How to handle these *******

[Lieutenant Lich]

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.

[KeyBlue]

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.

[RocketRooster]

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.

[RocketRooster]

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

"Avoid enemy strength and attack his weakness."

[Lieutenant Lich]

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.

[KeyBlue]

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.

[RocketRooster]

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.

[KeyBlue]

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.

[rtc]

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.

[Lieutenant Lich]

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?