Anvil Churchill could use a SLIGHT buff

I think one of the main issues with the churchill is that it has very little impact when it arrives. The main gun is hardly special and the low armor means that all the AT your opponent currently has will penetrate it easily. Since it doesn't create any matchup mismatches your opponent doesn't have to adapt their strat to cope with the presence of a churchill. By contrast when the comet arrives it outclasses medium tanks/AT infantry and is a constant flanking threat. This in turn requires your opponent to react to the comet by placing tellers or investing in panthers/dedicated TDs. For the curchill to be successful it needs to be able to create a similar kind of mismatch when it arrives on the field.

I think one of the main issues with the churchill is that it has very little impact when it arrives. The main gun is hardly special and the low armor means that all the AT your opponent currently has will penetrate it easily. Since it doesn't create any matchup mismatches your opponent doesn't have to adapt their strat to cope with the presence of a churchill. By contrast when the comet arrives it outclasses medium tanks/AT infantry and is a constant flanking threat. This in turn requires your opponent to react to the comet by placing tellers or investing in panthers/dedicated TDs. For the curchill to be successful it needs to be able to create a similar kind of mismatch when it arrives on the field.

The shock value of the Churchill comes from its enormous HP pool and its grenade throw. Past that, if you don't manage to crush the opposition on your first pass, you will bleed too much Vet to your opponent. In your second pass (when the enemy gets all-vetted paks), you may not be as lucky.

This veterancy-tweak proposal aims to address part of that issue.

Tank Durability

Now, regarding tank durability. You can (approximately) calculate the durability level of a tank as follows:
- Multiply the armor of the tank with the hit-points of the tank.
- I am saying approximately, because I gloss out on some details (deflection, attacker penetration, etc. All of these would benefit the Churchill, though. I'm really presenting the worst case for the Churchill here).

By comparing durability levels of different tanks, it can give you a sense of how many more shots (per-average) it will take for a tank to be taken down.

Now, let's say you're comparing two tanks:
- Comet, 290 armour, 800 HP (durability level = 290 * 800 = 232K)
- Churchill, 240 armour, 1400 HP (durability level = 336K)

Note:
- If the attacker's penetration is below 240 armor (the minimum of the two armour values), this means that the Churchill can withstand 336/232 = 44% more hits than the Comet.
- As the attacker's penetration increases beyond 240. Things become EVEN BETTER for the CHURCHILL.
- The formula doesn't take into account deflection damage (read the OP again; carefully, this time). This favours the Churchill even more.
- The low-armour tank will also be more predictable; there is NO chance your tank can vanish in under 9 hits from an AT gun (for Comet this is 5 unlucky hits).

Quiz

Comet attacked frontally, vs Churchill going ass-first.

Now, it's your turn. Suppose you are trying to compare the durability of a Comet when attacked frontally, and a Churchill when attacked from the rear. Which one is the more durable? (Churchill rear armour = 180)
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Yes, the Comet is much faster, but the Churchill is NOT the paper-thin tank people make it out to be. This is what I am referring to as the psychological impact of low values for armour.

Mr.Smith do you actually use Churchills or are you just going from stats?

That's an ass backward way to compare durability. Panther pens at 240 and most AT pens at 200. Lets use 200 as a baseline..

Pens Churchill 83% of the time.
Pens Comet 68% of the time.

Hence Comet requires 8 hits to kill, Churchill 11. Trouble is the Churchill is almost certain to die to 11 shots, there is a deal of random chance in the Comet's figure, yes it can die to 5 but it could just as likely survive 13.

Now you might say the Churchill is more durable, but in game it isn't. Comet has useful smoke, a better gun to take opposition tanks and AT out and most importantly the speed ( especially with warspeed) to get out of trouble fast. It also has the armour to have a decent chance of deflecting incoming shots as it speeds away. It can crush shreck blobs too.

Panther kills the Churchill in 9 hits, guaranteed. Churchill needs at least 14, and likely more against it. Panther likely kills the Comet in 7 shots, but dies to the Comet in 9.

The Comet however fires faster, so has a good statistical chance of soloing a Panther from the front. You will never get around the back of a Panther with a Churchill so it is moot. Again though the Comet can get away if the engagement goes badly.

The Comet is more durable by dint of being a balanced mix of firepower, protection and mobility, the Churchill an ass backward sponge which can get into trouble but not out of it. This is purely due to nerfs which have gone so far as to make any comparison between the two a joke considering their extremely similar prices.

If you take two 35 tonne tanks and design one to be highly mobile with effective firepower then it's armour should suffer in any equally valid design. If the other is to be slow and poorly armed then it's armour can go through the roof. One is an extreme point on the triangle which prioritises protection, the other a more central point which is a good all rounder.

The Churchill though doesn't obey this due to nerfs. It is considerably weaker in firepower, massively weaker in mobility and doesn't compensate with protection. The one and only thing it had going for it was ridiculous nuke grenades, though this fifth nerf killed off the entire weapon system and Anvil with it. I cannot conceive of a scenario where a vanilla Churchill would be superior to a Comet.

Gawd knows why it's armour was ever nerfed, it isn't as though the Axis lack heavy tanks, tank destroyers or AT in all of it's forms.

It needs a high armour value ( you know, like all the other heavy tanks in the game) to have any value at all, which would neatly also reduce the vet given away by it.

You have your analysis mostly, right.

However, when calculating averages you shouldn't be rounding numbers (neither up or down). The fact that it takes 7.35 shots per average to kill a Comet doesn't mean it takes 7 or 8 shots to kill it. We only know it takes at minimum 5 shots to kill it; that's the only certainty. Everything else is pure RNG and the average gives us an idea about where we are going to be.

Regardless. Let's move to another example, where the Churchill truly shines; the Panzerschreck. Could you repeat your analysis on this one? (it's trickier, since the Panzerschreck also deals damage on non-penetrating hits).

Panzerschreck
Penetration: 170
Damage on Penetration: 120
Damage on Deflection (when not penetrating): 30

You will see why I have been so insistent in pointing out that trading Armour off for an increased HP pool is actually a very generous deal for the Churchill (except for awarded Veterancy).

You have your analysis mostly, right.

However, when calculating averages you shouldn't be rounding numbers (neither up or down). The fact that it takes 7.35 shots per average to kill a Comet doesn't mean it takes 7 or 8 shots to kill it. We only know it takes at minimum 5 shots to kill it; that's the only certainty. Everything else is pure RNG and the average gives us an idea about where we are going to be.

Regardless. Let's move to another example, where the Churchill truly shines; the Panzerschreck. Could you repeat your analysis on this one? (it's trickier, since the Panzerschreck also deals damage on non-penetrating hits).

Panzerschreck
Penetration: 170
Damage on Penetration: 120
Damage on Deflection (when not penetrating): 30

You will see why I have been so insistent in pointing out that trading Armour off for an increased HP pool is actually a very generous deal for the Churchill (except for awarded Veterancy).

The only correct way to evaluate the Churchill vs Comet impact would be to look at their average efficiency in-game.

Tanks are not a function of armor and health only. Even if you're looking strictly at survivability, you'd have to consider speed, acceleration, turn rate, size, abilities, etc.

Churchill smoke has been reported as bugged.

Imo it not be shot blocker is should provide light cover and immunity to suppression. Then is would serve its design role...

Veternacy speed is something that should be looked at. There are units with high XP value that either do not do enough damage or can only harm low XP value target like infantry.

For damage sponges the change could be that they gain more XP when they are fired upon and give less to enemies...

+1 for smoke

WTF is up with that tank?
I see it spewing smoke all the time, and think to myself, WTF??

Against frontal armour, which I don't personally find very realistic...

Shrecks will pen Comet 58% of the time for 120 damage so 42% chance of 30. Hence average damage per Shreck = 82. Shreck will hit 66% of the time. Hence average damage = 54.12, or 15 shots to kill a Comet.

Will pen Churchill 71% of the time for 120 damage so 29% chance of 30.
Hence average damage per Shreck = 93.9. Shreck will hit 78% of the time.
Hence average damage = 73.24 or 20 shots to kill a Churchill.

Think these are both stationary, and it doesn't quite tally with my experience I have to say....

Hmmm....

Im using Churchills a lot.

Recently, in 2v2 we've made huge comeback thanks to Churchill + Croc combo.

Tho, yea it's quite bad, but Im hipster and I just like to used it.

I find Comets to be about equal, though this may be due to Vet, the result of the calc surprised me a little bit.

Maybe with a Comet I'm squishing the annoying bastards... Not sure.

Edit:

Two double shrecked blobs would apparently mean a dead Comet after four volleys. This doesn't seem right, so I think you'd have to halve the damage for moving. In the meantime both a Comet and Churchill get 5 rounds off, plus enough MG fire to wipe a couple of models.

I'm still going for the Comet here as trying to squish them also prevents them from firing. Course the Churchill has it's hull defences too, though there is no chance of a squish. They certainly don't suck against infantry.

Side or rear armour would be more realistic too assuming some other bugger is engaging them, in which case I'd give it to the Churchill. Lone squads I think squish wins.

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Vet gain is only based off of the health of a tank while durability is a function of both armor and health. Therefor if the goal is to reduce vet feed while maintaining durability you need to to reduce the health pool of the tank while simultaneously increasing its ability to mitigate damage. Using your methodology we can lower the HP of the Churchill and increase its armor to achieve roughly the same durability level. For example:

Churchill, 240 armour, 1400 HP (durability level = 336K)
Speculative Churchill, 325 armour, 1040 HP (durability level = 338K)

The speculative Churchill in this scenario has roughly the same durability as the current tank but more of that durability is based around armor deflecting shots than health tanking hits. As a result the speculative Churchill will produce less vet for opponents at the cost of being more prone to RNG elements (it can survive 2 fewer penetrations than the current Churchill) and a bit more vulnerable to superheavy AT (JT, Elephant, Pak43 all require one fewer shots to kill).

Below are the average number of shots require to kill each Churchill variant:

vehicle health/(opposing weapon damage*(average opposing weapon penetration/armor))=average # of shots to kill

Churchill
vs P4 1400/(160*(110/240))=19.09 shots
vs Pak40 1400/(160*(190/240))=11.05 shots
vs Panther 1400/(160*(240/240))=8.75 shots
vs JagdTiger 1400/(320*(240/240))=4.37 shots

Speculative Churchill
vs P4 1040/(160*(110/325))=19.20 shots
vs Pak40 1040/(160*(190/325))=11.11 shots
vs Panther 1040/(160*(240/325))=8.80 shots
vs JagdTiger 1040/(320*(325/325))=3.25 shots

As you can see 1040 HP and 325 Armor would achieve similar survivability vs most sources of AT while bleeding less vet. Although this speculative Churchill would be more vulnerable to bad sequences of RNG if the smoke was fixed it could effectively mitigate those times with a well-timed smoke cover. I would favor this approach over the alternative because it works within the existing ruleset instead of creating special vet gain modifiers for one specific tank.

This of course assumes we want the durability to remain the same. If we wanted to make the Churchill more durable we could always increase the armor further (1040 HP 375 armor would put it at the same durability as an IS2).

You're on point, Cabreza. However, for all the reasons I've outlined, 325 armour, 1040 would be a straight nerf to the Churchill (damage from sources with penetration bigger than 240, deflection damage, rear shots from flanking, more RNG-prone damage-soaking).

I'm pretty sure there should be a better, more straightforward way to achieve the same without tweaking the Churchill's combat capability stats. The reason I'm saying this is that:

I'm not an expert on this, but I'm 99% sure this can be achieved easily. Previously, the British Tank Commander upgrade (which now confers bonuses to accuracy and received veterancy), was actually affecting awarded veterancy to enemies.

Thus, it *should* be simple to work it out.

I could go ahead and dig up that modifier attribute myself. However my CoH2 tools stopped working, and I've no idea how to fix it

It wouldn't be a nerf, would keep the same durability ( though with a slight problem against very heavy TDs) though give less vet. This is particularly important with shrecked up infantry who could easily receive a tanks worth of xp for slightly annoying a Churchill.

Also would help to cure the 1 minute in battle, 5 minutes taking up valuable engineer time being repaired problem.

Of course the actual figures would be up to the devs but they look like an excellent starting point to me.

Personally it's more or less the abilities you gain when going hammer

Vehicle marking is amazing when going firefly's since you can take a shot, pull your firefly back a little bit and still have los by the time the gun is loaded again.

Emergency warspeed, well no need to explain, great for getting out of bad situation and works on allies (if they're Brits)

Those two alone are enough to chose hammer over anvil.

Now with the Churchill, another thing that kills the choice of Anvil is the commanders with crocodile and the AVRE, yes they're more specialist tanks. But the idea still stands, high HP meat shield tank that can take shots for firefly's and comets.

Like I said the ability of warspeed (can be used on Churchill's) and vehicle marking giving los on tanks from a distance is great.

This game is a great example of why Hammer is currently better then Anvil (The passive abilities) and allowing a player to gain a variant of the Churchill through a commander. (Although this video is more of the power of firefly's)



I can't seem to get the link to work properly but start at 33 mins onwards or just watch the whole video.

Personally I think it's more then just the tanks that make Hammer more popular, it's the abilities in general and the ability to gain Churchill's through commanders.

However buffing the Churchill in some form may make the commander more viable. but the overall passive abilities are just more attractive for Hammer.

However buffing the Churchill in some form may make the commander more viable. but the overall passive abilities are just more attractive for Hammer.

remember when heavy engineer used to be extremely popular?

Hammer definitely certainly benefits more from commanders that have 1) Crew Repairs and/or 2) Doctrinal Churchills.

Anvil works in more subtle ways. It will also keep working even if you are in the backfoot/don't have enough fuel. And it will also work even better as your armoured forces scale up in size (or teamgames).

A capture point that can spot for itself makes demo charges so much more effective; your allies also benefit from that.

Also, Heavy Engineers are (assuming 5-man vet2 Sappers)
- 2 squads can repair any damaged vehicle within seconds, and there you go; it's back in the fight. No downtime; you're fighting with your entire force all the time and that aids with unit preservation in the long-run.
- 1 squad can lay a mine within 2 seconds.
- 1 squad can also put up a Bofors emplacement in ~10 seconds. That's great for the extreme-late-game when new units don't have enough time to reach the frontline.

Currently only the repair speed bonus works. Bugfixing will make Anvil great again.

PS: Personally, I would take Comet & Anvil benefits any day over Churchill & Anvil or Comet & Hammer.

PS: Personally, I would take Comet & Anvil benefits any day over Churchill & Anvil or Comet & Hammer.

Me too

The big problem with the Churchill is that a damage sponge is not actually useful and not going to win any engagements for you, something which is especially true against good players. Ability to deal damage is always more important than the ability to take damage.

Vet feeding aside, it currently just has no impact on the battlefield because it does not pose much of a threat to anything that the Axis field in the late game. It does not do anything special that can't be achieved with other units which perform those tasks more efficiently.
Thus, even if it the vet feeding issue were solved it would still serve little purpose and is completely out shined by the Comet and the Churchill variants interms of impact. The Churchill would still need a little bit more to make it as equally attractive as its late game peers.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I would like to see the Churchill become more threatening to AV blobs by either improving is AI, or by boosting the frontal armour. It would however, still be a rather bland unit.

So here are some other options which I'm gonna toss to the wind:
- Give it a special ability like CoH1's tank shock to suppress blobs
- Give a mine plow to allow it spearhead for other units.
- Give a blitz ability to help it briefly overcome it slow speed and flank or get out of trouble.
- Allow it to also fire smoke shells, giving it some much needed utility.

Mine flail for the squish / dismember / maim would be seriously amusing...

So here are some other options which I'm gonna toss to the wind:
- Give it a special ability like CoH1's tank shock to suppress blobs
- Give a mine plow to allow it spearhead for other units.
- Give a blitz ability to help it briefly overcome it slow speed and flank or get out of trouble.
- Allow it to also fire smoke shells, giving it some much needed utility.

+1 to all these ideas
Churchill is bland, but on purpose with the extra HP, although it should have abilities that allow it to be useful, like it's doctrinal variants.

Should give it an Upgraded Tank Commander (actual Winston Churchill!?) that works like a gimp Command Vehicle Aura that slightly buffs infantry. Churchill is supposed to be an infantry support tank after all~