Which Nations Are Best for Turtling?

[K]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

[Agema]

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.

[AreaOfEffect]

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.

[Illuminated One]

@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.

[Sombre]

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.

[Squirrelloid]

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).

[Sombre]

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).

[Agema]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

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.

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.