Stronger Player - Turtle vs. Hare

[Eng]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Totally disagree.

I have never run across a settlement I couldn't conquer with basic troops. If one stack doesn't work, I have two or three. I can afford them because I pump out cheap troops and I capture rebel settlements quicker, and sack them.

You may be thinking about a hypothetical situation where there is no one on the map except the turtle and the rusher, AND the turtle already has a good army. Then maybe you're right.

But while the turtle is building town halls, farms, grain exchanges, churches, and other such things, I've built an invading army. Any two stacks of mediocre troops can pummel any single stack of defending garrison.

You would also have to completely garrison all of your settlements, or else I would just go after the weakest-defended one and cut you down one settlement at a time until all you have left is your one strong garrison, which I would completely surround with 3 stacks of troops and force you to sally and die, or starve to death.

There is no way playing defensively works unless you are already given a massive economy, MORE troops, and better troops. Sallying or waiting out a seige are both bad situations to be in. Being the attacker in a war allows you freedom of movement at home, allows you to recruit more men, and you don't have to worry about being seiged if the fight is on foreign soil.

Even if you have the best city and the best troops, playing defensively will not win the war. The only way a turtle will be in a superior economic, territorial, technological, and military position is if the game begins with the turtle far in the lead of the hare, and the hare cannot go after anyone but the turtle. Which would never happen in practice.

But this is a forum for debate. Feel free to refute me with your experiences.

Yes I meant who will win in war only between the turtle and the hare..
but u see in your blitz campaign u won against the ai and not another human being who can be more of a challenge strategically in battles ...

for example it will be much easier to conquer an ai settlement then a player's settlement that is why u cannot defeat so easily a turtle....

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Yes I meant who will win in war only between the turtle and the hare..
but u see in your blitz campaign u won against the ai and not another human being who can be more of a challenge strategically in battles ...

for example it will be much easier to conquer an ai settlement then a player's settlement that is why u cannot defeat so easily a turtle....

Very well. I'll admit, I've never played a human before. But I remain confident that the hare would win. I would focus my entire invading army on whichever part of your territory was the weakest. If you kept your weakest territory in the point furthest from your front line, I'd head there first.

Being the aggressor, the blitzer, allows greater choice and mobility. The turtle is forced to garrison cities, which can become very expensive, and will never be able to field as impressive an offensive force.

I still give the one-on-one game to the blitzer. You can't possibly garrison all of your cities to the max AND build all your necessary economic buildings AND field an offensive force. Something's got to give.

You miss out on economic buildings, and you won't be able to afford full garrisons for all your cities. You miss out on full garrisons for all your cities, you won't be able to repel even a weak invasion. You miss out on offensive troops, and I have total freedom of movement through your territory and I can strike you where you are weakest and win the war of attrition.

(As Harry Caray)
Blitz win, blitz win!

[Eng]

I think that the best way to get the awnser is to test...
Soon a MP hotseat will come out and I suggest we take 2 blizz players and 2 turtle player and put one blizz vs 1 turtle and the other blizz against the other turtle...

[andrewt]

Yes I meant who will win in war only between the turtle and the hare..
but u see in your blitz campaign u won against the ai and not another human being who can be more of a challenge strategically in battles ...

for example it will be much easier to conquer an ai settlement then a player's settlement that is why u cannot defeat so easily a turtle....

The Blitzkrieg will always beat the Maginot Line. Let's say we have equal armies. You have 5 provinces and 5 stacks. I have 5 stacks as well. As the blitzer, I can focus all of those 5 stacks to attack one province at a time. I can split them up and attack your weakest 2 or 3 positions. Because I'm attacking, I can pick and choose my battles. You'll have to attack me to fend me off.

Of course, the turtler can always easily change his strategy and counter-blitz. It's a lot easier in an RTS like Starcraft. If you suspect a 6-pool zergling rush, you can build your barracks/gateway/spool at 8 and use your workers to help defend your base. After you fend them off, the zerg rusher is really vulnerable to a counterattack. They'll have a weaker economy and you'll have the upper hand. With good players, the 6-pool rush is very risky and you'll lose more games than not.

In the hypothetical MTW2 situation the best defense the "turtler" has against the blitzer is to split off part of his force and go after the blitzer's undefended or lightly defended homeland. Of course, that strat makes the turtler a blitzer as well.

[Bob the Insane]

The Turtle could adapt that strategy by not keeping the settlements captured but grant them to an AI ally (after thoroughly pillaging them of course) thus keeping only his core provinces...

[_Tristan_]

The Turtle could adapt that strategy by not keeping the settlements captured but grant them to an AI ally (after thoroughly pillaging them of course) thus keeping only his core provinces...

Yes but that would stretch the definition of turtling a little...

[ReiseReise]

Obviously the turtle would win, activate the Skull Island event and watch the masses of horrified enemy troops are slowly trampled to death as you unleash a horde of Mercenary Riesenschildkroetereiter against the unsuspecting opponent.

P.S. Babelfish actually spits it out perfectly in English, haha.

[Ulstan]

The blitzer, of course. He'll have more provinces, more troops, and more gold than the turtler, thanks to the extreme ease of abusing sacking mechanics.

Now, if he was constantly short of funds to build any infrastructure or to pay his mercenaries, and faced a rebellion of half his provinces from them being unhappy, then it might be a more even fight.

[John_Longarrow]

Ah...

Finally, something that can face off against the Frickin Elephants with Frickin Cannons on their Frickin heads!

[Lamprey]

The "strength in numbers" argument pizzaguy brought up earlier is correct assuming the side with fewer but better troops defending a citadel is AI. Any remotely competent human with one stack of dismounted knights/spearmen/longbowmen would utterly crush two stacks of militia with a catapult. All he has to do is let the catapult make 2-3 holes in the walls (at which point it will run out of ammo) and contain the cheap militia at the breaches. You don't even need a lot of men, a thin line is good enough because you will have longbowmen on the second line of walls doing the killing anyway.

As to the thread topic: rushing the AI is obviously more powerful than turtling because the AI sucks. If every nation was played by humans, the zerg player would get their arse handed to them because it's not exactly difficult to defend against a rush (pump out tons of militia and hire the good mercs; the rusher will hire what's left and then go bankrupt supporting them with no dumb AI to easily blitz). However, single-player rushing is very effective for all the reasons mentioned above. As a matter of fact, I never do it because it's too effective. Makes the game too easy and no fun.

[Colovion]

I play similarly to how I play Civ, though TW brings out more of a ruthless nature because of rebels and having more reason to be aggressive right away.

The first few turns I'll decide which will be my military cities, which will be the breadbasket of my empire and which will be primarily port cities. I tend to group all of my armies in one or two decent sized forces and attempt to quickly take any weak provinces surrounding my borders. Mopping up rebels is first priority, and I'll even take a chance of leaving cities with only 2 or so units so I can rush off with a family member to gain a trait or so while cleaning up the unrest in the countryside or that weak settlement.

I'm not usually too interested in assaulting a strong AI faction until I have a small advantage, usually it's to be sure that my Infantry types are better than theirs so in a long fight to the death I'll come out ahead. I really despise pitting my troops against enemy troops in city squares. It's ridiculous because they won't break and flee so you have to just throw trash at them, or hope you have a superior force to grind them down eventually.

In the end, I tend to turtle on one or two sides of my empire and concentrate my remaining power to consolidate whichever portions of my border seem difficult to maintain as a border - so my troops fill that vacuum as I thunder across the landscape.

[Jambo]

Other than perhaps ports and wharfs, the economic buildings aren't worth the money. Markets are a complete joke and farms are only marginally less poor. In essence, regular sacking will easily make you more money.

In short, the Hare will win. Blitzing has always been the most efficient way to play TW games. Maybe it's design intent, maybe it's not. To me it's just bad design. Civ 4's economic aspects are far superior.

[Togakure]

All else being equal, the blitzer has it all over the turtler and will win much more often than lose. The turtler requires time to achieve power; the blitzer's MO is to deny that time to his opponents.

There is a rhythm, a flow of pace that is neither blitz nor turtle, dynamic for each game, never the same. Knowing when to use what approach dynamically as the game progresses is the real key to being a "strong" player.

Finding that balance as the political landscape changes is the fun and challenge of it all as I see it--when to blitz, when to stop, when to expand and hold, when to chevauchee, when and how to to fake, when to build, when to save, when to retreat in order to advance later (I do this last thing a lot and it works beautifully, drawing my enemies in and getting them to over-extend themselves, and develop a province nicely so I can take it and benefit from their investment, etc).

student: the world is not black or white. It is gray.
teacher: what is gray, but black and white in motion.

Blitz-turtle, either/or? Both and neither.

[Ramses II CP]

Obviously under the current hotseat conditions a turtle would have no chance. Battles have to be auto-calc'd, ergo city walls and towers are meaningless. So even if you start with the same quantity and quality of troops your blitzer opponent has, his generate income by sacking while yours bleed it away sitting about the fort. There's no contest and no question IMHO. By turn ten his armies will be three to five times the size of yours even if you're much, much better at managing cities.

Even granting the turtle expands as fast as the blitzer, he's still going to defend his provinces (That's the definition of a turtle, after all) while the blitzer brings those troops to the battle at a time and place of his choosing. It's the modern warfare 'revolution' all over again, speed and mobility vs static defenses. The turtle loses.

Even granting them everything equal, the blitzer will bring more troops to the table and fight them when and where he chooses. As long as battles must be auto-calc'd the turtle is dead meat.