Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors Tactics & Guides -> Guide -> Psychological Warfare -> Page 1
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Psychological Warfare


1. Taking advantage of civilization stereotypes: Most players are rather stubborn in that they will focus on one strategy and will not stop, you must use this to your advantage. Usually the opponent will be this stubborn when he/she realizes that you are a civ that specializes in a certain line of units(Viking: Infantry, Persians: Cavalry, etc.) He/she will mainly only use the counter to the unit that he/she expects you to employ in battles(Persian: Pikemen, Viking: Archers), so you already know what he/she will build. What you need to do is build a complete opposite to the units that your opponent expects you to use(Viking: Heavy Cavalry, Mongol: Heavy Infantry). Usually the opposite to the stereotypical unit is the counter to the counter of the steriotypical unit, so you will easily destroy your enemy's army.

Although powerful if pulled off, using this strategy is rather risky, because your opponent may anticipate your strategy and build the counter to the radical unit that you are planning of creating.

2. When approaching your enemy, set your army to staggered formation: Along with protecting yourself from scorpion and magnonel fire, when your army is in staggered formation, it looks much larger than it really is. When you have large units like cavalry, the army's size is exaggerated even more. The use of your looking larger than it really is, is that your enemy might get frightened and may run away. Even if they do fight, they may be in a frenzy to fight off your army, which means that the amount of extra troops that your enemy might train could severly slow down his/her economy.

3. Attack your enemy on two fronts: (Note: This strategy is best used with an ally, so you will not have to switch from one part of the map to another.) Accumulate 2 armies, and situate them on either side of an enemy. First attack with one army, and when a large portion of your enemy's army is defending against your first army, attack with your second army. Most likely, your enemy will have sent all of his/her army to the other side of his/her territory, so one half will be nearly completely unguarded. This will make it much easier for your second army to break into the city. Eventually, your enemy will be forced to send his/her army to defend against your second army, allowing your 1st army to break through the city much easier. Just with the time your enemy's army takes to get across his/her territory will make it much easier for you, but it may also greatly confuse your enemy, giving you even more time.

4. Distract your enemy from his/her economy: This strategy is rather useful in the start of the game, using your scout. Although it takes a bit of micromanagement, you can use gather points on your town center, in order to save you some time. Using the scout, attack one of your opponent's villager. If it attacks, run away. Most likely, your enemy will have to send villagers out to kill your scout, in order to stop your harassments. Because he will be focused on your scout, some of his villagers may be idle. Another economic problem that the enemy will have is that the villagers that are trying to kill your scout cavalry will not be gathering resources.



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Comments:
11.11.06 18:12 - yolcuvincent
thanks,i love this tricks..i will try
26.11.06 23:37 - King Purple
There are several things that we do without really paying attention to why we do them. This is a good example of those sort of subconscious actions.
19.12.06 19:31 - Narse
a little addition for 7: tell your enemy a good joke, so he'll start laughin and u may place your trebuchets without him noticing. i have to tell u, GREAT guide this one.
24.12.06 05:24 - Narse
here's another addition: draw your enemy's army away from his city with ranged units, then close his retreat with a group of fast units which you kept hidden (cavalry, mounted archers, fast infantry maybe but not so effective).
26.01.07 04:29 - HC_Shanks__
glad ya guys found it interesting, and its really cool the admin saved the strats from EL ^^
04.02.07 19:50 - The best gamer
...Great, really good
15.02.07 17:22 - NightFalcon90909
Great article on psych warfare... table of times was helpful too.
01.06.07 04:28 - Mandalore
Send a ton of relatively cheap units and a couple siege weapons to attak the enemy base,when they attak, fite a battle and near the end bring in your real army.
18.06.07 22:35 - Bob McBob
Very good, I just beat my brother using #4!!!
02.07.07 07:12 - Steele
Hehe I know a good way to distract ur opponents (especially AI) At the start of the game send ur scout to the enemy base as fast as possible. When ur enemy see u, he probably wont attack u since he know you will only distract him. What you now do is kill all of his sheep. Since its only sheep, he wont be alerted and if lucky u will be able to waste about 500 of his food supply (when a sheep is killed by a military unit the food will be automatically lost)
17.07.07 17:59 - IS_NormanDuck
A comment from a newbie ^^ " If you say something like "Am I you for me seven turtle" " It sounds like Ruy Lopez in 16th century who spoke that playing chess it would be favorable if your opponent has the sun in his eyes
27.11.07 16:11 - general hendrix
great strategies. although i had used some of them unknowingly many a times....
13.12.07 02:26 - cohorts killer
those are so true
05.01.08 00:26 - omt
"Am I you for me seven turtle" He got totally confused
11.01.08 16:10 - tejprakash
i quitted aoe but on reading these strategies i am back in the world of aoe
22.01.08 07:22 - Dude
these tricks are fun to record. Wathc opponent when you are finished
04.02.08 01:18 - Bozoom
Man i LOVE this tactic... I played for 4 years this game... and still i develloped new tactics... this one is kinda hard... it pushes your development to the limith of 0
13.04.08 08:29 -
those are some good strategies, work well. where is a good source of info on which units counter attack well versus other units?
09.05.08 00:24 - bleu
kill all your villagers and make a big army of 150 pladins and 20 onagers and 10 scorpions and 10 halberdiers.. and raze.
15.05.08 17:14 - Makon
i really loled when i read this... psychological warfare is so rarely used on games its funny to see a guide about it (although it SHOULD be used a lot more). Very nice!
27.05.08 00:39 - The Authority
When you make alot of Cavalry Archers, don't just use them, actually diversify your units, buy adding some Heavy Cavalry Archers and Sheep.
04.07.08 20:18 - Pyrreli
Thx for all fantastic information:D
11.07.08 07:19 - Elliot
Number 3 is a must when you start playing harder opponents, also use your taunts, when u launch an attack whilst another attack is in progress, use a loud, annoying, repeatable taunt, so they do not hear the YOU ARE BEING ATTACKED sound
29.08.08 00:07 - Muhammad
Thanks alot these are really cool and important strategies especially to a noob like me ,,lol
28.11.08 05:05 - nick
I really reccomend copying before battle and pasting a comment or anything like that using ctrl-c and ctrl-v, that way you arent distracted yourself
18.12.08 11:51 - Teuton Master
With the Teutons, get them to the Imperial Age any way. After that, get all the Upgrades available, also, make sure you have a castle. Ok, now that you have all of that, build castles for defense and then kill all your villagers. Since doing that, make sure you have the cheat Aegis on, it will build units and stuff really fast. OK also, use the cheat Cheese Steak Jimmy's for food and Robin Hood for gold, use that until you have the number of recources for creating 1k Teutonic Knights. Now, choose the desired Nation that will get wiped off the deck. Now, assuming that you have 200 units max, CHARGE!!! Break open a gap in their defence and then get them to the center of the town and let them own. Firstly take out the castles, dont worry about anything else, just the accursed castles. Teutonic Knights are slow, but are sorta immortal (very hard to beat if you verse them, or me XD ). Eventually either your knights will die, or they will wipe them out. Send the remaining units to the center. After that, send re-enforcements, you will need them for the next town. now, just pillage and pillage and pillage, eventually you will win. The hardest race to verse wouldve been the Persians Teutons or the chines coz of their Chi No Ku's or w/e they are. So... just annihilate all enemies and dont rely on your allies, just sit it quiet until the warfare has settled down, then just charge, its quite fun if the enemies put up a fight, but, they will kill them no matter what usually. the only hard unit would be the Persian War Elephant. :D thats all for now.
18.12.08 11:52 - Teuton Master
sorry for the long article guys XD time 2 play AOE2 : Age of Crusaders! :D!!! Ta-Ta for now!
20.01.09 09:29 - dummie
any special unit to kill the war elephant ? as the camel and halberdier ??? thanks
01.02.09 03:04 - jam
neat tricks - just need 2 try them out now
27.02.09 05:32 - ADD
Tueton Master mentioned cheating, but that has little to do with psycological warefare, and if you are playing a multiplayer game with 'allow cheats' off, it won't work. In addition, if players start using those resource cheats, etc. there is not end to where it stops and takes out the fun of working off of an economy. (there are many other cheats besides the ones he mentioned)
26.03.09 22:56 - william
this is a stupid strategy, it relys on the fact that for you everything is going to workout fine. There is to many variables that will screw you over if you use this strategy.
07.05.09 14:55 - john
COOL.
23.05.09 04:48 - Bobert R.
I've tried the "Am I you for me seven turtle" strategy several times, but i've never gotten a response lol. And also, my friend and i played a 2v2 RM with us allied, and we were acting like we thought that only we could see what we were saying, but we made it so that everyone could see it. So, we said things like "I'm about to flush with 20 men at arms. I just have 6 more to go and I'll attack" and things like that. One guy was very confused lol
11.07.09 20:16 - zoooga
its not about breaking an enemy. besides "Am I you for me seven turtle" is funny as hell and would momentarily throw any good commander for a few critical seconds. imagine, the enemy preparing to siege your gates and then recieving a random message before he gets raided by cavalry archers. he may accidently forget to move his units into counter-raid mode and lose men, all because you sent a strange message.
11.07.09 20:19 - zoooga
pysch warfare is not for someone who enjoys rolling over a town with battalions of champions and mangonel barrages. its for people who thoroughly enjoy ripping a person apart by poking them from under a bush and whistling like a pidgeon. everything this dude wrote down does work, so i encourage any good guerilla man to think about this stuff
25.09.09 11:48 - K K
it's nice
17.12.09 10:12 - DAUD
Its A shitty Tutorial.If anyone follow it, he will be lying under enemy's feet .SO please don't try it.
31.12.09 10:50 - *~$Nilesh The Gamer$~*
Hi, I was runner up in the age of empire contest at national level. just do what i say & see the results ...
31.12.09 10:53 - *~$Nilesh The Gamer$~*
Drop me mail at nileshkarande1@gmail.com ------------------------ Every team has its own beuty if you have mongols take lot of mongols around 100 & 10 onagers & attack enemy I beat it will defeat any army
31.12.09 10:56 - *~$Nilesh The Gamer$~*
No one can beat mongols excepts scrisisor from Archery.so make a huge troup of mongols of around 125-130 & take 5 to 10 siege onagers no one can stand in front of him.
20.02.10 21:41 - P
definately trying the trebuchet house one.
02.04.10 21:59 - sachin
gr8 stuff.......
11.05.10 18:04 - aoe--4life
First of all psych warfare is something used to scare and confuse. the number one tactic that i use is to make the enemy think that u are weak. build a fake town with 10-15 villagers farming between you and your enemy. just wait for him to attack then send in your forces by sea or on the opposite side of the enemy base. most of his army will be out attacking the fake town and you will role over him or her with a relitively small army. also try small inraging pokes at his villagers only. will piss them off.
31.05.10 12:56 - Phalse
Or you could rename this article annoy and confuse your opponent using mostly exploits of AoE's ancient game code. Honestly the only thing here that is a strat is using the scout to attack villagers while using TC wp.
02.06.10 07:48 - JC
Here's another trick. Send in a couple of scouts on a suicide mission to the enemys tc while in fudal. This will have two benefits, first it will damage his economy and second, you will know what units your enemy is building.
30.06.10 00:14 - Goguryeo
This pathetic strategy doesnt always work, my enemy tried it to me, but its a common and obvious tactics that i am expecting from an enemy so i didnt pay a big attention on his/her attack. Q: why would you try to use your villager to kill a scout which is better armored and has more attack power, another one is that why would you try to catch a running scout using a villager? isnt that stupid? and with this strategy, the enemy that you're harassing can do the same thing on you so whats special on this strategy? nothing... :) anyone wants to play with me go to garena gameserver and add me up {jumong}
03.07.10 08:27 - gccnmvmk
A weakness in the house/trebuchet tactic, of the enemy send cavalry to attack the houses, he/she will see the green SQUARE line instead of the circule one of the trebuchet and retreat the cavalry. Other thing is that he/she might do click on the house before sending troops(I always do that)
03.07.10 08:36 - gccnmvmk
Other thing; There are perfect civilizations who are good in always everything, for example: Spanish, Byzantines, Saracens, etc. You never know exactly what the enemy will send. I think that only works in lowly civs like viking, aztecs, franks. Viking: Infantery, Archers. Aztecs: Infantery. Franks: Cavalry.
04.07.10 08:16 - Claijohn
Thats really good thinking!!
18.07.10 17:32 - Andy
Spanish and Saracens are good at nothing. Sure they have good technology in imperial but a good player will never let you reach even castle age. The most often played civs on voobly nowadays are huns and aztecs, and it is pretty easy to see that huns will make cavalry/cavalry archers and aztecs will make EW and monks
12.10.10 06:43 - Bothorth
I could anticipate your anticipation of my anticipation of your counter to my anti-stereotypical unit. Point 1 is Game Theory!
26.03.11 17:30 - HC_Shanks__
Glad you like it. If you have more ideas for interesting warfare strategies, please email me at Dave_DJshanks@hotmail.com to tell me so I can post more.
27.03.11 23:34 -
lol
26.04.11 11:22 - Tim
40 Heavy Cavalry Archers 40 Paladin Knights 5 Trebuchets 5 Onagers 5 Siege Rams 5 Bombard Cannons = Unstoppable Army
05.05.11 07:30 - castles
i abuse my oppenent all the time. his reaction is always funny
05.05.11 07:32 - period stain
i like to lick butt holes all the time guys i want sum cum in my mouth
05.05.11 07:35 - castles
that last guy is kinda strange/gaaaayyy!!!!
05.05.11 07:37 - casltes
NOOOOO!!! HE IS NOT!!!
05.05.11 07:47 - casltes(the real one)
that was my little brother
30.11.11 23:51 - Spartacus
I respect everyone's ideas of psycological warfare, but there is a much simple way to win. Simply train as many illagers as possible. Immediately start collecting wood and food, stone and gold if possible. Once you have considerable resources (you shoul pretty quickly) build barracks archery range stable and many houses. After this send villagers to work building a stone (or fortified if available) wall. Set up watch/bombard towers along the inside o the wall. Age up whenever possible. Once age three, build castles, and research all remaining techs. This should all happen very quickly. This entire ime train cavalry, archers, infantry, and some siege units. Exact units depend on opponent's army. Attack. This method seems simple but that is why I is so good. People expect elaborate plans and "psychological" war. This method has worke for me, and has helped me win man many battles...I have won competitions and haven't lost a battle for years. And as far a civilization goes, a good player can win with any civilization, playing against any civilization. I do not know if any of you will use my strategy but you do not have to. I am just making a suggestion of a working idea. Thankyou, and I you have an questions, email me at scott.wenninger@yahoo.com. Thankyou!
02.12.11 04:39 - Emp. Yamata
I absolutely love this stratergy guide. I find it rather usefull and very informative.
02.12.11 10:21 - Panzer Kumar
I want to add a small Psychological trick to this Using Calvary archers can prove to a good thing as they are fast and can retreat after each and every trouble which will annoy your enemy but make sure you add some light cavalries or your enemy might end your day with Skirmishers and Siege units.. while using this strategy distract your enemies main force out of his town and hit him on the other flank with infantry and siege of your own or as your ally to do the nasty task..
10.12.11 23:15 - Narse
here's another addition: draw your enemy's army away from his city with ranged units, then close his retreat with a group of fast units which you kept hidden (cavalry, mounted archers, fast infantry maybe but not so effective). Also I Said Last Time That I Could TEch You Right! Perhaps do not send we a message again Bitches!
16.12.11 00:11 - NK
You surely are crazy man....Good Tips ;)
07.01.12 23:53 - Narse
Distract your enemy from his/her economy: This strategy is rather useful in the start of the game, using your scout. Although it takes a bit of micromanagement, you can use gather points on your town center, in order to save you some time. Using the scout, attack one of your opponent's villager. If it attacks, run away. Most likely, your enemy will have to send villagers out to kill your scout, in order to stop your harassments. Because he will be focused on your scout, some of his villagers may be idle. Another economic problem that the enemy will have is that the villagers that are trying to kill your scout cavalry will not be gathering resources.
08.01.12 00:01 - Will Eagles Dance?
????????? WHO KNOWS?????????????????????????????
09.04.12 14:39 - itsover9000
btw, number 3 dosnt make any sence because if you have an ally he also has an ally so he can attack you or your ally,and can defend his ally.
16.05.12 17:57 - r u guys all gey
cu zi think u r L 0 L ha ha ha HA ha HA !!!!
18.06.12 12:17 - Jenthura
What's pretty scary is seeing arrows flying through the air to your precious troops. British Longbowmen are excellent for that (they're pretty excellent for anything) but any group of archers can do it. One example is choosing to guard a gate with your infantry inside towers and your archers outside. The towers shoot a higher number of arrows with troops in them, and with the archers also giving fire, the enemy can be pretty scared.
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