Profile of GiaA

It's not variety, choosing between Panzergrenadiers or Jeager Light Infantry is variety because they are different tools for different purposes. More equal tools with the same purpose doesn't equal more choice unless you factor in a careless player that isn't interested in picking the best of the two tools

that is assuming that they have the exact same role, there can be nuanced differences between stock units that make one or the other the right choice depending on the situation or playstyle. You also have to account for tech accessability.

Some (purely exemplary) theorycrafting to make this clear: If you skip T3 to go T4 you get punished for that by not having a close range elite infantry early on but get rewarded with an even stronger elite close range infantry once you get T4. What's wrong with that? That's interesting faction design. In CoH2 there is one unit of each kind in the entire tech with zero overlap. Because of this there are very few ways to play CoH2 EVEN IN THEORY and ofc this number is reduced even further in practice.

The players are incentivized to choose the most effective options, this is true in coh2 (think of consripts vs penals) and will be true even in coh3, which is why non doctrinal elite 5 men g43 squad and 4 men mg squad will not necessarily create variety but just overlapping units being switched around according to the meta

So your argument is don't have 2 stock units that overlap because one will become meta? And if we only have 1 unit that will be better because that one unit isn't just meta it's literally the only option? Makes no sense.

Edit: Oh and penals are fine btw. They have their role.

"Noob friendly" is genuinely something you can ascribe to a multiplayer game. I'd say that a game with a low skill ceiling is pretty "noob friendly". The skill floor is somewhat less important, actually.

If the game can be played optimally with little effort then terrible players and good players are basically indistinguishable, which is definitely what i'd call "noob friendly".


Arent the descriptions you're giving of capping CoH1 and 2 the reverse of what you're stating? Surely your unit having to put itself at extreme risk to capture a point (by entering an animation/becoming vulnerable/unable to retaliate to attack) makes clearing an area vital before capping can occur?

1. I originally had a paragraph about skill ceiling in the post but deleted it because it felt off topic and you're right ofc in that it is the one way in which a multiplayer game can be noob friendly. Throwing dice is as noob friendly as it gets because there is neither skill floor nor skill ceiling. But this is irrelevant here because no one has come even remotely close to reaching the skill ceiling in any CoH game. And even if you assume that someone will eventually reach it you have absolutely 0 evidence that CoH1 has a higher skill ceiling because we have no idea how either game would play at such a level.

2. No. In CoH2 you can't cap as long as the opponent is present. In CoH1 you can cap while all the fighting going on.

Great post. These distinctions are super important. It must be clear what category a map belongs to when it's designed. I hope relic is aware of this. I also agree that a couple of "fun maps" are tolerable in automatch as long as they don't exceed vetoes.

You're equating frontline usefulness with being a mandatory tech progression(since vanila factions can't tech without them) and that is not very valid comparison.

Sturms carry early game well and are REALLY good at repairing, you don't need to have more then 1 for unit to be useful and you feel how useful and important the unit is when you lose it.

I do agree REs do not have as much importance, but they still make an excellent bazooka platform and that Pershing obviously isn't going to repair itself, mine sweeping is invaluable regardless of game mode.

1. My other post is where I make my main point but I'll try to explain it again.

2. I'm not making a balance argument. I'm not saying that they are good or bad. Sturms are the most essential unit in the game pretty much. But you should rarely have more than 1. So the point is that Sturms and REs don't play any role in build orders because there's no reason to have less or more than 1 which reduces macromanagement complexity. They are pretty much never a build option unless you lose them in which case you HAVE to rebuild them (which isn't great either).

3. What Hannibal is saying is wrong. It's a very significant decision whether to reatreat your pio early or wait for it to retreat "naturally". If you rush a 222 a lot of the time you will have to retreat your full health pio after about 4 mins. If the Soviet wants to rush a T70 he will have to sacrifice either sweeping capability (which is significant considering T70 could run into tellers) or a big part of his combat strength (flamer) for a while. THOSE are interesting trade offs. They are just examples of the general principle I'd like to see applied in CoH3.

4. You could follow that principle for every faction in CoH3 but it's not necessarily unbalanced if you don't. It's not inherently problematic if one faction has a certain mechanic that is (dis-)advantageous. The whole "unfair" argument only applies to the accecss to basic tools like anti building/indirect fire etc.

Edit: I think you should reread Hannibals quote. You agreed with him but he seemed to be saying somethign entirely different from you. His point was that it's not really a meaningful decision anyway when to reatreat your pio for building base.