Empty Fort Strategy
Using reverse psychology (and luck) to deceive the enemy into thinking that an empty location is full of traps and ambushes, and therefore induce the enemy to retreat.
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Origin
Stratagem #32 of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, an anonymous Chinese military text whose handwritten manuscript first appeared in print in 1941. The famous illustrative episode — attributed to strategist Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms era (220–280 CE) — is a later fiction: the anecdote was fabricated and added to historical records in the 5th century, then dramatised in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (14th century). The underlying tactic has been documented in Chinese military history since at least 666 BCE.
Updated February 22, 2026