Interesting answer: Sima Yi never had the advantage when he faced Zhuge Liang, and the two sides were only evenly matched.
Sima Yi's difficulties
The total population of the Shu State is only about 940,000, the total population of the Wei State is about 4.3 million, the total military strength of the Shu State has reached 100,000, and the total strength of the Wei State has reached 500,000.
But is it enough to just compare the data? Let's take a look at what are the unique benefits of the Shu Kingdom?
The Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai once said that I wrote a poem that shu dao is difficult to go to qingtian, which means that the difficulty of Shu dao is often easy to defend and difficult to attack.
And the easy to defend and difficult to attack means that Zhuge Liang only needs to send a small number of troops, stay at a critical juncture, and then delay the enemy, and the enemy will not be able to attack even if he is killed.
In the same way, Cao Wei was not without enemies, on the surface Cao Wei unified the Great North, but in the north there were still enemies in the north, the north of the north, the east of the north, and the west of the north.
This meant that Cao Wei absolutely could not suppress all 500,000 troops on the side of Shu Han, and he also needed to allocate at least half of his troops to defend the entire Cao Wei in the four directions of east, west, south, north, and north.
At this time, the number of Shu Han who could really fight was probably about 80,000, and Cao Wei was only able to fight 200,000.
In other words, this simple data ratio is 1:2. (In addition, Cao Wei also needed to beware of Eastern Wu, let alone many troops.)
Under the premise of 1:2, the population has no way to form an absolute crushing trend, after all, at the time of the imperialist war at the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the casualty ratio reached 1:600. Wait, that seems a bit off-topic.
Sima Yi did not dare to move
At that time, Sima Yi's state was very delicate, to put it simply, if he was sent to the front, he had neither military achievements nor defeats, and at most he would be scolded and accused by the emperor.
But once Sima Yi did something wrong and suffered defeat, then all the courtiers of the entire Cao Wei would be verbally criticized, and Sima Yi's position in Cao Wei would plummet.
In other words, Sima Yi has understood that he only has two possibilities to do, the first possibility is that he must win the battle, and if he wants to win the battle, the second possibility may be that he absolutely cannot lose.
With these two small emotions, Sima Yi did not dare to move at all, including Zhuge Kongming's empty city plan, Sima Yi did not dare to move, if the real marching battle really lost? Can he afford that responsibility?
This is also why Zhuge Liang ordered his soldiers to take turns scolding Sima Yi's ancestors for three generations, and sent him women's clothes to humiliate him, Sima Yi was still unmoved, because once he moved, he had to win, and if he did not win after moving, the whole Cao Wei would put pressure on him.
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