thephilosopher

Booming to phase 3 and then turtling is what a good player who wants to turtle would do. But very few turtlers are good players, and very few good players go for a defensive turtling strategy. Most turtlers I've seen in action build some early military units, maintain a fairly defensive stance even in phases 1 and 2, hit 100 pop around the 12 or 13 minute mark (sometimes even a tad later), and then start cranking out fortresses and garrisoning all their troops as soon as they hit phase 3. I've even seen one or two stop all resource gathering at phase 3, except farming, and operate entirely with trading at markets. Then they play the old Muhammad Ali strategy: wait for the enemy to attack, and then mop them up if the attack fails.

I like it the way it is, too. Small groups of troops are useless either way - they take forever to capture buildings, but they take even longer to knock them down. And if you've got a large army, it's much more efficient to capture and delete than to bash them down.

So, like a scientist I guess, I sought out turtlers for about a half dozen or so games the last couple of days to test some things out. I played mostly unrated games, because I didn't want any losses to mess with my rating (which is already sitting a bit too low b/c I lost a bunch of rated games back when I was new to the game). As a part of the experiment, I made no attempt to use my usual (and almost 100% successful, but super slow) strategy for dealing with turtlers - building defensive structures, encircling their territory, and taking them down in gradual waves. What tended to work: invading with elephant armies or large numbers of rams, supported by ranged units and swordsmen. Including defense against cav in the army. What didn't work: invading with large armies with 4 or fewer rams or elephants (i.e., or any other conventional strategy against boomers or rushers). Phase 2 rush (but that might be because I'm just not very good at phase 2 rushing). Cav rush at Phase 1. I won about half the games and lost about half. One particularly frustrating game ended in a stalemate, where I took out the opponent's fortresses and got the CC down to half power, before they were able to drive me back. I probably could've won that game, but it was going to take an hour or longer. I got so annoyed that I quit the game, which is the first time I've ever done that. Not my best moment, but I think we were playing unrated. I called an end to this little experiment after that game.

A Phase 2 rush is another strategy I thought might work against defensive turtling, but I've never tried it. The idea would be to prevent them from going to Phase 3 and building fortresses. Turtlers tend to be hard to rush in Phase 1. At least, the ones I've seen build early military units so a cav rush won't be successful.

It's got its advantages and disadvantages. The main problem with only changing the rating of the winner is that it would give higher ratings to players who just play more games. Even if they lose most of those games.

It can be hard to tell. I have no idea whether my rating is about right or too low.

If you think your rating is too low, there are basically two ways to "correct" it that I know about: only play against people rated higher than you and win about half those games, or rack up a large number of wins against noobs. The first strategy is preferable to the second one, both because it's a more true indicator of ability and because a fair number of "noobs" in the lobby are smurfs (far from all, but, to be honest, a number of them are).

I think this is probably true, esp. Carthaginians. But for whatever reason, turtlers seem to love the Gauls and people who pick Carthaginians seem to like phase 2 merc cav raids instead of turtling.

This might be a kind of basic question, but I've noticed an uptick lately in players who use turtling as a strategy in 1v1 play. That's their right and everything. If they want to do it, they can. But I have to admit I think it makes the game super boring, at best, and it's sort of a cheap way to crank out wins in games you'd otherwise lose, at worst. I'd like to avoid joining games against turtlers b/c I think it ruins the game experience. Does anyone have tips for how to handle this in 1v1 games? Ways of setting up the game (specific pop limits/maps/civs) to discourage turtling as a strategy? Ways to quickly defeat players who turtle? I already know some of the basics - for example, I now avoid any 200 pop game against players who choose Gauls (or sometimes Romans). That's practically an advertisement that you're going to turtle. I also know how to defeat turtlers really, really sloooowly. But is there a way to do it much more quickly?

Cav aren't as OP as you're suggesting here. It sounds like the problem is that you need to work more ranged units into your army and not just spam out spearmen. tbh, I usually have zero or few cav in my army. I do perfectly fine fighting opponents who use cav, as long as I have a balance of units and get some military upgrades.

I think this is also the same player who quit without resigning in one of Tom0ad's recent vids. Seems like a pleasant fellow.

Also, Sophist - +100% research time, -90% pierce resistance. Jokes aside, I really like your idea for the Athenian bonus.

Hi @user1. My opponent quit a rated 1v1 without resigning. Maybe accidental, but I was going to win and would like the rating points. My lobby name: thephilosopher Opponent's lobby name: WilsonWilson commands.txt metadata.json

Definitely. I also edited that post and added that bit at the end about pop max. 200 pop seems way better for turtling than anything higher.

My impression has been that the decline of turtling has looked a lot different depending on skill level. Most players under about 1300 rating still can't beat a player who can turtle, even when they can beat players who use other strategies. Most players over 1300 can easily boom and defeat a turtler. It also depends on pop max. 200 pop max seems to be much, much better for turtling than 250 or 300.

For the record, if anyone ever sees someone in the lobby named "the_sophist" who plays Sparta like a 1250ish player and starts talking like the Aristophanes version of Socrates, I'm probably smurfing. Or someone's playing a joke on me.

I assume the objection to buffing them only against buildings is that it would make them too similar to rams? Presumably the ideal function of catapults is that they're OK but not great at killing units (i.e., better than rams, which don't kill units at all) but not as good as rams at knocking down buildings?

I prefer 1v1 personally, but the lack of players and options makes the TG more attractive. Playing 1v1 often means having to choose between either a good format that gets old after awhile (mainland map, standard settings) or someone trying to play tricks on me (e.g., by choosing a weird map that few people know how to play, by choosing weird settings that most people aren't used to, etc.).

This is probably true. It still doesn't make sense to me why people try to manipulate their rating in this way. The higher their rating goes, the more they're going to get upset about losing when a better player comes along.

Yeah, it's pretty weird that some people are super vigilant about smurfs. They should give it a rest. The fact that some people are very upset about smurfs is probably a big motivation for the few smurfs who cause problems.

I agree with your point that the scoring system gives eco too much weight and military not enough. Noticing exactly that problem is one of the things that tipped me off a few months ago that I needed to do a much better job managing resources and troops while playing the game: I was losing games even while winning the score! But going back to your original example, I don't think it's a very clear one. Three players on your team scored in the 17000s. That's way too close to judge MVP by score alone, and no one should expect that level of precision from the scores. So, it's not at all obvious to me that I should expect atila1752 to be the MVP in that game judging by score alone. Usually if I see scores that close, I'd say the MVP isn't obvious and I need to look at the details to decide the MVP. I'd have been a lot more unimpressed by the scoring system had atila1752 scored, say, 5000 more points than a player who bagged 800+ kills. Or if I looked at the detailed stats and found that someone other than epemeune was the best player on Team 1.

I played AoE: Rise of Rome and AoE 2 back in the day. 0AD is really the only game I've found that captures and builds on that experience. I don't get tired of 0AD because I don't play it too often and I'm not a good enough player to really max out the experience.

I think the answer to your question is probably about balancing the civs. Sparta has a much, much better melee unit you can access at Phase 2 (skiritai commando). I play Sparta a lot, and I usually use hoplites to protect the CC from enemy rams. When I want to put together an army to attack, I use skiritai as my melee unit. Also, Sparta does have skirmishers. They're not very strong, but you can make them a lot stronger by selecting Brasidas as your hero in Phase 3.

Were these rated games? If so, I'd think someone using cheats in a rated game would be solid grounds for for reporting the game in the appropriate thread. Is it even possible to use cheats in a rated game?

Like others said, women are commonly overlooked as an anti-ram unit and can be really seful. Especially since lots of players try to send in sneaky rams without protection. As a bonus, if you're playing the Spartans, women have an extra hit point and basically function like low-end swordsmen. They can be used as either anti-siege or anti-cav in a pinch.