Profile of Esxile

What was your doctrine?

Here some tips you can always follow, they are viable in 99% of situation, they aren't going to make you lose by themselves if you follow them.

If you go T1 (lieutenant): always unlock zook and equip your RE squad. Or simply inlock it and wait to see if you see a 251 or other mechanized unit. Unlock BARs as well after. Zook will be your only AT capability for some time, better have it ready.
Zook + half-track together = beat T2 ostheer, half-track T2 OKW and is really good vs puma but you need some micro + luch T3 OKW here again with some micro.

If you take his fuel for a good amount of time early game = T1 + half-track. You must preserve it vs the pak but this will be your best early asset to hold the line (+ a .50). The m20 is more interesting if you didn't succeed to take his fuel, cheap in fuel and good for harassing.

If you go T2, always unlock BARs.

Going T1 + T2 as USF is really situational. I'll say only if you see an early Stug / Ostwind or Jagpz4. The rest of it is manageable via T1/zook + T3 + commanders assets.

Airborn to skip T1 is ok if you have a really good micro. You can't have more than 1 para in 1vs1, they are too expensive. Airborn is better to skip T3, in fact to drop an ATgun if required.

Actually with the new HMG42 meta, infantry doctrine with the mobile mortar is more than interesting. The commander would have work very well in you game. Early mortar + hmg.50 to cover it.

Doesn't Stuart have the same ability that allows this tank to stun then kill the vehicle by itself? And, like in Stug's case, a more powerful vehicle than itself: Puma. Is that OP?

Look, remove it from Stuart as well if you want.

1) Starting price is irrelevant in COH1 because each unit have their upkeep.
When the moment US can sustain 2 Engi, 4 Rifles, Wehr can have 2 Pios, 2 Volks, 1-2 MG, Sniper, and even more. Wehr units are having very low upkeep and they are constantly having surplus, if you play them right.

2) There were working heavy MG build in Wehr.

3) In COH1 it is IN FACT easier to defend flanks thanks to mines, MP40, bunkers, FTFL, etc.

But less map control. It has never been a problem to sustain 2xE, 4xR 1xRanger or 1xPara if you use them properly without bleeding hard. You had 3/4 of the map to compensate your upkeep and as reward real option to shutdown his own resource income and popcap (This is exactly why the system has been changed). The problem for the US has always be the transition into the motor pool/tank depot, BARS first or motor pool first. And of course, unless being newbie, you always build your SY as soon as possible, same if you went airborn and skip the motorpool.

Flanking was easier in Coh1 because you had more tools and Mgs were weaker.
1- HMG More expensive, only 3 guys and by the way less durable. And the arc of fire were shorter and pio didn't give you extra vision range
2- Volks weaker a mid range and you had to decide to upgrade them to make them short range or leave them as they were until building a bunker and starting gren zombie spam. they were cheap to reinforce but cost only 10mp less to build and didn't scale at all late game.
3- Engi beating pio 80% of the time, not like pio beating RE 120% of the time.
4- Engi having flammer. In fact many flank was performed by your Engies + rifles
5- Werhm mine were strong but not denying a super large area like in COH2
5- M8 was 10x stronger than the actual M20
6- BARs upgrade was global and volks didn't scale at all. So as Axis you were force into teching to get grenadiers, you hadn't access to LMG in your basic units. LMG was far more expensive because the ammo income reduce, in many years playing Coh1, I have never see anybody able to build LMG on any of his grenadiers in 1vs1, unlike in coh2.
7- Atgun more effective
8- halftrack could reinforce in the frontline and wasn't that pain to micro like the ambulance is.

HMG42 is an issue vs USF because it let the Ostheer completely dictate the game path without giving USF a hard counter coming in time.
It is like playing paper/rock/scissor and Ostheer player can always select the 3 options but USF only 2.

If an Ostheer player wants to BO an heavy MG opening, USF player should be able to get a quick counter.

I face a guy yesterday who build 3 MGs in a 1vs1, all in a narrow area covering eahc other, I had to flank him from all sides of the map, with the right timing positioning each of my squad in cover, from 3 different "screens" position, at the same time being aware that he could use couple of riflegrenade to dislock some of my squad from behind his HMGs.
I had to use smoke from different position to push, coordinate it in the different screens with hotkeys etc... Of course he had a pak behing so no light armor push.

Him, he has everything in the same screen vision, HMGs, grens, pak, pio.

I finally manage to cut him and he still found a way to insult me before surrender.

So yes, that was entertaining, stressful and the victory really grateful. But still, I made the game, I use 3 times more micro and decision making that him. And he could, at any moment reverse the battle simply because I didn't have the right tools to counter his HMGs, because USF doesn't have those tools.

Flanking is part of USF gameplay, yes it is. But it doesn't mean that you could only be doing that with no support tools from behind.


On the other side, I don't see a lot of Ostheer flanking anything, they are blobbing with an HMG in the middle, when the contact is made, deploy the HMG and place gren in cover and wait for the suppression. Repeat it a 2nd time adding a mortar, repeat it a 3rd time with LMGs, pak etc...