We will talk about the Stratagem, Bluffing and Cover Up Army Manuvers. This discussion is for intermidiate-advanced players of Age II.
Stratagems are really cool tools you can use to help you manipulate a battle towards your favor. Most players make the mistake of using a stratagem without combining it with other ofensive/defensive manuvers. This is a mistake because many Stratagems serve as a suppliment and should not be used as a "stand alone" tool. There are many many creative uses for Stratagems and I will discuss just a few surrounding Bluffing and Cover Up Army Manuvers.
Say for example you want to wipe the troops of a heavily defended player who has their gates open. Simple, send multiple waves by pressing the Colonize button, right? Wrong. Yes, you can do that. But here is a way to use Bluffing and Cover up Army Manuvers to help you make your attack more effective....
Many of us know that if you send waves to a player they can use the Stratagem "Besiege Enemy Fort to Rescue Ally" which will cause the wave(s) you sent to return to your city and thus screw up your efforts. Solution?
Simply send a few waves of 20k total in troops. Use Bluffing on the waves. To use Bluffing go to Reports > Army Movement > View > Stratagem, AFTER you have sent the bluff wave(s)
The Bluffing stratagem will make your troop count 5-10 times bigger.
20k x 5 = 100k
20k x 10 = 200k
When Bluffing is applied to a total wave of 20k troops it will make the wave look like a 100k-200k wave. The defender will not know if the waves are being sent from a Historical city or from a regular player city unless they are able to check the origin of the attack. We all know that Historical cities can send much larger waves than regular player cities.
At the same time, send your ACTUAL attack waves with full troops and use the stratagem Cover Up Army Maneuvers. It will understate your troops by 10-20%.
Now ask yourself this question: If I am the defender and I have lots of attack waves coming in to spam up my Feasting Hall... and I going to take the time to check the source of every wave? Probably not. Am I going to check what is being sent and use Besiege Enemy Fort to Rescue Ally in order to send back the largest waves, the waves that could do the most damage? You bet your boots I am. So if the defender sees a wave of 100k-200k troops, most of which are layered to do heavy damage, those waves will more than likely be recalled. So make those waves Bluffs. That way the defender will send back the least damaging waves, not the most damaging.
And for goodness sakes, do not use Bluffing on 40k+ waves because that will be dead give away that something is wrong. If the defender see incoming waves of 200k-400k troops in a single attack wave... they are probably going to know exactly whats up. So try to make the Bluff waves look as real as possible.




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