1v1 help OKW vs Sov

Need some tips on how to improve.

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  VS

  Shadow Link

  Crypticz

  1v1 help OKW vs Sov

  by: ShadowLinkX37 map: Lost Glider

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It will be a pleasure for me to work on this one

EDIT: I don´t feel good at all, probably I´ve catched a cold. In short I do not have the energy needed to write a review right now.

I plan to write some notes once I feel better so you´ll get my review eventually. In the meantime someone else can do it (if he wants ofc).

Cheers
Hector

In case i have the time and motivation, i'll have a look even though i don't know this map that good ^^

In case i have the time and motivation, i'll have a look even though i don't know this map that good ^^

But I can't use IS2 as OKW :thinking: what can I learn from IS2 overlord Kappa

But I can't use IS2 as OKW :thinking: what can I learn from IS2 overlord Kappa

But I can't use IS2 as OKW :thinking: what can I learn from IS2 overlord Kappa

Make sure to pm me a reminder to review this. Im not at my computer right now, unfortunately. Sorry for responding so late.

Make sure to pm me a reminder to review this. Im not at my computer right now, unfortunately. Sorry for responding so late.

Review this

Review this

"PM"

Keep in mind my playstyle and advice is heavily biased towards map control, aggression, vehicle usage, and the scavenge doctrine. The following is just a collection of notes and loose thoughts:

The first minute in (~1:00), wiring the church was a waste of time. I say this for a few reasons. First, you're against a soviet player, and you can usually assume soviet players will go t1. Your first primary advantage as an okw player going against a soviet player (presumably going t1) is that t1 is a slow build. This means you want to be using your sturmpios aggressively since the enemy will have little field presence (though on lost glider specifically i use them to cap a fuel then take a cutoff house, still pretty aggressive i guess). You want to be taking advantage of your major strength at this point (sturmpios) and his major weakness (no field presence) and not doing so is a massive mistake. Another reason why I call it a waste of time is because having sturmpioneers do "engineer" stuff (especially in the early game) has a huge opportunity cost. If you placed wire with, say, a rear echelon squad (who, by the way, lay wire down faster than sturmpioneers do), then you wouldnt be missing out on much since REs have little combat value anyway. But when you're using your strongest unit to do something any other factions engineer units (their weakest units) could do, youre not fully taking advantage of your factions strengths. Another reason why I say it was a waste of time is because that church actually has little value. Ask yourself, why would the enemy even want to take the church? It only covers a victory point (close to no value in the early game), and even then, the victory point can still be capped under green cover from max range; essentially, it doesn't even prevent people from capturing the victory point. Furthermore, that building can still be easily assaulted because it has two faces with only a single window to shoot out of. The building has little strategic value and is easy to retake. Finally, soviet players that go t1 generally dont care too much about garrisons. Denying garrisons is pretty important against maxims, sure. But penals do best in close range, meaning they want to be pretty aggressive once theyre actually out on the field, not sitting in a garrison. Furthermore, one of the largest strengths of penals is that they have a large squad size, meaning garrisons lower their dps more than they do for other squads (a penal squad shooting out of a house with 3 windows is only taking advantage of 1/2 its dps, while a gren squad in the same situation is still making use of 3/4 of its dps). Also, since theres a decent chance a soviet player going t1 will get an m3, garrisons hold even less value for them. Even if it were the right call to wire off the church, you took far too long to do it so this is something you need to work on.

Your capping order is far too conservative and slow. 2:00 into the game and the soviet player has MORE capture points than you. He had to tie up his engineers building t1 and he still outcapped you in the opening stages. Against soviet t1 you can and should be more greedy with your capping. Id say the root of the issue in this case was (besides the wiring of the church itself) that youre overvaluing the mid area of the map for some reason. Honestly, you dont have to care about the middle unless he goes through it to assault your cutoff, which it was still too early in the game for anyway.

2:15 into the game, you move back your pioneers when the m3 comes, which you shouldnt. Pioneers can shred an unsupported m3 (it was unsupported in this situation) and there was light cover readily available. Not only would you put his m3 out of action for now AND be able to cap the munitions point, you would gain a ton of vet for your sturmpioneers and force him to retreat an engineer squad to repair it. In doing so, you would tie up 2 squads/units (360 manpower and 15 fuel) of his 3 squad (660 manpower and 15 fuel) army for perhaps the next 30 seconds, and would give yourself a large tempo/capping/combat advantage. Again, you want to take an engagement where you have sturmpioneers in light cover against an m3, especially if your sturmpioneers get to cap throughout the whole thing.

2:30 you focus the wrong target with your sturmpioneers and take WAY too long to retreat them. The m3 is closer (closer = you do more damage to them), is putting out more dps against you, and would get forced away much sooner. On the hand, the penals are putting out minimal dps (only 1 man firing at your sturmpios, thats laughable damage) are in garrison cover (you do ~25% of your damage), and are further away (further = much less dps). Seriously, there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to have your sturmpios focus the penals in the church over the m3. Once the damge was done to you and you lost your first sturmpioneer model, you needed to retreat immediately. Maybe this was all just a micro error, but there was nothing else for you to be microing. You need to subconsciously keep track of which unit deserves your attention the most. This involves keeping track of how low each of your units are, what cover theyre in, and whether or not theyre in combat. Once you have that in mind, you need to consider how long it'll take you to issue whatever orders are necessary so that you can tell how risky it is to spend all your time microing this unit (having a squad place sandbags takes more time to micro and incurs a larger risk of having you lose track of other units than simply moving another unit does). All of that said, I guess it would just come down to learning to micro better (if that was the issue here).

Just a few seconds later (~2:40) you walk your volksgrenadiers up to engage the penals in the garrison, then get them forced off within 5 seconds. This was a losing engagement from the start. You knew the m3 was there and you knew the penals were there, so you end up bleeding yourself manpower and losing out on the territory/positioning you could have gained if you just avoided the losing engagement. Having seen that hes forced off so many of your units, he sees its clear to take your cutoff, denying you ~14 fuel a minute. Taking that engagement lost you 25 manpower, 14 fuel a minute, and control of your own cutoff. Against top level players, you basically shut yourself out of the game. You REALLY need to be thinking about the engagements you take before you commit to them.

(~3:00? came out at 3:20ish, not sure when you started building it) The raketen was a mistake imo. If you sink 270 manpower into just the possibility that you take out his m3, then youre going to lose the infantry engagements hard with how dominant penals are. Even if you do destroy the m3, your raketen wont be doing much besides capping after that. In my view, getting a raketen is at absolute best breaking even and at worst being down a volks squad.

At 4:00, you blobbing 2 volks gren squads up to the penal squad in green cover was a losing engagement (luckily, he wasnt paying attention so you werent punished). Anyway, instead of blobbing up to the squad and taking the close range fight, just sit both of your volks in heavy cover.

At 4:30, you sit your sturmpioneers at max range in green cover and have them fire on the engineers in the garrison, which is a mistake. One option was to have the pioneers charge the garrison and go to its south face (the engis have low damage and probably wouldnt have even dropped one model off of your sturmpios) at which point you get to fire pointblank against a no window garrison with 3 of your sturmpio models. This would give you control of the garrison and could allow you to later focus on forcing back the penals. Another option was to have your sturmpios directly charge around the wall and engage the penals. The wall would have acted like a shot blocker, so your sturms could have pounced on them and sprayed them down at point blank while only taking fire from the engineers in the garrison, which wouldnt have inflicted much damage on you. This then allows you to force off his penals, keep your volks on the field, cap the center vp, and assault the garrison with two squads (though it appears you force off his penals anyway and that he vacated the building to repair the m3...).

At 5:30, you place down a mine which is a waste of both munitions and time. You have no map control, so at this point, your first priority should be to recapture territory since you destroyed the m3 and forced his units back. Capping a point was WAY more important at this state of the game. Furthermore, since you dont have map control, you should predict that youll be fighting against a lot of garrisons. Given this prediction of what future engagements will be like, a single incendiary nade will probably do much more for you than a single mine. I say this especially because its only 5:40 into the game and a t70 is probably 3-4 minutes off. This means that a penal or engineer squad will probably detonate the mine and not a vehicle, especially since you dont have control over that area and cant control what units pass through there (super defensive mines are useful because only vehicles can dive far enough to detonate them; when you dont have map control, its a complete toss up). Finally, when playing okw against sov t1, its important to make sure that your volks can trade well against their penals. Unlike against brits where stgs dont make a difference against stuff like snipers and hmgs, okw vs sov t1 is all raw infantry engagements and getting stgs as soon as possible ensures you minimize your bleed, maximize his bleed, minimize his vet, and maximise your vet.

At 6:30, you have two volks squads sitting in green cover near the right fuel doing absolutely nothing. Against top ~30 players, you would have lost the mid engagement hard and the enemy would have taken control of your cutoff. Sending two volks squads to the left side was overkill and was a poor assignment of units when you had the possibility that you could lose your cutoff. And yeah, try not to have your units do nothing (unless theyre holding an enemy cutoff, not much further you can go than that, really).

At 7:00, you again have a volks squad between the left vp and your fuel just sitting there doing nothing. You could go for a strategic point with it, or sit it in the green cover thats on the left vp, they'd be able to take the victory point and even probably win the engagement against the engineers in the building. You ended up having them idle for far too long before you finally got back to managing them, and even once you did, you quickly forgot about them again.

8:30ish, you had enough fuel and manpower for a luchs but you didnt get it. If you're going mechanized (ESPECIALLY against lend lease), you need to start getting your luchs the literal second it is available, even if its late. It is the vehicle that is supposed to single handedly win you the game against lend lease.

At 13:00-14:00, if you didnt place down that mine earlier (which, at that point, never even triggered) you would have had enough munis to faust and finish off the t70. Im sorry, but its a little bit of a "told you so" moment.

Don't have a time stamp for it, but draining your opponents munitions by intentionally taking a snare with your luchs is fine (and really good, in fact), but its just far too risky once your opponent has their t70/stuart/aec out. Also, since soviets hardly use munitions, its not as beneficial as it is against, say usf. My point is: baiting snares is too risky after a certain time/point in the game and usually not as worth it against soviets.

All said, you probably lost the game around ~6:00, you were in a really bad position by then. Everything kind of just snowballed afterwards. For a lot of the game, you had a massive supply advantage (larger army), but because you kept units idle, misplayed engagements, and didnt put enough focus on territory you were never really ahead overall.

My analysis and focus started to taper off at the end, but what I typed is probably excessive enough anyway...sorry...


Also note that there are good things you did in the replay that I didn't bother to comment on (you dont need me to reinforce the fact that certain things that you intentionally did were good as you already know that; also, you asked for tips so thats outside the scope of what you asked for)

More general advice:

Playing against soviet t1 into lend lease is always about keeping up the tempo and staying aggressive. With dshks coming out at 2cps and m4cs coming out at 10, its basically a race against time in which you try to establish a large enough lead to squeeze out a victory once the callins come out.

Dont place mines just because "mines win games." Place them because the state of the game and your enemies likely future moves call for it.

Sturmpioneers need to be used aggressively. Especially in the early game. ESPECIALLY in the early game against soviet t1.

Games like that just make me upset. I had double the army size at one point and still couldn't win an engagement, or his units would get away on slivers of health after I took a wipe.

Ty for tips

Games like that just make me upset. I had double the army size at one point and still couldn't win an engagement, or his units would get away on slivers of health after I took a wipe.

Ty for tips

Tbh, i don't recall seeing a lot of close retreats in that game. And yeah, part of that is penals being more pop cap efficient than volks, the other part is you misplaying engagements. It's tilting going against lend lease a lot of times, but its important to always blame your own play for losses (yes, even in the rare times when that may not necessarily be the actual reason for the loss)