Anvil Churchill could use a SLIGHT buff

TL;DR: Should the Churchill award a lower amount of Veterancy to attacking units, in order to account for its low armour value?

When used properly, the Anvil Churchill seems to be in a decent spot, price-to-performance-wise.

Just like most damage-sponge-oriented Tanks, the Churchill has to be used cautiously at first, until it can vet up. Once the Churchill has reached Vet3, and receives its much needed mobility buffs, it can be used much more aggressively to spearhead your attacks.

The problem, however, is that unlike other damage-sponges (which rely on high armour), the Churchill trades-off a significant amount of armour for the biggest HP pool in the game.

The benefits of a high HP pool (with low armour)

The Churchill has the following advantages over high-armour medium-HP damage-sponges: wearing down the Churchill's HP pool is more consistent (and less RNG dependent). This might seem like a downside at first. However, it allows the UKF player to predict how much damage the Churchill is able to take before it has to be pulled back.

Compare this to the IS-2, for instance; a bad RNG-streak can easily ruin your day.

Finally, the enormous HP pool is the biggest middle finger to flanking the Churchill (which isn't difficult to achieve, given its lack of mobility).

Edited to add (8 March): A higher-HP-to-armour ratio (for the same HP * armour factor) also makes the Churchill MORE resilient to attacks that cause deflection damage (e.g., Panzerschrecks). Even if Schrecks don't penetrate, they still cause a fixed amount of damage; in a blob, deflection damage can become significant. (I'm not even taking flanking into account here).

The downsides of low armour

Just like most damage-sponges, a Vet0 Churchill is not immediately useful to spearhead a big attack. In order to unlock its full potential, it needs to attain some veterancy. This will yield the necessary mobility (and crit-damage repairs at Vet3).

However, the low armour and low speed of the Churchill has a fatal downside; the Churchill takes a lot of damage from just about any source. This makes it act as a Veterancy pinata to the opposition. Given that the Churchill cannot finish off enemy targets, the enemy veterancy will accumulate (enemy tank destroyer, paks, etc).

Thus, as the game drags on, it is very likely that summoning a Churchill will end up doing more harm than good to the player (even if the player plays cautiously and manages to preserve the Churchill)

(Of course, the other downside is that you need to spend more time repairing the Churchill. However, Anvil comes with Heavy Sappers, so there's no issue there)

Edited to add (8 March): Another downside is that Churchill has a predictable performance. Just like the Churchill user knows when the tank has had enough and needs to be pulled back, an attacker will also be able to tell whether a flank (trade) will succeed or not. Low-armour contributes to eliminating RNG to the attacker's favour in this situation.

A modest proposal: just reduce awarded veterancy to attackers

A higher-armour Churchill would "bleed" less veterancy to the opposition. However, a higher-armour Churchill with a 1400 HP-pool would be completely OP for its price. Instead, we could just tweak the awarded-veterancy modifier. That way the Churchill will perform on a similar level to other damage sponges with respect to the veterancy-pinata aspect.

The modifier could be something along the lines of -30% awarded veterancy (which would be similar to the Churchill having 340-ish armour).

Wish all AI infantry received less xp vs vehicles. Volks and PG rank up fast preying on USF/USSR and UKF sponges in particularly where going around a wrong corner can spell instant doom. Don't get me wrong double zooks can do the same but no one should be putting those on RM and I don't see people complaining about the newer more expensive RearE when you have the brits Engineers doing a markedly better job.

The lose in AI capabilities is easily recovered with the quick VET gains especially when infantry VET bonuses will be working as intended.

I play all factions pretty equally and PGs and Volks seem to benefit the most but at least the PG's cost more and are more squishy to indirect fire.

As usual, a well written post by Mr.Smith himself

+1 The Churchill needs a buff, either your idea or another.

I kinda feel like tanks or vehicles shouldn't award any experience unless destroyed.

Yeah, nuke grenades was probly the only reason Churchills were worth it. Now they as scheibe as Comet grenades :'(

maybe getting its dmg consistent with cromwell's dmg a good buff too? They have the same gun after all.

I kinda feel like tanks or vehicles shouldn't award any experience unless destroyed.

Downside to that would be it would most likely go to who got the final hit and nothing worse then seeing an allied get it when you put in 99% of the effort and at the moment that only really goes towards the CPs let alone if your units got 0xp gained from all the hard work.

Downside to that would be it would most likely go to who got the final hit and nothing worse then seeing an allied get it when you put in 99% of the effort and at the moment that only really goes towards the CPs let alone if your units got 0xp gained from all the hard work.

Fairly easy to check for player damage and reward whoever did the most damage when the unit is killed. Lots of games do this.

+1. good post

+1 But I wouldn't mind getting greedy and asking for a slight cost decrease too

Fairly easy to check for player damage and reward whoever did the most damage when the unit is killed. Lots of games do this.

With relics ongoing issues with vet systems and the like I just don't think I could trust them to implement it. If the tank is healed over the course of the game to finally die relic would balls it up and it would be based on the damage issued over the entire game even if you were the one that ambushed and took it out in the end in 20 seconds.

If Churchill is getting any sort of buff, it needs to have the Grenade ability removed. It's such a stupid ability that allows the Churchill to consistently one shot Raketens and to a lesser extent Paks, which are supposed to be counters to the unit.

If Churchill is getting any sort of buff, it needs to have the Grenade ability removed. It's such a stupid ability that allows the Churchill to consistently one shot Raketens and to a lesser extent Paks, which are supposed to be counters to the unit.

The nuke grenade ability was nerfed after the last patch to be a slightly better version of the standard riflemen grenade so its shouldn't wipe squads which such regular ease. I have not personally tested it as I've not seen any reason at all to get a Churchill over the slightly improved Comet.

Lowering the vet provided from hitting a chunchill is a good suggestion as it tackles a non-obivous problem. Btw does the tank commander upgrade reduce the amount of vet a received from hitting a comet or cromwell, or am I mistaken?

I would personally like to see the Churchill get improved frontal armour or have its main gun accuracy improved to make it more threatening to AV blobs.

Currently, with the nuka grenade gone, the only useful role it serves is to just take hits. It is just not good at any thing else, very much like the KV-1 - which is a bit sad for such an iconic tank.

320 armor with 1280 hp.

and remove the speed penalty on the smoke ability.

It wasn't in a good place before the most recent nerf, hardly used, and with the Comet getting a buff it makes even less sense. You don't get free engineers with it, at best you'll need to spend an extra 70 munitions and more likely 140.

Comet is cheaper, takes less popcap, spends more time on the field rather than being repaired and is more effective all round.

Whatever the cost the Churchill should be a heavy tank, not a medium which lingers.

Even comparatively if fails, though the popcap and manpower needed are reasons not to go Anvil. Sometimes I will to repair a Croc as a luxury but the Croc is effectively slightly cheaper ( as you don't specifically need the 200MP 50FU Anvil, two of whose abilities don't work) and worth the popcap.

The free vet for enemy tanks is purely down to it's lack of armour, it is just two PIVs bolted together. In it's current state it isn't worth the price or the popcap.

320 armor with 1280 hp.

and remove the speed penalty on the smoke ability.

+1.

The reduced vet solution isn't a bad idea but it would mean creating specialized game rules for one specific unit that aren't in any way clear to the average player. I'd much rather see the churchill just brought in line with the survivability of every other heavy tank.

+1.

The reduced vet solution isn't a bad idea but it would mean creating specialized game rules for one specific unit that aren't in any way clear to the average player. I'd much rather see the churchill just brought in line with the survivability of every other heavy tank.

And 1 only on the field like every other heavy tank

And 1 only on the field like every other heavy tank

neither the churchill nor the kv-1 are true heavy tank without a doom cannon like on the tiger, or a flamethrower.

neither the churchill nor the kv-1 are true heavy tank without a doom cannon like on the tiger, or a flamethrower.

Kv-1 will never be 800hp and 270ar
Churchill with 320 armor will be

This post was so well written that I would've agreed even if I didn't agree (which I do).

+1

If Churchill is getting any sort of buff, it needs to have the Grenade ability removed. It's such a stupid ability that allows the Churchill to consistently one shot Raketens and to a lesser extent Paks, which are supposed to be counters to the unit.

1. As other people mentioned in the post, the Nuke grenade has left the building. Now both the Comet nade and the Churchill nade have met in the middle (Rifleman-nade-ish level but with 25% more AoE radius). It's not godly-level but not bad either.

2. Every other sponge tank has some decent gun to deal with infantry (i.e., AoE). The Churchill mostly relies on grenades to threaten infantry. Its gun is Cromwell-like (which is to say it's decent but not THAT good), and its Vet1 ability gets worse as enemy infantry attains Rec Accuracy Veterancy.

320 armor with 1280 hp.

The proposed change (320 armor 1280 hp) is actually a pretty significant buff from the most part. I'm assuming that if relic increased the price of the Churchill recently, it means that it should be performing around where it currently is.

320 armor and 1280 would change Churchill's survivability as follows:
- 20% more hits from enemies with penetration 240 or below
- No change vs enemies with penetration 292
- Survivability decreases by 8.5% vs enemies with penetration 320 and above
- Everything else in-between should be linear (I think -- hadn't had coffee, yet)
- Qualitatively, Churchill's survivability will become more RNG-dependent

However, the thing with the Churchill is that it's one of the slowest damage-sponge tanks. Which means it can be flanked quite easily, and also make it a prime-target for high-penetration heavy TD's. This means that taking a high-armor lower-HP approach with the Churchill might make it a bit less desirable than it currently is (unless the HP * armor factor is a significant straight buff -- as is the one you proposed).

and remove the speed penalty on the smoke ability.

This is not a bad idea. The penalty could stay, but it could get reduced. Or the duration of the smoke ability could be decreased (currently it's at 10 seconds and it's not possible to cancel it). However, the smoke ability should not be buffed to a point where it becomes vein-popping to finish off a Churchill.

The Churchill gets outshined by the Comet by a lot when it comes to utility (long-range smoke + WP shells). Churchill is supposed to provide that utility with the grenades and the Smoke ability. However, the Smoke ability doesn't really work, currently:
- Part of the reason why the smoke ability doesn't work is the speed debuff.
- The most important reason why the smoke ability doesn't work is the way AoE suppression works (that's a bug).

If you use smoke to cover an infantry advance, enemy MGs will immediately target the Churchill. Since the Churchill does not benefit from cover/has an enormous target size, it will accumulate a huge amount of suppression. The same amount of suppression will transfer to all nearby infantry and pin them in 2-3 bursts, even when they are behind green cover.

At least with the awarded-veterancy buff, the Churchill can be used a bit more aggressively to smoke out entrenched positions.

+1.

The reduced vet solution isn't a bad idea but it would mean creating specialized game rules for one specific unit that aren't in any way clear to the average player. I'd much rather see the churchill just brought in line with the survivability of every other heavy tank.

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.

+1 But I wouldn't mind getting greedy and asking for a slight cost decrease too

The cost is not that bad. I'm not going to create a balance threat if the cost level is within 10-20%-ish percent of where it should be