Company of Heroes Strategy & Tactics

One thing i don’t get though was Lum’s comment about Allies not being gas limited. Not to get RTS-ified, but, OMGWTFBBQ. I’m always out of gas as the Allies. Supply yard costs 50 gas, Motor Pool costs 25 (?) gas, and the light vehicles all cost some gas. Shermans cost 90 (!), Tank Building costs 45 (?)(!). Crocs cost 110! (!!).

To me as Allies i’m playing to race to light vehicles in almost every game. I build the Supply Yard the instant i get 50 gas. Vehicles pop out the moment i’ve got the gas for them. Getting even one infantry upgrade really sets me back. It’s one reason i’m very loathe to build a bunker unless it just can’t be helped. Getting the Allied power that nets you that Sherman without any gas is nearly the best power you have overall.

That Allied power (Calliope) was nerfed last patch. Calliopes no longer have a Sherman gun.

I meant that Axis was even MORE fuel dependent than Allies.

Nah. You Axis player boo! :)

The thing about the Axis that hurts is the cost of the Veterancy upgrades, if by chance some Allied player can keep their tanks alive long enough to gain experience. Two notches of experience and StuGs are killing Shermans head-on. Not only do i have to buy a 90 fuel tank to beat your 30 fuel StuGs, but i have to buy another expensive fuel upgrade to the gun, in order for these tanks to be useful against Panthers, or even Pnz IVs. (Not that there aren’t other ways of beating StuGs, but once you move into the “tank battle” stages of the game, you used to have to have Shermans). Don’t German bunkers only cost munitions, and not fuel, as well?

That sucks about the Calliopes. They were the best tank the Allies had…(in practice, imo).

No power however is (or was) as wildly stupid as the smokescreen of the Sherman. The “mist of invulnerability” is one of the more transparently gamey elements of CoH.

I’m not a fan of the 1v1 matches, personally. If you read the strategy guides for 1v1, they are all along the lines of “move your second engineer to this point on the map, then place barbed wire following this line”. Larger matches are more freeform, I think. It is true that with more players that games last longer, so armor eventually rules the field, but infantry is still useful. I also like that with multiple people on a team you can come up with synergistic strategies, where players pick a development path that will support the others. Maybe one person rushes to armor, while the other builds out their lower level tech first to hold off the enemy while the tanks are coming on line.

I don’t play much else in online RTS than 1v1 in any game…

Mainly because the more people, the more chance the game doesn’t finish.

So true. Although a buddie and I play 2 vs. 2 COH every week and only rarely do people drop/quit. 3vs3, 4vs4, almost every time one or more peeps don’t last…very, very annoying.

I wouldn’t generally characterize the map dependency as tricks. (Though there are some, like any RTS. Remember starcraft’s lost temple, with it’s perfect artiltery spot against the top player’s 2nd gas mine?) I can’t think of any map that doesn’t have numerous interesting openings in terms of how you lay wire, etc. And the gameplay for different maps continues to diverge from there, based mostly on the relative availabilty of resource types, topology, and the cover/obstacles in the environment. I think a lot of what makes the micro heavy tactical gameplay work so well, is that you got this rich and deformable environment to play in and exploit to your advantage. It feels like something new, rather than the two old extremes of 1) macro heavy, build tons of units, throw them at the enemy (total annihilation?), or 2) micro heavy, direct rock paper scissors unit countering (starcraft?).

Is there any intention to get voice chat running for the games tonight (Skype, Teamspeak, etc.)? I figure I’ll be too busy managing my forces to type smack, but not too busy to talk smack (or receive it).

Yes, and I’ve found that they are very slow even against an entrenched enemy. Snipers work so much faster. I’ve had a really hard time figuring out how to use mortars; they are micro heavy, and the only time I have been successful with them are the rare times they catch someone in the open field (in which case they really do devastate infantry).

How so?

At times I’ve built morter, I’ve used em to destory point caps from afar, and sometimes I’ve just left em in one spot and when I check on em, they are firing on some random area I didnt realize they could attack…I really need to figure them out.

Massed mortars can be effective, but those are resources you could have spent on something else, like tanks.

  • Alan

Man, tonight’s fighting was an education. I had been getting the impression that Germans had an advantage but I think thats b/c many of the maps played in skirmish online favor defense and long battles (like that Lyon map which I’ve come to hate) and that often favors the Germans due to their very strong end game units.

However, tonight’s games showed that early on, well played Americans can do very well. Although the Americans have less flexibility early, they do have more raw combat power in terms of infantry and engineers out of the gate.

Above all else, tonight’s games taught me the power of combined arms. I need to tune up some of my techniques.

Before you think I’m channeling TomChick, I deal with / write / hate documentation daily. The documentation for this game sucks. Sure, that’s true for a lot of games, but most of those games aren’t as good as CoH. Relic needs to get its shit going with the wiki they have and make it THE manual of the game, with the important values for the current version. Can you imagine being able to look up information and find it? You don’t need Web 2.0…

Shit, their wiki isn’t even up: http://wiki.relicrank.com/

It was originally a modding wiki, but I seriously think that all games, particularly RTS games that will change with patches, should be documented online with a wiki-like CMS.

Forums are simply shit for finding information compared to a wiki, and yet the community ends up using the forums like a wiki. You could have both the Relic forum mods, testers, and even developers contribute to the wiki, or hell, just ask the right fans.

As far as strat, and not general thirst for data that could be used to more effectively develop strat, Reldan and I have been working on making Axis as viable as possible in Victory Point matches, particularly against airborne. I’ll try to remember to read more of this thread and weigh in, but right now, it’s all about playing.

Would love to play any of you online, just look for us in Semois.

The key to winning as the Axis is knowing the map, essentially. Axis troops are weaker against general enemies (like flanking Engineers) but stronger against their counter (except the AT gun). The Axis have “strong” counters, while the Allies have “weak” counters, to use the RTS parleance. Once you force the Allies to fight when and where you want, you’ve all but won.

I agree with everything else, but would add that the axis are pretty strong against Allies AT guns. Just upgrade mp5 on your volksgrenadiers and have them run down the AT crew.

Axis AT guns are useful, but should always be backed up with a STUG or another tank

Oops, what i meant was that the Axis AT gun was weaker than the Allied, contradicting my assertion that ALL Axis counters were better.

Allies and Axis have reverse upgrade logic as well. Allied infantry are very generic, and need to be upgraded as a type. Axis infantry are upgraded individually. So in general an Axis player not only has fewer numbers of infantry but more specialized infantry as well. That dual-MG Grenadier squad is a very valuable and unique asset; the Allied player has the exact same 3 infantry squads.

The Allies also have better special abilities, which can really hurt an Axis player. Watching two of those expensive Grenadier squads be strafed to death is a glorious/terrible thing.

Yeah, most of the time I never build them. But sometimes, if you’re in an infantry heavy game, they can be life savers. They can get you past choke points that you’d otherwise have to figure out a way around.

One nice thing about Mortars is that they’re really good at clearing out nests that are too strong to take out directly.

Use the Mortar to wipe AT guns guarded by MGs or bunkers, for example, and then move in with the tanks.

Also the Axis have a small advantage in “bunker” technology, imo. It’s generally a good idea for an Axis player to build a bunker anywhere there is going to be lots of infantry combat.

Though the reverse is true for veterancy.