Early game commander doctrinal abilities.

Hello,

I would like to know how do you pick your commander. Are you more an early commander or a late one? Since 90% of my 1vs1 game are vs OKW, my vision exposed below is strongly influenced by them.
I have try all three commanders many times in 1vs1 situation, and tried different tactics with the CP0 and CP1 options. And I’m bit disappointed as I feel them kind of useless.
So to reply myself first, I’m a late commander, I prefer to know what I’m facing and being able to reply with the best late game commander options.

To explain why, I just want to provide a feedback on early USF CP options. I don’t know if you share it, and if not or have some tricks I didn’t use, let share them!

Armor Doctrine:
Assault Engineer are really weak to be efficient, overall for their price. If their damage is reasonable, their survivability is horrible. You cannot leave them alone, First I tried them as a fast pushing squad, to counter sturmpio, but they just don’t do the job, after I tried them as a capping unit but since you always need to keep them in screen otherwise they get just wipeout too fast before you can even react to warnings, especially vs sturmpio I do not use them to cap anything. Finally I decided to pick them for their flamer but here again you lose the flamethrower if the carrier die (and it happens randomly and quite fast), it just doesn’t worst 60 ammo. At the end I succeed couple of flanking with them and it took too much time to burn a squad… Better use a RE with volley fire or a riflesquad.
Crew Thompson, they die as fast as assault engineers, I tried couple of time in different situation to use them with their Thompson, the result was the same each time, a quick death.

Infantry Doctrine:
Half-track mortar CP2. I had great hopes on it, overall since USF does not have any indirect fire unit before T3, and howitzer being so bad. So I had been greatly disappointed by it, damage dealt by it is incredibly random and the AOE of shell too small. I remember a game where it took 3 round of barrage fire to take a single MG34 squad (not full health) in sign of vision. I don’t know how many shells are drop during a barrage but it was unbelievable. I finally manage to kill them with another unit. This unit is just unreliable in term of firepower, and investing on it only to drop smoke shell is too expensive.
Riflemen squad amelioration CP2. As far as I tried it, mines are only affecting armored vehicles and not human squads. In COH, it was a great deal, because it was affecting human and also because Werhm vehicles had a shorter range of fire like the sdfk. Or you were able to manage a proper disengage (not a retreat) to drive a puma on the mine. Here, vehicles range is bigger and they can wipe a squad too fast to be able to drive them on a trap, of course it is still possible to mine so shockpoint where you know a vehicle will come soon or later but it is still a bet. The rest is situational, only sand bags have are interesting to defend a position or a vehicles.

Airborn Doctrine: Pathfinder are interesting, the vision they provide is great. But what else? They are a support unit that can deal reasonable amount of damage but not more than any other unit already on the field, you cannot really use them as capping unit and need them have them following other unit. So is an additional range of vision really necessary at the beginning of the game? Not really from my point of view. This unit doesn’t not bring anything before line of combat are more of less settled up.

I just dropped the mechanized Commander after my last game. Early jeep looks so nice I’ll try it my next game!

Yeah, the mechanized commander looks good, the jeep will be useful against early kubels.

I agree with you about the US mortar halftrack being unreliable as well.