Conquer Club

I'm seeing turtling used more and more as a tactic in limited-round games, and was wondering what the community's thoughts were on the matter.

For the uninitiated, "turtling" in the game's context means to use your turn by a) reinforcing your main troop stack(s) and b) immediately ending your turn without fighting. In games with spoils, particularly escalating spoils, sometimes b) is replaced with "fighting a country with 1 troop on it to get a card without reinforcing anything to it, then ending your turn."

This tactic takes advantage of the fact that in limited-round games, if no one has eliminated all the other players, the winner is the person with the most troops on the board.

Feel free to add your own option in your responses.

um... never heard it called this.. i think you may want to create a new name for this activity that isn't already a part of the english slang lexicon... when i read the title of your thread, i spat out water on my ipad mini...

Urban Dictionary wrote:turtling:
The delicate moments right before one really, really has to take a sh*t, where the sh*t is literally poking its head out of the sphincter then quickly hiding inside again.
Man, on the drive home from Disneyland, I had to take a serious sh*t; I was totally turtling.

seriously, think of a new name...-Jésus noir

I've heard taking the most defensive position possible referred to as turtling in a number of games, both board and online. I don't take my cues from Urban Dictionary, since I would posit that 95% of the definitions submitted to the site are one-offs posted for a laugh by drunken fratboys.

Taking the most defensive posture possible is called turtling because rather than being aggressive, a turtle's main method of combat is to more or less hole up in its thick protective shell until a predator goes away. Snapping turtles notwithstanding.

EDIT: Also, come on. You took the time to look at this thread, go to Urban Dictionary to copy a definition, come BACK to this thread, and paste said definition, but you couldn't even vote in the poll?

Turtling is what Claude Lemiuex did when Darren McCarty decided to beat his ass:


And you're right; Lemieux lost a lot of respect when he did that. What a chump!

Bollocks in 2015.

SaucyJack wrote:EDIT: Also, come on. You took the time to look at this thread, go to Urban Dictionary to copy a definition, come BACK to this thread, and paste said definition, but you couldn't even vote in the poll?

Yeah, I'm not going to vote either.

Bollocks in 2015.

owenshooter wrote:um... never heard it called this..

i've not heard it on CC, but my regular Risk crew (board game) calls turtling all of the time! typically, it refers to the guy who takes too much territory, gets ganged up on, and then retreatsto whatever tiny corner he can find… we usually play escalating to keep games relatively short(ish). the turtle often ends up with an un-attackable single stack somewhere. the turtle sometimes wins, but rarely.

edit: I wanted to vote, but your descriptions are too long for my attention span.

Too many options and I couldn't vote. Here's some humor instead.

For the uninitiated, "turtling" in the game's context means to use your turn by a) reinforcing your main troop stack(s) and b) immediately ending your turn without fighting. In games with spoils, particularly escalating spoils, sometimes b) is replaced with "fighting a country with 1 troop on it to get a card without reinforcing anything to it, then ending your turn."

In escalating, non trench, you should always stack, that's the strategy. So let's keep it out of topic.

I usually call that strategy stacking, but why not for turtling.

I voted for a win is a win, it doesn't matter.
That's a disadvantage of the round limit, many people stack, because that's usually the best strategy. It is totally fine, and most high rank player resort to it. It is ofc boring.

Concerning your poll, all situation are possible, if you are underdog and the top ones are fighting, then stacking is smart. If you are underdog and top ones aren't fighting, then stacking is stupid because you will lose at the end. If you are top one, it always depend on how big your lead is, with good player, you can't stack when you are top one, because they'll do smthg about it, so usually you have to keep attacking. if you are top one, and other people aren't doing a thing against you, no chat, then stack and win.

I agree w/ Don.

In escalating it's the standard strategy and if you don't adopt it you can usually expect to lose.

All other types of spoils often result in stacking for round limits of 50 or less. At first I disliked the tactic and didn't play it, but over time realised that it's often the only way to win.