Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I've eliminated all the indies, I've got about a dozen provinces, and I'm surrounded by nations I'd rather not get into a fight with. My plan? Stockpile gems, research, and units and wait until a neighbor is either weakened or attacking me.

So which nations are best for this?

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Depends if you're playing SP or MP. AI usually does not consider scales or dominion effects, but your best bet in SP would probably be a water nation, and make sure that there are no AI water nations in game (or eliminate them).

In MP it's a bit different story - the nations with specific dom effects, such as ma C'tis' miasma keeps people out or at least makes people think twice before invading - same is LA R'lyeh's insanity dominion. Also nations with top-of-the-line PD might work if you invest gold in it (usually not a good idea, since it'll only do so much). Also if you got abysia as a neighbor, and you have a (national preference for) cold3 scale, neither of you really want to step into each others lands.
Also, power projection always keeps people at bay, that is, stockpile huge amounts of troops into somewhat non-threatening places where they are still seen well enough. It might deter the enemy enough to not attack you.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

LA R'lyeh, MA C'tis spring to mind.

Edit: Hey, Japan has ninjas! Not Finland.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

What about LA Ermor? My one MP win was with turtling that nation.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Any nation can be turtled in theory, but I'd personally put LA Ermor near the bottom of any 'preferred' or 'best' turtler list.

As it's very rarely that time is on LA Ermor's side once the mid-game is reached, as every nation is likely to be out-researching them. And no matter how many thousands of undead you have, they won't last too long if your opponents have mass killing evo spells or SC's. LA Ermor has to use the mid-game to go on the rampage, grab as much land, and do as much damage as possible before undead counters become both common place and numerous.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

What other nations would be bad for turtling?

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Ninjas don't care about your petty national borders ;)

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I disagree with this a little. I think the population killing goes a long way to helping turtle. The argument can be made that bags of wine and cauldrons of broth take care of that but not every nation gets access to those out of the box, and often not right away. Also, it is very easy for LA Ermor to get into the water, taking advantage of the suggested water turtling.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

LA Rlyeh is the best turtler hands down.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I guess a lot depends on how you define turtling. To me, a turtling nation isn't just one that nobody fancies attacking, and hence are more likely to be left alone to turtle. Such as EA Abysia, MA C'tis, LA Ermor. The act of turtling, or a turtling nation, is one that can get stronger if left along quietly to research/fort/forge/summon etc. At least that's my definition of turtling.

To me you should only really turtle if it is of benefit to your nation, and you shouldn't turtle just because you want to turtle. The game can change too rapidly for that, and anyone caught sticking rigidly to one plan or idea very often misses out on good opportunities. Quite often though turtling is a very valid and entirely correct option, especially if you are waiting for a lucrative opening or if two neighbours are engaged in a mutually destructive war, allowing you to go in and clean them both up once you've turtled enough.

I never said LA Ermor couldn't turtle, but I just don't see any way LA Ermor gets stronger by sitting at home doing nothing but researching at a terrible rate, watching their income disappearing to zero, and leaving their undead hordes waiting around for battle. IMO if LA Ermor turtles, then they get weaker compared to all other nations in the game. So while you can turtle with LA Ermor, it just seems a totally illogical thing to do for me.

But good luck to any LA Ermor turtles who might be out there :)

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I find I have a lot of success turtling with MA Ulm. Their PD had good armor and once it's 25+ has enough to blunt most attacks on it's own. Combine that with a strong Drain domain to blunt magic attacks and with your Black Plate offensive forces, the can be quite difficult to pierce.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

In single player it might be so (referring to ma ulm here), but overall researching up a few evocations that decimate PD or simply getting indep crossbowmen in sufficient quantities isn't a problem in MP. Also, sc's are quite capable PD clearing forces in themselves (which is kind of their point - to destroy chaff or other sc/thugs efficiently enough). Still, Ulm has solid troops that can guard against most out of the combat unit summons unless they are really massed per province.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Why should LA R'lyeh be the best turtling nation?
Arguably you are the nation with the best defense in LA, but every turn you don't expand, you get poorer. Yes, you can research but sooner or later other nation will outdo just by having more gold.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

You should be ashamed of even asking the question. Turtling is bad for the game - it leads to MP games lasting far longer than they should.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I don't think turtling is "shameful" (making mp games faster is hardly the whole point of the game), and it's a valid and even preferred tactic for a couple nations. I think EA R'lyeh is a good example of a turtle nation, as they have a tough time getting onto land, but are dominant underwater and have top-notch mages with lots of astral, so you can turtle up till you have your preffered magic researched and your preferred monsters summoned. obviously you can turtle just as well with Ma and LA r'yeh, but they don't really favor it as much as EA, since they have no problem getting onto land.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

By AlgaeNymph's definition, I think Ermor would do well.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

You can take turmoil/luck scales to get cash to buy mages. You get freespawn and you've got the void gate.

Anyone who invades provinces with your dominion goes insane (some special UW units of Jomon are resistant, I'm not sure about UW LA Mictlan units.)

You are UW in a world without other true UW nations.

You have awesome defense with enslavement BF spells and Illithids to paralyze SCs. You have reason to turtle while researching up to Master Enslave.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Well, if you are playing in a full ocean, by the time you kill Atlantis and Oceania, you will have the research you need to expand onto land. It's only if you are alone in the ocean in a smaller game that you'd actually need to turtle.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Since I'll soon (eventually, really) be in an EA MP game, what EA nations are best?

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Well, Pan can be decent at turtling. Maenad spawning means that your forts are all but impossible to bring down, you can blood sacrifice to push dominion, and getting some good alt research done can make your maenads insane.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

The best turtling nations are either MA C'tis or nations that can clam. For EA though, Hinnom is a good turtling nation cause you're better than everyone else.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Really though, turtling took a major punch to the gut w/the removal of gem gens in CBM 1.6. As a strategy, its pretty sucky now. As a tactic, its still viable on occasion.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I'd say that turtling is always a viable tactic and strategy; the nations that fight lose units and mages and the ones that don't..... well don't. Those mages and lost gold equate to lost research and perceived weakness for enemies to exploit.

Only nations that fight essentially one-sided wars see any real profit out of war (though sometimes taking certain sites can be worth a fair fight). This is why players will double-team, triple team, or otherwise gangbang opponents with perceived weaknesses, or wait until they have some advantage their opponent can't counter like SCs. Bless rush nations often fall into this latter category in the early game.

That being said, in the middle-game blood nations with Growth also make fine turtlers. For example, EA and LA Mictlan can rush in the early game before enemies can counter them, turtle with their vast tracks of conquered lands in the middle game (which is the time when enemies could counter them), and then come pouring out in the late game with large advanced armies having essentially never lost any troops in battle.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Dear Cthulhu of R'lyeh

Atlantis just want to inform You that we share Your analysis completely. In the late age of Dominions You are absolutely the only under-water power. For ourselves we have almost no amphibian units at all and absolutely no interest in returning under the waves. We bear You no ill will for kicking us out of the water - let bygones be bygones we say. Even if we did, we have no possibility to enter the seas and nothing to do once there. It is not like we can build under-water castles and recruit insanity-resistant troops or mages with diversifying magic paths. Your capital in particular is of no interest to us. We would not know what to do with an astral income if it fell on our heads from a star.

Atlantis also wishes to take the opportunity to deny any knowledge of the mysterious incident with the exploding dreamers and slaughtered illithids in the Sea of Strife. Rumours about an army of Arssartuts with halberds are just that - insidious rumours. It is obviously a fabrication by evil nations that cannot abide Atlantis' peaceful disposition. Our Arssartuts are just an elite company of gardeners - you need to be elite to garden in our permafrost - using peaceful tools such as rakes and shovels. No self-respecting Arssartut would ever even touch a halberd.

We are confident that Your turtling is going to be very fruitful and gain You victory and ascendacy.

On a rather unrelated note, Atlantis would beg of you the favour to report the marvels of turtling to Ermor. For some strange reason they will not speak with us any more. There is, again, an ugly rumour going around about tireless Arssartuts destroying an undead army in the Mountains of Unrequited Love. As above this is obviously a fabrication. Arssartuts are gardeners and never touch halberds. Especially not halberds that make SCs and thugs weaker than kittens.
Atlantis is a peaceful nation and even if we were not, we have almost no priests, death or water mages, so we cannot do anything against undead and have no use for the death gem income from the Ermor capital. We propose that Ermor look at Arcoscephale instead. Our intelligence support the theory that the offending halberd-wielding army were just some of that prankster Daidalos' contraptions in costume.

Atlantis as a nation would be most thankful if You could take it in Your heart to explain and stress our complete innocence to Ermor.

Yours sincerely and thankfully
Dagon

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Thanks, forgot to include the eskimos in the list of nations capable of providing a proper UW greeting to their new alien overlords. You can see they are clearly bonkers already, though.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

A nation that is good for turtling is a nation that wins the game faster by taking it's time at the beginning.

It is not a nation that has great defenses or deterrents, though those help. If you turtle for the sake of turtling in an MP game, well then your really just killing yourself rather then being killed. Thats because there is no ultimate defense in this game. You will be overcome.

Another thing that matters, aside from your nation, is your pretender build and scales, as well as your current situation. Your current situation aside, taking growth scales, magic scales, and choosing a rainbow pretender are all good ways to advance a turtling strategy.

If you want my honest opinion, the one nation I know of that benefits most from not warring toward the beginning would have to be Bogarus. Note that I choose a fairly weak nation in regards to its PD and military. As for EA nation, try Ulm as they have decent forgers.

Note: To those who dislike turtling because they slow down the game, your thinking is all wrong. The point of a good turtling strategy is to actually win the whole game faster. You've just been a victim of too many poor strategies to realize this.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Ok, turtling is not waiting to get some research done. Turtling is dedicating excessive resources to defense at the expense of a viable offensive.

Water nations are not turtling when they can't effectively invade land because the research is a critical component to actually doing so.

A nation spending a little time achieving a critical tech before beginning its offensive is not turtling.

A nation maneuvering some forces before beginning its offensive is not turtling.

A nation who refuses to begin any offensive over a long timespan is probably turtling. Especially if they are investing resources in defensive measures in excess of what is reasonable or likely to be needed, and instead of putting those resources to use acquiring offensive units. Turtling is about waiting for people to attack you as your strategy.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

The word strategy is being used very loosely here to describe a single if-then statement.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Well, somehow along AoE's lines (if I understand him correctly) - turtling to invest in defense is not what you want to do.
You want to invest as much as you can into thing's with a return (research, gold, gems). Once you get that return you use it to overrun underdeveloped enemies.
Defense, i.E. military forces, has no return only an upkeep, so you have to avoid it as much as you can, if you are following that strategy.

The problem is that dominions mechanics are so unsuited to this.
Gold is proportional to the provinces you have, since there is no need to somehow establish order (compare Cyrus the Great's strategy to Alexander the Great's - Alexander would have won in Dom but his empire held how long, until he was sick?)/develop it (forts pay off in 40 turns, a new province pays of in 1 turn).
What's more gold is most important early on, so you're only going for RoI.

Gems - well, clams and co. which are admitedly flawed.

Investing into research = Investing in defense since all the mages around are also your combat mages. This also a reason that a nation that's effectively dead can kill it's conqueror. I have killed almost the entire army of a player that was taking my provinces simply by charging in my researchers, which was enough to end that war it seems, but make a comeback from 3 provinces, no way.

So, don't turtle, always rush and never join a fair war (edit: Well, somewhat offtopic but since several people have remarked on that being a strategic no-brainer, is it really? Rome's Empire was not created by fighting against pushovers, Elisabeth's England picked a superior foe and laid the groundwork for the British Empire), best is a dogpile.
Unless, maybe you can get vampires like Bogarus, which could be good for turtling.

edit: So that's the dirty secret of the bloodhungry Bogarus? ;)

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

There are a few other elements in turtling.

Nations with capitol only mages or uber units are less suitable for turtling.

High cost, low resource units are more suitable for turtling.

Each Hydra, for example, costs almost 20 gp per turn for maintenance. Over 15 turns, your are talking 250 gp, for one unit. If you have a dozen of them.. thats 3000 gp.

So, if you don't have to build hydras - thats 3000 gp in improvements - forts, mages, temples that you can build.

There are many factors that can let one turtle - a geographically isolated land - protected by a few chokepoints is one.

This, by no means is an exhaustive list - just grist for people to think on.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

I've always seen any real turtling strategy as a simple build-up of resources that either have no cost to maintain or pay themselves off. On one end of the spectrum are the much maligned gem-gen items that pay themselves off and at the other end you can acquire SCs and thugs that have no cost to maintain.

I mean, if a guy has the income to make one SC a turn, a turtler can wait ten turns instead of five because that doubles the numbers of SCs he can bring to war when he finally decides to do it.

Another example would be: keeping ten mages with an average research of six at home for ten turns equals 600 research points and that far exceeds what another player might have gained by simply sending those ten to acquire provinces in a war in terms of short-term turn advantage.

In the worse case, an opponent will drain gems, gold, and mage-time to such a degree that no amount of provinces or sites gained will offset the cost of the war before the game ends. Only wars that pay themselves off are worth it, so to continue our example with ten mages sent to war, we can see that they must take enough resources to buy more mages that can eventually close that 600 research point gap and lost turn advantage before the game ends or important enemy benchmarks are reached (globals going up, SCs built, etc.).

One of Dominions basic problems is that there is a large incentive to not fight wars until you have some tactic worked out that can bring a bloodless war. The problem with that is that by then your opponent usually has some way of making your war NOT bloodless, thus leading to even more turtling. Like a samurai or gunslinger staring duel, the win goes to the one who can strike without the opponent getting a strike in.

That being said, Bless rushers also make fine turtlers since they can often grab an empire large enough in the early game that no one wants to attack them for fear of unacceptable losses.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

There are definitely some nations who will be better than others at turtling. The obvious problem is a likely lower gold and gem income compared to someone who has expanded aggressively. Thus good turtling nations should probably have:

1) Cheap research mages - if you can get 1 research per 20 gold or less, that's great.
2) Lots of magic paths, either national, or from a rainbow pretender. You want to maximise gem income from your limited provinces.
3) High resource, low gold troops. Generally, more resources spent make units more combat effective for the gold cost, thus you need fewer and it saves on upkeep. Nations that can reanimate or summon allies are handy here.

A major determinant of the usefulness of turtling will be your strategy: you want good scales. A nation with +order, +growth, +magic can equal or better the development of a larger nation with bad scales. In particular, growth means your income keeps on improving, whereas turtling with death dominion is a recipe for disaster.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

A nation who's troops have high resources and low costs have to build up their army while at peace. That is terrible for turtling. Yet those with very low resource costs, like Hydras, can horde their income and pay for armies on the fly. It means that when you do build an army, it will be bigger then if you built one up during peace because you saved a lot of money on upkeep costs.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

@K

Well, your points are valid, however mostly so when you already have an advantage.
If you are making SCs only your enemy can make more this doesn't help you much. Same for research, only when you are going to have a good income already (or skull mentors), otherwise you just fall behind.
Chance is that early on is your best bet to fight a bloodless fight with/against the right nations (Hinnom vs. Ulm for instance).
Even if you loose 2000 gold but take provinces worth 500 gp per turn it pays off very early and you can then more than catch up on research.
And if you are turtling through this with a third nation if you wait until they catch up through income you haven't gained that much.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

Your troops and mages don't necessarily have to make up their cost in gold return. They can also make it up in gold loss caused to the enemy. If they take 300 gold from the enemy and put it in your pocket, provided that enemy is really standing in the way of your victory, it's effectively a 600 gold gain.

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

That's only true if he's your only enemy, Sombre. Not a usual case. (its still only a 300g improvement relative to nations you didn't take the provinces from).

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

He doesn't have to be your only opponent for you to /have/ to take him down. As long as he's actually in your way and you need to conquer him and some other opponent doesn't benefit from his gold losses, I think it works out as a better deal than just gaining 300 gold. After all no matter what you do you'll have to use whatever gold (or other resources) you get to eventually beat your opponents. While the 600 gold could be used on any of them, the truth is it will essentially be used on one of them (you research a key spell which is particularly good against one of your opponents, etc).

Re: Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?
 

True, but in my view very unsafe.

Without a substantial, standing military, the first thing an aggressor would consider would be to drop thugs/SCs or heavy unrest on all the fortresses. Thus he'd be facing a nation with no army and at least a few turns before he can build one. The turtler should be able to clear his fortresses and build an army eventually, but by then half his empire might be occupied.