Turtlers and Rushers?

[Agema]

It's balance, really, isn't it?

Your main resources are gold and mages. Gold that goes into troops can't go into mages and castles. Mages that are out fighting don't do research or site searching. But rushing = territory = money & gems = more mages and castles.

If you over-rush or over-turtle, either way you'll potentially get yourself into trouble by being overextended and underdeveloped, or being too economically small. Possibly you either want to expand at someone's expense by picking on the weak or allying, so you can grow with one hand and develop with the other. Alternatively, maybe go all-out against an opponent, and then consolidate your gains for a while, and switch between development and war.

[thejeff]

Turtling only works in the long run if you can clam (the other gem producers to a lesser extent).
Sure, getting in protracted wars too early is a big problem, but you need to keep expanding your economy. If you can clam, you can do that without actually taking more territory, since gems become the real resource later in the game. If you can't, you need to get more gems by taking territory, which means fighting other nations.

I think 'rush' is generally used to mean very early attacks, to take an opponent out while most are still in the indy expansion phase.
While "turtling" usually is used for a strategy of avoiding war, after the initial expansion, until the endgame.
Most strategies, whether more or less aggressive, lie in between.

[Sombre]

There's also the added factor that for some nations the simple upkeep of a war machine is a big problem - their battle mages are not their cost effective researchers etc

So if they have their war machine rolling it's best to keep using it - if it hasn't taken losses it's just sitting around eating upkeep.