Why Turtle is not a good Strategy

I don't know how you came up to that conclusion after reading my post, other than by just ignoring it.
It's ok if you think that raiding your enemies is the only way of obtaining and securing map control. But containining an enemy is a form of map-control, too. But you'll notice the inefficiency of your strategy once you're playing against someone who actually knows how to defend against your swarms of units.

Sure, being aggressive is a good mentality to have in this game. Raiding unprotected areas of your enemy is always good. But sending a hundred ants into a heavily fortified enemy base to let them get obliterated by stationary defences and maybe destroy a section of walls in the process, is BAD. It's, like I already said, a form of wasting ressources. You'll always have to wager whether there's more reward than risk involved.

But if you insist on continueing to mindlessly sending units in to attack someone, even if there are enough defences to prevent every attempt of doing so in a cost-efficient way, then people will just have an easier time countering you. Your advantage in economy won't mean a thing if you just tend to throw your units away.

This is a macro-game. It means that you not only have to think about how to spend your ressources and expand your economy, but how to use your units, which you spent your ressources on, in the most cost-efficient way possible. Just trust me on that matter

I don't mean a swarm of units getting in his main base, what I mean is get some Slammers, running in the side of the enemy base destroying his Eco, also he can't spawn a bunch of turlte all arround his base.

Yeah sure, that's always a good move. As long as your Slammers hurt the enemy more, than losing those Slammers would hurt you. But there will be games where you can't even do that. Where every single inch of your enemy's base is so well protected, that waiting for your nukes/orbital laser-platform to finish would be a better idea than to send any ground-units in.

but you need to think about Time, well of course a Super-Turtle Planet can be done, but you need to have at least 1 hour to make a decent Turtle, in the best situation.
w/ a constant fight, unless if your enemy is a idiot(don't attack you A.K.A. Turtle), you can't do that.

Strong defence and building focus is a good strategy in PA if this is turtling then turtling works. The strenght of lazer towers combined with T1 artillery with walls strategically places in and around your base make any tank rush useless when done properly. Building airshield of superiority fighters and missile turrets protect you well enough from air. When you reach T2 you can spam catapults, umberellas and if the map is small enough use the classic 18th century line strategy of building defences in lines all the way up to the enemy until you can pound his base. If he has neglected catapult defence you will win easy, if not you can snipe his advanced radar stations and mass build catapults. On larger maps I usually focus more on nukes but always build bases near the enemy base and creep in with catapults. Not sure if this is considered turtling though with regards to OP explenation.

I have won 3/4 games where my team and I have used this strategy in MP games on PA so far in 2v2 and 3v3's. The game we lost was due to the enemy team using this "turtle" strategy better than we did. Though we cordinated over skype which is a inherent advantage over people who play with random players.

I always defined turtling as someone who ony concerns himself with defence, and deep down knows he is going to lose but will go down as slowly and make it more time consuming for you than possible. I have played many games on LAN parties against friends who really are more fps players, they know they suck at rts so they rather just turtle which is more fun to them.

I'm gonna disagree with the majority of you guys.
While we all get the gist of what turtling is, no one knows the true definition of a turtle, because one doesn't exist. If it did, then there would be no argument.

Consider these restrictions:
We are only talking about high level play(read: people playing to win)
Even distribution of resources over the entire playing field.

Consider this interpretation what makes a turtle
A turtle is a strategy where you secure a perimeter with practically impenetrable defenses and reserve some space inside to construct a game-ender, be it a wonder, an experimental, nukes, or even a comm snipe.

Under these conditions what decides the success of the turtle(assuming satisfactory execution) is space costs and initial investment in defense.

I'm not going to type out the mathematical proof(if you will), at least for now. Here is the conclusion:
If you're going to isolate a part of the map for yourself to build a game-ender, then your opponent can freely expand everywhere else. The consequence of this is that your opponent can build the exact same thing you are building or even a counter to it, faster than you can.

Bigger perimeter means marginally more resources, but way bigger cost of defending.
You can't landgrab and then establish an impenetrable defense without your opponent having a large time window to crush you.

...
Say you can build a resource generator similar to that of the Paragon from FA; Not necessarily infinite resources, but you still need it to win. If we increase the size of the building we reach a point where the cost of the building, plus the cost of all the towers of each type around the building would cost more than a successful attack on such a base.


Sorry I'm jumping all over the place, I can't write straight atm, but want to get my point across.

Well for a starter I wouldn't really say that the "Turtle" is one single strategy. Turtleing might be a part of a strategy like a nuke rush, rushing orbital or luring the enemy into attacking your defenses although the last strategy requires that your opponent makes the mistakes rather than yourself playing well.
The viability of turtleing is highly dependent on map/planet features and resource distribution. If the map/planet have a lot of choke points or if the resources are centralized around the players starting positions, turtleing might be a good strategy.

Not to mention that FFAs strategies might be more geared towards your survival rather than fighting against your opponents outright.
Turtleing strategies have their place but don't expect them to work well on an open map with spread-out resources and most importantly remember why you are turtleing in the first place. Defenses won't help you win unless you actually have a way of hurting your opponent whether it be lategame t2 spam, turret creep or a nuke.

The effectiveness of all strategies depends upon its ability to counter the moves of the other player.

If you're playing against players who insist upon raiding you constantly with units, then a turtle strategy can work to your advantage. Hold off their attacks with much cheaper defenses while rushing a game-ender.

If the enemy you're playing against realizes that you are turtling, they can simply copy your strat without the defenses and beat you to the game-ender. Either that or they can attempt to set up long-range/artillery siege to wear you down.

If a player turtles and you try to assault his base and fail (due to mass defenses) then you'll likely eventually lose unless you mend your tactics.

It WORKS but only when used intelligently and in reaction to enemy behavior. Much like any semi-balanced strategy.

Yeah. Currently in PA you have the RPS of expansion>defense>raiding>expansion like seen in TA and Zero-K.
Scouting allows you to balance your start and counter the enemy start.

And this is why this game is so awesome.

OK, now Turtle can be a viable but when the game is released I will have one argument:
MEGABOT.

sry wrong topic

this is why Turtle is...
if you get a bunch of Turrets we need only to throw some of those.

What happens if you have a strong outer ring of defense and a strong inner ring.