Instructive turtle games to watch

[knacK]

Can you recommend me some nice 1vs1 games (replays or Youtube videos) where one of the players starts turteling at some point? Especially games where both players know what they are doing. So the turteling player is turteling well but the attacking player with map control knows how to play vs. turtle and wins (which should be always the case of course if you know how to play vs. turtle due to map control and more mexes). I am interested in the best ways to beat turtle. I know in theory: mml, t3 arty, etc, but I would like to see the execution by experienced players.

[tatsu]

the only case where that happens is when one player doesn't really know what he's doing :

Case in point : https://replay.faforever.com/12266629

I'm a bit worse than this guy (EG. I don't know what I'm doing) but I somehow ended up getting map control pretty early on and then couldn't figure out how to capitalize on that.

despite throwing a bit of air and land and tactical missiles at him continuously he survived and even managed to eco pretty well to the point where he was keeping up with my land army.

In the end though map control always wins (if the skill gap doesn't too heavily favor the turtler)

and in general the higher skilled player has the good sense to not turtle.

[armacham01]

#11961621
#11658240

Here are two examples of how to beat a turtle. In both cases, the player expands with a lot of t1 units to grab t1 mexes around the map. They also keep up with FLOOD's economy by upgrading mass extractors and upgrading HQs. AlexanderBerlin is a lot sharper than Cysteine, so he closed this out much sooner. But even with the mistakes, Cysteine still won, because the basic underlying plan was strong, and he was strong enough to pull it off.

You need to keep up with the enemy's economy and tech. For example, if you don't get t2 tech, you might just die to TMLs. If you don't get t2/t3 land, you might just die when Titans come spilling out of FLOOD's base, or if he drops 6 percivals.

You need to keep up with the enemy's economy. Early on, this should be easy, because you are getting t1 mexes all over. But eventually the turtle will be upgrading his mexes at home. if he gets 4 storaged t3 mexes, that's 108 mass/second. Which is equivalent to 54 t1 mexes. so you do need t2 mexes to keep up with his economy.

If you watch some of FLOOD's other games, you will see him winning a lot of the time, even against 1k-rated players.

MML and T3 arty are not really the answer to beating a turtle. They are ways that you can try to break the turtle, but the key to beating the turtle is to get and keep an economic lead, to have tech parity (or a tech lead), and to scout so you know what terrible strategy he is cooking up for you. When you have that lead, then you can look for specific ways to defeat them. MMLs may be a good way to break a particular position, to chase the turtle back into his base, but the key to beating a turtle is not specific weapons, it is to have the right mindset. Control them, strangle them, be bigger than them, don't let them sneak attack you.

[knacK]

Thank you guys for the replays and your comments on them! I will take a look at them.

@armacham01: I think I should have explained myself a little better. It's clear to me that you need to be at least even in eco with the turtle and actually it should be easy to have a better eco due to map control, like I mentioned. But what I really wanna know is which WEAPONS are most suitable for breaking the wall of the turtle and how to execute it. Probably the replays are gonna help me with that.

[ThomasHiatt]

Breaking the wall of the turtle is not really the goal since there is no rush to do it. The only way you can lose is prematurely attacking into a fortified location and donating mass, or getting sniped. You just eco and tech until you have an unstoppable force and then eradicate them with ease. If there is any doubt that your attack will fail then you can just wait slightly longer. You have more map control so your advantage can only increase.

[knacK]

Breaking the wall of the turtle is not really the goal since there is no rush to do it. The only way you can lose is prematurely attacking into a fortified location and donating mass, or getting sniped. You just eco and tech until you have an unstoppable force and then eradicate them with ease. If there is any doubt that your attack will fail then you can just wait slightly longer. You have more map control so your advantage can only increase.

Makes total sense. But there must be more and less efficient ways to eradicate them in terms of choosing the right weapons. That's why I wanted to see some examples. But I guess I'll just figure it out by playing (since only like 1/20 games goes into t3/t4 turtle stage there is not much pratice, though).

I looked at the replays btw. In those games the turteling only just began when the turtle already died. I am looking for games with lots of shields/PDs/stationary arty etc at t3/t4 stage . Thanks anyways!

[tatsu]

the right weapons.

A bit of everything I wager. If you just do one thing it becomes easier for him to counter against it. in the end when you have map control a mix of a large land army push, an air snipe and mass extractor snipes with tml will do it.

[armacham01]

It sounds like you're not really concerned with fighting a "turtle" per se, you want to know how to fight an enemy with a strong established position. Good players CAN get to that point in games (although it's rare, usually the game ends before that). They don't actually get to that point by turtling up. They fight aggressively for the entire map. But sometimes a game lasts long enough that people actually make things like T3 heavy artillery.

If you're interested in seeing what people do for/against bases like that, you can watch dual gap games. Basically any game that lasts more than 60 minutes should have a LOT of shields, heavy artillery, etc. Same story for twin rivers, seton's, isis, canis, and lots of other team maps. if the game goes on long enough, it's likely people are making big toys and heavily-shielded bases.

If you want to know what people "should" do, look for high-rated dual gap games. I couldn't find any recent ones but here is a longer game on that map #11873875

Here are some seton's games that go long, you might find base-breaking tactics here.
#11824838
#11810555
#11795246

Here are some twin rivers 1v1s that go long
#12232765
#12173640

If you search Gyle casts for "epic" team games or "arty fest" you should find some games with these situations. Not sure how helpful it will be to watch his videos, for what you want (specific details about what you should do).

[codepants]

The one thing I think most people miss is not coordinating their mmls. Have them stop firing (red button in the lower left), wait 8 seconds, then tell them to fire so they all fire at once. Overwhelming TMD is much, much easier this way. (unless it's AEON tmd. Then ignore this) (but most people who are good enough to play aeon are good enough not to turtle)

Most turtling begins at t2 so assuming all else equal, you kick out your first mobile missile launcher just before your opponent finishes his first t2 pd (mmls are slightly cheaper than t2 pds). At this point the turtler will start making tmd. Again, mmls are slightly cheaper than tmd, so you should have two mml. If he goes shield, again, mmls are cheaper so you should have three before he can get a shield up. At this point you need only make one mml per building he makes. If he spams TMD, he is not advancing. Your MMLs are merely keeping him in place while you get map control elsewhere. The point is not to beat the base, just to have them put much more mass into it than they need to. You can break turtles with mml since one mmls is cheaper than one TMD, but your profit margin (the amount of mass you spend less than your opponent) is very small. Sometimes it's necessary to keep them from pd creeping you, but in general, making mmls is only a distraction.

If your opponent is smart he will make his own mml, forcing you to make a shield. You might have to micro your mmls in this case, but most turtlers aren't that good (usually by the time someone can turtle well, they know doing other things works better).

Considering from the start again, say your opponent went t2 on their ACU and you went gun. T2 is slightly cheaper than gun, so he will finish first, but t2 + t2 pd is more expensive than gun, so you can approach and start shooting the pd before it finishes (all else equal). You can then push your opponent back until he collects some units, and you just got map control. Having some units with you and having OC helps too.

Anyway, the turtling phase shouldn't get much beyond t2 if your opponent is really focusing it. If you let them build a ravager, for instance, then you already lost (or are really ignoring them and really winning everywhere else on the map. Or it's a team game and your team sucks).

I recently played a turtler but the replay is literally just me spamming mmls while ecoing and him making pd and ecoing slightly less. It was a multiplayer game so there was nowhere else for me to go and nothing else for me to do. It was really lame. The smart thing he did when his base started buckling was reclaim it all.

[FtXCommando]

way better to build t2 arty than ravagers in a firebase war