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Originally posted by Borodin@Jul 10 2005, 09:08 PM
I've always found that the easiest course upon starting the game was to go into voluntary exile, after first raising the loyalty of whatever heroes you had with you. Target an empty province that borders on empty provinces: the northwest corner of the map (#1) is the best.

As you travel through various provinces to get there, try looking at the stats of masterless heroes. If you find any that are low, attempt to get them to join you.

Declare your status as a leader while still in province #2, and drop off a newly recruited hero there--it's directly to the east of #1. It's also untouched by other occupied provinces, so it can safely be occupied and built up without fear of threats or invasion. One Big Tip: any hero you appoint a governor (the person in charge of the province) will never defect, so leaving your hero with the lowest loyalty in province #2 makes sense. They'll hunt and get taxes, and pay themselves first to raise loyalty. Meanwhile, you can settle another low loyalty hero directly south of province #1, and south of that, if need be.

Typically, I build up my forces while recruiting better heroes in the surrounding empty provinces. The more provinces you declare as your own--having them reach a level of 40 in loyalty for "official recognition," the better. Note, I typicaly take them to 30-36 or so, then deliberately gift the people with enough to hit in the 52-56 range. That way, there is no chance of revolt. At 40-46, you're almost guaranteed the people will hate you, and soon.

The more provinces you grab, the higher your rating. The higher your rating, the more likely you are to recruit masterless heroes. Give the better ones lots of men, arm them and train them, then spy on other occupied provinces, and attack one that isn't fully occupied to the teeth. Conquer it and try to grab as many enemy heroes of decent quality as possible; doesn't let them retreat off the screen. Once the battle ends--hopefully, with you victorious--raise everybody's loyalty repeatedly, and move all your heroes back to one of your own provinces.

Transfer men from less effective heroes to one with strong attributes, and try to make a hero with high integrity, courage or mercy a brother/sister. If you succeed, you'll be able to move them to another province, and gain an extra move each turn in which you can act through them. The more brothers/sisters you have, the more moves you can take in any given turn. But you're limited on the number of brothers/sisters you can recruit, so choose wisely.

By what year do you end up getting the imperial edict?

[Borodin]

Usually about 5-7 years before the game conclusion. I've never run out of time, if that's what you mean. The ending is largely a case of isolating Gao Qiu, then drawing off large numbers of his armies with a very weak, poorly supported hero who raises a neighboring province enough to get the enemy's interest. After doing that a bit, I surround Gao Qiu with my some small armies--so he has no other province to move to, and escape--then attack with my best forces (making sure at least one hero is left behind).

jus wondering.. how do u create a save directory for the game?? i'm running it using dosbox.. but not sure how to create a directory to save games..
anyone can help??

[Borodin]

You do it from within the game. Just choose the option that lets you save a game, and exit. When you leave DOSbox, that saved game will still be there.

[Aguirre]

This review is little inaccurate. KOEI wasn't founded in 1988 - it was american branch of the company. KOEI itself was established many years before '88 (in 1978, to be precise). Also, user interface wasn't that revolutionary - remember about Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Genghis Khan, all three developed earlier than Bandit Kings.
All in all, the game is very good, although quite hard. That's why KOEI gave up this title and never released the sequel.

Good old game, there's a trick to get infinite money in the game but takes forever to do it

I had the old Nintendo version of this game. It was one of my favs.

Suggestions for new players:

1. Play an early scenario, and try to expand in the west, where few people have claimed prefectures. Unless you want to be attacked, always stay at least one prefecture away from Gao Qui's territory. The imperial forces never try to take empty areas; their domain only expands if they decide to attack a bandit-controlled area.

2. Don't be too picky about sworn brothers early on. You need them to allow you to issue commands in prefectures where your chieftain is away from. A sworn brother with low integrity can be good for throwing Feasts... (Golden Lotus as the sworn sister of Hairy Priest is just wrong... k: )

3. Don't bother with duels, especially if you're the attacker. Your body points will probably be too low to win by the time you reach your opponent...

[Borodin]

Duels are a pain in the behind. I suggest avoiding duels unless a nearby opponent general has a low body value at the moment. Unfortunately, it's impossible to avoid accepting a duel, because it's entirely up to your challenged general. And I"ve been in situations where some of my healthiest and finest generals were challenged, and lost.

Some tips of my own (sorry for any problems reading that, my home language is german):

If you start in 1101 and take Li Chong:

Move to the upper RIGHT province (#5 i think), it has a weapon smite inside! Settle and start increasing the wealth or other things ... also go hunting to have at least 200-300 food ... also use rest to have at least 40-50 power! In December give ALL your food to the local population to increase their happyness to over 50 ...

In january you will have some food / gold, immedeately move into town and recruit every hero wanna follow you, in february take about ~200 gold and most of all the food with you and move over to prafecture #6 (to the south), leaving the recruited guys alone in your home country!

The thing is: the pc can perform MUCH better in increasing the wealth, recruiting guys, train your troops, increase hero happyness etc. ALONE! The pc can do those things in one month, you can only do one thing in a time!

Move on with this strategy move over #8 to #9 and #11! Province 7 and 10 are hold buy other PC guys (working also against Gao Qiu, but not very well, #7 has very low heros, so you can crush #7 later on get a well build up province, and #10's leader isn't very well, he 'll have about 7-8 heros inside his province but are below 40 population happyness!

Keep in mind your own heros will only stay in countrys when they are below 3 heros or have no free countrys to move to!

So send one of your crappiest heros to #4, move him without any money/food to prevent him from coming over province happyness 40! Collect spare heros in province #6 (has also smite), but every time WITHOUT your main guy!!!

Your pc heros will train troops only if theres another strong enemy beneath so if you want to lets say crush #7 to have a peaceful back, you will have to move your mainguy li chong (or a brother of yours) to your #6 province, train them up, build weapons in town and attack (and crush) #7

Some additional tips:

IF there is a strong enemy beneath you (mostly some of the evil guys) which have mostly an abundant mass of heros, and you need new ones use these tactics:

Defend one of your countrys with no more than 700 men and at least your main guy or a brother, if he wanna attack you to early bevor you're ready pay the money the want, you will have enough money very soon in the game! So if he attacks, the evil guy only have 30 turns to crush your whole army!

So here we go: lets say your province has 4 castles ... so you put 4 armys into your castles and hold 3 armies as reinforcements not in battle! The evil armies will rush on and attacking your castles, as your forces where smaller in size bevor the war, the evil armies will mostly have absolutely no training and are easy to wipe!

But you stay in your castles and let him come ... if you are short to get captured (one of your heroes, you let him run into one of your other provinces. sooner or later one of the evil guys has very less peoples left or no peoples left (the red number shown instead of the white!) than about ~ 30-40 (his hero power he try to escape (run away)), you attack him and bring him down to power zero!

If the enemy is too strong you come in with reinforcements and move around hiding before the evil guys ... after battle you will have about 3-7 heros captured and about 80% of them will join your ranks, immedeately after move out with your mainguy/brother to let the pc reinforce the armies, give money to the new heroes in only 2-3 turns ...

Thats all, the others told also good tips also use them!

Mydgard

This is a favorite game of mine as well. Its based on a classic Chinese story. One translation is called Outlaws of the Marsh, it pretty good. The full version is something like 105 chapters. Very lengthy.