Forged Alliance Forever

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-07-21T03:32:51+02:00

KeyBlue, I played against an aeon on Chiron. He chose to turtle so I remembered your steps. Not every one of them but I stopped making useless shit, teched mexes and then teched facs. I hit T3 air wayyyy before him and was on my way to billy his base a 2nd time. Then he ctrl-k'ed to not waste time.

In other words, thank you for the advice. I understand the principle now.

Statistics: Posted by Lieutenant Lich — 21 Jul 2017, 03:32

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-07-04T01:35:48+02:00

Lich King wrote:
Here's a replay on Broken Vows. I was seraphim against a UEF turtle. Somehow, I thought I attacked at the right time but he still repelled the offensive and eventually overwhelmed me because of his percivals and broadswords.

Just wanted to say, I've played this guy a few times and made exactly the same mistakes as you... it's such a frustrating/boring style of play to come up against. I feel your pain!

Statistics: Posted by Mr Teatime — 04 Jul 2017, 01:35

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-05-03T13:59:36+02:00

Lich King wrote:
How can I limit a turtle? Just build some PDs with radar and AA outside the range of his and stealth them?

no PDs needed, just use normal land units. when you control the whole map except for his base, you can afford to eco up quickly, which then allows you to easily outproduce him on land units while also teching up fast, so you will have a much better army. that's enough to contain him in his starting position and prevent any attempted breakout.
on t1, have some arties in your army to prevent t1 PD creep
on t2, have some MMLs in your army to prevent t2 PD creep
build a bunch of interceptors (later ASFs) to ensure air control
scout a lot, and make stuff to deal with whatever he is making

Statistics: Posted by rtc — 03 May 2017, 13:59

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-05-03T08:25:19+02:00

Please don't make things more complicated than they should be.
The guy who did turtle was just sitting on his 4 core mex and didn't even try to defend every other mex (pretty sure he made his first combat unit around min 6 or so). There is no reason why he should be able to keep literally every other mex outside of his base other than his opponent not attacking them for no reason.

Statistics: Posted by PhilipJFry — 03 May 2017, 08:25

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-05-03T00:18:15+02:00

Taking a leaf from the book of real warfare, I'd say it is good to have mobile reserves halfway to the front lines, because even if you match his army strength up front, an equal engagement will remove any map presence you have up front and you will have sacrificed the time cost of getting units back into action to stop him expanding to his closer mexes, and him having lost his reserves isn't a hard blow if his aim to expand his turtle.

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 03 May 2017, 00:18

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-05-02T23:08:49+02:00

Lich King wrote:
I'll try that next game. How can I limit a turtle? Just build some PDs with radar and AA outside the range of his and stealth them?

Don't build any PD... Just make sure you have some small armies near his borders so you can stop any raids he might attempt.
(scout to make sure his army doesn't become bigger then yours)
Usually you already have enough army left over from the start of the game: the units you made before you realized he goes turtle.

And why would you need to limit a turtle? The turtle already limited himself...

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 02 May 2017, 23:08

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-05-02T22:47:11+02:00

I'll try that next game. How can I limit a turtle? Just build some PDs with radar and AA outside the range of his and stealth them?

Statistics: Posted by Lieutenant Lich — 02 May 2017, 22:47

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-05-02T22:06:18+02:00

20 minutes in, you suicide your land forces by running them straight into his defense. your mixed T1/T2 army gets destroyed by a bunch of T2 PDs, a ravager, and some shields. you do some damage (kill some t2 pgens mostly, which puts him in a power stall) but you lose your entire army and donate him a ton of reclaim right into his base, while you're already behind on eco.
then your attempted T2PD creep gets blown up by him building more ravagers. meanwhile you rebuild a small T2 land army that just stands around because it can't touch his base due to all the T2PDs and multiple ravagers inside of it - waste of mass imo. you're also hitting T3 land and are still sitting on T1 air 20 minutes into the game. very slow tech, considering your opponent never put any pressure on you.
during all of this, you have full control over at least 2/3 of the map, yet somehow you manage to fall behind on eco more and more as time goes on. this is a disaster.
you then build a few T3 mobile artillery units, which is a good idea against an enemy who relies on PD creep so much, but it is way too late - by this point he already has percies on the field an is obliterating the remains of your forward firebase with them.
you manage to finally take out his little base on the central plateau, and start a brief assault on his base, but your small t2 army gets destroyed by his percies and PDs, and your artillery has to retreat without dealing a lot of damage.
the following drawn out standoff between a bunch of artillery units, sniper bots, MMLs and static artillery buildings doesnt go well for you either, mostly because your opponent simply has more stuff than you. then he sends out a bunch of T3 gunships, and because you dont have a single ASF on the field, you cant do anything about them and lose your ACU.

when you play against a turtle, eco more and tech earlier. this way you'll end up having more stuff and better stuff than him, and will easily overpower him in the long run.

Statistics: Posted by rtc — 02 May 2017, 22:06

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T22:38:07+02:00

I've lost my share of games against turtle before i understood you should just follow these simple steps.
And once you follow them, every turtle player will just crumble down before you and you'll get bored due to the lack of interaction.

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 30 Apr 2017, 22:38

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T21:40:16+02:00

Your half-a-twelve-step programme really is very good advice. Reading through the bullet points just made me kick myself as I realised I had a victory over an experienced 3500+ game opponent (and sweet revenge for a prior humiliation - and pissed it away into a headwind. If I had your advice in hand I would quite probably have won.

That is the price of experience. Thanks for your post, it is worth its weight in gold.

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 30 Apr 2017, 21:40

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T21:24:03+02:00

Lich King wrote:
Exactly what I did. I did not attempt to push FLOOD after he spammed up a bunch of ravagers. I sieged him instead and intended to wear him down but as you could see, it did not work.

Thats because you tried to do step 5 without doing steps 0-4 first and thus you couldn't reach step 6.

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 30 Apr 2017, 21:24

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T21:11:16+02:00

RocketRooster wrote:
Oh, and, uh, one more piece of advice:

"Avoid enemy strength and attack his weakness."

Exactly what I did. I did not attempt to push FLOOD after he spammed up a bunch of ravagers. I sieged him instead and intended to wear him down but as you could see, it did not work.

Statistics: Posted by Lieutenant Lich — 30 Apr 2017, 21:11

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T20:53:49+02:00

Oh, and, uh, one more piece of advice:

"Avoid enemy strength and attack his weakness."

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 30 Apr 2017, 20:53

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T20:41:51+02:00

Stellar advice, Keyblue.

I lost a game against Photon today, on that ice map, under similar circumstances even after having secured the ENTIRE map and cornered him in his core base. I kept spamming T1 but just couldn't break through. I made the mistake of ignoring the expansions he had up on the mesas near my base (which ended up being my undoing with tmls and an air base) , and instead focused on overwhelming his base with spam. It just didn't work. He hunkered down, eco'ed hard and was able to snipe me with t1 bombers in the end.

He built a single ravager in the middle of his base which meant that I could not interfere with his leisurely reclaim activities even on the outskirts of his position. Apart from the many other mistakes I made, I tried cracking his base with T3 mobile arty without first securing the firing position, and just generally not taking care of my eco and safety of my com, and relied on T1 spam the whole game which fed him a shitload of reclaim.

If I could coin a phrase to this effect: map presence does not imply map control.

Statistics: Posted by RocketRooster — 30 Apr 2017, 20:41

Re: How to handle these *******

2017-04-30T18:27:36+02:00

Did you watch the replay? Cause its quite obvious what you did wrong.

The reason why turtles should never win is that map control gives a huge eco advantage.
For some reason you didn't use this at all.

1) you overflowed a lot of mass
2) you were behind on eco

Both of those things should be avoided in any game you want to win.
Especially not both at the same time.

How to win in the future?
Step 0 : Recognise that your opponent is a turtle and stop most unit production. (Switch to engies if you don't have many)
Step 1 : eco so hard that he can't possibly catch up (make sure to keep enough mobile units so he can't counter attack, not PD!!!)
Step 2 : Don't attack ever unless for the killing blow (cause the reclaim you leave will keep your opponent in the game)
Step 3 : Make sure you know everything he's doing at all times. (he controls only a small part of the map so you only need to look at that specific spot)
Step 4 : Get air control so you can't get sniped no matter what. Get t3 air when your eco allows it.
Step 5 : Once your eco is miles ahead of his you decide how you'll win: T3 land push, T4, T3 air snipe.
Step 6 : Win because your opponent can never survive your attack with the eco advantage you have.

If you don't have the patience/time for the eco and just want to kill him fast, then you need units that are great vs buildings : artillery and mml.
Be aware that this can be very risky and if done bad you could just have suicided and lost.

Attacking the turtle base is exactly what the turtle player wants, since he wants you to feed him reclaim.
So the actual winning strategy is not to attack, then all the pd and shields he build will just be wasted mass.

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 30 Apr 2017, 18:27