How to defeat a turtle
I just defeated a turtled-in opponent in ranked play. He played rather defensively and found himself encircled. But he built lots of defenses and forced me to come get him. Meanwhile, he had tech 2 artillery shooting out at my forces, forcing me to put up a lot of shields to protect my forward base. I dropped some siege bots to his rear and took out all of his outlaying buildings and resources, but I still couldn’t crack those defenses.
I ended up using his own strategy against him. I built up a lot of artillery underneath my shields and I guess I got lucky with a few shots, because his commander quickly went up in a plume of radioactive waste. But had he turtled in a little bit better and used more shields, this wouldn’t have worked nearly as well. I would have needed a better strategy to take him out. Here’s what I could have done.
The simplest strategy is just a massive Tech 3 siege bot rush. I was building up to this with a land factory that was assisted many times over, but it was still taking awhile. I had the luxury to build up as much as I wanted, seeing as how I had many times as resources coming in as he did, so I didn’t want to go in too early and waste my entire force without being assured of taking him out. It’s possible that I did wait too long, though, and if I had just sent in the siege bots that I had, I would’ve taken him down.
The other strategy that I was working on (besides the artillery) was a gunship assassination mission. I hadn’t really used air power against him very much, having used land power a lot, so most of his defenses were anti-land rather than anti-air. I did build up a good number of gunships and was prepared to send them in on an assassination mission when my artillery got lucky first. And I would have sent them in with the siege bots for a mixed-arms attack.
These next two strategies come courtesy of Unconquerable. I’ve thought of them “academically”, as it were, but I didn’t think to implement them during the heat of combat (maybe I should write out a list of strategies on a Post-It note and tack it on my monitor). The best way to crack a turtle that’s heavy on tech 2 point defense is to send in tech 3 mobile artillery. They have longer range than the point defense and will quickly overwhelm it. Unconquerable’s other strategy would be to send in two strategic bombers on an assassination run. This is the strategy he used to great effect to win the Gamespot “Last Commander Standing” tournament.
April 3rd, 2007 at 10:40 am
T3 mobile artillery is has a longer range than point defences, but noticably shorter than T2 artilery. Although the latter costs more, would they truly be that useful in cracking a shield while sitting there under artillery fire?
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:15 am
Absolutely. Tech 2 artillery is noticeably inaccurate. In the time it takes mobile artillery to crack base shields, the defender would be lucky to kill even a few of the attackers with tech 2 artillery. Mobile artillery firing out from underneath shields would actually be a much, much more effective counter. As would having a defensive army ready to sally forth and engage the attackers in close combat. Gunships do a good job of this, and have the advantage of being able to respond more quickly than, say, siege bots. Or, even better, just a few strategic bombers can demolish any sized land army that doesn’t have good anti-air protection.