is written by the victor. With both of that in mind, I wouldn't be surprise if our historic text of Cao Cao has many of his evil deed never recorded or downplayed and vice versa.

[@SFDPSFDP]

According to what I have read, during his conquest of Xu province, he slaughtered over 100,000 innocent civilians which shocked everyone even by that time's standards. He also executed lightly so many people during his life. We may have admiration for what he achieved as a ruler or general, he was definitely a genius, but as a person I am not sure I would recommend him as a hero.

[@eric_wiley]

How did you capture him?! I've tried 10+ times, no luck

[@rionaldoputra1519]

I think what you mean in this guide is Cheng Yu not Chen Yu. BTW i love watching your series. Keep up the good work!

[@czazIX]

Thank you Serious Trivia. Your videos have really helped me understand this game. Can't wait for an updated Liu Bei and Sun Ce. Have you ever been able to get Cao Chong as an heir?

[@SeriousTrivia]

Children are generic so only the children born by the start date are historical you will never get Cao Chong but we will see him added in future chapter packs

[@jangiurg5295]

This was absolutely fantastic. I plan to go through all the 3 campaigns as Mengde so this was timed perfectly.

[@weasel9498]

Hey Trivia, will you do updated 190 start date guide with Cao Cao since 1.7.0 changed some things, for example Xun You became legendary/unique character and compared to here in your video my chance of capturing him is 0%

[@SeriousTrivia]

I am working on these one faction at a time so yes we will eventually get to update Cao Cao

[@weasel9498]

@@SeriousTrivia Cool! Also seems like i managed to get one time event to start after Cao Caos father dies and then Xun comes to your faction but after i did second test run I didn't get that event again

[@elite968]

12 restarts and still i can't get Yuan Huan captured. I guess i will move on without him.

[@Warman88888888]

Can I use this for the radious mod as well if I wanted to do Cao Cao there too?

[@SeriousTrivia]

I don't know what the radious mod changes so not sure

[@dogwithshirt]

I can't seem to capture Yuan Huan at the beginning after numerous tries. Did they patch it or something? (currently on version 1.5.3)

[@SeriousTrivia]

I don't think so. I am assuming just unlucky

[@meh1681]

May I ask a question here? Thank you for this (seriously) helpful guide on how to get your early footing on Legendary, but i've always been baffled on how you're supposed to fight vs full stacks with only 2-3 units for each of your generals. Do you use your generals to charge and get victory like what you showed here? Or is there a general way of winning engagements against the AI when you're stupidly outnumbered?

[@SeriousTrivia]

If you are stupidly outnumbered then you must exploit the AI to win because even in a fair engagement on legendary the AI units get massive hidden buffs to their stats so there is no way you can win a fair fight (say Ji militia vs Ji militia). Sure playing smart (spear into horse, horse into range etc will help you even the stat odds) but if you are down in stats and men then you need to use generals or towers

[@meh1681]

@@SeriousTrivia Hmmm. Can you recommend one of your battles to watch perhaps? I keep struggling even on Hard to win manual fights, and delegating leaves me with pretty bad numbers. Loved your commandery and earlygame guides by the way.

[@tommerker8063]

@@meh1681 unbreakable general, encampement stance befor being engaged, loop the enemies around your tower

[@jameschen53]

Just saying I think that's the wrong chen(cheng) yu u have there（程昱）

[@Ocean-uw4fi]

I can see why you are playing campaign at the legendary level. No wonder I get so stuck in mid game after expanding from all side and everyone is targeting me

[@Thanksxmen]

feeling very targeted as a new player who just spent 120 turns chasing the han empire up and down the eastern portion of the map, now taking like 10 turns to start moving towards big daddy dong.

[@yasinkaraca4840]

I didn't like this very much, It takes a strong army to fight Tao Qian. The best way is after uniting Chen, it is necessary to attack Pengchen. He Yi can get us in trouble. It is necessary to deposit the money in the army in my opinion.

[@SeriousTrivia]

you don't actually need a strong army to fight Tao Qian though. You can wipe him on turn 7. Uniting Chen is what get people in trouble with He Yi. The farmland is a beginner's trap as once you take it, it actually decreases your income and expose you to multiple new potential enemies on the west when you should be focused on the east in the beginning. Assuming you are playing on Romance mode, with the quality of generals and items that Cao Cao starts out with, wiping out Tao Qian is fairly easy. I have a pretty straightforward example of this on the Cao Cao let's play series where Tao Qian gets wiped super quickly with minimum investment albeit it was on a much older patch but the idea is still the same.

[@yasinkaraca4840]

@@SeriousTrivia Maybe I'm not a good commander. Tao Qian is running away in Pengchen, I have to do surround Tao Qian with two armies. I'll take your advice, I hope you succeed on KZbin greetings with love.

[@Schile23]

My Yuan Huan has ''Officer'' not ''Agricultural Reformer'' :/

[@SeriousTrivia]

which patch are you on?

[@Schile23]

@@SeriousTrivia I think it's v1.1.0

[@wschong7789]

seems it is impossible to capture him in the new 1.7.0 patch

[@SeriousTrivia]

haven't tried but I doubt that is true (does the capture value show 0%)

[@wschong7789]

@@SeriousTrivia it is still the same 61%, i let him survive and escaped including letting him go to the outside of the map, but he will still ended up dead. Similar situation with MrSmartDonkeyLP's gameplay in your Co-op video.

[@SeriousTrivia]

I think it is just a rng type of thing. I obviously haven't tested it but I think if it is showing 61%, then there is definitely a chance to capture.

[@wschong7789]

@@SeriousTrivia i hope so, it just weird that he will still ended up dead despite surviving the battle.

[@muddledmuppet8584]

@@SeriousTrivia FWIW I captured him just now, but I play normal/very hard, don't know if that makes a difference. Cheers for video!

[@ChhalySamsokrith]

Will you do Liu Bei?

[@SeriousTrivia]

Everyone will get covered

[@quanguctranngo7871]

No matter how many time I tried that guys never got captured :(

[@TheMrYadrian]

This game has got one thing that I hate: Settlements infrastructures - I do not know what to build in provinces to get 'benefits' and less 'deficits' for my gameplay. Buildings are divided in colours and you never know what to build and which colours are in 'symbiosis'.

[@SeriousTrivia]

I mean it takes a bit of a learning curve which why there are commandery guides on the channel and its not that complicated really. Here is a very simplified version if you are interested kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJnXlYRom7V1mqM

[@TheMrYadrian]

@@SeriousTrivia Thank you, I will try to 'learn' something from it because I bought 'Total War:Three Kingdoms' in promotion 2 weeks ago (if I am correct) and I really was 'smashed' by the 'complexicity' of the game - your guide is helping a lot^^

[@mrahmedfuad2656]

Amazing 🌷🤣

[@skychefnugen8491]

Don't know if CA is petty or not but patch 1.70 removes Sentinel's supervise construction assignment.

[@SeriousTrivia]

no they didn't...I am still using it. They made Cao Ren a commander so you don't start with a sentinel anymore but sentinels still have the assignment

[@skychefnugen8491]

@@SeriousTrivia Oh I see. Thanks

[@kevindevina3093]

could you share your pc specs?

[@SeriousTrivia]

AMD Radeon RX5700 GPU and AMD Ryzen 7 3700 CPU with 16 GB of RAM and a bunch of storage that is split between SSD and HDD

[@kevindevina3093]

@@SeriousTrivia done subscribing to your channel. very helpful guides and voice is not that annoying unlike other guides keep it up!

[@kevindevina3093]

@@SeriousTrivia do you have a guide on how to get unique characters of other factions?

[@SeriousTrivia]

not really as there are not any foolproof ways. Currently, the best way to do this is 1) through marriage if they are a family member of the leader, 2) through turncoats if they have disloyal traits or low satisfaction, 3) through battle, better victory conditions and patience skill increases capture chance, 4) use spies to lower than satisfaction through discredit character (-30) and/or discredit faction (-10)

[@kevindevina3093]

@@SeriousTrivia is your old guide with cao cao, south migration, still applicable with this patch?

[@cg9251]

How to rise credibility?

[@SeriousTrivia]

Use schemes

[@empi2597]

i really dont agree with tanking public order, since the changes, population is really important right now not to mention that its cheesy. might as well use trading imbalances to get infinite money...

[@SeriousTrivia]

You can still gain population with -100 public order

[@empi2597]

@@SeriousTrivia its still a slower buildup to max pop and as i mentioned really cheesy, i have a hard time believing that the devs of this game sat together and said:" hey lets make tanking public order a really good thing". The reason why its not punished harder is that the AI is really bad at maintaining public order, and making it a harder punish would break the game, tanking order and profiting from it is in the same category as any other exploit for me, might as well make a guide to exploit all other things in this game and recommend it, but thats just my opinion.

[@jxslayz6663]

Expand north for free horses.

[@yyangcn]

Anyone tried this and managed to capture Yuan Huan within the last two weeks? I just did 6 restarts and no luck. And there seem to be others who could not get him either on this comment section. EDIT: OK so I think I figured it out. It's simply my lack of understanding of the difficulty mechanics. I foolishly thought I could copy the step-by-step here on other difficulty levels, but apparently not; you'd HAVE to play on legendary in order to capture Yuan Huan on first turn. I've tried all levels from easy to difficult, 3 times each and no cap; tried once with legendary, boom, captured. On a side note, if you drop combat difficulty to Easy, enemy archers WILL shoot anything that shows up first, including generals. This means, quite ironically, you can't cheese (not that you need to anyway) the AI with only generals. At least not as easily as on the higher difficulty levels.

[@councilofflorence4896]

I did it on very hard mode actually, so it's possible. It only took me 14 tries with quick save.

[@skychefnugen8491]

I just got the game a week ago, playing normal and I can capture Yuan Huan 1st try. However Xun You, the next general is unbreakable so I released him, I guess it's all RNG.

[@brunopimenta8204]

tao tao, chao chao, shao shao, cao cao but how the fuck do you pronounce this guy name?

[@SeriousTrivia]

This is probably the best way for English speakers tsao tsao but the first word needs to be a bit flat while the second one need to be ascent kind of like how you would end a sentence

[@For_the-Emperor]

I’ve played all the total wars and beat them all. I love the total war series but this one not so much. They made the politics so overly complicated, I’ve tried Cao Cao campaign countless times and just can’t win, seems like warhammer and the older titles just play better.

[@SeriousTrivia]

Warhammer is definitely a lot more straight forward compared to 3K but I do prefer the diplomatic elements myself but I wouldn't say it makes the game any harder just different and takes a small learning curve to get use to the systems

[@For_the-Emperor]

@@SeriousTrivia Agreed, just different compared to the old titles. I liked the politics in shogun 2 and rome 2. Warhammer has like zero politics lol all warfare.

[@Confederate-hj2dc]

Move aside Yuan Shu, Cao Cao is now the greatest Jew in all of China!

[@SeriousTrivia]

Yuan Shu overspent and died of thirst so I am pretty sure he never qualified in the first place

[@Confederate-hj2dc]

Serious Trivia what I meant was how in your recent guide on Yuan Shu, you showed how he can bribe people to give him legitimacy. Like George Soros in real life. However, Cao Cao can outshine Yuan Shu in that department thanks to Yuan Huan.

[@Confederate-hj2dc]

Also, I can’t wait to see your guides for the eight princes trivia. I’ve beat the game with Diaochan as my Empress, but I’ve still to win as either bandit, yellow turbin, or eight princes’ factions.