Hey,

I'm having trouble at the first mission of the second campaign. You get to build a huge town, and need to conquer 3 cities. I'm very wealthy and powerful, keep on giving gift to everyone, but the conquered town are CONSTANTLY rebelling. I quell the rebellion, they start again almost instantly, even if I send gifts... I flood them with gifts, they continue rebelling anyway, basically, instead of having 3 trade partners, I have now constantly three enemies.

You probably have a weak military. Vassals in Emperor don't like it when their military is stronger than yours. I never have problems with rebellions: in the first few years, a fort or two should be enough, but as time passes, you will need more forts to quell rebellions and keep others from trying to rebel.

Basically, you are quelling rebellions, but the game engine is ensuring they cannot stop, because either you have a weak military, or you keep sending too many troops to quell it: the game engine is very receptive to what you do, so when you send all troops, leaving your own city defenceless, others will get upset by it.

Nomads for exemple only has one shield shown on the map, I have like 5 or 6

I've got 4 full chariots army, 10 infantry, and a hero... Maybe i'm missing something, but doesn't seems weak to me.

I tried sending less troops but that didn't seems to do the trick either. Guess I'll try again.

I think you mean 12 forts, since that's the maximum you can have.

Check the opinion of the city, they may be Bitter or Angry with you, send them gifts of items they need (ie things they purchase, or money if you can't give them anything) until their opinion increases to at least Loyal.

Yep sorry, hazy on the number, but yeah, i've got the maximum, with a handful of chariots. I thought the maximum could change depending on the elite housing.

I managed to quell a rebellion, but as soon as the slight thing go wrong it start again (even if they say they're loyal). I can't quell older rebellion because they built up so many military that I keep on being defeated (because I can't send everyone). Maybe I should try attacking the food supplies ? Or destroy their military with all my troops, so I end up with 3 rebellions, but at least manageable ones. Can you explain to me the military options ?

One of the town I kept flooding with useful gifts (I know the drill, it's similar to Zeus), finally got over their rebellion, but same here, they start again very quickly. I even tried lowering the tribute. At one point they were noted loyal, but when I attacked another, they rebelled again.

Basically the situation has spin so out of control that I can't seems to find a way to improve it. I need to concentrate a lot of time and resources just to quell one, and then the other rebel again if I do. Damn !


Thanks for the help anyway ! :D

I would strongly recommend not continually using your military to quell rebellions, it can have unintended consequences with the game engine. Keep buttering up your allies/vassals with money or goods until they stop rebelling. Peaceful quelling may be better than military action and make sure to focus on one city at a time, rather than trying to quell them all in one go.

Also make sure you aren't vassal to someone else (ie someone else is not asking you for tribute every year): if someone is demanding tribute, conquer them and break vassalhood with them, in case that's causing issue.

If, after all of that, they are still rebelling, then I'd recommend starting over (from your description, this sounds like Hao from the Zhou Dynasty?). Have a look at some video let's plays of others for that mission, in case you can find something useful from them. :)

What difficulty level are you on? At Very Hard, you may find it difficult to keep vassals happy and they may rebel more often, but on Hard it should be pretty easy to keep them from rebelling and below Hard, they shouldn't even contemplate a rebellion at all.

So I went back to try this again. Basically you cant lose either Vassal or youre screwed. This includes making one an ally as that removes it from your "rule". Once you do regardless of what you provide with gifts or military strength they will endlessly rebel. Usually mine rebel before my troops are even home from conquering them. Then you have the task of trying to retake them all at once.

Seems you have to play the scenario to keep vassals happy then take Shu after they have a military decline and it pretty much ends instantly. If you are one to read the scenario text, part of the challenge of the level is presumably rebellions. I think they ratcheted it up a bit much however...

Personally, if I were you, I would use a cheat or restart. I tried for hours to amass enough troops to keep everyone under control at one time and it was impossible. Without the ability to build cats, even the weakest walled city can hold off all but your largest attacks supported by heros.

EDIT: So I realized I should add how you go about losing a Vassal on normal... Never ask them for military help. That will drive them mad. Try and avoid any request, but military requests should be strictly off limits. Keep the gifts going here and there and they should be fine. Cash seems to be enough and you should be swimming in it with this scenario.

So that the ally thing makes sense, heres what I did in some reasonable understandable format...


1 - Annual gifts to Vassals - I used their tribute as a trigger to send them back a cash gift.
2 - Establish Carved Jade and Brozneware immediately to start cash flow
3 - Use spys to open up three primary rivals (I ignored the nomads)
4 - Once Palace is up request an animal from Vassal. Start using the animals for gifts if you are short on cash.
5 - Start building up weaponsmiths and forts. Whatever mix you like, its irrelevant essentially. Just have at least 4.
6 - Pick one of the rivals other than Shu. Start giving them gifts as well, best you can do. Its totally worth building up a product they want, wood for example.
6 - Start buttering up Huang
7 - When you are stable and see the messages about a reduction in military strength in Shu. Send a spy to begin sabotage on Military.
8 - Get Huang in the city and use him to take whatever rival you buttered up. Huang is required as you dont have cats, otherwise you need a ton of troops.
9 - Send an ally request to a vassal. Just one, not both!
10 - Rival you conquered will immediately rebel, respond by immediately quelling with everything you have. Make sure Huang goes! Best to just keep him buttered up and in the city.
11 - When they return immediately launch against Shu (with Huang, you can win without him if you have enough troops but why risk it?). If all goes well in a month you wont even see the conquered text and the scenario will end.

Too much? Sorry, just like occupying my time with this game lately...

Bit late now, but I was having a similar issue to the OP on Hao and Wei.

The game, or this mission seems to have some annoying bugs.
There also seem to be quite a few spies visiting your city.
Don't overlook elite housing, as they generate a lot in tax

The game hints strongly that you should invade Shu first, but I invaded Pingyang first, but the game never registered it as a city i ruled.

My first invasion of Shu failed, even with Huang and four units. I probably left it too long after the message about Shu being weakened.

This seemed to set of a chain reaction and my original two Vassal cities stopped trading with me, despite having favor with them. (In retrospect I made the mistake of becoming allied with them, as I didn't realise they wouldn't count as being ruled)

I did conquer Shu, but then another city rebelled, which lead to Pinyang rebelling, then Shu.
I quelled the rebellion in Shu, but before my troops had returned it rebelled again! A simultaneous attack on Pingyang failed. (why spies can't report a walled city or best invasion point is beyond me)

Anyang decided to invade also.

After a break, I reloaded the game, and most of the rebelling cities were still rebelling, bit still trading with me.

In the middle of all this the Nomad Camps invaded also.

I was about to start again, but decided to see if I could push through.

Basically I gifted the crap out of everyone with items they needed, and eventually the rebellions were quelled, and emissaries came and asked for trade to be reopened, (despite us already trading). Even though they seemed to be vassal states they weren't counted as ruled?

Anyway, I kept sending gifts till they were docile or admiring. Then I chose the weakest cities, sabotaged their military, (I had about 10 forts by now), then sent two simultaneous attacks. One of them still failed, but I had enough favour leeway so that the other cities didn't rebel, and I immediately attacked another city as soon as my victorious troops returned.

This finally won the game. (As you can imagine, a long game)

I've missed a few points here, because I did a few other things along the way, but can't remember the order.
I asked for one or two favours from cities and broke alliances, since you can't invade otherwise. All this would have contributed to my mess ;)

I've played the game a long time ago, but never got into the diplomacy side of things as i find that a bit tedious.

kill their armies, keep 1 or 2 in city when they go out. its registering you as having no armies when the armies are out on conquest so they think thye can rebel and get away with it

the programing makes them rebel once they are able to win against your military power but armies outside the city dont count towards your power.