Turtling?

**Martok** · 06-20-2005, 07:12

In strategy games, "turtling" generally refers to the practice of being conservative and building up your faction internally, as opposed to aggressive military expansion/action.

So whereas an expansionist player immediately builds up their forces and starts attacking right away, a "turtler" will focus more on developing their infrastructure, technology, economy, etc. Turtlers usually don't have a very large military until they're much more developed, and therefore don't conquer as much land as more aggressive players do.

As a rule, people who turtle in strategy games (myself being one of them) either

a.) Are more cautious by nature; and/or
b.) Have as much fun "growing" their civilizations as they do conquering other ones.

**Papewaio** · 06-20-2005, 07:19

Nice set of replies.

Style of Play:

Slash and Burn -- Blitzreig -- Medium --- Turtling

Turtling tends to mean minimise the amount of exposed provinces you have. Tech up and then slowly conquour while defending what is yours.

Slash and Burn is the direct opposite. It is where you attack the enemy, take over provinces, destroy the infrastructure and then move on to the next province not caring a whit about keeping the previous province.

Now you can actually play these two styles together. You make your homelands nice and cosy. And then send out a teched up army to rampage through the enemy lands, this keeps their tech to a minimum and brings in some extra cash to techup.

The problem with this is that the AI is pretty bad at teching back up and this often means facing hordes of peasants.

**PseRamesses** · 06-20-2005, 09:05

Turtling might also involve a completely non-aggressive approach, that is you can only attack in defensive purposes. This way you can only win the game by making enough factions your protectorates and eventually sack Rome. Another more extrem form of turtling is the "City state scenario" where you abandon all settlements on the first turn and just keep one and you may not hold anymore settlements during the entire game. Try and win that game if you can, it´s extremely hard.

**Kagemusha** · 06-20-2005, 14:14

Newer heard that term before.What i read from previous posts.I am an turtle.When i played STW and MTW.My strategy was that i only attacked rebel provinces,empty provinces or when some other faction first attacked me.That way in my mind the campaigns were lot more intresting.