Chapter 394: First Experience
Before entering the game, the system prompted him to first select the province for his birthplace, a feature similar to other nation-war games.
Zheng Hongxi took a look. He had initially wanted to choose Qingzhou or Yangzhou, but found they were already full, so he picked Liangzhou instead.
After all, the Liangzhou army had a significant role in the history of the Three Kingdoms.
Upon entering the game, Zheng Hongxi was surprised to discover that the Luoyang city he had seen earlier was actually the game’s real-time scene.
The view before Zheng Hongxi’s eyes was a vast wilderness. This wilderness contained rocky mountains, forests, and farmland. The camera angle was very high, so the entire rocky mountain only occupied a tiny grid square on the screen.
Zheng Hongxi roughly estimated that one screen on his phone could display about 10x10, or roughly 100 small grid squares, while a mountain or a patch of farmland only took up one square.
The nine grid squares in the center of the screen were marked with special borders—some red, some green—clearly indicating the main operable area.
In the very center of those nine squares was a small city emitting smoke, while the surrounding red squares held some bandit troops and their camp tents.
Obviously, following the opening storyline, this small city was the player’s own city, currently under attack by bandits and in dire straits.
Next came a series of beginner tutorials.
Guided by the system, Zheng Hongxi began to assemble a troop to counter the bandits.
The entire combat system of "Rate the Land" was also completely different from the mobile games currently on the market. Each player could lead multiple troops, and each troop could carry a maximum of three generals.
Each troop was divided into the main camp, the central army, and the vanguard. If the general in the main camp was wiped out along with the entire troop, the battle was lost. However, Zheng Hongxi’s troop hadn’t unlocked the vanguard position yet; it would only become available after upgrading the command hall.
After selecting a bandit group, the troop set out.
The process of marching was very clear: an arrow connected the target tile, and above the troop model’s head, the specific march time was displayed.
Soon, the troops engaged, and the battle screen appeared. In the early battles, both sides had few troops. Zheng Hongxi’s cavalry charged in and completely annihilated the enemy forces.
Next came basic operations like recruiting generals, continuing to attack enemies, attacking enemies carrying supplies, and conscripting soldiers.
However, Zheng Hongxi also noticed that the system was gradually shifting the player’s attention from the specific battle screen to the battle reports. Later, when attacking tiles, the battle screen no longer popped up; instead, a battle report was sent directly to the lower-left corner. If the player was interested, they could click to open it.
Skipping the lengthy and meaningless battle process was a nice feature for Zheng Hongxi—it saved a lot of trouble.
After successfully repelling the bandits, Zheng Hongxi’s city was built up, occupying all nine grid squares and beginning to take shape.
System prompt: Occupying the capitals of all thirteen provinces would allow you to unify the land. Early development is slow; you can follow the mission prompts to expand your influence.
"Beginner tutorial... that’s it?" Zheng Hongxi was a bit surprised.
Most mobile games had very long beginner tutorials because the gameplay itself was complex, and basically every new mechanic unlocked required a tutorial.
But judging by "Rate the Land’s" attitude, were these few simple steps the entirety of the beginner tutorial?
This left Zheng Hongxi a bit puzzled. With just these few steps, could players really understand how to play?
Next, Zheng Hongxi started doing missions.
The missions in the game were roughly divided into two parts: missions and strategic objectives.
Strategic objectives were longer-term goals, like occupying a certain number of land tiles, reaching a certain resource production level, etc. These could essentially be seen as the core tasks for the near future.
Missions, on the other hand, were more varied, including constructing buildings, upgrading buildings, occupying land of a certain level, and so on. Although the missions didn’t seem to have a clear quest line, they actually did. For example, players had to upgrade the city hall before unlocking missions to upgrade other buildings.
There was quite a lot to do in the early stages: constantly sending troops to occupy land and continuously upgrading city buildings.
At the start, building upgrades were fast—short ones took just over ten seconds, longer ones a few minutes—and they were quickly completed.
Zheng Hongxi followed the missions, constantly upgrading buildings and sending out troops. And indeed, there was always something to do.
Each completed mission gave a lot of resources, which was quite satisfying for players because resources were scarce in the early game. Having these mission rewards meant they could continue upgrading the next level of buildings.
During gameplay, Zheng Hongxi also discovered some slightly deeper rules.
Other players’ birthplaces were nearby, and they would compete for land. However, at the start, everyone was in a truce state and couldn’t attack each other.
In other words, who got a piece of land depended entirely on who was faster.
Newly occupied land was also in a truce state and couldn’t be attacked for an hour.
Troops could only march to tiles adjacent to their own already-occupied tiles; they couldn’t skip over and attack.
Moreover, Zheng Hongxi noticed that he currently had a beginner’s buff. Besides the main city’s truce protection, it included faster recovery for injured generals, halved stamina consumption for generals, reduced cooldown for joining alliances, and full refund of conscription resources when removing generals from a troop.
Under normal game rules, defeated generals would be injured and couldn’t fight; each battle consumed 20 stamina, and generals had only 100 stamina total, so they couldn’t fight once it ran out; and removing generals from a troop normally only refunded 80% of resources.
Clearly, the beginner buff was a modification of certain settings to lower the game’s difficulty for new players.
There were also a few players around Zheng Hongxi, and since everyone was currently in the wild (not in an alliance), they all appeared marked in red, which made Zheng Hongxi a bit uneasy.
But soon, he received an alliance invitation.
System prompt: Joining an alliance will increase resource production, allow you to march using alliance members’ land, and enable you to attack cities as an alliance.
Obviously, in a nation-war game like this, most core gameplay relied on the alliance as a vehicle. Without joining an alliance, it was basically unplayable.
Two alliances invited Zheng Hongxi: one called [Dragon War the World] and the other [Big Farming Household]. Clearly, the first alliance won Zheng Hongxi’s favor, simply because its name sounded slightly better.
The alliance was only level 1, so it could only hold 10 members. It would need to be upgraded to add more players. Several alliance members were near Zheng Hongxi’s city, all marked with blue tiles, which made him feel much more at ease.
At that moment, the alliance leader started sending messages in the alliance channel, telling everyone to join the chat group.