Original Secrets & Tricks
Four tricks passed down by veterans: full-stat starts, early officers, ruler capture and looting.
Cheat: full-stat home city
At ruler selection (must be done before the ruler appears on screen), follow these steps for a home city with full gold, troops and treasures:
- Stop at the ruler-select screen, before any ruler appears.
- Hold START on controller 1.
- While holding, press Up, Down, Left, Right in sequence, 3 full cycles.
- Release after the “ping” sound, then start the game and pick a ruler — full gold, troops and treasures.
The “February 189 officer swap”
An exploit that yields late-game officers as early as February 189 — Xiahou Ba, Deng Ai, Sima Zhao, even Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang. [The source gives only this summary, without step-by-step details.]
From Baidu Tieba (tieba.baidu.com/p/5127947076).
Capturing a ruler
Rulers normally cannot be captured; this exploits the “ruler is not the governor” bug to search one out:
- Reduce the target to one city, its ruler plus a single officer, with as little gold and rice as possible (don’t starve them).
- Besiege it while developing and emptying a city next door.
- In battle, drive the lone officer into the empty city, leave the ruler in the poor one, and withdraw.
- Wait a month or two — the ruler may move into the good city, triggering the bug: he is in the city but not its governor.
- Besiege and attack that city, burning its provisions to win.
- Use the “search” command on the city to search the ruler out and take him in.
Empty-city looting
- Actively strip gold and rice from unowned cities.
- For occupied cities: attack, then retreat on round one to bypass them — one loop can net a thousand-plus.
[Transcriber’s note] Cheats and bug exploits may affect saves — back up before trying.]
Source file: bw-dalu/roms/source-web/original-guide-cnblogs.md (compiled from K.F.J on cnblogs.com et al., 2018).