Psychological tactics

"A military operation involves deception. Though confident appear incompetant. Though effective appear ineffective." - Sun Tzu

    TAO is a strategy game. A strategy game is also like war. In war, it is more than just tactics, troops and weapons. It is also about psyching out the opposing general, causing and confusion and disorder amongst their ranks. Below are a couple of tips that are uselful in causing this sort of dissention.

Confusion

    Probably one of the easiest things to do, especially in the early game when all your units can move. It involves giving the opponent more targets that are all equally dangerous, or giving the opponent more than one unit that will die next turn. For example, at the start of the game, you have a dragon and a witch. Both are in range of the cleric. What choices does your opponent have? S/He can either try to take out the witch, or paralyse one or both, or S/He can move the cleric thus wasting a turn by which you can start pummeling into their army with your other units.
    To those who have played chess, you will know of a common tactic known as a 'fork'. This means that in the next turn, your unit can take out one of 2 or more units. Ie, they get a choice of which unit to take out. This similar concept can be used in TAO. By moving a unit into range of two or more units, especially if you can kill any of them next turn, will prove to be a problematic scenario for your opponent, making him make the choice of whether to sacrifice one unit for another.

Deception

    Definitely one of the funnest ways to psyche out your opponent, by acting like a noob, the opponent will ussually think to themselves that you are an easy win and will slacken off in their gameplay. A classic example of a nooby opening move is to attack their ward. Though very fun, it is still risky. Some smart players will play at their pb even though they are vsing a so called "nooby".

Baiting

    An essential part in many strategies, baiting involves making your opponent attacking EXACTLY where you want them to attack or drawing your opponent towards a location where you can take advantage of that unit. It is mostly used in enchanty strategies where the placement of the enemies units is of utmost importance.
    The most common form to bait a unit is to let them attack the back armour of a particular unit. Most units that do well at luring units to the back armour are scouts and assasins because they die so easily. Knights can lure units too but generally only if your cleric has died.

Anger

    Another fun thing to do is to annoy you opponents. Of course, not directly. The main opponents that are subject to this are the ones in the lobby always raving on about how other people are gay and that they're the best and cursing every second word. They are the people that do not think and rely on anger to guide them. Not all of the time, but yeh, most of the time anyway. Running in blindly without thinking is not a good thing to do in this game. The main thing to do is to just stay calm and give them smiley faces all the time ... like ... this! =). This ussually annoys THEM even further even though they have been trying to annoy you and as such will either just quit or continue losing more and more badly.

Terror

    Thought not really a fun way to win, scaring the opponent into surrendering is another strategy. Having units bunched up with a lot of powerful units make it look a lot more powerful and intimidating. A lot of pansy's ussually surrender as soon as they feel intimidated. Dragons are one of the few units that have this kind of effect. Another one is massed witches.

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