What makes a good faction and Commander?

With the inclusion of the US and the OKW I feel that we need to ask what a faction and its commanders should look like.

To start when we look at the OKW we get a well balanced core faction. They are the only faction with elite INF and a heavy tank in the core faction. They have good AT and AI without the need of a commander to fill the holes in the core faction and each tier has an AI and AT answer in them. While, their commander are based more on utility. They bring either other elite units (FJ and Fusalers), or abilities to make your units better. In the end I see the only real problem with the OKW design be the lack of a need for a commander. Will the commanders are good you only really need one or two things from it because of the well balanced core faction. At the end of the day OKW commanders only add flavor.

The USF on the other hand is a faction of based around another tier system that spreads out the factions answers. One only needs to look at the were the MG and the AT gun are at in the tier are. But, even with this the americans are all about their vehicles, and INf upgrades. They by far have the best light vehicles in the game IE the AA halftrack and M20. The USF are a ability faction. From their rifle men to the jackson. Almost every unit get better with their vet one ability. There officer also give them one of the most powerful tech system in the game. That one free unit you get for something you were going to get anyway is great, and makes bake teching more viable. The USF commanders on the other hand are more of a play still change then anything else. In the end the only units that are better the the USF core faction are the EZ8 and the Paratroopers. The commanders also bring a lot of off map support for the faction. They are the only faction that has a call in arty or air support in every commander.

The Sovs are a call in faction. Their tier structure forces them to only pick two of their 4 tier structures, which other then tier 2 only have either AI or AT focused units. This leads to them having to pick commanders that A. have and elite Inf (shock or guards) to get them thought to the late game. This is when they can call in the best of their tanks which can only be call in from a commander. This has lead to a meta were Sov spam a unit until they get the elite inf, make a few of them, and hold out for late game call ins. which are far better than anything else in the core faction.

The OST on the other hand have an ok core faction up to tier 3. Their grends are still great Inf with upgrades, and P4 are still the best core medium tank. Now I do agree with many that there is little to no reason to go to t4 because a tiger is better then anything in the commander. This leads to the OST being in the same bout as the sov where they need to choses a commander that has a tiger. OST have far less call in units them the SOV and have no real elite in (PG might be elite) the faction whatsoever. This leads to the OST having to rely heavily on their support weapons, which are some of the best in the game. the commander tend to provide abilities or upgrades to core units, and the majority of them have a heavy tank in them.


After looking at each faction I have come up with a few things that each faction should have. Along with home commander should influence the game.

A.Each faction needs to have a their best heavy tank and elite INF in the core faction.
When we look at the OKW we see this. In my eyes the Obers and the king Tiger are the two best units in the faction, and both of them are core units. This allows the OKW to pick any commander, and never have to worry about not having late game units. This is the only reason I need to justify calling the OKW the best faction in the game.

B.Each tier in a fact need to have both AT and AI answers in the tier.
At the end of the day you shouldn't have to go without and AT or AI option, if you don't chose a commander with one build into it.limits strategies immensely.

C.Every faction should get something for teching up.
Far is Far, and this is one of the main ways to reword back teching to lower tiers.

D.finally commander call-in units for the most part should never be better than the core units.
These units should either be just as strong, or a different take on a unit in the core faction. IE a Jagtiger just having a longer range then a king tiger, and better at killing tanks then inf. At the end of the day it is just a different heavy that with a different role.This again will allow players to play any commander they want rather them what is best. And, even if a commander is better then the rest it will only be by a slit amount. leaving more than enough room for skill to shine.

What are you guys thoughts on what a core faction and it commander need to look like. Please remember that we are talking about the set up of the commanders and the core faction in general. Leave the balance of units to other threads, and come into this discussion with the idea that each unit fills it role. Hard I know (Panels elite AI inf LOL)

Yeah nicely put. Soviets in particular are too Commander dependant for Elite Infantry and for Late game tanks. So whilst you can have a balanced faction, having it half of it filled with completely worthless and unused units and only 2-3 Commanders are actually viable out of the 20+ is really bad for the game.

i don't have an exact answer.

i really like ostheer design. core faction is well rounded and each flexible tier is well rounded with no overlaps for the most part. and the faction's relationship with the commanders are great imo. for e.g., ass gren, ostruppen, artillery officer commanders add good amount of variety to the ostheer army when chosen.

but if all factions were like this, i would be bored

i mean, i like sov's rigid tiering and dependency on commanders somewhat but right now, they may be too dependent on commanders or it is just that many of their commanders are verging on uselessness.


as far as the new factions go, i mostly like their designs 'cept for okw's forward bases. their commanders are all unique and aren't like vcoh2's early commanders where it is more like quantity over quality.

I feel like you have most commander options as Ostheer and they tend to complement tech tree quite nicely. Therefore I think it's currently the best designed army. If only Soviets could afford T3+T4 combo

I think Wehrmacht is the best designed faction. The only thing I don't like about their design is LMG Grens scaling so much better than Soviet and American infantry whilst also having better support weapons and tanks.

Soviet teching could be fixed quite easily I think by making it so the fuel cost from getting a tech building is significantly lowered when you got the next. So instead of paying for 120 fuel for both Tier 3 and 4. You would only have to pay for 30 fuel to get Tier 4 after already having completed Tier 3. Having to spend 240 fuel for an incredibly lackluster Tank Destroyer is just not at all viable, which is bad for game design. Units should have a counter. If you see a slow heavy tank, going for a tank destroyer should be the intuitive thing to do. And vice Versa with other tiers.

The American tiering system is also way too punishing, since unlocking all tiers is too fuel costly you generally just skip either Tier 2 or 3. But in doing so you then miss out on some valuable units such as the 50cal MG or the M1 AT Gun. Another reason why USF just picks Airbourne almost all the time.

OKW lacks a real medium tank (meds that come out past 17 minute mark are not your "all purpose medium tank"), and the superheavies are not that practical, without true mortars, flamers and non-doctrinal MG. (if you say kubel...just don't post)

Not really your "well-balanced" core faction.

More like an extremely polarized faction.

Yeah the OKW design is an absolute mess. I'm not what what they were thinking giving a faction no mid game tanks, and no support weapons but a whole bunch of super great infantry with forward bases and crazy late game. Did they not expect to see it turnout as just a lame blob faction.

I really like a lot of the OKW unit design, but the way the faction works overall is just really disappointing. You would think they would learn from all their experiences with Coh1 and 2 faction design how to actually creative interesting and compelling factions and not just whatever sounds cool to the noobs "Camp and big tanks yay!". It feels like when they were designing OKW and Brits back in the day their design mentality was basing it around what would be fun for the player, not what would be fun for both of the players and what would create a great dynamic and intereaction between all the factions.

I think USF overall is pretty good, it just needs a bit of tweaking of adjusting in regards to the Tier system, late game and AT options. OKW and Soviets really need an overhaul, the Soviet one will probably receive one eventually but I doubt OKW will see any drastic changes for a while, it's too early since their release.