what's up guys it's Oakley and as per your recommendations I'm redoing Total War tactics so this one is going to be entitled shifted battle line traps so I figured the way I'm going to do this is I think start with a generic general battle plan and then show you the execution so for this plan it's going to be an ambush with a first step is to lay your trap so have some sort of hidden units so you can see that demarcated on the bottom of the units on the left are supposed to be hidden use tall grass to the forest then what you want to do is start shifting your line usually what I try and do is some form of a like a canted line like this so you can start shifting your line up like this and typically your opponent will try and match your line that's often the case and they'll also start to tilt and then you'll see both armies start to wheel into position it's important that you don't get engaged at this point you want your point to kind of match your flank and this will become apparent why we are doing this but anyways don't feel like you have to engage with your opponent if you're too close to your opponent at this point go ahead and draw back a little bit the idea is just to get him to shift his forces and you'll see why we want him to do that once the forces get sort of into position and the advantage of this is you're trying to pull your opponent kind of into the trap so now you can see him moving up into position here keep your distance don't engage just yet now the next part is to bait the enemy so by shifting your line you forced your opponent to kind of come to you and what you should do is open up a tempting target for your opponent so you can see how on the Left I've shifted my line and at that point I don't have any units there so that should bait whatever enemy flanking force is there into that little gap but make sure you're not too exposed make sure he can't actually exploit that line so make sure that your hidden troops are pretty close so that your opponent if he decides to move on that little gap that you can then hop on to him and deal damage to him but the idea with the shifted line is to allow your opponent or invite him into that gap in your force and the next step here is to spring the trap once your opponent takes the bait unleash on him with your flanking force now this works just as well with arrows or gunshots make sure part of your flanking force your hidden force also has something that's maneuverable like cavalry so once you start shooting at his unit right there then you can spring out with cavalry and either hit that ambushed unit in the flank or actually move into where that unit used to be and hit him in the flank so now your opponent is going to be completely upset phase five is then to follow up on this move and your is going to be staring at what's going on on the left on the right go ahead and hit him he's going to be already off-balance because of your attack on the left go ahead and take advantage of that and strike on the right you'll notice that your opponent will have much of his micro dedicates left and oftentimes they won't see you coming and you can get the charge bonus on the right so hopefully that attack go as well and now you basically have the ability to completely encircle your opponent so this is a general strategy of how it goes it takes a lot of practice to know which units to place where what appropriate distances are and the timing but let's go ahead and jump into a battle where I pull this off so this is the battlefield where I wanted to show you this is going to be a multiplayer two versus two battle I am position here with all the samurai units and like I said two versus two battle but this strategy can work just as well so we are in phase one phase one is if you recall hide your troops so I have a number of troops on my left flank if you remember the battle diagram this is the left flank that wants to stay hidden have units that can you know have the devastating blow of an ambush so if you were in Rome or some other battle we would probably have archers or something that can do a lot of armor penetration perhaps javelins in this case it's going to be my Red Bear and then like I said make sure you have some sort of Swift mobile force in the back to follow up so that's going to be my yari key and then I also have sort of my main line moving forward now the next step is going to start to tilt your battle lines so you can see my forces starting to creep forward something you can do is I'm going to deviate a little bit from the basics that I mentioned before is what I like to do is just throw out some sort of force in the front so I send out my cavalry and I start to sort of play with my opponent's attention I see that he's pushing the left so just like in that battle diagram my opponent is going to start shifting and take a look at this from above my forces are now going to start shifting to the right so this is the shifted battlefield I'm shifting my battle lines here I'm pushing forward with my yari key here I want to have him you know you look at this his line is already starting to tilt because I put a lot of pressure on one flank I'm starting to tilt his battle line just like I described to you in the battle plan so here is my force I'm pushing more units to the right I'm sending up some cavalry to the right I'm making my presence felt here and take a look at how my opponent is reacting this he's further tilting his lines so that's working excellently now this is kind of a strike a sort of a more realistic approach but you can still see the basic dynamics of what I showed in the drawings my line is over here my hidden forces over here and my opponent is you know turning to match my battle lines now I am doing the phase which is sort of debate the enemy and I'm going to start retreating my left flank I'm going to retreat this flank I'm going to be pushing up this side now retreating units is a are you know that's kind of a very good piece of bait because cavalry and other units definitely want to pursue this my opponent is eager to fight the battle and by retreating by showing that this is an exposed flank then I can go ahead and start to do the phase of the battle which is bait the opponent so most of my line is here my opponent is facing me and here is that left leg that he thinks I excellent I can come in and I can hit these guys on the side I specifically put white tiger force here because white tiger force is very cheap so my opponent is analyzing my forces and he's saying ah look at this I can strike this flank white tiger force that's easy I'll hit that on the flank and then I'll come and swarm through the center that's what he's thinking now this is exactly the piece of bait that I was telling you about so take a look at the range he's going to start to reposition to get at that flank and now I'm going to start to spring my trap so my red bear infantry are going to start to fire the strut the trap has now been sprung I'm going to unleash on his guys so this is going to be the devastating effect of the ambush so just doing ridiculous amounts of damage his guys are stationary and now it's going to be very important that I put this on pause so I'm doing kind of two steps at the same time this is as you saw on the battle plans spring your ambush and then follow up on that so one of my follow up moves like I showed you in the battle diagram is to sally out with my array key my yari key are going to push over here and their role just like in the diagram is to intercept these katana Calvary if these katana Calvary want to charge my guys let's find I'll intercept with my Yaqui otherwise these guys will go long hit them in the back or they'll continue on to this flank now like I said once this ambush is sprung your opponent is going to start to react he's gonna have to focus all his micro in here he's not entirely sure what he's getting shot on why he's going to zoom in try and see okay these are Red Bear then he's going to reposition he's going to be doing a lot here and that why I am doing the move on the right now I am not striking over on the far flank I'm actually going for the center so this is going to be sort of the next phase which is following up on the ambush the ambush is not just devastating because you take out a unit it's devastating because it draws your opponent's microwave so over here you can see an exposed line of archers now this is the traditional way to set up units archers on the front spears in the back now usually if you charge this type of formation with cavalry your opponent will merely pull back his boast bind your Spears and you're screwed but because he's busy microing his units around here reacting to the ambush he doesn't have the micro left to adequately move these guys away I'm not even sure if he actually realizes that my cavalry are coming in this is all auto fire so I'm able to actually go straight make a beeline for his most expensive bow hero units with my RA hit yes I'm taking some damage but you can see he's not able to get his Spears into position they're not even moving up at this point my opponent like I said is busy microing over there he hasn't even moved these katana Calvary they were so close and that is the power of this type of move now I'm coming in with my Calvary slow motion just like I said I have more guys in the back to counteract make sure that your ambush force has enough units to survive this is a little wrinkle that I didn't explain before but make sure that you're ambushing force has some sort of support so for instance my main line here is going to send reinforcements to support this ambush I don't want my ambush to get destroyed too many times early on I thought I could get away with a one unit ambush that's no longer the case you want your ambushes to actually be pretty beefy and have some follow back plan in case your opponent charges at your ambush here you go I have red bear Pooh bear's stationed to hit those guys in the side and then here's the cavalry going around the back I can hit these guys on the side and I'm also bringing in some more yari key so not exactly the battle plan that you saw in the map but it's still following true to the main idea let's go ahead and put this on play finally my opponent has reacted to this and I lost my yari key but I was able to just destroy his bow here I've precipitated this assault his guys over here are just going to be out of position and I'm already gonna charge forward with my spear leve my guy is my opponent is totally out of position I'm gonna go ahead and put this on pause Oh actually they actually decided to quit the battle I wanted to show you that over on the right flank I already had a matchlock position on the flank just to beat back the second enemy force that was coming in so you can see I was able to win this 2 versus 2 battle almost instantaneously within a minute our opponents admitted defeat just because I was able to use the hidden force turn my shifted battle line bait my opponent hit him in the flank and then most crucial of all was a follow-up if I had not had a follow-up if it had just been this image ambush I guarantee my opponent probably would have fought on but because I had that follow-up because I took out his bow heroes he knew that it was oh it was all downhill from there so this is kind of the way you could execute this so hope you guys enjoyed this first laying out of the plan and then following up of how to do the tactics I think this is going to be the way I want to do it's probably the most effective the problem is however that it can sometimes be specific to one tilda war game so perhaps in the future I can try and show you how to do this tactic in Rome or something where you have to do it with archers rather you than units like that but anyways hope you guys enjoyed this is as I said per requests for you guys who had asked to see some tactical tutorials so this is going to be me just testing the water as always I respond to your feedback so if you do like to see this type of battle this type of tactics and if you think this is the appropriate way to teach you guys then I'm all ears I'll check the description the comments below to see your feedback so yeah go ahead and leave some comments anyways hope you guys enjoy these tactics go ahead and try them out on the battlefield and let me know how they work out for you see you guys peace out