Uploading a match to showcase my german play. For critique.

Mein got these russian winters are miserable.

Typing these chronologically as I watch your replay:

You need to prioritize what points you want to take initially (mun > fuel > cutoffs for german IMO) and concentrate your forces in that area. The opponent did a atypical build with a MG first which allowed you time to rush the north fuel which normally is locked down by the sov engineer/conscript. To contest that you need to rush your first pio to take it and hop in and out of the building to deny him the ability to use the building against you. Either do a 2 pio build (first pio rushes, second builds the t1 then goes cap) or more usually I just rush my first pio over there after the t1 building is done and then push my forces there. Tl;dr you need to concentrate your forces on the general area and blob the first couple conscript squads or you will get driven off because you are strung out. Germans cant cap the whole map at once like soviets can. Take a starting high value point/connections and work from there. Honestly thats what the soviet player did ironically but he went t2 heavy and isnt a very good player, dont expect to see his build used by better opponents

Kholdny winter is low munition and the fuel is harder to hold so both sides will be rushing the northern fuel as it only requires 1 point to connect to the base sector. If the enemy is already too entrenched at the fuel or whatever point you are trying to get by the time you get there, dont beat yourself against the wall - cap elsewhere and come back later.

Taking a munition point first will allow you to get LMGs/flamers ASAP. Buy one of those as soon as you get 60 munitions for some much needed early game hitting power.

While your pios are sitting in a cap zone, have them build wire to deny cover from the enemy's side of the map when applicable (ie. east side of the truck in center muni in the replay) because they will cap while building anyway.

Retreat your units or walk them out of danger as soon as you judge they cant win. there was no reason to risk losing your first gren by waiting until he was pinned at the fuel. He was never gonna fight all those units off anyway, so just press retreat and regroup. Similarly flanking the mg with your engineer wasnt going to accomplish anything but damaging or losing your squad when his units turned around.

On Kholdny the hedges and walls are able to be shot over with nades or through via flamers and attack ground commands on tanks. If you know a unit is camping on the other side, throw something over to get a free hit on his squads.

If the enemy ever gives away the map like he did to you early on and you are wracking up 2x fuel point income, just tech to 3 or 4 asap (judgement call) and get some armor on the field to end the match quick.

Another thing is your mg sat alone by itself in the south fuel when you got pushed off the top, never leave your mg idle. Put him where the enemy is at all times.

You had 100% control of the munition point, upgrade all your units with LMGs/flamers

Your biggest problem was losing your squads, work on retreating them earlier and not overextending. Like at 17:46 you just sent a gren to cap the fuel point and got killed by 3 enemy squads: dont neglect your squads to watch a firefight somewhere else! you gotta work on micro and unit preservation and it just takes experience

At this point you were floating near 1000 mp 400 munitions, I would have recommended immediately rebuying your mg, getting a total of 3 gren squads, maybe a pgren and a anti tank gun to round out your army. Dont let mp accumulate, spend it as it comes in

You need to get the MG upgrades on your panzer 4s asap, they are cheap and very effective. You wasted all your munitions at this point by letting them sit.

Your tanks should be scouted by infantry or at least kite backwards out of anti tank nade range as much as you can to delay the soviet's ability to damage your units. P4s are not as expendable as t34s. Always try to panzerfaust enemy vehicles, use blind spot by buildings or hedges to get your infantry close when you know they are going to drive past

About 35 mins in you did well in destroying the enemy atg + 2 t34s but you retreat when you should have pressed and destroyed the final t34 with nothing to oppose your full health units. Panzer4s always beat t34s in combat

You chose a doctrine with no munition abilitites despite having 600 stored up

So in summary you need to work on your micro/squad preservation, concentrating forces to support each other, and moving your units with a plan... dont send them in one at a time

Thanks for the input, questions though.

1 How would i know he had gone MG heavy at the start of the match? Do you mean i should have rushed top fuel as soon as i noticed his MG? Kolodny winter is one of the maps i struggle to prioritize capping on. I've just been educated on how different the resource system is and i'm gonna be focusing muni's early game from now on, whereas i had been neglecting them before.

2 Thanks for the building cover tip, i actually didn't think i could build anything unless i controlled the sector. If i can cap while building wire i might actually start using it again xD Can i do this with teller mines as well?

3 Thanks again for the tip to attack ground across hedges. I hadn't realized i could fire through those hedges with my p4s, or i would have.

4 As for my MG, should i be using it more to support my gren pushes? I had thought of it more as a tool to prevent movement in an area.

5 I catch alot of my squads dying just in time to watch it XD. I usually do ok up until around the 13 minute mark when i'm focused on attacking somewhere, and have one of my gren squads harassing. I don't pay attention to the squad, and i don't realize he's been hit with a molotov/is being shelled by morter/is suppressed by a machine gun for just long enough to be too late. My APM and map awareness need work, but that'll hopefully come with experience.

6 The floating you talk about towards the end was me wanting to buy an elefant, but being pop capped, I do realize i tend to float when the match gets busy. Usually not to that extent though >.< I hadn't realized the mounted MG's on the p4's were worth the 30 muni's but i'll start getting them now.

I'm going to be working on a few things before i submit my next replay.
- Not spending my first 60 munis on a medibunker
- Getting LMG's on all my grens when i have the muni's to do so, as opposed to waiting for vet2 like i had been
- Getting the MG on P4's, and getting Whirblewins if i win the tech race to t3/tank time.
- Not floating muni or manpower like i have a tendancy to do past the 10/15 minute mark
- Not "Firing and forgetting" my grens on Shift click "harrassment" missions 15-20 minutes into the game
- Holding muni points early game, fuel points whenever i can, and cutting off the opponent even if i don't necessarily gain any resource bonus from it. Cutting off his fuel could win me the tech race even if its only for a minute or two.

Anything other big things i should work on? Besides unit preservation/map awareness? I've considered making a scout car part of my "build" to scout/deal with mortars.

If you see an MG as one of his first units (when he shot your gren) you will know he did a t2 opening, which almost never works vs a good ostheer player because he gives up capping power and mobility.

You can build anything while capping as long as you are in the zone.

Mg needs to be behind grenadiers now. They nerfed it so it cant be relied on to hold off infantry on its own

You will just have to work on your micro, you can hotkey units. At least the mortar for quick redirection of fire

Why buy an elefant? He only had close range tanks and you had the lead in p4s.

LMGs will help you get to vet 2 quicker, you can give your first lmg to the gren with the most vet and most squad health to make the most use of it

Remember you can de-cap enemy points without recapturing them. If you know you wont hold a territory, decap it and move on to keep him on the back foot. Dont lose your squads decapping though, when in doubt run away

A tiger would have been very useful in that match as opposed to an elefant

I'll need to be more aware of what my opponent does. When i saw his maxim it didn't occur to me that he had foregone building conscripts.

I wanted an elephant because i'm wierd and i love the unit XD And i knew i wasn't gonna need T4. I would have built a tiger but i picked my elephant doctrine ... Because.

Right now i'm running: Fortified Armor/Spearhead/Festung Armor doctrines. They all have panzer tactician which i am a big fan of, and they have, respectively: Elephant, Tiger, Pak43. I like having some sort of hard AT unit to deal with SU85's/T34 swarms late game. Pak43 is for if I know i'm struggling to control enough fuel, or save enough manpower for elephant or tiger. I'm also a fan of the command tank, mortar HT and occasionally the recon overflight. I usually hold off on picking a doctrine until i feel i can get real use out of panzer tactician, or decide i want to go for tiger/elephant. Occasionally i'll decide to go for the spearheads MortarHT earlyish game. I'm just a big fan of that unit for its cost. Any tips on doctrines i might be able to swap out Festung armor? The pak43 seems to be the only hard AT for if i feel i'm losing the fuel war and expect SU85's.

Edit: I use hotkeys on certain units. SNipers/Morters/Support Vehicles/Heavy armor/Artillery. Not so much on grens/pgrens/engi's because i end up with so many of them.

I primarily play german and have yet to find a commander I actually "like". I end up just sitting on cps until I find an ability or two I want, or decide I want a tiger, and choose a doctrine. The ostheer cdr's are nowhere near as interesting as the soviets which allow for different gameplay and builds via call-ins in my opinion

1 tiger (either spearhead or the opel blitz one), fortified armor, and your favorite pak43 one is a good mix. The pak43 has a shorter range than you'd think BUT it will shoot through hedges/buildings like they arent there. On maps like kholdny that can be very useful. Careful not to get it decrewed and also fix the enemy tanks at the max range of the gun so they cant circle strafe it (Fausts, mines, spotting)

Yeah, i'm gonna play around with Pak43's tomorrow to see how they work out for me. I've heard mostly good things about them. The fact that they can fire through all(?) obstacles is pretty nifty.

What i've noticed though is that while soviets should pick doctrines early on, to get use out of heir powerful game changing 1/2CP goodies, as ostheer its safer to wait until 3 or 4 CP's to see which doctrine will fit best given the map and enemy composition.