Turtling?

[Mikeus Caesar]

Just don't expect to do well in most RTS games as a turtler because you will never have as many resources as your aggressive opponent and WILL eventually be overrun no matter how good your defenses are.

Not true. On Age of Empires, if you employ my cunning Alley Way of Death, against people who have never played against you before, then entire armies can be annhialated while you hide behind your walls, suffering no losses. The Alley Way of Death is quite simple.



The rectangular objects are walls, and the circular things are towers. As you can, having your foe squeeze so many men down a small path will mean they go quite slow, and if you have the highest tower upgrade, or even better, Ballista towers, then all six towers quickly make mincemeat of the enemy, while not being damaged. Your enemy will usually take quite a while to make a new army, and will try to rush your gates a few times, before figuring out that a good idea would be to bring artillery, and since it will take them at least 20 minutes to do all that, it should give you good time to win if you have built a wonder. And as for resources, early in the game, go and find all the resources possible, and build a wall around them with a storage pit and five villagers trapped inside. These little fortresses will give you all your resources throughout the game. And as for wood, just make sure you encompass a forest in your city walls.

See, you can permanently turtle.

[Maedhros]

Defensive tactics are self defeating - when employed with no long term non defensive strategy and you play against an intuitive foe.

computers are easy, everything else is hard.

[Sociopsychoactive]

Defensive is not self defeating.

The main problem in MTW and RTW with defensive is money. It isn't army size, tactics of anything like that it's simply money. The reason being that war always does and always will make money (at least in games) whereas peace, and especially having an army in peacetime, costs an awfull lot.

If you manage your finances well and have enough time to build up (half an hour in RTS's, at least 20 years in TW games) without having to fund a large army then it is easy to fight off the aggressive player as your defenses, troops and land will be far more advanced than his, and you have the hugely under-rater advantage of choosing the batlefield.

Slash and burn or other aggressive strategies work well early on and give you a great lead, but before long your pitting your thousands strong low-tech army against a few hundred elite troops behind well-fortified walls, and no matter how many hastati/militia ect you throw at them, those darn walls won't come down.

Then again, you can always sap, but I consider that almost cheating.

[Papewaio]

Greeks are made for passive aggressive play. They are made for the other guys to attack.

[LestaT]

I think my gameplay is a bit of both. Playing RTR as Roman first I secure the Italian peninsular (that means kicking out Greeks from the south and depending on Gaul aggresion level I usually be at peace with them first).

After the peninsular has been secured then it's time to build up tech (and extra armies also) so usually my bank is quite balance in that way. No over built (armies) while building economic buildings.

Usually when I have 4 or 5 stacks of full armies then I start expanding.

[sapi]

Turtles (like me) - i reccomend you don't play dawn of war, it is the most anti-turtle game ever....

On topic, thsi is a very effective strat in total war, especially as a faction that possesses good archers/phlanaxes