Profile of Antemurale

Let's keep the salt out of the State Office. It's one of the rare places where discussion is (largely) civil.

This war is over. We have far superior weapons, soldiers, and most important of all, me.

Hey there,

Before I begin this review, please keep in mind that I am mainly a 1v1 player who occasionally plays 2v2s.

Strategy

1. Coordinate with your teammate on how you guys will be working together. I am quite sure that you two are an arranged team, so before the game begins/ as it begins you should coordinate. For example, you could focus on mid while he focuses on left. Try not to go left/right (and leave mid open). This is because your units are too far apart and cannot assist your teammate's units very effectively. For example, if your teammate is holding back a swarm of infantry with an HMG on left, you could move two or three infantry units from mid to left in assistance (flanking maneuver).

2. Win engagements first, care about territory later. Don't try to forcibly stop your enemy from capping a point if that means you will lose the engagement. This is because you will lose more territory (map control) in the long term, because your units spend more time back at base rather than capping or defending your territory.

3. CoH2 is all about manpower. While you do need fuel for teching/vehicles and munitions for abilities/weapons, try to play for the long run and minimize your Manpower losses starting from min 0; the manpower you saved could mean a fuel/munitions cache or enough manpower to get an extra tank destroyer. Try to lose the least amount of manpower (e.g. units or infantry models), or at least lose less manpower than your opponent does. Use better cover (e.g. glue your infantry to green cover). Save your units; as a rule of thumb, retreat your units when the hit half health.

4. Time is a resource. The VPs (3VPs every 3 seconds if your opponent has all three of them; 1VP every 3 secodns if you have one and your opponent has two) dictate how long the game will last. The fastest time for a VP game is 17 minutes (if your opponent holds 3 VPs from min 1). Thus, every second that a unit spends inactive at base (including the time when they are reinforcing and healing) or every second resources pile up without purpose is a second that is lost.

Tactics

I actually don't know which of you is which, so I'll do my best to cover both players.

00:00 I'm not sure if your internet is bad, but not building anything until 30 sec into the game is really harmful for your early map control. Both of you suffered for it. This is also why "resource floating" is very bad; you have fewer units on the field which could be fighting or capping.

02:20
(RIGHT) Riflemen encountered a Sturmpioneer building a mine. Stop the squad and shoot at the Sturmpioneer while it suffers the penalty for construction. You might have dropped one or two models before your opponent reacted, but you kept moving your Riflemen towards the munitions point. By doing this, you put yourself into the fire of both a Sturmpioneer and a Kubel, thus you lost the engagement (and the Riflemen in the process).

(MID) Tommy squad with super early grenades tried to nade a Sturmpioneer as it closed in. You were sitting behind green cover; don't let 25% of your DPS go to waste. You could have dropped one or two models as they approached (and then instantly hit the retreat button to minimize your own Manpower losses).

02:40 (LEFT) You shouldn't park your MG on a VP. VPs are a ticking timer that tells you how long your game will last; the quickest VP drain will happen in 17 min. Thus, covering VPs is not very important in the early game. Winning engagements and protecting your resource-producing points is more important. At the very least, gave it cover your fuel point (or your cuttoff). Better yet, use it actively to support your infantry when they push into enemy territory. Move it around. There were two free points (munitions and regular) that were up for grabs. 20 seconds later your opponent hit your cutoff and you guys were starved of resources.

05:00 Why get a Mortar squad? Mortars are powerful against team weapons (e.g. HMGs) and static targets (e.g. bunkers), but not against roaming packs of infantry and Kubelwagens. Your resources would have been better spent in a third Riflemen squad capable of fighting off Volks, Kubels, and Sturms.

The late UC is also questionable. UCs are strong in the early game because they can allow you to bleed infantry (have your opponent lose manpower) without you losing manpower (because all you need are repairs). Typically the UC is built early on to fight OKW because they have no Panzerfausts, but by now the first OKW tech structure has gone up and the advantage the UC has is gone. This makes keeping the UC alive much more difficult. Your opponent just chain-faust your UC the moment your drove it up to the Volksgrenadiers.

After you built your units (starting from the LT to the M2B to the Stuart), they all sat inactive at your base for quite some time before they were used. Remember to check your upper right UI; any squads with a clock on it is "idle".

Both of you at this point have teched for grenades. Usually I find grenades easily dodged in the early game (because fatigue hasn't set in). Thus, investing your resources into weapons upgrades would be a stronger choice. Also, don't throw grenades just to get kills; throw them to win engagements. If you will not win the fight, don't throw a grenade. You lost your Riflemen trying and your IS trying to throw grenades in a lost fight.

07:00 Do not get a cache (much less two of them) unless you are ahead in the manpower race. At this point in the game, you needed more units to outfight your opponent (having already lost most of the map and lost a Riflemen squad). A M2HB or two would have been a strong choice, as would teching for Captain and getting an M1 ATG (as your opponent already fielded a Luchs).

Your opponent also already went for a Luchs light tank, thus the M20 is a very poor choice (as it is utterly defenseless against the Luchs). Also, when using the M20, do not drive it directly at enemy units (it got chain-fausted and died); instead you should take advantage of the M20's superior range to kite enemy units. Always have the M20 shoot at maximum range.

Royal Engineers are a very poor combat unit. While you might have figured that they perform well at close range and have a HEAT grenade to deal with vehicles, they get stomped by Volksgrenadiers aith either the StG44 or the MP40 upgrade. Everything on the field (except for the Luchs) could have been defeated by 5-man Infantry Sections. Glue them to green cover and watch your enemy's casualties mount as he tries to fight them off. Kubels are very ineffective against infantry in green cover too; a 4-man IS can outfight a Kubel provided that the IS sticks to green cover.

12:00 At this point your were floating over 800 manpower. 800 manpower is three Riflemen squads that could have been fighting, capping, and the like. You did spend it all in one go at around 13 min; try to be constantly spending your resources unless you are specifically saving up for something.

13:00 Set you ATGs (6-prd) to "Prioritize Vehicles". Don't have it waste shots on infantry (because the possibility of having them connect is ridiculously low; they also don't do much damage if they do. It is much better to have it stay alert, ready to shoot at an enemy vehicle the moment it enters into the ATG's cone of fire.

16:00 At this point, your priorities should have been the VPs (you were down under 100). Your Paratrooper squad should have been dropped on the right VP to cap it (and try to hold it). You are already so far behind in terms of fuel that nabbing the fuel point wouldn't have mattered; at this point it would have been about investing Manpower into ATGs to offset your opponent's vehicle advantage (a 17 min KT no less). Of course, your opponent also had an infantry advantage, but it was quite minor. Combined, your opponents fielded 6 squads of infantry, which can be easily defeated with the amount of units you both produced. The issue was that you didn't keep them alive.

Main Point

Keep your units alive! That will solve half of the problems you faced in this match. Don't play to win the match; play to improve. Set a goal (e.g. I will never lose a unit in this match) and set out to achieve it. When you accomplish this goal, you will naturally begin winning your matches.

Good luck on the battlefield!

Dunno, if anyone knows how to make in-depth mods and would like to make a mod that has these things, it could be really cool to test.

Something along the lines of an "unofficial Brit revamp" mod.

In the future, don't necro the thread, just make a new one asking the same question.

Thanks.