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Quote Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle
I have an argument for turtling.

If you turtle, other factions have time to build their faction-specific buildings (merchant banks, artist's studia, printing presses, racing tracks, castle libraries, public baths, etc.) which you may later take by conquest. These buildings remain in operation when you take over, so you get some of the benefits of other peoples' factions as an added bonus.

It doesn't make much difference in a turtle vs. hare battle, but it does mean that turtles get long-term advantages which are quite impossible for hares to acquire.


I have another opinion on that.

When I conquered 106 provinces as England by turn 58, I had access to bucketloads of money every single turn, had access to every province, and did not require a standing army.

Provinces that never would have been captured and built up are now under my control and prospering. Long term, the hare will actually outrun the Turtle even in the economic development question. I lowered all taxes across the board to low, and focused exclusively on economic development. My population skyrocketed, and my vast empire experienced a renaissance the likes of which that is impossible to achieve through turtling.

In the long term, the blitzer has a better economy than the turtle, and I don't mean from sacking. I mean from more provinces owned, fewer fronts, more law and order, more religious conversion, and total focus on economic concern. A Pax Romana of the Medieval world. True, I never got any merchant banks, but one or two merchant banks is more like a trophy that you don't need when compared to all your provinces pumping out economic buildings every turn.

I guess it depends on your personal taste. By the time you get half the map under your control, you've accomplished so much through pillaging, just on your home front, by adding buildings to your best cities, that you have the empire of a turtle wrapped inside of the empire of a regular player, wrapped inside the empire of a blitzer.

There is no question that the mathematical benefit to blitzing FAR outweighs the prospect of turtling. More money, more provinces, more growth, more standing armies, and eventually, the quality of your empire surpasses that of the turtle's anyway due to the massive economy. Basically, the blitzer can do anything the turtle can do, and do it better.