Where Company of Heroes went wrong.

--- note this is covering generally both games rather than just vCoH or CoH2---

In my opinion the problem at the heart of all the Company of Heroes expansions/iterations since the original came out has been that it's strayed from what it was originally. Basically that it was Band of Brothers - the Game (this is obvious given the number of references there are to the series in the original game and even the name, there's a line in Band of Brothers where they refer to themselves as a "Company of Heroes").

I have a bunch of problems with Band of Brothers, but what I can't really fault are the combat sequences, which are admittedly some of the best in film making. What's significant about Band of Brothers is how well it often portrays combined arms (the scene outside of Carentan when they face Fallschirmjagers, Stugs and Jagdpanthers springs to mind). Throughout it you'll see your standard infantry squads, your .30 cal squads and your mortar squads, as well as various bazookas etc all working together to destroy the opposition.

This was translated well into the original Company of Heroes (and if you watch the campaign cutscenes, there will even be moments where Band of Brothers scenes are played out) and in the faction setups of the original vCoH this was mirrored, with your company being easily able to access standard infantry sections, MGs, mortars etc. This resulted in a fairly even and well balanced game, with Yankees vs Wehrmacht being the original and the best when it came to a good fight, even after Opposing Fronts came out.

However, the Band of Brothers-esque style of set up vanished with Opposing Fronts, and hasn't really made a reappearance since, apart from the Ostheer in CoH2.
For Opposing Fronts, the Brits had to have all their support units entrenched (which led to all the turtling and sim citying that they were famous - and hated, for) and the Panzer Elite didn't even have a dedicated suppression unit, having to make do instead with G43 armed PGs and for mortars they had the (admittedly excellent IMO) mortar halftrack.

Opposing Fronts, whilst admittedly fun, was, when it came to balance, something of a disaster (don't mention the Kangaroos, I think I mentioned it once and I think I got away with it). I've had a suspicion for some time that this was down primarily to Relic not following the same general principal of Company of Heroes being "Band of Brothers- the Game". Instead, the classic (and historical) aspects of company battles of World War II were sadly left out, for weird set ups devoid of historical authenticity. (of course it's possible that units would have come up against either extremely mechanised units who'd left their support weapons behind in order move faster, or else heavily fortified units, but in comparison to standard company on company combat, this would have been far less frequent and also far less interesting in comparison to standard company battles.
It's my opinion that one of the key reasons for Opposing Front's failure in the balance department was its failure to follow the authentic structure of an infantry company. (Tanks and artillery are a different matter and I don't feel that following a structure with them is necessary)

Fast forward to CoH2 and we have a similar thing, but once again there are some aberrations. The ostheer are the only one following a conventional "Band of Brothers" setup. Ostheer these days gets a lot of hate, but I personally rather like them these days. In my experience they place great emphasis on tactics, movement and positioning, definitely a greater emphasis upon it then all the other factions. Soviets by contrast (whilst having some of the worst faction design in the history of the game), whilst having the full suite of combined arms, are still hamstrung by missing out elite infantry (desperately needed by the) if they forgo T1. If they go for elite infantry by contrast, they forgo their absolutely vital support weaponry. So whilst Ostheer follows a relatively authentic Company setup, the Soviets do not, and thus is the origin of some of their significant early game balance issues.

Now we come to Western Front Armies. Here we have the same deal as Opposing Fronts. The classic set up of a World War II infantry company is thrown out the window and this has left both armies in precarious positions of balance. On the one hand we have the Americans, whose Indirect fire support is frankly pitiful with a few minor outliers, they have an MG which is too easily destroyed and is gunned down by blobs and their options for opening the game are limitted to rifles... rifles... and more rifles. Meanwhile, OKW has no infantry MG (which led to the silliness with the KoenigKubel), no mortar, it's indirect fire is frankly not very good early game, with no mortar, a heavily nerfed infantry gun and an extremely dodgy in the balance department Stuka zu Fuss, which on a bad day kills nothing and on a good day wipes out 2-3 squads in a barrage. To make up for this, the OKW is forced to rely on massive blobs of infantry, infantry whose balance is extremely questionable. In my experience, OKW is the only faction that doesn't reward positioning infantry more than blobbing them. Both factions have significant core balance problems and once again, like Opposing Fronts, this comes down to their not following authentic company set ups.

I know this comes off as a rant in favour of historical accuracy, but when you look at the factions with the full suite of combined arms, compared with factions that do not, it is clear that those factions are both more capable of facing all battlefield threats, are more flexible, are better able to use skill to defeat blobs (instead of another blob) and are better able survive to the late game with veteran infantry (because it is far harder to punish combined arms then blobs).

In short, factions with a more authentic structure with infantry at their core are better balanced, more interesting and skillful to play and are better able (when balanced properly) to defeat blobbing and low skill tactics. The most significant balance problems that are in CoH2 are all derived from how certain factions are well balanced combined arms forces, and other factions which are not focused on combined arms are forced to have patently broken units to make up for those deficiencies.




On faction variety:
There's a strong argument for not homogenising factions like my writing suggests above. It's a decent argument and is valid. However there are myriad ways to make factions different without forcing some factions not be able to benefit from combined arms. Within a combined arms company in CoH2 you have 4 different elements. Infantry, Machine Guns, Mortars and AT guns. Each of these can be balanced to allow certain factions to excel in certain areas or the like. Perhaps the Soviets could have better infantry, however the Ostheer have better Machine Guns to counteract that.


On Tanks: Tanks I'd regard as seperate from this particular debate. If anything they are a whole different game within the game. Nor should superior tanks be used as an excuse for a poor early game. The core of balance is balance, It's imbalanced when one faction is doomed after a particular minute mark.


Hopefully this will reach the right ears.

TLDR - Factions which don't have a proper set up of infantry combined arms contribute most to all the balance problems we have now.

Well written, and ya I agree, combined arms is not usually possible.

i agree....


there are some really basic units that some armies don't even have and should get. ostheer and soviets have the basics, but USF and OKW seem to lack basic units like a regular mg or a mortar

INB4: Sorry for wall of text, but its my agreement with the OP and my explanation on why some things are "wrong" to design.

There are, unfortunately, design limits in video games. Not everything can be designed and expected to balance out with everything else through tinkering. Homogenizing things does make balancing a lot easier, but it makes things look dull and boring (and lazy). However, there are some fundamentals to design such as in a faction, and the basic fundamental is: "this unit is strong vs blah and weak vs bleh". Mg's are strong vs. all infantry and weak against flanking and indirect fire. Mortars are good vs. static positions but weak to direct confrontations. AT guns are strong vs. vehicles but weak to indirect fire, flanking, and infantry. Infantry are there to take the hits and provide infantry support. A big example of the breakdown of the basic "rock,paper,scissors" combined arms is WFA's strong design around superior and flexible infantry that can do the jobs of the mortar, the AT gun, and the mg.

USF has only one main infantry squad. Riflemen. They can be equipped with bazookas and take out tanks. They can be equipped with LMG's and be super powerful at range (mainly m1919 since BAR is medium range oriented). Also, m1919's have suppression options, because who needs to bother through the hassle of needing something as important as an mg? Technically, RE's can provide the job of suppressing, with volley fire and the building of mg defenses. Already the infantry take over the basic functions of an army. USF's mg is very powerful, but it can easily be defeated by the infantry squad it suppresses through the sheer firepower of the enemy and through grenades. The AT gun struggles to counter heavy armor. And the pack howitzer is slightly too expensive, making it a choice that is looked over. The support weapons, which should be strongly represented in every match, are underdogs while Relic's design of Riflemen "über alles" casts a shadow over what truly makes a faction.

OKW has no real support weapons. Taking the stock inventory into account, the two included support weapons cannot be relied on to do their function. The R43 is a defensive weapon, as it starts with shorter range and is best used in buildings. It also has a slow reaction time making it easier to counter with vehicles, the unit it is supposed to best counter. The kubel technically counts as an mg, but it cannot be relied upon past 10 minutes into the game. A core function that becomes redundant as the game goes on, regardless if it starts out powerful, is not a good model for reliance on support weapons. The faction's true mg, the mg34, is doctrinal. Automatically it does not serve a core faction because it is unfair to expect a player to select commanders with the mg34 every game. IMO, kubel and mg34 should be switched so OKW has suppression that can be used throughout the game and can choose a commander to be aggressive early game. Next, it takes forever for the leig to remove the enemy from afar. The same amount of resources can go to a unit that can march up the enemy and shred it in seconds. So while these options are crippled, OKW is designed so the player can indefinitely choose to build infantry that can obtain 5 levels of vet as to become powerful enough to erase their counters. Volks can have panzerschrecks which penetrate all stock USF vehicles at max range... (But the broken part is that handheld AT weapons give them vet, which ruins the entire vet system). While they may not have AI output, they eventually become super resistant to small arms and counter nearly all vehicles. For AI firepower, they have obersoldaten which also become super tough, but mainly they have extremely high firepower for a mere manpower cost... Which is credited to a weapon that is usually mainly obtained through a secondary currency, munitions (not helping that the lmg34 has twice the DPS of the lmg42 and can be shot on the move, but not saying that m1919's are that much better at being broken). Plus, obersoldaten eventually gain the ability to suppress squads. Vetting isnt hard with a high DPS LMG. Being designed different is not exactly good for the game...

While Soviets and Ostheer arent perfect either (in which the SU is based off of vCoH US design), at least they were designed around the tested idea of core fundamentals, valuable information gained from the progress of CoH's balance. So I am allowed to tell recommend people to buy CoH2 WFA 5 years from release, which includes aspects that will take years to refine to be accepted as a polished game. So technically, WFA was not finished the day it was released.

SUM: WFA factions are a good example of the breakdown of combined arms mentioned in the OP, and Relic's use of untested success in design has led us to our current situation. This i bet is why the RTS business is fairly small, since its so hard to make a game where all the factions arent alike, and for the game to be balanced and interesting - not faction biased in areas. The genre being designed around WW2 doesnt help.

i've thought some about the faction designs and come to the conclusion that all the factions are designed to function with 1/2 to 3/4 of their units. this causes problems.

in dow2 (i'm going to talk about it because the underlying mechanics are almost identical and it also used a tier system) 3 tiers with 3-4 units in each tier. these units were not identical between factions and not all factions had the same options but the cores units covered most things and the commanders and their globals mostly covered the small gaps left.

while there was ~~10 units available to each faction you were not expected to use every unit in a match. for one, games were smaller and 6 or 7 squads was the norm late game. additionally you didn't need, and couldn't afford, more than that. in coh2, the tier costs mean that generally no faction has all its units available. soviets can generally afford 2, OKH 1/2 & 3 or 4, and US and OKW can generally afford 2. OKW is the mostly likely to afford all 3 tiers but even then they don't generally utilize units from all.

since no units or roles are duplicated across tiers and not all tiers are available you end up having to decide both want you units you want the option to use and want units you want to actually build. this creates two places to make poor decisions. this is highly pronounced with the soviets who have no hard AT other than the weak t34 if they go t1/t3. the US has a similar issue if they do not get t2 and then for some reason cannot afford shermans or jacksons.

not only is a smaller number of units more boring but it results in predictable "safe builds" and creates balance problems when a player does not have a counter available.

You seriously overstate of how much combined arms in coh 1 there actually was.


Were ranger, airborne blobs "combined arms"?

Was zombie grenspam "combined arms"?

Was sniper spam that was super annoying and also you saw it in pretty much all games ever "combined arms"?


Sorry, but coh 1 also had a very shitty metagame throughout most of its life.

One of the best posts written on CoH. Well done.

Marco makes excellent points and hits many nails on their respective heads. However, translating the reality of combined arms tactics into a compelling video game means making *big* sacrifices as variety means asymmetric faction design.

In WW2 all of the armies fielded more or less similar weapons and tactics at, say, platoon level. Rifle squads supported by a gun group with a light or medium MG in turn supported by mortars or light artillery.

The big differences came in AT and armour, actually (the Americans with the bazooka and the up-gunning arms race with tanks on the Western Front in 1944/45).

So Relic has to use some broad-brush strokes to capture army character and translate that into tactical implementation. Sometimes it sucks (Brits). The Brits always boiled my piss - as an army in NW Europe they were as fast at advancing as the Americans. The struggle to take Caen and some lazy amerocentric stereotyping of British generals made them this ponderous, lumbering zombie faction.

Anyhoo, I'd be happy with the factions being more similar in early game (Mgs, mortars etc) with perhaps more profound differences by the time armour hits the field.

+1


This is why I keep insisting we cannot just ditch historical accuracy totally. Like Wombat said, I would love to see similiar early game and different style of armoured play for different faction.

In reality German squad tactics all revolved around the MG42. If a MG42 crew member died, someone else had to replace him. The MG42 had to keep firing. The US squad tactics didn't rely very much on MG's at all. The game Brothers in Arms demonstrates very well how US squad tactics worked. You had a scout team (team Able) that would locate the enemy's position, a fire team (team Baker) which would supress the enemy, and an assault team (team Charlie) would get close to the supressed enemy and take them out with SMG's and grenades.
I think the whole relying on the MG42 thing is nicely represented with Ostheer.

I also agree. The lack of solid combined arms play, especially for the WFA factions has bothered me for some time now, and I think Marco explains very well why we're seeing the Meta that we do.
Fixing this won't be easy, but, assuming Relic wants to do, it'd be worth it.

Also, I wish MOWAS 2 had a larger playerbase.

Well written and a +1 for me.

+1

I agree. I very much enjoy the soviets vs wehrmacht match-up but the WFA factions are just based on blobbing, spam and cheese units.

The balance would be probably close to perfect or at least very good now if they had taken more time to balance out (ie. listen to the playtesters) WFA before release and actually think how it plays vs the vanilla factions.

You seriously overstate of how much combined arms in coh 1 there actually was.


Were ranger, airborne blobs "combined arms"?

Was zombie grenspam "combined arms"?

Was sniper spam that was super annoying and also you saw it in pretty much all games ever "combined arms"?


Sorry, but coh 1 also had a very shitty metagame throughout most of its life.

At a high level CoH1's meta was really never like this, because in CoH1 homogenous unit groups are a lot easier to beat than combined arms. Sure, there were situations where single-unit spam was the best option in CoH1 (funny enough it was situations that mostly involved the OF factions), but if you went into a game against a good player with the mindset that you were going to primarily build one unit and one unit only, you were going to have a very hard time winning.

The thing with strategies that involve single-unit spam is they're generally relatively easy to execute but relatively difficult to defeat. They're also extremely inflexible. And once you get to a level where your opponents know how to play against them, they're very hard to win with because they don't give you many options. I can't speak to CoH2, but that's how it was in CoH1.

As for the OP, I agree with a lot of the comments, but I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion. I don't think it's really ever been a balance problem, but more a design problem. The vanilla matchup in CoH1 wasn't always balanced, but people always loved playing it because it was designed in a way that encouraged active and dynamic gameplay. It combined tactical and strategic decision-making in a very unique way. Ever subsequent faction design in Company of Heroes has strayed from the model of the core factions, and they've suffered as a result in my opinion.

At a high level CoH1's meta was really never like this, because in CoH1 homogenous unit groups are a lot easier to beat than combined arms. Sure, there were situations where single-unit spam was the best option in CoH1 (funny enough it was situations that mostly involved the OF factions), but if you went into a game against a good player with the mindset that you were going to primarily build one unit and one unit only, you were going to have a very hard time winning.

The thing with strategies that involve single-unit spam is they're generally relatively easy to execute but relatively difficult to defeat. They're also extremely inflexible. And once you get to a level where your opponents know how to play against them, they're very hard to win with because they don't give you many options. I can't speak to CoH2, but that's how it was in CoH1.

As for the OP, I agree with a lot of the comments, but I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion. I don't think it's really ever been a balance problem, but more a design problem. The vanilla matchup in CoH1 wasn't always balanced, but people always loved playing it because it was designed in a way that encouraged active and dynamic gameplay. It combined tactical and strategic decision-making in a very unique way. Ever subsequent faction design in Company of Heroes has strayed from the model of the core factions, and they've suffered as a result in my opinion.

This is pretty much how axis is currently, quite inflexible and easily beaten by several allied strategies

What i hate about Relic is they innovate new army designs for the simple reason of innovating. For Relic its worth it if gameplay takes a backseat as along as new armies are radically different than the older armies. Relic could learn a thing or two from Blizzard when they say "GAMEPLAY FIRST".

This is pretty much how axis is currently, quite inflexible and easily beaten by several allied strategies

Ostheer, at least, still has what's probably the most versatile unit roster.
The problem being that half of it sucks.

Ostheer, at least, still has what's probably the most versatile unit roster.
The problem being that half of it sucks.

Ostheer is probably the best combined arms army in the game however, and I have to really disagree with your statement that half of them suck. MOST of them have a role and place. However people have a tendency to gren spam into paks into tiger, which is a lot easier to use than maintaining a combined arms army