Profile of CieZ

M3s: The 50cal on the M3 will KILL an un-upgunned 222. No shit.

I'm quite sure that this statement is extremely wrong. Assuming M3 50 cal versus a normal 222. The 222 has more DPS and more front armor and more rear armor while having the same HP. I can't see a scenario in which just the M3 beats the 222. I'm also pretty sure that a 251 HT beats an M3 1vs1. The only time the M3 is effective against either the 222 or the 251 is with guards inside, but that is guards being strong against light vehicles (as they should be) not M3s...

Nah 222 is pretty good on maps like Moscow outskirts, Minsk pocket, Langres (as long as you don't succumb to the awful vehicle pathing on this map), the southern part of Karkhov, prip winter to name a few.

I'm not sure if you mis-spoke but you said that "open" maps tend to degenerate into indirect fire? I feel like that couldn't be further from the truth. Open maps (Moscow, Langres, Prip winter) tend to allow for a lot more flanking potential and the ability to spread out your units more, which directly counters indirect fire. It is always the narrow maps that degenerate into artillery fests (Minsk pocket, kharkov, semos summer, prip summer)

Well German play is unfortunately pretty limited, especially on a map like Semoskiy. Ivan knew that OMGPOP was going to get flamer M3s, honestly everyone knew he was going to get flamer M3s but Ivan had two unfortunate things to deal with. Firstly, OMGPOP takes advantage of houses better than any other player in my opinion which forced Ivan into a mortar, which is a soft counter to garrisoning at best. Furthermore, the mortar is very vulnerable to M3s. Now on Semoskiy Winter Ivan maybe... maybe could have gone for a 222. A lot of people seemed to think that getting a 222 would have solved the M3 problem, but in reality it isn't as cut and dry as that. There are simply way too many houses for Guards to sit in in the middle of Semoskiy that would deny the 222 a massive amount of freedom, and run the risk of instantly killing it. Second, there also is not much room to maneuver in the middle of that map - both of these issues are even more prevalent on Semoskiy Summer where you don't even have the lake you can drive on. Simply put, while the 222 is normally a good go-to counter for M3s, there are way too many ways it could go wrong on that map. Also - POP could have easily just swapped out his Combat Engineers for Guards in an M3 to chase down the 222 if it took any real damage at all.

In this past I have used PaKs effectively against OMGPOPs cars, but this would not have worked on a map like Semoskiy, where PaKs are actually pretty terrible because of all the shot blockers - and once again houses that Soviets can garrison. In theory Ivan could have tried to get schreck Pgrens out, but they're a pretty risky option because if both M3s can come in and flank them - they're probably going to be dead before they can do any effective amount of damage.

Ultimately getting a 222 *may* have been Ivan's best choice, if only to prevent the M3s from chasing so far, or swinging in to finish off a fausted M3 - but it certainly wasn't as clear-cut of a choice as a lot of people made it out to be. There were just far too many things that could have gone wrong.

As far as OMGPOPs German goes, I think he should have opted for a sniper. A sniper is, in my experience, the most reliable counter to Soviet garrisoning and conscript spam in general. I feel like Semoskiy has too many narrow passageways and is just too cramped overall for the FHT to be as effective as it could be on other maps - also the new vet abilities really hurt the potential for the FHT to carry on into the later stages of the game. Personally I think that getting two LMGs is a better use of those first 120 munitions. Or an LMG and a teller. I would have really like to have seen OMGPOP plant a couple of tellers, with the nature of Semoskiy they're actually really good against Soviet tier 3, but he needed to save for schrecks after the FHT.

I think these games are a pretty good indication of how much the +240 MP change helped the Soviets, while not doing much for Germans since MG42s are so useless. As well as showing how insanely strong molotovs are/how abuse-able houses can be for Soviets. And for anyone saying that cons can't compete with grens... you're clearly doing it wrong.

On a final note for General Hell/Ami/whoever else - I find Semoskiy to be a really bad tournament map. Semoskiy Summer more so than winter, but they both feel highly soviet favored with how difficult it is to hold munitions points, with how many houses you can just camp in the middle of the map, and with both fuel points AND both cut-offs having houses right there. As the German player you basically have to try and guess which fuel node the CEs are going to, and run for the other one since he will always beat you to the house and 90% of the time CEs destroy pios 1v1 anyways.

Poor Raz... losing to a Tiger Ace you mad bro?

On a serious note. The unit is kind of silly. I haven't lost to it (yet) because of my love for T-34s and how strong ram tends to be against it. Well and I plant mines like they're going out of style these days but still - the entire premise of the unit sort of goes against the inherent principles that RTS games are built around.

While I agree with this to a point, once you got to higher levels of play in vCoH, the game was far more strategic than it was tactical. You can't really outmicro your opponents in high-level vCoH play because everybody has more or less comparable micro skills. You had to succeed strategically.

In CoH2, that really doesn't feel like it's the case. In all the games I've watched, casted, and played, it was always the player with better unit control that won the game. When you have such a basic tech structure, and no trade-off between tech investments and unit investments, you'll eventually reach a point where there is one agreed-upon ideal unit composition for both sides, and high-level matches become a contest of who can execute that composition better.

Vanilla CoH had, in my opinion, the ideal combination of tactical difficulty and strategic depth. From the start, CoH2 has leaned more toward tactics, which I believe takes away from the depth and longevity of the game.

And regarding commanders, I agree with Tommy; they create artificial depth. Even if the commanders were free, I don't think it would really solve anything. They limit a player's options to those that were selected prior to the game's start, rather than allowing a player to adapt seamlessly to his opponent's play on the fly.

I think you're under-estimating the amount of strategy that goes into CoH2. Yes unit control is important, but guess what... it is important in every RTS I can think of and certainly every RTS I have played. It is one of the fundamental pillars on which the RTS genre has been built and I don't see a single problem with it. If you want to only overcome opposition with some grand over-arching strategy you can play things like Europa Universalis or some other game along those lines. In CoH2 you still have to micro well, but you also have to play strategically. There are constant decisions on what unit to purchase, how to spend munitions, where to lay mines, grenade pump-fake mindgames, pushing for cutoffs, which resources to deny your opponents based on the map layout, etc I could go on for a long time. I'm not saying that these things were non-existent in vCoH but to say that CoH2 is not strategically deep is simply ignorant.

You're throwing around the word "artificial depth" too loosely and simply trying to use it as some fancy buzzword. The truth of the matter is that commanders add real and relevant depth to the game. They have the potential to define how you are going to play in that specific game, on that specific map, or in reaction to what your opponent is doing. You do not have to pick a commander at the beginning of the game - it is entirely feasible to wait until you have seen what your opponent is doing to pick a commander. I fail to see how this system lacks seamless adaptation in response to what your opponent it doing... It also allows for players who prefer to take the initiative to choose doctrines with units like Assault Grenadiers/Ostruppen/Partisans/etc to force the enemy to react to them. Both of these are valid ways of playing and both certainly add depth to the game. Any time a commander can have such a large impact on how the game progresses adds real depth. I will say that I dislike the paid DLC way in which some of these commanders are implemented but that's just life in today's gaming world and it is ultimately probably outside of Relic's hands.

I also find it *very* hard to believe that everyone had comparable micro skills in vCoH... even in games as large as SC2 there are professional players who have untouchable micro that is miles better than other pros. There are also professional players who have god-like macro ability that compensates for their lack of micro. Unless every vCoH player was simply THAT good at every aspect of the game... I feel like you're just trying to pull excuses out of thin air.