For me it really ruins the game when 1 player can sit in a base piled with all of their specialists and hold off an enemy who has 10x the production and unit cap of his. I have had multiple games where a player get's a sentry with a pile of specials and makes it impossible to finish him off without pulling so many troops off of my borders that I lose them. This game is about strategy and there's no way to counter a turtle unless you get a navigator, pirate, assassin combo which can take multiple days of waiting for the right specials and even more time to get them in position. Choosing to ignore a turtled player just turns them into a ticking time bomb, they will continue gaining specialists and building up troops (up to 150), wait until you are preoccupied fighting another players and then blow a giant hole in your front line.

Some ideas for nerfing turtling:
#1 Cap the number of "active" specialists (specialists who's non global effects happen) at a base to 5 (counting queen). This would help by greatly diminishing the effectiveness of a pile of specialists while turtling.

#2 Having a minimum number of bases required to gain new specialists (3 would be a good number) would allow an attacker to strategically shut down his opponent's growth (which makes sense if they have only 1 base left) giving the attacker the opportunity to slowly wear the turtling player defenses down and not having to sacrifice their other fronts to do so.

#3 Increase the number of choices of specials to 4 so that players have an easier time drawing nav+pirate+assassin.

No actualy I don't think turtlling is all that effective all you need is some allied effort. You could even ally with the guy thats turtling.

paradox486 wrote:For me it really ruins the game when 1 player can sit in a base piled with all of their specialists and hold off an enemy who has 10x the production and unit cap of his. I have had multiple games where a player get's a sentry with a pile of specials and makes it impossible to finish him off without pulling so many troops off of my borders that I lose them. This game is about strategy and there's no way to counter a turtle unless you get a navigator, pirate, assassin combo which can take multiple days of waiting for the right specials and even more time to get them in position. Choosing to ignore a turtled player just turns them into a ticking time bomb, they will continue gaining specialists and building up troops (up to 150), wait until you are preoccupied fighting another players and then blow a giant hole in your front line.

Some ideas for nerfing turtling:
#1 Cap the number of "active" specialists (specialists who's non global effects happen) at a base to 5 (counting queen). This would help by greatly diminishing the effectiveness of a pile of specialists while turtling.

#2 Having a minimum number of bases required to gain new specialists (3 would be a good number) would allow an attacker to strategically shut down his opponent's growth (which makes sense if they have only 1 base left) giving the attacker the opportunity to slowly wear the turtling player defenses down and not having to sacrifice their other fronts to do so.

#3 Increase the number of choices of specials to 4 so that players have an easier time drawing nav+pirate+assassin.

Lol I getcha man. You had a bad game that felt unfair- I too ranted when a guy hired double kings and rampaged across the map- ended up owning 31 factories, when he finally made a couple mines he could produce 203 Neptunium a day. It sucked. Sounds like you where in a similarly 'unfair' situation.

This is where this game is beautiful. Diplomacy can either make any strategy useless or invincible. If his allies had backstabbed him while he was on the offense with his drillers somewhere else the Mr.Kings would have been wiped out. Same with this situation. You can spot a turtle- they are the first to build a mine and thier favorite specialists are Sabetuers, Inspectors, double agents, and smugglers.

Building a mine requires drillers and 50 drillers can mean a lot early game, a second mine is even more expensive. If they build a mine early you have a couple options- Try to convince others that they are weak and down 50 drillers and an outpost(mines don;t produce energy or drillers). Pledge alliance to the scum bag an in return ask for funding when he gets 20 Nept- Funding is a very strong buff that can help you snowball.

I hope this helps a bit. Sometimes with the way diplomacy rolls out and your positioning, some games are just unwinnable.
TLDR
Hit turtles immediately after building mine
Turtles make ok Allies if your after Funding
Sometimes the game may be unwinnable- Sorry.

I mean, I guess it's "powerful", except that the guy youre killing needs time and opportunity to mass a bunch of specialists, AND needs to be losing very badly.

Be happy. He's losing really badly, and you're not. You get to keep playing toward a medal, while he, at worst will be an annoyance and finish only better than the players who got eliminated.

I know what you mean about how annoying it is
But a turtle is not achieving any victory objectives in the game and also the production is very low
Honestly I'm more worried about gifting when a player is defeated

You mean like this? This the game I'm in right now. I was the biggest powerhouse on the map and got turned on

Wow. But seriously it looks fun.

I had a guy tell me how honest he was and he immediately blitzed me. My position was bad and he had three sites on my side and I had only one on that side.

Thanks to his help in public chat I got everyone around him to attack with me. He ended up with 217 drills with a nav/general/queen sailing around. My pirate/assassin could never catch him, nor could the hundreds of subs I chased him with. If he was smart he could have killed my queen but instead he plowed into my mine and resigned.

Some last stand combos are hard to counter.

gardengnome wrote:I had a guy tell me how honest he was and he immediately blitzed me. My position was bad and he had three sites on my side and I had only one on that side.

Thanks to his help in public chat I got everyone around him to attack with me. He ended up with 217 drills with a nav/general/queen sailing around. My pirate/assassin could never catch him, nor could the hundreds of subs I chased him with. If he was smart he could have killed my queen but instead he plowed into my mine and resigned.

Some last stand combos are hard to counter.

I don't see why your pirate + assassin could never catch him. Maybe you just need some allied effort and have 2 of them?

tw2000 wrote:No actualy I don't think turtlling is all that effective all you need is some allied effort. You could even ally with the guy thats turtling.

yeah, after a players base is destroyed they usually are very keen on being an ally of the person who destroyed it....