You know, I take exception to his stance on the first article on turtling. Turtling isn't dead, or even endangered. I can tell you that as a Warcraft III player (a game notorious for its brutal rushes) I don't panic when I see a big army rushing me hard. This is because I know my opponent has geared all his resources towards this, so I need only survive it and reach a higher tech level unit to punish him severely. It's when I see a few harassers trying to keep me occupied that I panic, because I know he's put up a few defenses in his base and is pursuing those high level units, and it's going to be hard for me to actually get in there and stop it while his small force is playing cat and mouse and a few well placed towers keep his base fortified. If you notice, this strategy that causes me the greatest angst isn't definitively rush, turtle, or boom, but rather a combination.
A good strategy game doesn't force you to play rocks-paper-scissors with these three strategic paths, but rather to use different aspects of those archtypes to pursue a larger strategy. Sins of a Solar Empire does this very well, and it's only getting better. I think it's a misconception when people talk about rush > boom > turtle > rush. People see a rush beat a turtle, and instantly think the equation is broken. However, they often miss the larger picture that opponent is using the rush only to lock them into turtling and then actually leans more on booming once they're cowering in their base. I think a lot of the problem is often inexperience; you need upwards of a month to really get a feel for the balance of a game, and in that time you're more or less making intelligent guesses about how to divert resources between military, economy, and defense. Is it really so hard to see such a player not knowing how to use his defenses to win if he's inexperienced?
I think the people who ask for a game where they can sit happily in their impervious shell without need to go out and fight for resources don't know what they're asking for. If there is no neutral resource to fight over, and an early attack force can't successfully attack the main base, then there's no reason to build an attack force at all. The game just becomes a test to see who has the best build order to reach the "shell-cracker" unit that can break down those defenses. In other words, turtling is a moot point, because no one builds an army until they have the units that counter it.
