Warlords: Strategic Conquest

You decide to not expose your troops to inevitable heavy casualties from ballistae fire. You order your ballistae forward. They move into range to destroy the installations. A battle of the ballistae ensues as bolts furiously fly back and forth. Ballistae on both sides slowly wreck and break down. Your 20 to 10 advantage is offset by their greater range and accuracy. When the giant bolts cease flying, neither side has a single ballistae intact.

This is the result you were looking for. Now you finally get the chance to use your cloud ladders.

They slowly approach the walls, with your infantry and archers forming long lines behind them. Your 500 thousand cavalry can only wait outside the castle, anxious to enter the fray.

You watch as your foot soldiers crawl out of their cloud ladders and attempt to assail the walls. The enemy is well positioned, sniping the exit points of your cloud ladders and maximizing the effectiveness of their 300 thousand archers. Almost none of your troops make it onto the walls alive, and those few who do are quickly cut down by the 200 thousand infantry supporting the archers. There are simply too many enemy archers for your cloud ladders to safely deploy your troops.

You rue your decision of not attacking the gate with your ballistae, but now it is too late as they have been destroyed. The defenders slaughter each wave of your soldiers, who reach the top of their cloud ladder only to be outnumbered and outmaneuvered like the wave before them. Soon you see your 700 thousand foot soldiers dwindle to only a few thousand. Your cavalry can only watch as their comrades are cut down hundreds of feet above them. You feel abject failure.

Your cavalry cannot enter the castle nor attack anyone, and Min is certainly not going to open his doors, so you have no choice but to tell your troops to turn back. However, your colonels have had enough of your idiocy and decide it is time for a new leader. You can't blame them; after all you did just blow a great chance at victory. Your colonels execute you on the spot. Soon they start bickering amongst themselves about how to divide power and none achieves the dream you once had of uniting China.
End Of Story