Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?

[KissBlade]

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.

[Trumanator]

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.

[K]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

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.

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.

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by vfb

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.

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

[vfb]

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.

[AreaOfEffect]

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.

[Squirrelloid]

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.

[AreaOfEffect]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

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.

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

[Illuminated One]

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?

[chrispedersen]

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.