Profile of Joshua9

I open with snipers frequently, and as long as you are screening with a few early grens in case of m3's, I tend to get at least 20 kills a game, and I usually keep it alive until late innings, and that's in its bugged state, and is irrespective of how badly I beat or get beaten by my opponent

In my experience at my middling level, snipers are not so fragile. I've had 4 man cons get right up to their face because I screwed up, and I've still been able to retreat with my life. That has got to be frustrating when a con squad manages to get that close.

On the other hand, I've also had a single con shot from max range kill my sniper that I thought was completely safe, which is just as frustrating. Both must have to do with rng and critical chances. If possible, damage should be made more consistent as it is calculated for snipers.

On some level I appreciate the commander system for opening up the ways the game can be played,

When commanders are balanced, I don't think there is any issue of pay-to-win. there will never be a time(unless you are mirror matching) that your opponent brings a commander to the fight that you would have had if only you had had the money or weak-will to purchase it. Out the gate, you and your opponent are not operating with the same tools anyway. Also, there will never be a time that somebody brings more than 3 of those tool sets into a battle. Those choices come with opportunity costs. So long as things are balanced, this is not where the problem with dlc commanders lies.

It does disrupt the well crafted way in which commanders functioned in the first game though. In COH2 I'm not aware of ways to steer your opponent into "oh shit" commander options as there were in the first game. There's far less value in holding out to choose a commander after your opponent has made his choice, as there aren't(and shouldn't be) as clear rock-paper-scissors choices regarding commanders. Typically as Russian, you choose your commander after 1 CP. The commander trees are gone, removing some of the in-game decision-making.

Still, that can be considered a trade-off for all of the flexibility that new commanders and abilities can bring to the game.

But they also make the likelihood of future global upgrades less and les likely, either because such upgrade concepts are already incorporated or will be, into a commander, or because new global content is going to be harder and harder to balance with the wide range of commanders, so I agree with inverse, that while I think there are a lot of ways to approach a game of COH2, once you start it you are far more on rails than in the first game.

There are less ways to disrupt your narrative, because your opponent is also mostly on rails, so as long as you don't get crushed, you are going to deal with incoming threats the way your game-plan intends to, and besides, you've already locked yourself in to dealing with those threats a certain way, with your choice of doctrine, and your initial building tech.

Some global upgrades to mix up that linear narrative would be much appreciated, but probably complicated at this point.

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Things to praise about COH2

Plenty of openings for Ostheer(admittedly a few are doctrinal) More openings for Russia than America:

Russia is far more flexible than America was in this regard, at least in unit composition. America did have global upgrade options that could kick in early. Russia has a few of those too, they are just currently no-brainers at their low cost. You can spam 5 conscripts and get molotovs in the first few minutes, so the manpower cost on either baseline troops or the upgrade, should probably go up.

True Sight: Still think its an improvement for gameplay.

No global vet upgrades, which at least gave the Wehrmacht some fuel globals that are lacking in COH2, but at the cost of creating a late-game snowball affect...forcing a design of a weak early game for wehr and an invincible late game.

Fuel costs for Call-ins: This is both a much better idea and a problem though. Its hard to find the right medium between UP and OP. VCOH actually had the same problem anyway, so limited call-ins. COH2 could do that, but I think a better option would be to make an initial call-in buy the current price, but to ramp up the cost of subsequent buys, so that you don't have 6 t34-85s happening in a game. This way you have the benefit of skipping a building, but only an initial benefit. After the first tanks, you should decide whether you want to pay a premium or would rather start investing in infrastructure.

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other negatives about COH2:

I miss the base rush. That has been entirely eliminated from gameplay, partly because of the off-map unit arrivals, partly because of mg coverage. I was going to say that mg coverage should be scaled back and bases should have garrisonable buildings again, but I guess the nature of the unit arrival is really the big reason this tactic is no longer viable in COH2, so garrisonable bases probably wouldn't be a good idea. Base rushes were an exciting way to put pressure on your enemy. It would be great if Relic could figure out a smart way to reward a player for base-rushing in some fashion, without breaking the game. This is probably crazy, but maybe players should have resource caches in their base that hold resources beyond some base level, so that when they are destroyed, all resources above a certain level are lost, and capacity is lowered until a very cheap replacement building is built. Then a no-brainer upgrade for a faction could be some fuel upgrade that raises that capacity without the cache... not that that's a good idea, or that it would ever happen....just thinking out loud. It would obviously penalize somebody who is already taking a risk by saving up for the expensive impact tank over somebody who is buying every chance he gets, so that's bad.

Tank Spam : this just didn't happen much in VCOH. I do actually like me a few more tanks on the field. It was rare that you saw a few shermans in VCOH, but in COH2, 4 or 5 tanks on both sides is relatively common. I wouldn't mind that as a way that games could evolve, but they evolve that way a lot. I've seen plenty of games , where people have as many tanks as infantry units.

I wonder if this is just a function of no global upgrades to make infantry more powerful into the late-game, but I don't know that I really want units to wade through tank fire either, or become invincible to small arms fire the way they used to be, and the way vet made grens in VCOH.

The mines ARE too good. However, I don't think it's a problem, because the rest of the commander is extremely lackluster. It doesn't make the entire commander OP.

I don't see a single top soviet player use this commander.

Personally, I gave the commander a brief try, but found it lacking.

That sounds about right. When I did a whole scoring mockup of all abilities, the only way I could get this doctrine to fit into the same scoring range as the others was to make the mines a 5 on a scale of 3 to 5, given that it was a zero cp ability(which always rates higher) and that the other abilities in the doctrine were scored pretty low.

I've never played against this doctrine or used it though, so that's all just theory. I just don't know that it is a bad thing if its a strong ability.

Ostheer Abilities and Valuations

0-Cost

Troop Training - 5 / Assault Grens - 5 / Air-dropped Medical - 4 / Ostrouppen - 5

1-Cost

Stun Grenades - 3 / Panzer Tacticion - 4 / Mechanized Assault Grp – 4 /
Mech grenadier grp - 4 / Cargo Truck - 5 / Artillery Field Officer - 3 / Mortar HT - 4 / Trench - 3 / Defensive Fortifications - 3 / HT anti-tank mine - 3 / ambush - 3

2-Cost

Jaeger Light infantry Upgrade - 4 / Smoke bombs - 3 / Supply Drop Zone - 5 / redistribute Resources - 5

3-Cost

Stug III Assault gun - 4 / relief infantry - 3 / tactical Movement - 3 / spotting scope - 4 / hull down - 3 / straffing run - 5 / incendiary bombing run - 4

4- Cost

Light Artillery Barrage - 4 / LEFH 18 Artillery - 4 / Command Tank - 4 /
Pak 43 - 4

5- Cost

Tiger - 4 / fragmentation Bomb - 3 / Elephant - 4 / Stuka bombing Strike - 5

6-Cost

Stuka Close Air Support - 4 / railway Artillery - 5 / Sector Artillery - 5?

7-Cost

Tiger Ace - 5


Here are some no-holds-barred examples, not taking into account combo restrictions that are probably inevitable. I tried to make broken ones, but I'm sure people could do a better job of it.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger 24 pts

1-stun grenades
!
2- Supply Drop
!
[----------------------------------]

3 - Relief Infantry_______________2- smoke bombs
5- Tiger________________________7 - Tiger Ace


In this next example, if the player goes right side, shock troops unlock at 2, marked target at 3. Partisans Unlock at 4 and vehicle detection at 5. Left-side first, shock troops unlock at 3, and marked target unlocks at 5.




Can’t Decide? Well then Don’t!__24pts

0-Radio Intercept
!
1-Guards
!
[-------------------------------------------]

1- AT Partisans_____________________1 - Shock Troops
2- Vehicle Detection________________3 - Marked Target





Ostrippen into Oswinden__24pts

0-Ostrouppen
!
0-Air-dropped medical
!
[-------------------------------------------]

1 - Cargo Truck____________________3- Relief Troops
4 - Command Tank___________________5-fragmentation bomb


Soviet Industry-PPSH__24pts

0-Soviet Industry
!
1- partisans
!
[-----------------------------------------------------]

2-conscript assault package_________________2- Recon Flight
3-fear propaganda__________________________3-conscript repair kit



Map Shmap-oh did I still get that p4 out in 10?__24pts

0 - Aasault Grens
!
1 - Cargo Truck
!
[-----------------------------------------]

2- supply drop_____________________1- ambush
3-Tactical Movement________________5-fragmentation bomb





Guards Motor Coordination __23pts *everything is unlocked by 8 cps

1-guards
!
1- mortar
!
[--------------------------------------------------]

3-Marked Target________________________4-boobie trap territory
4-Vehicle Crew Repair__________________4-t34/85 upgrade

The choice system is very good but it would only create more overlapping abilities (I don't see that as a problem myself) because you added another ability to the tree.
Plus how would you unlock the other side of the tree? On the right side you ended with 5cps, does this mean you need to wait 4cps to unlock the howitzer? Make it when you select an ability from either side you every ability gets one cp cheaper.

This was exactly what I was trying to figure out, but a solution occurred to me.

I think the most elegant way to do this is to retain the collective unlock that occurs now. This way 1 cp and 2 cp abilities won't unlock later than they should. . The way to pair that with White-Flash's suggestion is to allow the player to branch off right or left after the first 2 ability picks. If he goes right, accumulated points do not unlock objects on the left. Only points that accumulate after the very last ability on the right side is unlocked count towards unlocking the abilities in the left tree. The point accumulation still functions the same going forward. If you have a 3 cost ability and a 5 cost ability in the left fork, both abilities unlock by 5 points total, the 3 cost unlocking first.

If abilities on both trees are very expensive, then it could take up to 12 cps to unlock all abilities, which is probably fine, but if they are all cheap abilities, all of them can be unlocked at 8.

The only problem with this system is that there's no function for taking the low end abilities from both trees. Once you choose a branch, you stick with it til you've unlocked the branch.