COH2 compared to older RTS (ie. Starcraft)

I saw a video on Youtube today about new RTS coming out in 2017. Most of the comments complained about how new RTS games are dumbed down with changes to aspects of RTS such as base-building.
This made me wonder, since COH2 does differ from the classics quite a lot, at least that's what I've heard. The only "old" RTS game I've played is WC3 and only briefly.

I would like to know how veterans of RTS (if there are any here) feel and think about how COH2 differs from older RTS and how exactly it is different from classics suck as Starcraft and Command & Conquer.

Well, to be honest, everything is getting dumbed down nowadays. The reason being is that everyone, including game studios, wants to make more money by catering to the widest possible customer base. Unfortunately (or fortunately), people of this day and age have seen/played a lot of different games that the "wow factor" bar rose so high. This especially hit strategy games because of the genre's reliance of similar macro + micro mechanics. You can't excite a hardcore strategy game fanboy with spectacular graphics, crazy good audio, nor a creative narrative or a theme. However, introducing innovative concepts in strategy games is something that can move the genre forward. And along came COH franchise.

The first thing that drew me personally to COH was the strategical mechanic of directional cover. It absolutely matters how you position your units on the field. This to me is the most realistic scenario of the game. No other strategy game even attempted to create anything similar. Sure, you might have a concept of garrison that gives you different bonuses but in most other strategy games that mechanic is a second class citizen. Furthermore, cover system opens new avenues to create the game more dynamic. Due to destructive nature of maps, you can manipulate newly created/destroyed cover to your advantage.

Another big selling point to me was how COH interacted with RNG. I mean, god forbid, a unit in your army doesn't hit its target 100% of the time. If you stick around these lands, you are going to read a lot of bitching about RNG and how a certain moment made somebody lose the game or perform badly. But the fact of the matter remains, had it not been for RNG, none of us would have been so hooked to this game. No matter if you attempt to play the game exactly the same from strategical perspective for 1000 times in a row, it will always feel different. It is similar to poker. You can deal the best cards to a bed player and the worst cards to a good player but in great majority of cases, the good player will win because of better risk management skills.

Finally, the whole historical aspect of COH made me a long term fanboy of the franchise. You will find that most everyone here enjoys WW2 topics in general. Put two and two together and you got yourself a hardcore fanbase. Stuff like squads, veterancy, realistic WW2 weapons, retreats, strategic points, realistic strategical characteristics of all factions is something every WW2 fanatic can appreciate. Alternatively, strategy games that you mentioned are fictional and include a lot of, but not limited to, floating wizards shooting lasers out of their asses, swarms of all sorts of bugs/creatures shooting black jiz out of their mouths, harvesting glowing dildo looking resources from the ground, etc. Needless to say, I am not a big fan of fictional strategy games. #MVGame

Welcome to coh2.org.

The biggest difference between "classical" RTS games (aoe sc wc ron ...) and COH is that in COH you are fighting and enjoying the game from minute 0 while in the other games you first have to do some artificial moves before you can start fighting (building up the city, microing peasants and so on). These artificial moves are almost always the same and this makes first ~10 minutes of classical RTS game really boring because all you do there is repelling 1 rush and building your simcity. And often winner is not the player who can create and micro better army but the guy who can build better economy within those 10 minutes of artificial moves.

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To be hinest, aoe2 has both cover system and RNG. It's in much smaller scale, yet it is there.

Elevations (all around like craters) add +25% attack/defence bonus for the defender and cliffs (directional) add +25% attack bonus to the one who is standing on top of them.

Yes it is in much smaller case but you can see its already there.

Also archers in aoe2 have registered accuracy - they hit from 50-100% times depending on unit. For example hand cannoneer is RNG cannon - high damage low accuracy and arbalest is accurate with lower damage. Of course accuracy increases when you get closer, so these 2 units can beat each other depending on range and Elevations play

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Cover concept was already introduced with Dawn of War in 2004 which was a really pleasant RTS game, hardly balanced with its thousand add-ons but really funny to play.

Sacrifice introduced in 2000 some Victory concept to a certain extend in multiplayer, as in Coh annihilation wasn't the most popular or interesting mode to play. In solo campaign you had a pre-determined number of troops and no buildings to reinforce.

Sudden Strike 1 in 2001 developed the non building RTS concept to its full extend. You had your predetermined army with timed, pre-determined and limited reinforcement. The only way to get new reinforcement was to capture points (symbolized as zeppelins) linked together and you needed to hold each pair together during a certain time to activate for once and only once the reinforcement associated. It is like holding 2 VPs for 2 minutes (not necessarily consecutive) to get some off map reinforcement.

Total Annihilation in 1997 (so old...) changed totally the economical concept of RTS, here you had to managed economical flux to sustain your continuous army production.

COh1 just took the cover concept to a full extend and associated it to a non-annihilation premium mode. And upon that developed the concept of miss/deflect which is simply incredible for the immersion in a WW2 simulator.

There are plenty of RTS games released in the last few years that focus on the classic RTS mechanics of base building and economy. None of them have been particularly successful.

I don't think it is so much a matter of things being dumbed down is that consumers are tired of the classic mechanics and are looking for something else.

Think about the rise of counter strike over quake. Now with the popularity of battle royale games like PUBG. It is happening in the shooter genre, it is natural to happen in the strategy genre too. People want something new.

Don't really think something as simple as a cover mechanic makes COH great. Its the combination of squads (that can retreat > reinforce > gain vet), suppression, combat from minute 1, diverse meta, global upgrades, and a good commander system. COH2 has the first 3 same as VCOH, but flops hard on the others.