In the absence of turtle ships of your own, neither demos, fires or galley lines don’t work. The turtles just fire their cannons too fast, destroying demos and fires too quickly. As for galley lines ships, even massed, they barely do anything.
It just feels like any dominant water map with Koreans civ you will lose water and the game if you’re not Korean civ yourself, with your own turtle ships.
The purpose of the game is that, you should always be able to do counter units to fight opponents units. I feel nothing on water can effectively counter turtle ships… this for me doesn’t make sense. It’s too easy to pick koreans and declare civ win because turtles have no counters, that’s just too clown
Even paladins have counters, in the form or camels/spear lines/genoese. It just doesn’t make any sense that turtle ships don’t have counter units. And don’t come with that fallacy of “Oh but byzantines have fast fire ships”. What if you’re not byzantine nor korean, why are you supposed to lose water and not win water because your opponent is a turtle ship civ picker?
The weakness of turtle ship is high cost and slow speed. You should get water earlier or gather enough ships to counter. More than 4 docks hiding some coast are needed to get water again.
Yeah, turtle ships are strong. But they should be countered by microed galleons.
An elite turtle ship has 8 range and moves about as fast as a Celt halberdier whereas a galleon has 10 range and moves about as fast as a hussar with husbandry. A galleon needs 60 hits to kill a turtle ship.
In csstle age, a non elite turtle ship has 6 range and moves as fast as a longsword without squires, whereas a war galley moves about as fast as 8 range and a knight with husbandry. A war galley kills a turtle ship in 50 hits.
Even though war galleys and galleons have a slow turning animation, the range and speed difference allow them to hit and run.
A turte ship costs about as much as 3 galleons (122w 180g vs. 90w 30g), and koreans have no relevant eco or military bonuses besides the wood discount (already taken into account in the price of turtle ship) . So civs with good eco should be able to outmass Koreans and kill the turtles one by one.
If you wait until late game / post imperial max pop, and do not micro your galleons, then it it rough. Koreans received several buffs over the recent years on water, so that they can be competitive at pro level, even though they are still far from the best and only occasionally picked after the big boys are banned. Their win rate on 1v1 Islands on the current patch is far from great (<50% overall and >1900Elo, 51% at >1200 Elo).
So on water maps it may feel like the late game Goth spam on land maps.
