Profile of Gbpirate

This is like the most realistic game mode of coh. Casualties or deaths (not sure which one) were inflicted by indirect fire the majority of the time. Not sure if it's closer to fifty percent or up to eighty percent, but it's more than half.

Artillery sucks but, i dunno, you've just got to learn to counter it. At the highest levels of the leaderboard, there is a certain meta that people have to play in to. When I had 4s team, we all had one commander we would always go with variation between one other commander for at most two players. It was boring as hell but if you want to win the most games against the best players that's what has to be done.

Hey dude, it's great to hear about your story!

Coh2 is deceptively hard. There are a lot of things to know about the game that can really only be learned from looking at the code, playing the game, or pouring over replays, forum posts, etc.

The best thing I'd say is ask constructive questions in your own threads (usually replay review threads, but also don't be afraid to ask questions about mechanics in the appropriate section) and watch your own replays.

It took me a couple years to get a good flow and system down in game to manage my micro and I find times where I play so well and get in such a good flow but then there are others where I just don't know what units I've sent where and hear "grenaaaaade" and just watch the top right of my screen and hope I don't see a unit card disappear.

Cheers!

Rifle man needs s m o k e (don't tell Hans) again and back teching shouldn't be so god damn expensive

I have 700-800 hours of HOI4 and I'd say that I definitely got my money's worth. However, after learning and understanding the game mechanics (though still being frustrated by them), the games becoming stale, monotonous, and sometimes outright stupid.

These complaints mostly reflect singleplayer and they rest on my observation that the truly challenging and lengthy games require the player to play as Germany or as an Axis nation in Europe for the simple reason being that the German AI is so incompetent that it loses the war. This issue was made worse with the "Death or Dishonour" DLC which made Germany's gobbling up of territory much more difficult. Basically, what ends up happening, is WWII starts very early and the Nazis just lose (one example is the AI Hungary backing Austria's independence and then allying with Italy) or Germany does OK against France and the Low Countries but then decides to declare war on the Soviets and launch Barbarossa in 1940 which proves extremely disastrous.

Eventually, with a democratic Germany, the USSR and the Allies will be drawn into a war because the USSR will intervene and declare war on Poland (Poland could join the allies), or meddle in the Middle East and Iran/Iraq/Turkey will be able to join the allies. This is because the AI, regardless of relations, will pursue their "National Focus Tree" (which roughly represents political actions that the player, as the leader of the country —often above the leader— can take) in its entirety if it is able. The focus trees are what the countries use to pursue their historical political actions (Hitler militarizing the Rhineland, Anschluss, claiming Czechoslovakia) but also actions that could have been taken (Hitler can partition Yugoslavia and then make Greece its puppet in addition to its Czechoslovakia branch of the tree).

After the monotony of the game is sort of...discovered, I guess, it makes playing any other country that won't intervene with a large economy/manpower pool irrelevant or any allied nation as irrelevant because you'll just win by 1942 or 1941 or even earlier. The only exception is France, which is often extremely difficult; however, as Germany goes down its focus tree and declares war on the Low Countries (assuming that France doesn't join the allies and instead makes the "Little Entente" and backs Czechoslovakia/Romania) the allies soon join in the war and win the game.

When it comes to multiplayer, there's a lot of issues surrounding the mechanics of the game that limit or inhibit your actions. Politically, the game can become a mess. When there are more than two factions involved in the same war or when there are three factions fighting it out against each other (allies vs axis vs comintern) the peace process gets complicated. Factors on the ground are ignored and instead the selecting of territories to directly control or administer through puppets rely on "war score" which is mostly an amalgamation of casualties sustained and territory occupied. I've played games where I lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers because they find themselves cutoff in territory that was awarded to an unfriendly state that I do not have access to (so supplies are exhausted and with 0 organization, the units cannot move). The peace process is also frustrating because the two highest-scoring players are able to dictate the outcome of the peace treaties, effectively sidelining other players. It's worse when the AI is one of those two players and they do something asinine. They often get inflated war score because they incur so many casualties in their stupid tactics of just throwing men at the enemy line and losing consistently.
When it comes to military combat, there are other limiting issues. It's impossible to plan a grandiose amphibious invasion like D-Day. Amphibious invasion plans and airborne drops cannot be coordinated on certain dates/times, and artificial ports are not a thing (although air-dropped supplies were recently added which mitigates this effect to some degree). So, the allies fighting for one-three months in Normandy w/out Cherbourg or Le Havre would be impossible in HOI4 because your units will just die. Amphibious invasions are also very easy to repel because of the way that the supply system works; in France or anywhere in Europe, a German player with good micro will be able to repel any invasion by simply encircling any blemish with superior numbers of divisions and, often, driving a panzer army into the middle of it.


There are a lot of other issues with the game that I don't really want to elaborate on as this is already lengthy, but I'd say that the game is good when you understand the mechanics and use those to win a few games. Then, it become stale and frustrating. Technology more or less stops in 1945 (as the game isn't built for a cold war) but I have played games (especially before I understood mechanics fully) that go into the 1950s and well into them.

tl;dr if it's on sale buy it.

That being said, if anyone wants to play sometime, I'd be down. multiplayer games are pretty fun and they switch up the stale shit. I like going with royalist or somewhat a-historical focus trees (Japan, Hungary are my two favourites).

Thank you, Hans, for this.

I think it's important that we put this behind us and move forward together. That being said, we should continue to treat each other with respect here on .org, any other forums, and on Twitch/Twitch chat. This advice goes to everyone (including myself).

I think we should all be excited for the coming months of CoH2 and the as of yet uncharted future of CoH and AoE4.