Building a Dynasty: Tools of Statecraft

Trade, Looting and intrigue! In order to acquire power in this game you have three primary tools at your disposal, trade, conquest and intrigues. These are the rules that don’t quite fall under the other categories and so they are here. We will cover the three tools at your disposal in detail here.

Trade: Trade is a vital tool for expanding your house, trade is done by making deals with other players or NPCs to buy and sell resources or in some cases you may even come up with a successful barter. In order to successfully trade resources and cash you need to have a deal brokered and enough caravans or transports available for shipping your supplies to their destination and your payment back. Be wary though because trade units like caravans and transports have the same movement range as the other land and sea units respectively and if you are desperate for a resource it may be best to try and find a source closer to home even if the costs are higher.

Trade can also be dangerous because moving large sums of cash or goods can attract the wrong kind of attention and may see caravans being plundered and transports seized by pirates.

Trade Units: There are two “trade” units a caravan which is a specific unit to land and a transport which is a multi-purpose ship described in the ship’s section.

Caravan: A train of wagons, horses and drivers capable of lugging cargo and cash to and fro.
Cost: 500 huan, 30 lumber, 100 people.
Cargo: 80 units of material or 5,000 coins per caravan.

Conquest: As explained in the movement and combat sections when your army sits in control of a settlement for a turn with the required number of units to “cap” its defense points you gain control of that settlement. When you first take control of a settlement you have a few options available:

Occupy:’’’ A fairly straightforward occupation which brings the settlement under your control and after a few turns of unrest adds its population and resources to your own.

Loot: Looting is similar to occupation except you take whatever food, money and resources the settlement was sitting on when you took it. If you loot a settlement it will be problematic for some time and can even risk spreading dissent to your other settlements.

Pillage: Pillage is a more extreme form of looting, this is best done if you don’t actually want to add the settlement to your own household. Pillaging provides a big boost in money and resources as well as giving you the option to enslave a percentage of the population and take them back to your territory to either work in your infrastructure or be forced into your army as fodder.

Slaves: As part of the pillage you can gain slaves these serve two major bonuses to your house if you choose to take slaves. The first benefit is they eat half the amount of food as normal citizens while still being able to work in your shops and industry. The other bonus is you can conscript them into a slave levy unit.

Slave Levy: 2000/200/1 These poor souls are even lower than the root conscript in the Hanshen armies, they are unarmored and carry only a short fighting spear and a whicker shield. They are half trained and serve as little more than fodder. They do however come in large numbers at cheap costs!

Raze: Razing a settlement is the ultimate act of spite, every building is burned every citizen slaughtered and every ounce of loot taken from what was once a settlement occupied by people. Depending on who you do this too and how often it can earn you scorn and hatred from almost everybody!

Intrigue: Intrigue is the third tool of statecraft; you can use agents to attempt to gather information about other factions such as army and fleet movements, trade routes, plots, and a plethora of other potentially invaluable information. If you have agents you can carry out just about any covert action you can think of from spying on rivals, to potentially blackmailing them, assassinations or even carrying out false flag attacks disguising your troops as another faction or bandits to either weaken your rivals, raid trade caravans or convince others to go to war with a mutual enemy. Beware though for the great game is unforgiving and if your plots are discovered you may face ruination on all fronts!