I Feel Soviets Failed Thematically.

Hello all. I feel that thematically, the Soviets don't seem to match what they intended them to be. When I think Soviets in WW2 I think sending hundreds of bodies at your opponent, with some mass produced tanks that aren't great or some that are.

In game, I don't really see much of that. "But they have 6 squad members!" Americans have 5, so....1 more on each squad constitutes bodies? "Well you can have a lot of Conscripts!" I have roughly the same if not more Riflemen squads + tech squads. None of their commander abilities seem to emphasize the whole "Rush forward for the motherland" except maybe two abilities. Rapid Conscription is one, and For the Motherland is the other one. Out of all that there isn't much else that seems to fit thematically with the whole "Outnumber and swarm" feel. Penal's which are pretty much convicts and screens don't even outnumber Conscripts in anyway.

When I look at their abilities, I just see Americans from Coh1. I see Anti tank grenade upgrades(Sticky bombs), Oorah(Fire up), and grenades are, well grenades. Merge only hurts your elite infantry and doesn't really stand out in any significant way, I mean are you going to create a conga line of reinforcing and falling back?

I remember on coh2's release, the soviet concept of mass produce tanks was alive. With the pretty BS call in of two T34's, soviet windustry, ect. Then those things got gutted and we're just stuck with a T34 way late into the game. Sure it costs 80 fuel and you can get two for the price of one panzer 4, but that just doesn't seem....like a good plan. I guess that's kind of...thematic?

I looked at CoH1's mod of soviets and saw the whole Officer/Conscript idea. Sure it was pretty rough around the edges, but it felt different. Wermacht and Ostheer in this game despite being the same exact army have various differences in potential gameplays. Yet, there isn't any with soviets. "NOT ONE STEP BACK" the Soviet commander yells, as I retreat my squad back to base "Oh....well...hm.". For the record, I'm not talking balance here, just theme.

TLDR: Soviets don't really outnumber and swarm as they should have. Americans feel more swarmy then they do. Their abilities seem uninspired from CoH1 Americans. Their mass producing of tanks is two more shoddy tanks then a panzer 4...? This is the whole reason to play Soviets thematically?

The thing with soviet units is even though they suck, you can keep rushing them at the enemy and slowly snowball.

Maxim spam, conspam, penal spam vs OKW, T34/76 spam, etc.

If you go commander you get quality and don't have to zerg

Conscripts and t34s dont have the theme of being cheap like they should.

Soviet stock weaponary is stay at early 1943, meanwhile all other factions are at late 1944.....

Relic lacks research/knowledge of their weapons during the war, I guess only thing they can learn from is the Canadian WW2 museum

The thing with soviet units is even though they suck, you can keep rushing them at the enemy and slowly snowball.

Maxim spam, conspam, penal spam vs OKW, T34/76 spam, etc.

If you go commander you get quality and don't have to zerg

soviet units don't suck as a general rule of thumb. their vehicles were terrible for a while at the beginning of the game but their infantry have always been decent, even if it was because of crutch units like snipers or shocks.

soviet units don't suck as a general rule of thumb. their vehicles were terrible for a while at the beginning of the game but their infantry have always been decent, even if it was because of crutch units like snipers or shocks.

Outside of Su-76, Sniper, ZiS-3, SU-85, and Katy redeeming aspect of soviet nondoc units is you can aggressively cap and rush them at the enemy.

Cons redeeming factor is cheapness, CEs same, maxims meant to A-move or garrison, mortar meant to rush, cons a zergling analogue, etc.

You get a durable, fast, and cheap army and you can't afford combined arms due to teching.

Outside of Su-76, Sniper, ZiS-3, SU-85, and Katy redeeming aspect of soviet nondoc units is you can aggressively cap and rush them at the enemy.

Cons redeeming factor is cheapness, CEs same, maxims meant to A-move or garrison, mortar meant to rush, cons a zergling analogue, etc.

You get a durable, fast, and cheap army and you can't afford combined arms due to teching.

and that is indeed a big design issue and the reason i hate the tech structures for everyone except OKH and brits. only having access to 2/3 to 1/2 (original soviet design) of your units is bad unless you have 3/2 or 2 times as many units as everyone else AND you still have units for every role.

I agree, it's dumb design. I would have preferred more similar teching but cheaper crappier soviet units.

You guys are asking for the Imperial Guard from Dawn of War 2 XD

You guys are asking for the Imperial Guard from Dawn of War 2 XD

Imperial guard take inspiration from Soviets in WW2. With things such as commissars and utilizing infantry to swarm the enemy. In fact, I love Warhammer and play Imperial Guard. Isn't that weird some grim dark Sci-fi universe captures that theme more so then the "actual" Soviet army?

Imperial guard take inspiration from Soviets in WW2. With things such as commissars and utilizing infantry to swarm the enemy. In fact, I love Warhammer and play Imperial Guard. Isn't that weird some grim dark Sci-fi universe captures that theme more so then the "actual" Soviet army?

I know where the Imperial Guard takes it inspiration from and its not just the Russians you cant say Imperial Guard are Soviets from WW2 the Valhallans are the Imperial Guard Regiments with most of its inspiration taken from soviets while there are other regiments that take inspiritation from something else, Death Korps, Catachans, Steel Legion and Tallarn to name a few

But the Imperial Guard in DoW2 was designed before the Soviets of CoH2 and what I was trying to say is you guys wanted their mechanics such as reinforcing 3 men for the price of 1, Heavy Artillery,badass firepower, canceling retreats with executions etc

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+1, Really good post. I feel you're pretty on the spot. Although you can spam T-34-76s now

Doctrines thematically went out the door I felt when Ostruppen Doctrine was released a few months after release. Why did the Germans all of a sudden get cheap infantry with squad sizes the same as cons? Really made no sense to me back then.

Now everything's done based solely on balance and gameplay rather than caring about themes. Sadly, Relic doesn't seem to care so much about doctrines thematically as they did in VCOH, with US, Wehr, PE and Brits. While it may not be a bad thing gameplay-wise in the way of making the game fun, it does take away the depth in the game that you can appreciate in CoH1.

But VCoH players who make comparisons between the two games when it comes to depth pretty much sound like a broken record, and its something that will never be fixed sadly.... Its just what gaming is like these days

Agreed. As the game started to get more factions, each faction begins to feel more like one another and is balanced symmetrically. Relic has completely lost the theme of every faction.

TLDR: Soviets don't really outnumber and swarm as they should have. Americans feel more swarmy then they do. Their abilities seem uninspired from CoH1 Americans. Their mass producing of tanks is two more shoddy tanks then a panzer 4...? This is the whole reason to play Soviets thematically?

Well first: comparing them to Americans is silly. They launched with Ostheer and were designed around them and the concepts of more infantry, more mobility, expendable vehicles etc are better shown here.


Their tech tree has also been butchered and homogenized over the last couple of years.

and that is indeed a big design issue and the reason i hate the tech structures for everyone except OKH and brits. only having access to 2/3 to 1/2 (original soviet design) of your units is bad unless you have 3/2 or 2 times as many units as everyone else AND you still have units for every role.

That's a silly thing to say.

RTS has always been about choosing what production structures to get. If you did something stupid and found your army lacking, it was your own fault.

It worked well in Dawn of War 2 because Hero/wargear choice and a myriad of unit upgrades replaced overall tech trees, but it wouldn't work as well in a game with far less in the way of upgrades.

There's a reason no faction in this game (well Soviets almost do now) has a linear tech tree. Even Ostheer had the option of researching battlephase independently from the structure that actually builds those units: allowing them the option to fast tech to other tiers and open up new strategies that way.

Even Brits have the decisions between Bofors/AEC or Hammer/Anvil to give some sort of tech tree decision making to the game.

Soviets old design never limited you to half your arsenal, you just had to spend the resources to get it.

If it weren't for the community whining about game pacing and having Relic hike up all the tech fuel costs significantly, it was actually quite affordable to buy all four tech structures in a game.

Oh God this myth again. This isn't the Red Army of 1941 or 1942. It's the Red Army of 1943 and later 44. That Red Army was NOT zerg rush-waste all your men palooza. Was it relatively less professional and relatively greater in numbers? Duh. But it was a mechanized and trained army like all others! The Soviets in CoH 2 reflect this. Their units are relatively cheaper and more expendable; relatively more spammy; and relatively weaker. Keyword is relative!

Trying to theme them around what are essentially stereotypes was always inadvisable, imo. The desperate, struggling Soviets zerg rushing the Germans to make up for their deficiencies are an early-war phenomenon. But that's what many people in the west think of when they think Red Army, so that's what Relic wanted to make it feel like. The late war Soviets were a well equipped, comparable fighting force to the Germans, roughly as good man-for-man and tank-for-tank, but with many more men and tanks overall. Things like conscripts with improvised molotovs in a mid-late war context is silly. Calling their core infantry conscripts feels odd because every army in the war used mass conscription, most fighting men in the US were conscripts, most fighting men in the German Army were conscripts, most fighting men in the British army were conscripts, and so on. Every country had lots of volunteers but was predominantly composed of conscripted soldiers.

In that sense, I'm glad that the stereotype has largely not held up in respect to their faction design (the campaign on the other hand...). The T34s suck and stuff, and they don't need to massively overwhelm the Germans with crappy stuff, instead relying on reasonably comparable armour. Their infantry is a bit mediocre but I can deal with that based on just faction diversity arguments, their weapon teams are often good and their specialists are ok. CoH is never going to be properly balanced if one faction needs significantly more units to take on the other, because of heavy micro burden associated. The USA wasn't designed to have twice as many units as the Germans in CoH1, even though in reality the US frequently outnumbered the Germans, just as the Russians did. It was not uncommon to have the forces be equal in size for a given battle, even though the Russians had two or three times more troops overall - tactical engagements could be of any size, and the Germans would also outnubmer Russians or Americans when they attacked in strength (even if, when you zoomed out 600km, you could count more Russians/Americans than Germans overall).

The real thematic failure, IMO, is OKW. Specifically the whole idea of 5 levels of vet is nonsensical. The Germans were NOT supermen in the Ardennes, no better than the Americans they faced down. Even if they were, wouldn't that theme mean that the Germans started stronger, as they were very expreienced, but had less room to grow from experience as a result? Shouldn't the Americans have more room to vet up? Shouldn't Soviet raw conscripts have the most ground to cover in terms of experience gain, thus being weakest but becoming much stronger?

Obers and other "elite" squads should have started at Vet 3, IMO, but having no room to get stronger because they're already elite. Then, the core OKW army should have been those raw recruits that were fairly weak, to support these elite call-ins / late game units. That would kind of fit the late war Germans in the west better, imo.

I also hate the gimmicky way they design additional factions. They always lack important core units that make balance a nightmare. I understand the want for diversity, but the CORE trio of AT/MG/Mortar should be roughly in tact for all factions, IMO. None of this Kubel instead of MG, Mortar Pit instead of Mortar garbage. Then the OKW fuel/resource situation... it just makes people who can't do math confused when having balance discussions, all the while GUARANTEEING team-game imbalance when the faction who is designed to be resource constrained scales up to larger modes.

That's a silly thing to say.

RTS has always been about choosing what production structures to get. If you did something stupid and found your army lacking, it was your own fault.

It worked well in Dawn of War 2 because Hero/wargear choice and a myriad of unit upgrades replaced overall tech trees, but it wouldn't work as well in a game with far less in the way of upgrades.

There's a reason no faction in this game (well Soviets almost do now) has a linear tech tree. Even Ostheer had the option of researching battlephase independently from the structure that actually builds those units: allowing them the option to fast tech to other tiers and open up new strategies that way.

Even Brits have the decisions between Bofors/AEC or Hammer/Anvil to give some sort of tech tree decision making to the game.

Soviets old design never limited you to half your arsenal, you just had to spend the resources to get it.

If it weren't for the community whining about game pacing and having Relic hike up all the tech fuel costs significantly, it was actually quite affordable to buy all four tech structures in a game.

DoW2 doesn't work the same way though. you tier up, you have a selection of options, and then you choose what to build. the big difference there being that you don't have to choose before teching. the only time you cann't build a counter is when you're in t1 and the other player had vehicles. most faction didn't have any counters to vehicles (a few did, SM had vengeance rounds, nades would technically work if you landed a hit) but basically you were fucked against vehicles unless you could tech in time. there were a few other issues relating to design (PM vs snipers) but as a rule of thumb you were never locked out of options by tech choice.

SC does force you to make a choice between the units you build but within that selection you have some kind of counter to everything you face. as terran, if you go mech you have AA ad if you go bio you still have AA.
(bare in mind that i have almost no competitive knowledge of SC2 so i may get something wrong there)

coh2 actually excludes certain units through teching. soviets do not get any form of hard AT if they go t1. before t3/4 were, uh, linked, the soviets could either choose t3 for much better AI and weaker AT or t4 for weaker AI and much better AT. USF does not get hard AT with their own t1. USF also get's fundamentally different suppression platforms between t1 and t2 and while they still have suppression, the units are used and countered much differently. OKW is actually relatively balanced, on paper, between the tiers (they have artillery and AT in both with t1 getting a utility unit and t2 getting a AI unit) but the situation is complicated by their fuel income reduction. OKH is similar to the dow2 system in that teching does not prevent you from getting units, although due to costs t3/t4 is more of a trade off then a natural progression. they still don't have anything in t3 that t4 doesn't have (and vice-versa) apart from the pwerfer, the units simply differ in cost and performance.

another key difference between dow2 and coh2 is that coh2 has a severe lack of role changing upgrades; the only ones i can think of are the handheld AT (schreck, bazooka, piat, sort of PTRS) and the M5/251/UC upgrades. all the other upgrades either buff or enhance the unit's primary role. i suspect this is partly due to there being less unit types in coh2 then dow2; the only thing separating the two types (infantry/vehicle) is target size and armour rather then damage/target tables.

apologies for any missing/extra "n"s; my keyboard is broken.

great post mr deaf mute

DoW2 doesn't work the same way though.

I phrased it weird. I was using DoW2 as an example of a game with a linear tech structure. It works there because there are a ton of options with how to spend power.

Most RTS games absolutely do limit options when teching, and rarely can you get everything.

There's very little tech decisions left for Soviets:

"Do I want T1 + T2 before T3?" That's about it. There's always "When?" but that's in every game ever.

There's not even any reason to not immediately build a structure at the start of the game anymore. It used to be you would want to go cap points first since you didn't have enough resources straight off and you needed conscripts etc.

If it weren't for commanders, soviets would be incredibly stale. They're lucky in that most commanders offer new units to play with.

I phrased it weird. I was using DoW2 as an example of a game with a linear tech structure. It works there because there are a ton of options with how to spend power.

Most RTS games absolutely do limit options when teching, and rarely can you get everything.

There's very little tech decisions left for Soviets:

"Do I want T1 + T2 before T3?" That's about it. There's always "When?" but that's in every game ever.

There's not even any reason to not immediately build a structure at the start of the game anymore. It used to be you would want to go cap points first since you didn't have enough resources straight off and you needed conscripts etc.

If it weren't for commanders, soviets would be incredibly stale. They're lucky in that most commanders offer new units to play with.

it does work better. there are more significant upgrades and the same number of units as coh2. there's also a LOT more variety between units and factions.

teching, not so much, units purchased, absolutely. dow2 didn't limit teching, a lot of older (and less relevant) RTS games didn't limit tech much at all (total annihilation, WC1/2, AoE). later games started to add choices. SC2 tends to have the player build roughly half their units in a given game. the difference between those games and coh2 is for whatever set of tiers you go, you have a unit for every situation. they work differently but the roles overlap; you don't get much of that with coh2, if you have it at all and that's the problem.

at this point the only faction i find interesting is the british and i think that's just the novelty. i don't really enjoy playing the soviets, OKH i've played so much i'm bored with, i hate OKW's design, and USF has a boring start but interesting mid game and then falls off again late game because they have two (as of this patch) units that can sustain any kind of damage. soviets have some of the more strategy changing commanders though, which at least adds some variety.