Use when negotiating for survival under threat of execution or hostage situations. Restructures hostage transactions by demonstrating a living captive's leverage value, sequencing agreements to protect all parties, and buying time for allied intervention.
Use when building popular support or consolidating political power through economic generosity. Implements asymmetric resource distribution — collecting with small measures, distributing with large — to cultivate mass loyalty and clan influence over time.
Use when facing a militarily superior enemy or planning attrition warfare. Employs deep fortification (深壁), supply line interdiction with light cavalry, and patient refusal of engagement to exhaust the enemy before launching a decisive counterattack during retreat.
A strategy for making a rebellion or regime change appear legitimate by creating omens, invoking admired historical figures, and rallying popular support.
Use when a powerful minister faces suspicion from a ruler or when navigating dangerous court politics. Deploys four survival strategies — hostage-sending, deliberate self-pollution (自汙), graceful punishment acceptance, and honor-declining — to reduce perceived threat level.
Use when sowing discord between enemy commanders and their trusted advisors or conducting disinformation campaigns. Deploys substantial resources to spread defection rumors, stages differential envoy treatment, and exploits resulting trust breakdowns to degrade enemy decision-making.
Use when evaluating governance quality, assessing leadership effectiveness, or auditing a ruler's conduct. Provides positive and negative indicators covering talent retention, crisis response, wealth distribution, and popular sentiment to diagnose state health.
A framework for forming a coalition against a dominant opponent by combining the grievances and capabilities of several potential allies. It focuses on coordinating pressure from multiple directions so the opponent cannot concentrate all its forces in one place.
A framework for planning leadership succession through merit and long-term testing. It is based on the traditional Chinese examples of Yao, Shun, and Yu, where successors were recommended, tested in office, and formally appointed after proving their ability.
An ethical analysis framework for comparing moral behavior with worldly success. It uses Sima Qian’s comparisons of virtuous people who suffered and villains who prospered to question whether justice reliably governs outcomes.
Use when seeking lasting historical reputation or understanding how names endure across generations. Applies the 附骥尾 (attaching to the horse's tail) principle — cultivating personal virtue while associating with eminent figures to ensure one's legacy is recorded and transmitted.
Use when persuading rulers, executives, or powerful figures who hold your fate. Applies Han Fei's 说难 framework to diagnose hidden motivations, avoid dangerous pitfalls (revealing secrets, pointing out faults), and build trust before speaking boldly.
Use when facing a numerically superior enemy or planning ambush warfare. Employs Sun Bin's staged retreat (reducing cooking fires from 100,000 to 30,000) to feign mass desertion, plus asymmetric resource allocation (sacrifice weak vs. strong, deploy strong vs. middle) for 2-1 victories.
A trust-building method for introducing major reforms. It follows Shang Yang’s story of offering a reward for moving a piece of wood, then using the fulfilled promise to show that official commitments are reliable.
Use when building multi-state coalitions or diplomatic alliances against a dominant threat. Applies Su Qin's 合纵 strategy — analyzing each party's geography, military strength, and fears, then proposing concrete mutual defense terms with specific obligations per member.
A guide to establishing discipline and authority when taking command of a new group. It uses examples from Sima Rangju and Sun Wu, including penalties for senior people who break rules.
Use when prioritizing between competing strategic targets or evaluating conquest options. Weighs prestigious targets (symbolic resources like the nine tripods) against practical targets (territorial expansion) using feasibility, consequence, net benefit, and reputation criteria.
Use when implementing comprehensive state reforms or transforming governance systems. Follows Shang Yang's model — mutual responsibility (什伍), family structure reform, merit-based ranks replacing hereditary privilege, and standardized weights, measures, and legal codes.
Use when besieging a fortified enemy or planning encirclement warfare. Based on Bai Qi's victory at Changping (长平) — feign retreat to draw the enemy out, deploy hidden forces to cut retreat routes, sever supply lines, and wait 40+ days for starvation-driven collapse.
Use when persuading a reluctant subordinate or official to accept a dangerous assignment. Based on 12-year-old Gan Luo's (甘罗) method — comparing the target's status to predecessors who refused similar orders, then implying fatal consequences without direct threat.
Use when commanding a large army against a determined enemy or planning patient siege warfare. Based on Wang Jian's (王翦) conquest of Chu with 600,000 troops — refusing battle, maintaining troop welfare through recreation and shared conditions, then striking when the enemy withdraws.
At most 3 mods per repository are shown here, and a mod shipped inside a plugin is left to that plugin's page — the rest are on their repository pages: