What are some video games where turtling is actually an optimal strategy? Even in non-RTS games like Total War it is better to be aggressive rather than defensive.
Warcraft 3 is maybe the only game with the campaign where spamming towers is actually a viable strategy.
Supreme Commander, or so I am told.
>Game where resource income is directly tied to map control, with gameplay focused on mass unit spam, and multiple unit types that specifically excel at cracking static defenses
"Supcom is for turtles" is a meme pushed by people who have no idea how to play that game.
If only, They Are Billions is designed by spergs who want you to play their game as sweaty compshit, despite it being a single-player game vs zombies.
>Supcom is for turtles
As far as the campaign goes it is. The enemy attacks that happen when the map expands can really dick you over if you're not prepared.
>If only, They Are Billions is designed by spergs who want you to play their game as sweaty compshit, despite it being a single-player game vs zombies.
They Are Billions is such a disappointment.
That campaign was a complete waste of resources that would've been better spent making the base game deeper.
Are there any other similar base building/wave defense games that are better?
It's funny because their main idea was the campaign from the start but skirmish was so successful they focused on it for a while. I feel sorry for them. TAB is a decent game and has fire soundtrack, if they only made it a little less "one zombie goes through everything dies"
Turtling in SupCom is a totally viable _temporary counter_ to specific enemy plays. It's by far the most reliable thing you can do on land _for a while_ if the enemy tries T1 spam - hold on with com and your own T1 to get earlier T2, put down some PD and hide under shields -> you get much better exchange rate for mass while he maintains the assault, even if he manages to overwhelm your forward defenses. The problem here is that you need to act on that advantage and just sitting at home focusing eco for game-enders only works if you're the eco player in the back lines in a multiplayer match, and that's actually harder and more micro-instensive than playing aggressivley on the front, hence eco/air beign the traditional spot for the highest rating players in the lobby.
how is eco micro intensive? I'm pretty bad at this game but I always figured eco is just about learning the optimal build queue to shit out a nuke as fast as possible
Games with optimal strategies suck.
clicking on rocks with engineers to get mass is very tedious and RSI inducing.
The worst part is there is a "auto reclaim" feature with attack-move, but it's much slower than clicking the rocks yourself. FAF admins consider mods to make attack move as efficient as manually clicking rocks cheating.
But I think the other anon meant that eco players are usually also the air players, and you have to micro air or you lose big time. Air micro isn't hard, you just need to not get surprised so it requires a lot of attention.
>spoiler
Figures. If there's one thing that pro-gamers hate, it's reliable QoL because it robs them of their hard earned skills such as the rapid rock clicking ability you mentioned and lets casuals do that effortlessly.
>_temporary counter_
>_for a while_
have a nice day then get the frick off our site, ESL.
Turtling in SupCom will get you brutalized by anyone who doesn't turtle.
Original supcom or faf? Because AFAIK turtling got nerfed in the expansion as far as I understand. Competent players in the original would end up in artillery slug fests.
>turtle in your base like a socially distanced normie
>enemy grabs the entire map and outproduces you in everything
>by the time you tech up to vehicles they drop their entire army and ultimate units
had a friend that played the guard exactly like that, but every time he tried multiplayer he got flattened hard
eventually he figured a setup that worked for him, 2 of us vs as many hard AIs as the map allowed
I figured IG players have some special brand of autism
Anon no...
Dawn of War outright encourages you to be rushing capture points ASAP and possibly fricking up the enemy's base as soon as possible.
You are right that Imperial Guard do have a gay strategy where they build a turret in the enemy HQ but that's more of an aggressive defense kind of thing.
In small 1v1 games you can take your half of the map almost instantly then focus on turtling and teching up. It can work as IG since their economy and static defenses are the best of any race.
Turtling is pretty much exclusively a singleplayer campaign thing, where defending against an immediate and persistent threat is one of the highest priorities, while rushing unfinished bases or claiming map resources isn't possible at all because of the widespread enemy presence. It's really a different game than playing online. I guess some card games or artillery games accommodate for a more conservative playstyle, because otherwise most games are all about aggression.
>Warcraft 3 is maybe the only game with the campaign where spamming towers is actually a viable strategy.
Wait, you're actually struggling to find suitable singleplayer stuff? There's got to be a hundred games where you can sit back until you tech up to your 'I win' button. And spamming towers doesn't even begin to count as a strategy, wtf.
>non-RTS games like Total War
I'm pretty sure that Total War has real time battles on tactical maps, even if it is turn based on the strategy map. Or did you auto-resolve all battles since you couldn't turtle in them?
He's one of those people that considers it no longer an RTS if you're not macroing and microing at the same time.
They are Billions.
supreme commander has some pretty good defensive advantage if you play UEF, but you probably shouldn't "only" be turtling
same with starcraft 2 as terran
total annihilation if you play vs ai on island maps
quite the opposite, you need to be constantly aggressive on the map to expand and get more resources so you can survive the next big swarm
c&c generals? not at all. maybe in campaign?
you again? Again,
>turtling is actually an optimal strategy
no such RTS or reality exists. Play tower defence games.
>Autist remakes a thread and asks the exact same question down to the last word because he didn't like the answers he got last time.
it's a terrible disease. if only they understood how tiresome they are.
Age of Mythology. It's the perfect game.
Conquest of Elysium.(only certain factions) The game is about surviving as long as possible as much as winning. It's possible to open portals to horrible realms, flood the world with ants or spiders, or cause some other disaster and just sit back and wait for everyone else to die.
Tower defense games.
Supreme commander. The OG one, not FA or FAF.
Victoria 2
For single player campaign stuff, aoe2 is a turtlers wet dream.
For multiplayer, I guess just favorite Arena and get good at using monks? Or play byzantines and try to trade trash favorably with the enemy till they run out of gold.
I always found AoE 2 to be frustrating for turtling as a child. I just wanted my nice teuton base, but my cannon towers and castles are forever outranged by trebs and bombards.
Funny thing is that castles weren't a thing in AOE1 at all, that game was really not designed for defensive play, all you had were wimpy towers and that's it
>cannons outranged by trebuchets and bombards
Lmao I know AoE2 is arcadey but this shit is outrageous and part of why I refuse to play it
>For single player campaign stuff, aoe2 is a turtlers wet dream.
except that's totally wrong, most missions become impossible to beat if you sit on your ass and turtle, the AI just rapes you over time with supreme resources and production. Barbarossa campaign is probably the most guilty of this.
But that Joan of Arc mission where you begin with a large siege force, take over a castle, and then there's a Burgundy base way down to the south? Had to restart that shit a couple times only to understand you HAVE to bumrush Burgundy with what you have right after you take over the initial castle. If you don't, you get overpowered 2v1 with combined archer/siege/cavalier/hussar comps
In most missions you start defending and your main objective is to turtle until you are on enemy level to launch an attack.
Civ5 is designed around playing tall with 4 well placed cities, for like 75% of the game offensive wars will just delay important early game development because global happiness is a very strange mechanic.
It is in fact the most viable way to play the game, focus on science for the first half of the game, then continue on to science / culture / diplo victory with a super tall empire behind movement crippling great wall.
There's even civs like Shoshone who get combat bonus in friendly territory (and are objectively one of the strongest civs because of how snowbally civ5 is off the back of a strong start)
Age of Empires 2
Look for the Legend of Wall. That guy would wall off the enemy base and starve them out of resources with bombard cannons and feitorias.
>What are some video games where turtling is actually an optimal strategy
Any tower defense game. Go play BloonsTD6 or something.
AoM on Titan is Turtling Incarnate.
The AI throws so much shit at you that in order to win you need to exploit that bug where enemy units will beeline towards a gap in your walls instead of attacking them, using it as a chokepoint to spam towers while you build up your eco.
The very first map in the expansion is hell because you're in the open and you need to build towers right away to tuck your Citizens in them every time the snowBlack folk come running around in groups of 20s.
>What are some video games where turtling is actually an optimal strategy?
Play as Eagle in Advance Wars By Web
Heck, play as Eagle in any Advance Wars
There is a reason why he's in either Tier 2 or 1 in all game modes. Even in the Live League if you're fast enough you can totally frick up your opponent's day by building units and ending the turn early.
Turtling is suboptimal in every scenario
I would go as dar to say "turtling is a bad strategy" is encoded in the structure of the universe itself
>I would go as dar to say "turtling is a bad strategy" is encoded in the structure of the universe itself
Why's it work for turtles then? Being aggressive outside of what's necessary to eat gets you easily killed in nature. Turtling is bad in game because land = resources = science = power. If resources were unevenly distributed as they are in reality, and for that matter if trade actually mattered beyond abstract money and manipulating the ai, it would be entirely possible to sit on what you have and do well.
>Why's it work for turtles then?
are you seriously comparing a real life turtle to a one-time RTS game multiplayer skirmish? And how does it work for turtles? Do turtles train units? Do they construct turtle warrior barracks? Do they collect minerals and coral reef to pay for turtle warriors in the barracks? This is one of those rare situations where going outside and touching grass might actually be beneficial for you
If turtling can't be compared to turtles then give it another name.
If you speed past the basic definition of turtling all the way to the habitual lifetime cycles of marine animals and say "that's the entire point", there is no help for you.
How are you this much of a brainlet? In both cases the "turtle" is hiding in its home and weathering the storm until it's time to come out and prosper. It's an apt comparison, and works well in some strategies, while adding to the fun and variety of them.
>I would go as dar to say "turtling is a bad strategy" is encoded in the structure of the universe itself
It works for turtles
lol, it doesn't even work for turtles. For any given species, there's a 50/50 chance that they'll be endangered or protected.
Turtling as a strategy only works on a very limited basis, i.e. a temporary defense to protect against a transient threat.
Ultimately, acting defensively is a bad strategy longterm, whether it's turtles getting fricked by crocodiles superior bite force, or a turtling player slowly getting crushed by a much larger enemy.
Turtles literally swim hundreds of miles harvesting resources, they're far more proactive than the mouthbreathers who want turtling to be viable in RTS games.
The first Company of Heroes campaign and skirmishes can be won by slowly securing the map choking the enemy out of control points. There are a lot of missions where you are simply on the defensive as well, and you can build enough field defenses to choke and block the enemy enough that a single machine gun and AT gun can defend a stretch.
What are some strategic video games where I don't have to do any strategy?
exactly, i just want to chill and watch my railroads run freight
>economy sims like Tropico aren't a thing.
Civ 5 as someone else said, it's actually optimal to have like 5 cities on deity and just defend them for a cultural victory or something.
This is actually pretty fun to do. I enjoy Civ5 immensely because each victory type can be countered by doing another victory type better. Or it can be a race. With Religion sprinkled in. I will shill Civ5 until my ass cancer kills me.
>deity
why would you do this to yourself?
t. Kingbabby, Emperor was harsh
i always thought "turtling" ment holding in your poop while you play the game.
That's prairie dogging.
Factorio
X4: Foundations
Just play Tower Defense games if your idea of a fun game involves passively watching the enemy kill themselves against your turrets.
I am surprised no one mentioned Stronghold, where turtling is the only viable strategy in most situations.
Empire Earth, against AI at least. Depending on the map configuration it's also a strategy used against other players, like on island games. EE is like AoE2 but the tech tree is massive, resources are effectively infinite, town centers are more powerful and can be upgraded, and the AI cheats and cannot be defeated by cutting off their access to resources. They will just keep rebuilding and popping out units no matter what, you can't just kill town center and barracks and effectively win from there. One of the optimal strategies is to wall and tower up and boom all the way through the tech tree from cavemen to planes then carpet bomb the map.
Applies to pretty much every game when against a cheating AI, you need to use resources more efficiently and towers do that best.
Against a player EE forces you to expand way more than AoE2. Because even though resource piles are infinite, there is a limit to how many workers can harvest from each one. It's similar to SupCom extractors on Starcraft crystals in that sense, your income cap is determined by how many resource piles you have access to. In AoE2 you have the option of throwing 30+ vils at a gold pile, and use the income spike to win even before it runs out.
All of them.
Stronghold is a very defensive game. Most of the missions just have you build you and survive enemy waves.
Age of Mythology is turtle friendly expect for a few missions.
Majesty is a defensive game by nature given how you have limited ways to be aggressive. Dungeon Keeper can count as well.
>Total War
The noob box can defeat anything. Turtleing is very effective in games where flanking is a thing.
It works in certain situations in the GSGs like eu(It worked way better with uncapped attrition, the eu4 cap changed the meta and direction of that game forever onward)or Stellaris, where you wanna choke the enemy with smallest possible casualties, until they are either bored or someone outside takes interest, so as to spend resources on defense ahead of time so that you're either not attacked, or when you are, it doesn't cost you as much.
Basically any game where "something else" can frick over your opponent given enough time, encourages turtling to a degree, because the flow of war isn't deterministic, meaning there may be better moments to attack/counterattack, but to reach those you need to be able to stall.
total annihilation
sins of a solar empire
stellaris
they are billions is defensive. yes you have to move on the map, but you're ultimately playing turtle the rest of the game. you're not attacking, you're expanding and defending.
C&C generals
starcraft
you can play some really effective campaign turtle strats in total war, I do it sometimes.
terra invicta
C&C Generals.
For the two reasons that you can create cash within your base and you have unlimited range weapons. So you *could* reach a point where you can annihilate your opponent from afar and have enough income to rebuild your losses.
But there is counterplay as well. A well made game will allways offer counterplay and a turtle is very easily exploited
Turtleing is gay and dumb.
Spellforce 1. Only because the AI cheats and it takes forever to get your shit online. Entire game feels like a turtlefest. They even put resources in exposed areas that you have to spread yourself kinda thing to defend.