It's not Star Craft. Pure math war-game would be boring as hell. Squad wipes are needed.
I'm sorry but I have to disagree 100% with this. RTS games are designed at their core to be a battle of wits and skill between two players on a grand battle scheme. Games like StarCraft take this to the extreme, where randomness is reduced to near 0 in order to maximize the "skill vs skill" component, whereby you are only punished for making mistakes, rather from RNG.
That being said, RNG and squad wiping doens't produce a good war-game. It simply punishes you for no reason. Squads should be wiped for the sole reason you had squad wipes in CoH1: you weren't paying attention, and so you suffer the consequences. Losing squads randomly (like that game of Hans vs Paul on Angoville where Paul lost 4 man Falls to single T70 shots) merely punishes one player for no reason. Sure this allows for come backs and lead consolidation, but when you know you are outplaying someone it is frustrating to have luck come in. Even games like Chess and Checkers have it figured out that RNG is bad and games should focus on strategic skill and positioning.
@Sneakking, you cannot justify the use of late game tanks is to squad wipe. Their use comes from their ability to soak damage while dealing heavy damage to vehicles, and to consistently inflict
manpower drain on the opponent. As a player you want to field vehicles which are superior to the opponent and which can supplement your army composition. The manpower drain via tanks was done perfectly in CoH1 due to the way the squads behaved and tanks fired. Late game tanks like the Pershing/Tiger would consistently get between 1-3 kills off a squad per shot, but never squad wiped. Thus if you are not paying attention or are blobbing uncontrollably and refuse to retreat, you get punished by consistently being bad and getting shot. If I were to, say, rush a KT in CoH2 with my Captain or Guards squad in order to lay support for a tank and the squad gets 1 shotted instantly, I hope you can appreciate how that merely punishes the player without adding to strategic depth.
And for someone who said math-war game is boring as hell Australian, why are you discussing reload timers and AoE scatter? The "math" of it doesn't matter, what matters is that the undersized axis squads get wiped more easily by allied units. Also, let's not forget the squad wiping capabilities of mines. This is one I don't understand. In CoH1 mines would protect flanks by pinning squads and inflicting huge amounts of non-lethal damage, which if left unnoticed by the played who hit the mine resulted in squad wiping due to merely not retreating a low health squad. Again in CoH2 I've been punished terribly for no reason when a 4 man Ober squad gets squad wiped by walking over a soviet mine. In before the "noob get a minesweeper squad!" - As OKW you need the sturmpios to minesweeper... and a squad with such high combat utility and cost shouldn't be mine sweeping the entire map so your shitty volks can go around capping or flanking. This is another thing I don't understand. Who designed OKW and thought "lets make their pioneers super expensive and strong, and also make it so OKW needs schreks, that way they won't have munitions or the opportunity to upgrade minesweepers for a while. That way they need to blob and stay together to avoid unnecessary squad wipes".