Profile of porkloin

The point is that you are now leading in the current manpower war and you want to pressure as much as you can.

This all sounds great except for the one arbitrary mechanic that kicks in around 30 minutes that prevents you from applying more pressure like what happens for around 99% of gameplay.

That cool decision making about whether to replace a lost squad and risk getting wrecked by vehicles or build an AT gun and risk getting wrecked infantry? The basic mechanics for 99% of gameplay? Suddenly they disappear from minute 30-40 vs a pop-capped opponent.

I'm not sure if you're used to playing closely matched games. A player can still be winning without fully wiping his opponents units. Unfortunately in very closely matched games the player with the better pop-cap density is arbitrarily rewarded.

Consider a game where one player makes decisions 2% better than his opponent per minute of game. Ideally the game would be won around the 50 minutes mark by the player 2% better, but around 30 minutes into the game a player with a better pop-density composition can suddenly be rewarded with a 10% advantage against his opponent.

The first player in this scenario is arbitrarily punished for not being overwhelmingly better than his opponent despite being marginally better than his opponent.

Whole game will break without popcap. Too much to list, here are some:

* spam only 1 unit like snipers or Panthers
-You can do this within the already existing game rules, yet no one is winning with a 10 sniper army

* undefeatably large armies
-Already exists within the current game rules. e.g. losing 3 squads before 10 minutes

* performance: high rendering costs and server side computation costs
* network: high bandwidth will result in lags, fast forward hitches, and delays
-4v4s have 3 times the number of 1v1 units yet no one is complaining about these issues. 4v4 is the only game mode that might struggle with an extra 10% units, but I sincerely doubt anyone already playing these will suddenly have issues.

* snowballing
* short matches as a result of snowballing.
-How exactly are you supposed to win games without any snowballing?

* infantry will become obsolete late game and will result in pure tank spamming since it will be a game of army strength instead of combi ef arms unit composition
-Pop-cap already encourages infantry to become obsolete late game in favor of tank spamming. 2 mortar teams are not better than a tank if you can afford the tank, but they have the same pop cap as a tank.

* large armies may be cooler but requires more micro management - might become more of a Starcraft like game displeasing to players who cannot control huge armies

I play COH because 90% of games are decided by upkeep costs instead of arbitrary pop-caps. I hate the 10% of games that are decided by pop-cap because they're too star-crafty.

something like okw would need a complete overhaul if you got rid of pop cap since they really have the best of most things and are limited by how many of those things they can have at a time.

IMO OKW would need some slight buffing at the the end of the day. I think their only redeeming quality is the pop value they can stuff into units. I'd much rather have 2x pios at the 10 minute mark, but at the 40 minute mark sturms are no question.

Cost/time opportunity and versatility. You have at most 100 popcap to play with and you need to decide which type of tools you want to have. You can spread thin and be versatile (MG + mortar/sniper + 2x pak + artillery + main line infantry + engineers + elites + tanks) or play basic/brute force (main line + engineers + tanks)

That's a great ideal and all, but anyone being honest knows that the armies aren't even close to being balanced around their 100 pop performance and it's a lie to pretend they are.

What exactly are we losing by extending the pop-caps again?

Lanchester's square laws takes into consideration both quantity and quality of opposing forces. So a numerically superior force can still lose to a force superior in quality. I think that's (usually) reflected quite well in CoH2.

Pop cap means you can't build a numerically superior force thus the game only rewards armies that can build higher quality units.

Axis will always beat a soviet player in the long game, not because they are better, but because they can build panthers at a better pop density than soviets can build t-34 76s. No skill is involved in this. Just arbitrary numbers.

... resorted to spamming inferior unit instead and got beat, fair and square.

There is no balance problem here.
Relic can't patch terrible player out of you.

So Kaitof finally admits that grens are UP.