Profile of NorthWestFresh

Jump back to quoted post21 Aug 2013, 13:17 PMraw

Had some games with both Germans and Russkies, trying out all the units. Here is how I see it now.

Germans
- Grens: Continue to be swiss army knive of Ostheer
- MG42: Does its job
- Mortar: These are getting build, mostly useless because of mortar halftrack (but OK if you want to preserve some fuel I guess). I don't build them.
- Sniper: Useless
- Officer: Never see these and I certainly don't build them

- Scout Car: Owns russian Scoutcars.
- FLHT: Must
- Pak: Useless
- Pgrens: Can kill other infantry in splitseconds
- Mortar Halftrack: Has napalm. What else you want???


- Stug: Not really useless, but there is no metagame for these things (yet?). Has to competes with other german T3 units.
- Ostwind: Good against infantry but that's about it.
- PzIV: Still the first tank of Ostheer
- Command: I build these things when I get the doctrine.

- T4: Who builds these?

Soviets:
- Conscripts: Conscripts
- Sniper: Must
- Scout Car: Must
- Penals: Useless
- Guards: Must
- Shock: Useless

- Maxim: Useless
- Zis-26: Very good AT/AI weapon that noone ever builds
- Mortar: Useless
- PM-120mm mortar: These are the things I build and that I see getting build.

- HT: Useless except in those 4v4 where germans are spamming strafe
- T-70: Useless
- T-34: Viable first tank, still has to compete with T4->Su-85 techpath. I overall like going T3 first now as it gives much needed flexibility vs. german infantry hordes.

- Katyushka: Noone builds these
- SU-76: Useless
- SU-85: It's the motherfucking SU-85.

There are still some units that are way out of line. Particularly german T4, and soviet T2 continue to be never seen. That's mostly because none of these buildings offer something that can't be done more efficiently with the respective T3. Soviet HT and the SU-76 have zero roles they could fill and are a waste time and money. The HT is mispositioned in T3, it will always come too late to be useful. T1 OR T2 as techpath for soviets doesn't really work, because you really need the units from both buildings. Building both T1 and T2 in early game is certain death due to the high costs of soviet buildings, so skipping one is mandatory. I realize that the idea behind the soviet army is to be less flexible, more standardized equipment, but I'd say at this point soviet is shoe-horned into a singular opening.

Soviet early-mid is still fucked and forces you into scout car micro with flamers and Snipers. While clowncaring germans is fun, once they drive your scout cars of the field you have almost zero force projection. That's compounded by the fact that T3 is still far away at that point in time and T2 doesn't really do anything to solve that problem. Doctrinals also offer you nothing of value at that point. While that may be a concious design decision due to the decision-based teching soviets do, even playing conservatively will make you fall behind. Basically, if you don't fuk a couple of german squads with clown cars in the early game, it's GG.

Please keep in mind that I am writing this from my perspective and have only my own experience to draw from. I am certainly not the best player of this game and it is very possible that the metagame is radically different in the higher echelons of skill (though from what I am reading I doubt it), but these are the issues as I see them.