Shame we're gonna lose most of our best Hero Units soon, if temporarily.
I've actually been thinking about who we'll take with us as our new core of Officers.
•Firstly; Xu Jian, our honorary godfathers son who was raised alongside us, absolutely loyal, however a little strained in his relationship with us as we've neglected him repeatedly and left him behind several times the last year. For the next several years having him with us will solidify that loyalty once again.
His stat gain has been 14 points, which puts him right after Lu Lingqi who is at 21 points gained, and the sixth fastest improving of our officers. He has good bonuses already and a trait for stat gain, if we get him into combat he's going to improve fast. He is above average, despite lack of combat or experience or good equipment and being so young. He has potential to be a high tier general, not Five Tiger level but pretty damn high.
•Secondly: Cao Xing, yes he's very young, only 14-15, but dear god he already has 71 war, and is the seventh fastest improving of our officers. He already has some good combat traits and a lot of experience scouting in war, which all the rest of our officers lack.
His speciality with a bow is also something we lack in as his his affinity with hunters and peasants now Zhu Fang is gone, Xu Jian has an affinity with soldiers, but that different from getting recruits from Hunters and Poachers for use as archers and scouts. Overall, as he grows, Cao Xing won't be far off from Zhu Fang, Liang Shu or Zhang Liao in combat potential. Recall in the Romance he managed to put an arrow in the eye of an enemy General from across the battlefield.
However, be prepared, he'll likely be more loyal to Lu Bu and choose to serve under him over us if we split from him.
•Thirdly: Gongsun Ye, this gives us a connection to the Gongsun clan, specifically a certain warlord raising up an army in northern You who's family has expressed interest in us…it doesn't hurt he's got a good stat line, especially for someone so young, he's only 19-20 yet he's got a stat line better than men a decade older than him and some really good equipment.
Basically this gives us someone who can give us an important political connection who's also a strong officer on his own. We want to keep that connection and build on it. We can't marry off our sisters or cousin to the Gongsun clan as they wanted, we already have ideas for them of course, but we can look to build brotherhood and friendship with them.
Overall, outside of Ce Xiang, our cousin, these are the officers I would suggest we focus on and build up into a new core while we are separated from Zhu Fang and Yu Zhong.
However we will still be working
with Zhang Liao, he won't be under us anymore, he was offered the same rank as us by Inspector Ding so he'll be our peer, though likely to listen to our suggestions and follow our lead.