Profile of Theodosios

5224

(A) It's not Star Craft. Pure math war-game would be boring as hell. Squad wipes are needed.

Im playing RTSes for ages. Not big-ones like StarCraft or WarCraft, cause they are boring with their predictability. Cossacks 1? Amazing, most of the time mirror design RTS game with unit like multibarrel cannon, regular cannon or howitzers able to kill 10-30 models per shot, apart from regular fight between soldiers.
Warlord Battlecry? Great RTS, 16 factions, still balanced with abilities to wipe entire army in a seconds.
Battle for middle-earth? Ents, nazguls' beasts smashing whole squads.

Wiping squads is part of the game, very good one. It's just Ostheer and USF suffer more from this than Soviets and OKW )which float MP so much that in place of wiped squad can put 2 squads). (A)

(B) As for wiping potential, OKW and Ostheer have better options.

Of course, there are units like ISU and KV2 but they are sluggish and they have reload over 10secs. There is doctrinal Bulldozer, which is worst that Brummbar. HE Sherman which is slighty better than Stug E but it also has bigger scatter and finally IS2 which has AoE only 0,5 bigger than Tigers while being very inaccurate.

On the other hand Axis have flaks, which are amazing and killing groups of infantry per burst. Brummbar, Tiger, Tiger Ace, King Tiger (which is wiping machine) or Sturmtiger.

Allies have only better mortar in terms of wiping potential. But if we look at vehicles, Axis are slighty in front. (B)

(A) Why do you try to project relations conerning squad wipes from totally different types of RTS onto CoH2? CoH2 is more tactical and about preserving squads and preventing to lose them to super units/abilities being granted the chance to react in order to safe them.

I can neither tell from my experience nor from replays that OKW/Soviets do necessarily float more MP than USF/Ostheer. It is dependent on many factors like winning engagements, map design and RNG. If you win engagements as USF in the greater time of the game without losing too many models and use heal you clearly float MP. If you lose many models as OKW or even squads due to bad play you will not float MP or you will be temporarily at disatvantage if you do not replace squads. There are campy situations in maps like Langreskaya where you do not fight much. Consequently, MP float on both sides can evolve. What I am trying to explain is that MP float is not necessarily dependent on faction to 100%.


(B) The Axis tanks with squad wipe potential you list are either doctrinal (Tiger and Tiger Ace) or come very late (King Tiger) or can be easily dogded/engaged by skilled players (Brummbär and Sturmtiger). Sturmtiger can maybe wipe some squads because it would come surprisingly as nobody would expect it due to not being a viable option but apart from that first surprising strike skilled players will prevent further damage coming from Sturmtiger. Sturmtiger as well as Brummbär bring you in the situation where you will not have enough fuel to produce or call in tanks which can handle late game vehicles from Soviets or numerous vehicles from USF.
Ostwind is quite powerful if used correctly but counter reaction come swiftly. Soviets whilst waiting for call ins could have problems to deal with it. But even then you are exposed to IS2/T34/85s without proper PaK40 management.

Why do you think Axis has more squad wipe potential than Allies? I disagree with you in both numbers and efficiency.
You completely forgot demo charges, Katyusha, Scotts and B4 (which can be easily countered by Luftwaffe though). Not to mention that squad wipes like these from Tigers can also happen whilst using T34/85s. Mortars and Katyushas can use precision strikes which cost munition but are efficient enough mostly resulting in instant squad wipes. ISU-152 takes time to reload but is still able to wipe squads regularly. KV8 can definitely wipe squads when you catch them without AT support covering them.

Furthermore I do not understand why you compare HE Sherman with doctrinal Stug E.
And doctrinal Bulldozer is not worse than Brummbär. Bulldozer comes earlier, at a lower cost and wipes infantry more reliably.

Guide is well written but I have one objection: How is double pzshreck "disputable" in performance? That's the best AT infantry squad in game... Pzgrens with upgrade also have great ambush and AT gun covering capabilities that cost you no munitions to work while few fausts are starting to be much more than 120 muni really quickly.

"Disputable" due to the fact that Panzerschrecks depend far heavier on RNG than other anti tank choices. They miss more often for example.

Concerning Fausts: You should only faust vehicles you can surely destroy afterwards otherwise your Faust was wasted except if you faust a vehicle that can chase you down (provided you have nothing else on the field which could stop it).


Thanks for your replies everybody!

This guide would never have been possible without help from awesome guys!

Special thanks to Sarantini (provided useful information to be added to the guide and summary of the build order picture), FichtenMoped and van Voort (edited and tweaked the guide appropriately and van Voort portalized it) and TM.Dutchy (created excellent highlight image ).

Furthermore, Strummingbird gave me a nice hint.