Company of Heroes 3: mamma mia, we Total War now!

Nice to see the dev team answering the big questions and being transparent. Very good communication.

Given the tactical battles seem extremely similar to the old games, are there any news (from the last months) about the new strategic campaign mode?

Sounds precisely like the kind of faction I am horrible with in RTS games. :)

I only played the previous game solo and hacked some config file to slow the game down to a crawl.

Not only does it help me to play the game but more time to enjoy the graphics and explosions!

Same for me. I wish it was exposed in the game’s user interface though. I seem to recall you could bring up a console and type in commands to change it on the fly, but still pretty annoying they didn’t think regular players might want to speed up or slow down the game

They’re also doing deeper dives with full game commentary:

The single player (and skirmish against AI) has tactical pause now, so you should be able to play as you like without having to resort to that sort of thing

Tactical pause is nice, but it’s not a replacement for slower speed, for me. It’s just a “me” thing, but I can’t stand having to pause/unpause frequently in real-time games, whether it’s RTS or something like Pillars of Eternity. If I’m having to do that, I’d much prefer to play a turn-based format.

What I really want in RTS games is the ability to go 1/2 or even 1/4 speed.

Yeah tactical pause is not a replacement for properly implemented speed options.

It’s nice having like a Total War option for half speed to allow me to get to stuff (shame the cost in Total War games for using it is the complete loss of sound).

I recall a few 90s games played with the idea of setting orders and than allowing the game play out in a few minutes increments, before allowing players another chance to give orders.

I doubt that would be popular today though.

Well, I mean it does still have it’s moments at least in the form of WEGO implementation in Combat Mission series.

There’s nothing in gaming for me that’s ever been more intense than playing another human PBEM in Combat Mission and watching the next minute of battle play out and see what happened.

I’ve always thought it a bit strange WEGO hasn’t seen wider adoption, last game I recall encountering in was Field of Glory: Empires. Hopefully they’ll use the same system in Field of Glory: Kingdoms.

It’s not the same, but that’s one of the bright spots of the Dominions Series.

I wonder if COH3 is going to finally turn into a bit more of an e-sport. I was really involved with the COH1 “scene” the first few years it came out, making tons of videos and occasionally casting games. It was a brilliant multiplayer game due to the faction balance which lead to natural swinging points of power as each side brought new units onto the field that would counter their opponent. A good game would have both designed in balance swings and player swings. RNG that was occasionally crushing (or hilarious).

The whole e-sports scene is a lot more mature, and I think COH is very easy to watch and understand even for someone who doesn’t play. I wonder if it’ll catch on? Probably not in the way that DOTA, LOL, or Counterstrike, but maybe there’s a niche in there somewhere.

It had a bit of a moment with Frozen Synapse/Cortex.

Oh yeah that’s right. And there was that bit of a hybrid I found fun and interesting in the Valkyria Chronicles series too.

RTS are now less popular than they were when CoH1 released, so it’s doubtful.

I would argue that there is just too much competition.

You have the entire Age of Empires Series with some serious Money.

People are trying to make Spellforce 3 an E-Sport series but that isn’t going far.

Company of Heroes 2 has a few tournaments going on, but I don’t know if that qualifies as an E-Sport.

And I guess even Total Warhammer has regular tournaments of just the Battles, which is interesting.

RTS is just really fractured, with half a dozen or so games, but I really only hear about the AoE Tournaments that are sponsored by Red bull or Microsoft.

Same for me.

You just showed how little competition there is: just two big games (AoE, TW), the previous game to his series (CoH2, which is no. 125th on the most played game list on Stam), you didn’t name it but I guess Starcraft 2 is still alive and kicking…and that’s it.

It isn’t like there is a dozen popular games all vying for attention, like in shooters.