Let's talk pop cap

Problem is that tri hero builds aren't uncommon, micro tax is not suitable as an argument. True experience mechanics can mean that heroes you may want to level are deprived of exp but there are level benchmarks that you want to achieve with most heroes and after that, the experience gain isn't as important so you would expect all players to grab 3 heroes at SOME point in any match longer than 15 minutes. But we do not see this. Instead we sometimes see single hero builds in matches that last 30 minutes, and sometimes tri heroes in 12 minute matches.

Okay. So building tigers from t1 should be a-okay balance wise since at most players will only build one or two, and they're sacrificing a whole 2-3 infantry squads to build it.

Or you already lost a heavy tank to your opponent and those forces were produced originally to counter it? Or you have been dominating in the tank department while your opponent has stronger infantry so generalist tanks aren't necessary for him?

Oh. Well if my heavy forced my opponent to invest 2-3 times the resources into countering it I probably should start pumping infantry since it already did it's job handily. It's not like they'll have much pop left to counter invest with and close the game.

Okay. So building tigers from t1 should be a-okay balance wise since at most players will only build one or two, and they're sacrificing a whole 2-3 infantry squads to build it.

Except that level 1 heroes in warcraft 3 can barely fight off an equal supply amount of basic units. A paladin will trade poorly against a pair of grunts despite the grunts only being 1 more supply.

Oh. Well if my heavy forced my opponent to invest 2-3 times the resources into countering it I probably should start pumping infantry since it already did it's job handily. It's not like they'll have much pop left to counter invest with and close the game.

2 AT guns is a given in pretty much all games and 1 tank destroyer isn't unreasonable in a standard build. Likely you've only directly forced a single purchase with your heavy. Point stands though that in this situation a heavy tank is not a good use of supply.

Except that level 1 heroes in warcraft 3 can barely fight off an equal supply amount of basic units. A paladin will trade poorly against a pair of grunts despite the grunts only being 1 more supply.

So picking a heavy tank over 3 infantry squads isn't that challenging of a decision? Should COH2 be more or less like WCIII?

Remember that this was your original thesis:

Taking a heavy tank literally means you are deprived of 3 mainline infantry slots so you have to weigh the cost of fitting it into your composition. If this consideration has never been an issue in your time playing, then you may simply not be at a skill level yet where its become important.
If you have ever watched competitive warcraft 3, the entire concept should be familiar to you.

I think it's self-evident that a heavy tank or 3 mainlines isn't a very hard decision. The heavy tank forces an additional 3-4 AT units that have little purpose beyond denying your heavy tank. 3 mainlines *might* offer a tad bit more map control, but are far more likely to bleed you heavily if you're fighting against anything built after the first 5 minutes of the game.

This is known as a false decision. There is almost no reason not to build a heavy tank over lower tier units other than an opponent vastly over-invested in AT.

So picking a heavy tank over 3 infantry squads isn't that challenging of a decision? Should COH2 be more or less like WCIII?


I think it's self-evident that a heavy tank or 3 mainlines isn't a very hard decision. The heavy tank forces an additional 3-4 AT units that have little purpose beyond denying your heavy tank.

Are you saying that in a typical game with close to max pop, you wont have a combination of at least 2 anti tank guns or tank destroyers regardless of if there is a heavy tank or not? If this is the case, it makes sense why you have problems with pop cap.

3 mainlines *might* offer a tad bit more map control, but are far more likely to bleed you heavily if you're fighting against anything built after the first 5 minutes of the game.

This is known as a false decision. There is almost no reason not to build a heavy tank over lower tier units other than an opponent vastly over-invested in AT.

The fact that you do not see a reason to maintain key lower tier units in the late game over "more valuable" units says a lot.

Are you saying that in a typical game with close to max pop, you wont have a combination of at least 2 anti tank guns or tank destroyers regardless of if there is a heavy tank or not? If this is the case, it makes sense why you have problems with pop cap.

As a largely 1v1 player 2 dedicated AT guns is generally the ideal amount unless I'm playing USF. I might consider adding a TD if I'm really really struggling with armor. 4, as you purposed earlier, is absurd.

The fact that you do not see a reason to maintain key lower tier units in the late game over "more valuable" units says a lot.

The fact that you do not see that the current mechanics punish you for keeping lower tier units at pop-cap says that you're not actually assessing the game as it is, but merely disregarding information that indicates that it is not living up to it's ideal state.

I'm the guy arguing for mechanics that favor keeping lower tier units. You're the guy arguing that sacrificing them or never building them at all in a high pop game is somehow interesting decision making like in WCIII or something.

The fact that you do not see that the current mechanics punish you for keeping lower tier units at pop-cap says that you're not actually assessing the game as it is, but merely disregarding information that indicates that it is not living up to it's ideal state.

All these british, USF and soviet players, being punished for keeping 5 man dual bren infantry sections, dual bar rifles and 7 man cons alife..

All these OKW and Ost players being punished for keeping HMGs and sniper alife...

You're as clueless as it can get. This is not Red Alert or Starcraft.

To put things a simply as possible, I think COH2 mechanics need to meet 2 criteria:

1: Armies should become progressively harder to maintain as they grow to provide room for comebacks.

2: Players should never be outright punished for past purchase selections.


Upkeep fulfills criteria one. Pop-cap violates criteria 2.

I'll be taking a break from this thread now.

Popcap is fine, if anything, premium tanks and heavy tanks should take an even larger share of popcap. This won't effect 1v1 players but will curb the use of Panthers and Comets in team games.

I think there are some units with questionable popcap.

Brits:
a; Sections. They go from 7 to 8 popcap with bolster. I think they should start with 6 and move to 7 like every other base mainline infantry. The squad size increase is not a unit flavor like cons or panzerfussies, it is a faction trait and shouldnt punish the faction.
b; Croc churchill. Compared to Tiger, IS2 and Kv2 it has one less popcap (20<->21). Maybe increase it to 21.
c; Sexton. While the sexton has 14 popcap the priest has 15. Either both 14 or both 15 popcap imo.

Okw:
a; Kingtiger. I dont think the unit warrants 23 popcap. Decrease to 22 like jagdtiger and isu. Maybe even 21 like tiger and is2.

Sov:
a; 120mm mortar. 10 popcap is way too high. I think 8 is reasonable. Then it has the same as pak howie, one more than leig and 2 more than any other mortar.
b; Kv1/kv8. 14 popcap for such durable units seems a little low. 15 or 16 should do fine.
c; Shocks: Have only 8 popcap while most other elite units have 9.
d; The sov officer has less popcap (7) than others (okw and brit one have 8)

Ost:
a; Brum: 14 popcap seems kinda low for such an heavy unit. Increase to 15 or 16.
b; Grens: Maybe it helps their performance to decrease the popcap to 6.

Usf:
a; Ranger: Have 10 popcap. Decrease to 9.
b; Scott: 10 popcap seems a little bit to low.
c; Calliope: 15 popcap is way more than any other rocket arty. If the HP nerf is done, there could be a popcap reduce.
d; Ez8: 14 popcap seems a little low.
e; Pershing: 19 is lower than croc and tiger. I think 20 is reasonable. Maybe add crew repair for compensation. Thats what holds the unit back the most. The hole faction is based around crew repairs and then you have to have 2 echelons just to repair your one tank.

I think there are some units with questionable popcap.

Brits:
a; Sections. They go from 7 to 8 popcap with bolster. I think they should start with 6 and move to 7 like every other base mainline infantry. The squad size increase is not a unit flavor like cons or panzerfussies, it is a faction trait and shouldnt punish the faction.

I agree with most of what you said, this one however I don't.
IS pack quite a decent punch for their popcap even at the current value, they have good EHP, centralize most of their DPS and have 5 men for resilience against AoE damage. They do not have a real weakness other than a missing snare which is compensated for by sappers and a very good ATG.

I agree with most of what you said, this one however I don't.
IS pack quite a decent punch for their popcap even at the current value, they have good EHP, centralize most of their DPS and have 5 men for resilience against AoE damage. They do not have a real weakness other than a missing snare which is compensated for by sappers and a very good ATG.

Yeah am not 100% sure too. But on the other side they cant compete against elite infantry like riflemen or cons can. And brits have only one alternative to sections. Commandos are good dont get me wrong, but they dont work like typical mainline and they are just in a couple of commanders available. So you are stuck with sections until the game ends. And for that their scaling doesnt match their popcap imo.

I do wonder if it's time to raise pop-cap to 125 or 150.

I really loved reading this. I will play devil's advocate. Why do you want arbitrary number of 125 pop cap? I want 1000 pop cap to capitalize on my flow! What would be your answer?

I really loved reading this. I will play devil's advocate. Why do you want arbitrary number of 125 pop cap? I want 1000 pop cap to capitalize on my flow! What would be your answer?

125 would remove the problem for 90% of the games where pop-cap does become a problem, while still preserving a safeguard limit incase of some sort of bug or exploit.

It's also hard enough to bring up the topic without massive resistance as you can see, so I'm not asking for anything radically game-changing.

Pop tends to be parabolic. Prior to mass armor players are able to maintain a positive manpower income while still reinforcing their squads. Once armor starts hitting critical mass they tend to destroy models faster than the manpower income can replace them and then begins approaching something like a 50 pop army.

The pop issue is largely a problem for the player with 4-5 mediums needing, and also having saved the income, for just one extra vehicle and maybe AT-gun to compete with heavies/ultra-mediums.

To explain the 125 more succinctly here is a graph of a critically underdamped differential equation:





If you've ever played with one of these:

You have an intuitive understanding of critically underdamped movements.

The first impulse, i.e. pulling back the spring, determines how far the spring head will travel before coming back.

This first impulse is akin to the first 30 minutes of the game. Players armies grow very large in size, but eventually become too big and back swing. Each swing will be slightly less and less though until it completely stabilizes. If I had to guess true manpower income probably tends to stabilize around 65-70 pop.

90% of games don't have enough initial army growth to hit pop-cap before making the first downswing so it's rarely a problem. When games do hit pop-cap though it's like that spring hitting an object instead of naturally coming back and going through it's harmonic motion. Instead of a fun game where things go back and forth, pop-cap creates games where the spring hits an object, loses all momentum, and dies near instantaneously.

Holy shit this is some super high quality baiting. Kudos.

Shame you didn’t bring quantum mechanics into this.

Although this indeed seems to be some sort of troll thread, simply increasing Popcap or removing it does not actually solve any problems, factions that don't have issues with Popcap/fitting units into their build will continue to have no issues, and merely be able to field larger armies. Factions that currently have population issues will have precisely the same problem, they still will struggle to keep up with the non-struggling faction's popcapped armies. Strictly increasing Popcap has no actual benefit to the game.

I do think that popcap needs a look at, but the way to fix it is twofold:

A: Minorly rebalance some units' popcaps.

B: Give every faction a way to "Recall" units, so they can retailor their armies in the lategame, without being forced to suicide units into the enemy.

(C: Some units, such as Howitzers and some of the "Premium" vehicles like the Panther, should have hard caps placed on them, primarily to improve teamgames, by reducing teams' ability to spam and reach critical mass.)


The idea that picking a Tiger (Or similar heavy) is always the right move over having three Infantry squads, or two/three other units is patently absurd though. "Cheaper" units have value and utility even into the late game, there is a reason that people don't suicide all their infantry/team weapons lategame so they can build an extra two or three tanks.

To explain the 125 more succinctly here is a graph of a critically underdamped differential equation:

See you said one thing but then you did the opposite...

Unlimited pop would help the player that gets ahead and starts to roll out mass vehicles first, since they inflict mp-damage without receiving any. vehicle armies will grow much more linearly (only affected by upkeep) as opposed to balanced or inf armies naturally stopping growth (due to upkeep + reinforce).

Currently you can see that effect to a minor degree - armies with mass mediums start to float a lot more mp, against armies with balanced comps- which take mp bleed in exchange for map control. The 100 pop limit helps stop the vehicular army from turning that MP saving into even more units, which inflict more bleed more efficiently, snowballing over the nonvehicle army

I'm skeptical of whether this makes for good gameplay. with infinite pop maybe players might start suiciding low val squads or leaving them unreinforced to capture after some time, to just maximize a MP-efficient vehicle army.

Unlimited pop would help the player that gets ahead and starts to roll out mass vehicles first, since they inflict mp-damage without receiving any. vehicle armies will grow much more linearly (only affected by upkeep) as opposed to balanced or inf armies naturally stopping growth (due to upkeep + reinforce).

Currently you can see that effect to a minor degree - armies with mass mediums start to float a lot more mp, against armies with balanced comps- which take mp bleed in exchange for map control. The 100 pop limit helps stop the vehicular army from turning that MP saving into even more units, which inflict more bleed more efficiently, snowballing over the nonvehicle army

I'm skeptical of whether this makes for good gameplay. with infinite pop maybe players might start suiciding low val squads or leaving them unreinforced to capture after some time, to just maximize a MP-efficient vehicle army.

You're forgetting that engineers are additional upkeep to vehicles making their true pop much higher.

Higher value vehicles benefit from this mechanic once again since they have better armor values, and bounced shots don't need to be repaired.

You're forgetting that engineers are additional upkeep to vehicles making their true pop much higher.

I'm not. 2 (or at most 3) engineers that repair / cap the map and don't trade models with enemy composition don't bleed. With a balanced composition you already need 2 engineers on top of the rest of the inf army.