As promised, here are the last three tracks from the first volume of our COH audio strategy series, Mind of a Master. This concludes our special D-Day celebration, but fear not sports fans: World War II goes on year-round at Rifles Ready!
That being said, I apologize for the slow updates of late. Suffice it to say June is a really, really tough month at work with a lot of things happening at the same time — all of which I’m personally responsible for.
I am also aware that many of the topics in this last batch of tracks were addressed in the recently released patch 2.600 — my reaction on that in a later post. But there’s also a lot of other insight from Surprise so I think you’ll still get plenty out of these.
Expect that post, plus an interesting balance article from Surprise, in the coming days. There’s also a new Battle Report in the works featuring a really good up-and-coming player whose replays have gotten a lot of attention on GR.org.
Track 8: Controversial balance issues – The Strafing Run
Track 9: Controversial balance issues – Supertanks and British armor
Track 10: Controversial balance issues – MGs firing at multiple targets, Panzer Elite and end credits
Folks, it’s that time of year again. Today is June 5, 2009. Tomorrow will be June 6, the 65-year anniversary of D-Day. The day 150,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy to end tyranny, free a continent and spawn a thousand film and video game adaptions of a climactic battle. It’s a special day to anyone who loves Company of Heroes or World War II games in general.
You'll like this.
To commemorate this occasion, I have decided with Surprise’s support to make ALL 10 tracks of our COH audio strategy series, Mind of a Master:Volume I, available on Rifles Ready! — free of charge.
Starting today and ending Sunday (D-Day +1), I will be posting several tracks daily for you to listen to.
The tracks will be playable via the native WordPress streaming audio applet (see below). Amazon.com is taking FOREVER to approve this MP3 album for download, and it’s a special time of year, so the hell with it. Please enjoy!
Tracks 1 and 2: Introduction to Surprise and his biography/A high-level overview of the state of COH
It’s a common situation: You have just secured a position inside a neutral building and are now awaiting the inevitable counter attack.
But more often than not, you forget to secure the blind spot of the house with barbed wire or similar defensive measures. The blind spot on a building is any location outside of it that doesn’t have a window. Thanks to COH’s somewhat nonsensical urban combat mechanic, outside units can attack infantry inside, as if firing through the wall. But the infantry inside — while benefitting from defensive bonuses — can’t return fire because there are no windows to fire out of.
This is a problem if you’re the guy holding the building; an enemy squad standing directly in front of the house can do considerable damage in a surprisingly short time.
However, you can solve this problem by simply destoying a part of the wall with a panzerschreck, a bazooka or a similar weapon.
All you have to do is target the house with the attack-ground order in the control panel. NOTE: This may take several shots, as these AT weapons often miss randomly when manually targeted. The point is, this simple safety measure will make every enemy think twice before attacking from the blind spot again.
Here you see the squad inside can now return fire at the Riflemen trying to abuse the blind spot.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Steven “Surprise” Uray continues his series on his adventure to Los Angeles, Calif., where he faces some of the best RTS players in the world at the World Cyber Games final. This is a tour-de-force that smacks of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Similar themes are explored: substance-driven soul-searching, shifting personal expectations, hopes being lifted then crushed, and true life lessons emerging from it all. I’ve even embedded a YouTube audio clip of the Steppenwolf song that defined the spirit of the 60s to accompany this excellent post. – Corkscrewblow
Fear and loathing in Los Angeles. With gamers. And some drinking and smoking. And other fun stuff.
Lazerflip and the Starcraft players went to Quiznos, while I went with Crunk to Panda Express. We sat down next to a guy playing a piano for the mall’s guests, and I was surprised how quickly our conversation turned to gaming and gamers we knew in general. I felt pretty nerdy talking C&C strategies, but it also felt natural with Crunk. I wasn’t very hungry and Crunk was done with his two entrees before I was half finished.
Back at the hotel, we decided to split from the Starcraft players to go swimming and smoke some cigarettes. Now, I had decided to quit using all psychoactive substances two weeks ago to focus on gaming and have a clear head. Up until this point, I had been entirely successful except when I accidentally drank half a Coke (caffeine).
Now I decided this was taking it all a bit too seriously, and decided to smoke a little while I swam. While we were going to the pool we first met Judgepowr, who was to be my roommate for the trip. I had already met him at Pacific Regionals, where he handed me an embarrassing loss. He wasn’t very good at Command and Conquer, but he played well enough to beat me whenever I wasn’t at the top of my game. He was short, stout and dark-skinned, perhaps Hispanic or Arab, and wore broken glasses. After a few minutes of small talk, he announced he was leaving to put his car in his garage and disappeared. I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t get to play him here in group stages and get revenge.
The pool was smaller than I expected for such a nice hotel, but it was refreshing and also had a nice hot tub. Eventually we got cold and jumped in the hot tub. After a little while, we got hot and bored and dried off and smoke some more. I went with them back to their room, and generally got more bored with them for around an hour before somebody jokingly suggested we act like stereotypical black people and get fried chicken with 40oz beers. After we all laughed, we agreed this was actually a good idea and decided to walk around downtown LA on a search for chicken and 40s in the blazing daytime heat. It took three hours, but we returned from our quest flush with loot: 50 assorted chicken wings, three Olde English 40s and a six-pack of Bud Lite.
Riflemen, even with BARs, can have a hard time standing up to Axis infantry armed with G43 rifles, FG42s and of course, MP44s (the most common SMG in the game). BARs are great weapons, but have a hard time chipping through tough, mid-game units like vetted Grenadiers, Stormtroopers, and G43/MP44 Panzer Grenadiers. Bring in Fallschirmjaegers and Knight’s Cross Holders and you got yourself something I like to call “a problem.”
In the late game, Axis players often have multiple squads of elite, anti-infantry troops with full or nearly full veterancy. Vanilla Rifles are owned outright, sometimes faster than you can hit retreat. The G43’s slowing ability combined with Axis SMG troops is simply murder. You really must preserve Rifle veterancy to have any chance in a straight infantry firefight against these troops.
But Airborne players DO have one equalizer — the Strafing Run. I’m not talking about the occasional Strafing Runs which mow down every man in its path. I’m talking about the nerfed, beta Strafe which primarily pins enemy soldiers, maybe killing one or two in the process. The video below shows what I’m talking about: careful use of air support that forces enemy squads to choose one of two very bad options: 1.) wait for the suppression/pin to wear off and eat grenades and focused BAR fire, or 2.) retreat, running past a shooting gallery of BARs.
As you can see in the clip, the Strafing Run did practically no damage to the enemy squads, however it pinned all three. This was a 2v2 game where I was the Airborne player. The Wehrmacht player immediately spams the retreat button, which results in his Stormtroopers being instantly cut down, because their position requires them to retreat through my three BAR Rifles. The PE player, noticing the fate of the Storms, crawls his Fallschirmjaegers away, hoping to recover from the pin in time to retreat down a different path. The grenade forces him to retreat from his current position, and both squads are eaten alive by a hail of BAR fire.
This is the absolute best way to eliminate very powerful enemy squads, and it earns your Riflemen a lot of veterancy, to boot. It should be noted the PE player complained that I was a “noob Strafe spammer,” which struck me as being particularly amusing. Strafing Runs are still good, they just require a little more combined arms to wipe out whole squads.
As far as I can remember, the earliest creative use of airdropped Paratroopers in conjunction with airdropped AT guns was by a great American player named PromethiusX. He used an M8 to spot inside a Wehrmacht base, then dropped Paratroopers and an AT gun into the base, with the aim of killing the Sturm Armory. Despite this spark of ingenuity, he lost the match to another blast from the past, Bentguru. This was during the first few weeks following the release of vanilla COH.
Now a recent replay featuring modern-day heavyweights 12azor and SayNotoStim shows off a much more evolved form of this concept, on a map that greatly favors this particular tactic: Langres.
12azor does some serious damage with this tactic, even though Stim’s doctrine choice, Defensive, seems designed to prevent base rushes entirely.
You MUST read on to see my super-detailed breakdown of how 12azor could’ve taken this rush to the next level and possibly ended the entire game in one fell swoop.
EDITOR’S NOTE:Surprise and reader colonelcommissar nailed some really good additional points on a recent post I made about the value of gaining experience. I’ve assembled them here in a single, organized post. – Corkscrewblow
Balrogs start level 12 and up
Having to learn C&C 3 has been a really big eye-opener to me on how to learn a game from the ground up. Seeing as I’m a year behind experience wise compared to my competitors who started playing when the game came out, I’ve had to play a lot of catchup (something I never needed to do in COH). I’ve found that I have no problem competing even with the best of players when I don’t make silly mistakes, but that is always a huge ‘when.’
Read on for tips on how to avoid your own silly mistakes!
One of the first things a new COH player wonders is, “why can’t my tanks just crush infantry?” You know, C&C-style, where you hold ALT, click your mouse on the other side of some men, and your tank rolls right over those fools with a nice big SQUISH. Well, if you think about it, COH is an infantry-centered game with far more infantry-based gameplay mechanics than tank-based ones. Infantry in COH are smart (relative to infantry in many other RTS games, anyway) and they automatically move out of the way when an enemy tank comes charging in. Unless of course, they can’t move out of the way, because they’re pinned. This is probably one of the best reasons to land a strafing run atop a whole crowd of squads when a tank is nearby; the pinning effect prevents the men from firing any AT weapons. The tank is free to simply charge right over the squads. You can achieve a similar effect with Wehrmacht MG42 fire, or Nebelwerfer barrages, or Infantry HT fire; crawling, suppressed infantry can be crushed as well.
Remember: When trying to crush pinned units, don’t click ON them, click to move your tank just behind them. Your tanks still have a tendency to avoid driving over enemy troops when you give them a new move order far behind the enemy.
Check out this timely YouTube video. It’s from a team game I played with one of my buddies — his Cromwell command tank gets caught flat-footed by multiple Panzergrenadiers packing panzershrecks, so he calls for air support. My P-47 doesn’t kill any PGs, but allows my friend to slam the Cromwell into some poor Krauts, killing 5 PGs and forcing the group to retreat.
One thing you’ll notice is the last PG to die (captured in the screenshot at the start of the post). He is killed after his squad was ordered to retreat; the Cromwell was in his way and kept moving, despite his attempt to keep running. Tanks in COH can crush unpinned and unsuppressed troops in numerous circumstances — squads caught between a tank and an obstacle like a house, Paratroopers landing on TOP of vehicles and dying, Sherman mine flails instantly gibbing squads, etc. That’s a topic that will be explored down the road, when I have screenshots and/or videos showing how such effects can be consistently achieved.
Adrock’s weapon-related post got me thinking about weapons. And by weapons I mean the Sturmgewehr (assault rifle) MP44. There’s probably nothing a Rifleman fears more than a Kraut trooper charging at him with a blazing MP44. The amount of damage the MP44 (which helped inspire the ubiquitous AK-47) can do to Allied infantry, especially Riflemen, is sickening. A vanilla Rifle squad will drop in a line of green +1s when an MP44 Storm squad or Panzer Grenadier squad runs past. MP44s can hit the field in no time at all with a Panzer Elite opponent; the low squad cost of PGs, plus the fact that Assault Grenadiers come packing munition-free MP44s, explains the PG death blob, which pretty much liquidates Riflemen beneath a storm of SMG fire.
So what can Riflemen do about it? The answer is range, cover and combined arms. NOTE: Riflemen equipped with BARs do not automatically “own” MP44 squads. They still die just as fast to MP44s. BARs will allow you to do more damage from afar, and “afar” is the key word here. You must start shooting before the MP44 squad gets into range. Rifles have the range advantage. So, let’s get to it.
Retreat when you need to If you’re ever caught off guard by an MP44 squad, i.e. they get in close before your Rifles can react, the best thing to do is simply retreat. Try your best to get your Rifles in a position where they retreat AWAY from the MP44 squads, rather than THROUGH the MP44s — for obvious reasons. MP44s do so much damage that it’s simplicity itself for your opponent to walk his Krauts through your retreating men, slowing them up long enough to kill all retreating squad members.
Rally and focus
When a pack of MP44 infantry charges your Rifles, and you do have time to react, you’ll want to consider the situation. If you have multiple Rifles and it’s only one or two MP44 squads, you can often win the fight or force a draw by getting into green cover and focusing fire on the MP44s, one squad at a time. When they get close, Rifles will start falling like flies, but by the time they get close, at least one MP44 squad should be nearly dead. NOTE: Any time you decide to “hold the line” with your Riflemen and fight charging MP44 squads, you will take losses. Just be prepared to quickly retreat Rifle squads the instant they fall to 50% strength. As mentioned above, avoid being in a position where retreating squads must run through MP44 fire.
Combined arms A Sniper lurking behind your Riflemen will give them a tremendous advantage against all MP44 troops, even Knight’s Cross Holders. Snipe an MP44 squad member, then focus all your rifle fire on that wounded squad — it’ll die quickly. You can often lure MP44 squads into an MG’s firing arc because vanilla Rifles walking away from MP44 squads make for a very tempting target for the enemy.
Rifleman abilities As stated earlier, BARs give you an even stronger reason to hold the line against charging MP44 troops, especially when your men are in cover. BARs will defeat MP44s quite handily assuming there are relatively even levels of veterancy between opposing squads. Supressing Fire is great at shutting down charging units, given that they take increased suppression from having zero cover. Grenades are devastating to the Panzer Elite’s small squads and will take a hefty chunk off even vetted Wehrmacht squads — IF you can land grenades in the path of charging enemy squads. Remember that even a near-miss with a grenade frequently causes enemy squads to “dive” for cover briefly, stopping their forward motion and giving your men more time to continue pouring focus rifle fire down on those Krauts.
The zones show where fights favor the northern player.
This will seem to be an overly simple “tip” for some folks, but I can’t tell you how often a situation arises where this tip isn’t followed. The premise is simple: you’re facing the Panzer Elite or the Wehrmacht and they just jacked up your army on one side of the map, forcing a general retreat. Now, about 90% of mediocre and even average players will do something very predictable — reinforce and go attack the SAME AREA THEY JUST LOST. Why is this not a good idea? Well, it really depends on the map, but on many, many maps, you can simply SWITCH SIDES OR AVOID HIS ARMY. Take good old Angoville for instance — with the U.S. Rifle squad’s hyperfast 1.25 capture rate, you can retake the side of the map your opponent isn’t on, thereby assuring your flow of resources.
The disadvantages of facing your enemy again on familiar ground are many. First, he’s had time to spread his guys out, place MGs, find cover, etc. Second, he’s had time to lay mines, drop Butterfly Bombs, repair vehicles and call in reinforcements of his own. He is anticipating a counterattack — that’s the flow of all COH games, attack then counterattack.
Divide and bait You can mix it up by moving where he is weak, a classic doctrine of master strategists. One piece of advice from ZeroCrack’s brief but succinct anti-PE guide for U.S. players is to AVOID your enemy where he is strong. Avoid him and retake territory he’s left open, so you can continue your tech and bait HIM into attacking your position.
This way it can be YOUR mines and barbed wire and troops entrenched in green cover that your ENEMY is forced to run into. Clearly this principle is best illustrated and best used in a U.S. vs. PE matchup given the two factions’ respective capture rates. The U.S. caps territory faster than you can blink while Panzer Grenadiers cap 50% slower than Riflemen.
Other maps
Most Relic-approved maps divide resources evenly, so it’s possible to do this tactic on just about every map. Of course, some maps are much easier to “switch sides” on than others. These include Angoville, Beaux Lowlands, Langres and Wrecked Train. Maps where you can’t effectivelyswitch sides due to cutoff points, tight spacing and/or uneven resource distribution include Semois, Sturzdorf and St. Mere Dumont. These are my opinions based on experience of course; your mileage may vary.
Posted by CorkscrewBlow 
Posted by CorkscrewBlow 
Posted by GrungeIsDead 
