Why no clone

Coh always stood out with its vivid battledield atmosphere.

it's the only game i know where models behave realistically. Reloading, seeking cover, ducking, proning, giving handsigns etc.

how come there hasn't been a single game who copied that?

it's the first thing i'm thinking about a modern RTS should have...

Rattenreich seems like a good contender for that spot but it's a mix of both CoH and MoW because it has a TPS/FPS mode for it's units, or at least had in the YouTuber preview before the last public alpha so I suppose only time will really tell if that's true or not.

Easy answer, RTS is very niche and not a very profitable business. CoH is even more niche than RTS, as when people think of RTS they think of Dune style RTS (AoE, StarCraft, ...), which would make it even less profitable.

It is not a surprise AoE 4 is more successful than CoH 2 or CoH 3, and probably CoH 1 as well.

A smaller market and less profit means less risk-taking and less competition. There are many games that take the MoW or CoH flavor, but it is not surprising all of them are very niche unknown games (Gates of Hell, Steel Divison, MoW, all these games are comparatively unpopular)

Nobody wants to make RTS games. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of design work behind the scenes before you even get to the coding. They're extremely complex games and there are so many moving parts that all mesh together to make the game "feel" right.

Indie studios largely avoid them for this reason - they also avoid them because they are largely not profitable. Even Age of Empires IV, one of the bigger RTS releases of the past decade, has only a fraction of the sales of anything in a "trendy" genre - battle royale, hero shooter, survival crafting, etc. For this same reason, AAA publishers and developers will not commit to them either, or will only commit where the profit is assured - take a look at upcoming RTS games with buzz surrounding them and count how many are remakes or remasters.

The other problem with RTS games, from an indie perspective, is that they require too much maintenance to remain successful. There were two fairly large attempts at a "Company of Heroes-like" RTS in the last decade - Iron Harvest and Ancestors Legacy. Iron Harvest was pretty shit from the get-go, but Ancestors Legacy was honestly amazing. It nailed the feel of Company of Heroes in terms of unit play and counterplay, and the developers had some competitive aspirations. The problem with both of these was a lack of investment - the developers of Iron Harvest straight up said they weren't really interested in balancing or supporting a multiplayer scene, and Ancestors Legacy just fell off as it wasn't profitable to patch anymore, and the balance was left in a bad place after the expansion faction released.

So it's a difficult road to make an RTS, and even if you make one it's no guarantee that you'll get the profits needed to support it and foster a healthy community. Another big problem is that RTS has traditionally been a Western genre - Japanese developers largely don't make them, and those are the only large development studios that will okay a project purely on the merits of making a game, not for the potential for a profit.

Ironically, CoH1 can also be called a clone. CoH1 copied the Codename: Panzers series of games in many mechanics and interface. So the rights to Codename: Panzers belong to THQ Nordic, which is now restart its franchises under its ownership and making small but strong games, including creating strategies (the last one I bought was Knights of Honor II: Sovereign, which I liked). Perhaps someday we will see the revival of Codename: Panzers as a competitor to the Company of Heroes.

Coh always stood out with its vivid battledield atmosphere.

it's the only game i know where models behave realistically. Reloading, seeking cover, ducking, proning, giving handsigns etc.

how come there hasn't been a single game who copied that?

it's the first thing i'm thinking about a modern RTS...

EZ

Despite what many people would have you believe to the contrary, there was actual effort put into CoH.

The closest alternative is MoW and its derivatives and they just crap out shovelware asset swap every year or two for last 16 years on the exact same 16 yo old engine.

I suppose the RTS as a genre just isn't all that popular. So when those sorts of games do get made nowadays they tend to play it safe and just produce throwback games that imitate the stuff we've all seen before.

Either that or we just get boring, low-risk 'remasters' of stuff like Warcraft 3 or Red Alert. Nobody has really dared to try to innovate since. Relic used to do that but as we know, they aren't what they used to be.

EDIT: I shouldn't say nobody. Obviously there have been some attempts, they just didn't work out.

Solo game, campaign RTS economical model is outdated. MOBA which is a derivate from RTS are multiplayers first and then started to include solo experience through campaigns and lore design.

The company that will build a core multiplayer RTS with different mods allowing fast paced games to last around 30 minutes or slower paced games for 40/50 minutes will have economical success.
You sell such base game at a competitive price, get a reasonable player base to which you dedicate at first enough support for balance purposes, instaure micro transaction to sustain your game on the long run and then once your game has some renom and interest you develop and sell solo campaigns and scenarios to which you can link various unique skins, abilities or whatever so anybody fell the need to buy it, solo players for the campaign and multi players for the goodies.

But how can it still be so hard? With all the modern tools and engines available?
Look at manor lords --> a single dude makes it and it looks incredible.

It should be a fraction of expenses and work compared to 2006

The problem in RTS is not the players, the players still play and want strategy. The problem is with publishers and large developers; for them, income from strategies is not as huge as they want to see or from trending games. They want to jump on the hype train and make games like Warzone, PUBG, Fortnite, which brought huge extra income. Small studios or indie developers continue to make strategies

Problem is RTS tend to push for 1v1 e-sport gigachad tourney gaming while 95% of the playerbase want to play SP and 3v3,4v4, comp stomps.

Problem is RTS tend to push for 1v1 e-sport gigachad tourney gaming while 95% of the playerbase want to play SP and 3v3,4v4, comp stomps.

SC2 was pushing esport try hards, yet it had extremely large casual playerbase.
But it had game modes and creative tools to support that.

SC2 coop commanders was fun af for me, and I'm afraid we'll never see such game mode ever again, tho HW3 will make an attempt.

SC2 was pushing esport try hards, yet it had extremely large casual playerbase.
But it had game modes and creative tools to support that.

SC2 coop commanders was fun af for me, and I'm afraid we'll never see such game mode ever again, tho HW3 will make an attempt.

Thats the thing! SC2 supported both side. Coop commanders were great and they provided really good challange and replayability

Imagine the same quality community made missions or the italy campaign made for coop