Force Distribution

"And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force
with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits." - The Art of War, chapter 6

This is easily one of the most important things I can teach you about CoH. I got to where I am in CoH today almost entirely on distributing my forces better than my opponents could. It's probably not something you have thought about that much, but if you want to get better at CoH, it's something you're going to have to think about very hard now.

In its most basic, force distribution is spreading out your units on the field to defeat your enemy. A very simple example is spreading out two Rifleman squads to beat 2 Volks squads. The Rifleman will do this by grouping up together, and finding an isolated Volks squad that they will beat with ease, and then moving on to the next squad of Volks that don't have the reinforcements to save them because those were already chased off by the Rifleman squads. You should generally try to out-number or out-gun your opponent with a stronger force, while leaving at least part of his units out of the fight. Take a look at example picture one, its hard to see it on the screen but here I have four Rifleman squads engaging two Panzer Grenadier squads. In example picture 2 you can see that I have forced my opponent's Panzer Grenadiers to retreat. This makes fighting his remaining Panzer Grenadiers on the field a lot easier, because I will outnumber him again. Go for where your opponent is weak with your strong forces, and avoid his strong forces when you have weak ones.

"That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone
dashed against an egg--this is effected by the science
of weak points and strong." - The Art of War, Chapter 5

To do things like this successfully, you need to know or at least guess where your opponent has put his units. This is a lot harder than it sounds, you will need to have some ability to actually see where your opponent's units are. To some extent, you can use your strategic points to look but that depends entirely on if your opponent is around a point you control. Your opponent won't just stick his units right front of you for you to see and exploit. In the early game I use my Jeeps or Kettenrads, and the Bren Carrier works fairly good too. Remember that when you send these units out you are not fighting, just looking, stay at a good distance so you won't take much damage. After you find out how your opponent has positioned his forces, you should find out how to attack them most effectively. Sometimes that means just defending the area your opponent is going to attack in the best way you can. For a little more detail in this read my Attack and Defense article. For a good example of this see the example screen shots, as it's pretty hard to explain just everything that is going on and what you need to do with just text.

IPB Image

Common examples of force distribution are the infamous 'blob' and a Pio horde. These are so strong because they put all of your power into one small area, allowing it to steamroll most players armies simply because they have spread out their armies too much to stand a chance. Now I am not saying you should blob up as much as possible, because that isn't to your advantage, grenades, artillery, and other area of effect attacks will own you. The lesson you should learn from the blob is that putting all of your firepower in one place is generally a good way to storm a position. I would generally advise attacking from multiple directions in an attack, because surrounding your opponent often times makes it very hard for him to run, especially with vehicles that don't have a nice retreat ability. This is not something that you can do all the time, but even attacking from 2 directions instead of 1 can yield really good results. The key to this is timing, if one of your groups attacks and the other is not engaged yet, it will usually be beaten back very fast, simply because you are using only part of your force against all of your opponent's forces. Even if you are fighting outnumbered for a small amount of time, it can have a big impact. Make sure that even if you attacking from all directions, all of your groups are engaged with the enemy at once if that is how it needs to be done, so that one group isn't fighting alone.

Now so far, I have only focused on outnumbering your opponent. This is not always the best option. Sometimes splitting up or hiding your forces is the best way to win. A good example of this is splitting up your forces to capture territory. It could also mean that you need to spread out your forces to minimize casualties against a strong impact unit such as a puma. If you split up your rifles and put them on separate corners of the map you force your opponent to pick a squad to fight with his puma, as opposed to being able to go kill all of your rifles in one spot. Another example of splitting up would be if you can't beat your opponent's army head on, or fighting all in one place is not a good idea for other reasons. Some factions are better at splitting up than others, factions like the Americans and Panzer Elite are better at winning many small engagements, whereas factions that don't have many units to go and split up or have many support weapons such as the British and Wehrmacht are best at fighting large and decisive battles.

I will give a real world example here about splitting up, and then massing and charging. I was playing Ryan "nystrom" Nystrom in the GR.org 1v1 tournament on Semois. He was the Panzer Elite and I was the Americans. He chose to make a FHQ (healing station) in the church, a very central location and a good base of operations for him. He went Logistik Kompanie with 4 man squads. This meant he could mass his Panzer Grenadiers in one place and expect to beat almost any riflespam, especially if he was fighting around the heavy cover of the church (while being healed by his FHQ). I wasn't about to play his game, so I decided to split up my men and focus on the left and right sides of the map where the munitions and small fuel points are. Nystrom had the ability to cut me off from these as his church as right next to my cut-off point for the left hand side. I decided to defend this with 1 Rifleman squad sitting behind green cover (they could be easily overwhelmed, but it would require a ton of men and he would be fighting my men in green cover with his in yellow or red) and sent the rest to his fuel, his munitions, all over the place. Ryan couldn't risk leaving his FHQ with no men around it, or I could simply decap it and waste his resources. For about 10 minutes, I mostly avoided combat around his church, and harassed my little heart out with all my spread out Rifleman, gaining almost all of the map around the church. He would have trouble taking on my Rifleman with Panzer Grenadiers 1 on 1. Eventually he got out an armored car, and started splitting up his men to go and cap the map. It was at that moment I came in with my rifles from all directions and shot out the few sentries Ryan had left to guard his forward base, and then put my rifles around the church to defend against a counter attack, and had 1 squad take down his forward base, or 'decap' it. This effectively shut his remaining forces out of their church. I spread his forces out, and then hit his critical points that were now weak. I already had control of the left and right of the map, and with the center I had near complete map control, which was pretty easy to ride out for a win at a time that Panzer Elite were really over-powered.

IPB Image

"The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning deep into his rear, before the enemy has time to react."- Erwin Rommel

I will end this article with a historical example of using force distribution to defeat enemies that outnumber you 4-1. In 1969 the Israeli air force pre-emptively attacked the Egyptian air force while it was on the ground. They launched all but 12 of their 200 aircraft in a surprise attack that put the planes over the Mediterranean and kept them so low that radar couldn't detect them and anti aircraft missiles couldn't hit them. The Egyptians were caught completely by surprise. Israeli planes destroyed almost all the planes on the ground and also took down the runways from which they operated. Over 300 Egyptian aircraft were destroyed at a loss of only 19 aircraft for the Israelis. The Israeli planes returned to their airfield and refitted, launching additional waves at the Iraqi, Syrian, and Jordinian air forces. The attack was so devastating that when Syrian officials were warned that the Egyptian air force had been destroyed, they thought the report was false because it seemed unreal that so many planes could be destroyed in a single attack. As a result, they ignored it and lost most of their air force in a later wave in just the same way. This bold attack and concentration of force guaranteed the initially outnumbered IAF air superiority for the rest of the war.

May not be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of Steven "Surprise" Uray.

Big shoutout the my editors Tim James and Kleatus, and my beta test readers for all your valuable feedback!

A nice game, posting at 1 AM really doesn't get me any downloads.

A nice game, posting at 1 AM really doesn't get me any downloads. I thought the micro-battles and mini-skirmishes were great, I really felt something coming back to me on this game.

Link

Smurfing once again...

Now many people believe that smurfing is a bad thing, however, when you're somewhat new to the factions you've got to smurf, I've taken two smurfs, one for Panzer Elite and one for the British, all of this after losing some games to Seph yesterday, and both of us coming to the conclusion that I need to maximize my knowledge of the game once again! :)

On another note, I'll try to get Surprise's new article up.

Brainstorming a tournament...

Well, I've been having some free-time or well, I've been thinking at work of setting up a tournament, that way CoH spices up its activity. I don't know about the prizes yet, as I make less than 500$ every two weeks, heh! But, my love for the game might just put in some cash for the winners, we'll see what suggestions come up.

Americans vs Wer

Now, rarely will I rely so heavily on a "special" feature of the game, but this time I thought off-map would give me a considerable advantage, but did it? Watch and see it for yourself. Be prepared for some intensive battle watching :).


Replay here.

Controversial strategy.

Last week I played against HepsReborn and he went Panzer Elite, later he made one grenadier and what seem like 2-3 scout cars, followed by armored cars, I was defeated quite easily. Then, a few days after Aniketos(#1 with Panzer Elite) beats Nuvion(#1 with Americans) and hell breaks loose.

http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?showtopic=331459

Afterwards, the same strategy is beaten by a British(faction)-player, Ravana001, now I've played Ravana001 in Dawn of War, and he's quite good in there, I could expect much of the game, and it turned out to be a mindless frontal-assault from Aniketos, however, Ravana001 capitalizes on it and constructs a fortification that will be result in the victory.

Link of the game.

Now, after seeing the strategy for myself, it seemed like a very strong yet not solid enough strategy, with enough knowledge and prevention, it can be defeated. One thing that is discouraging is that my friend and the #1 American player says that it's unbeatable. That's where the beginning of weakness appears.

Crazy game on sturzdorf.

Link to replay.


Now, I don't post many replays, but when I do, usually 5 people post replays straight away which makes my replay hide from the main page! And that's a big no-no. Heh, this was a crazy match on sturzdorf, and I should of rushed the base once I had my first sherman, after that, I was just going back and back.

MacBook AIR

Specifications


Now, I have a Windows Vista X64 Machine and a 32 bit XP, but seeing this made me realize that I could take it anywhere, however, I do not have 1,700 just laying around. But is still a good idea, that should have been developed as soon as there was wi-fi. We are getting closer to the future where wi-fi will be everywhere, in fact, I plan in the future to start a project for the development of wi-fi cities and rural areas in Mexico that suffer from not having been introduced to the internet, hopefully between the next ten years I can take some steps into turning that project into a reality, for now, I'll just visualize it.

Video of MacBook Air Tour


Apple's MacBook Air Page

CoH BETA Report | Sweet Replay | Smurf

Exploit information.

Apparently you can drop your weapons and then all of your units will get the reward. Pretty crazy stuff. Heh.



Also there is a pretty good match between Sepha vs Tamiya
Click here to go to www.gamereplays.org and download it.


Also, my smurf is now level 5! I still have a long way to go, but playing 3-4 games a day is sort of fun, maybe i will return to spam mode. (25+ games per day) But that wasn't nearly as fun as optimizing certain strategies or developing plans around each specific map. Anyways, I'm still enjoying Opposing Fronts, even with a crappy server/router.

Team Automatch BETA for CoH.

Finally, a feature that should have been included in this game, is making its way into the game, team automatch. It must be quite a feat, since there is a beta for it, thus not completed, however, it is great news for the community and for all of us Company of Heroes players.

Download the BETA installer. (CoH:OF required)
CoH Team Automatch BETA announcement.
Planet CoH's announcement.

Unit Pump and Macro by Steven "Suprise" Uray.

You wouldn't go off to war with only a few bullets in your rifle and a few in your pocket, so why would you go out to fight with a few units on the field and a ton of manpower in your pocket? Managing your economy to max out your ability to fight has been a part of strategy games since the beginning, and CoH is no different. Your survival in the game is largely dependant on how fast you get your units out to the front and how you manage them after that. We will be focusing on the first part of that sentance here, getting units out as fast as you can and getting them to the front. In any phase of the game, and especially in 'tier one' (barracks, whermacht quarters type units) it is imperative that you purchase units as soon as you have the resources for them, and not 'float' manpower, or have more than you need to in your resource pile. This is because your opponent will surely be buying his units as soon as he can, which means that he gets them out to the the front a little faster. Hotkeys and rally points are essential to getting your units in the fight. Live by your F- keys for production, you can select all your buildings with F1-F7 and click on unit production from there, so you can keep your eyes on the battle while buying reinforcements. Try to memorize the hotkeys of specific units such as riflemen and volksgrenadiers. This will help you when you are watching a fight to keep production up, while being able to keep your eyes on critical units. A common example would be to watch how a volksgrenadier/rifleman fight is going on while waiting for your manpower ticker to reach 270 so you can hit F2+R and set the rally point where you would like the new riflesquad to go after they are done producing.

Later in the game, we are all guilty of floating excessive amounts of manpower and munitions, but it doesn't mean it should happen. Try to figure out what you are going to be spending your resources on next, before you have the resources to do so. This way when you do have the resources you can focus on executing your plan as opposed to trying to make a call while the resources pile up. As far as munitions go, always remember to try to max out your munitions and not stockpile 200+ munitions (unless you are saving for an artillery strike, which is usually pretty expensive). Very commonly overlooked munitions abilities such as grenades and medpacks can have a big impact for a relatively small cost. The same could be said of landmines. You would be amazed at how much easier it is to win infantry fights when you purchase grenades as Americans (100mp and 40 fuel is a small investment, especially late game when you are drowning in fuel) or start throwing grenadier grenades. In theory these are entirely 'dodgable' but in practice, even the best players consistently get hit by grenades. Fights between top players are usually really even, because good players don't fight when they don't think they can win. Anything you can do to sway these fights in your favor is extremely important.

The next part of this article will focus on fuel, as the first two have focused on manpower and munitions. Fuel is the most important resource early game, as you need it to keep from being out teched and having to try and fight shermans with volksgrenadiers. To a large extent most armies can substitue a lack of fuel based AT with a munitions based one. For the axis player, this is brutally effective with the panzershreck, but for british and American players, much harder. In general you will want to focus on fuel simply to try and out tech your opponent, and gain the initiative with a fast impact unit such as the puma, quad, or stuart. In most cases, you won't be able to rush one of these units and have much of a 'free reign' with them but at the very least it keeps you from being put behind, and gives you more initiative.

It is important to remember that you should buy only what you need for a task. Do not buy excessive amounts of AT weapons if your opponent is only going to build a light vehicle or two. Also, don't buy more capping power or infantry than you need. If you happen to spend more money on something than you need, your opponent will exploit this. In reality, all groups of units are really just systems. Almost all systems have enough of something to complete any job. Combine all these units, and they form a self-protecting system. A group of units that has infantry, anti tank weapons, and tanks is unable to be completely routed by another single unit type. The trick in breaking these systems is proportion. If your opponent has a ton of anti tank units, and only a few anti infantry units, the system is easy to break by building enough infantry to overwhelm his anti infantry, and then his anti-tank units. Any system can be broken, so the trick is to find out your opponent's layout in units, and build the counter to it while you conceal your unit makeup until you are ready to fight.

To sum it all up, you need to spend your resources almost as soon as they become available, especially if you can gain more resources by using or investing current resources into getting more. A good example of this would be using your remaining 50 or so munitions into throwing grenades to clear a building that will allow you to capture another +16 munitions point and recoup on your investment. In the end, macro is not going to be terribly important in a match between two top players, simply because they are both able to max out their economies at about the same efficiency, but you don't want to go against one of these guys with any disadvantage, do you?

Panzer Elite

Lately I've been toying around with all factions. The majority of the time I choose the good guys, in DoW I went from Space Marines >>> Eldars and the trend is going to happen in CoH too, from Americans >>> Panzer Elite, I go from the good guys to the bad ones, but I always start with the good faction. As of right now, the Panzer Elite seem so versatile, I can just upgrade to panzers if facing some light-armor, or make a Marder if facing tanks. The only thing truly killing me, is rangers.

Soul Calibur IV

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29535.html?type=

Oh man, and I thought I was satisfied with Street Fighter IV, well now I also found out Soul Calibur IV is coming out, that means I'll be playing more consoles than my PC probably! I really like Street Fighter for it's blocking and combination, but Soul Calibur feels so different because of it's weapon usage... and now two new characters seem to appear in the game. Can you say, use the force?

Street Fighter IV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9kf0abPuqk
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29585.html


Oh, this brings back so much memories! I remember being 9 years-old and told to go get milk from the grocery store, however, there was this one little arcade next to it. Let's just say that sometimes I arrived without the milk! I did, however, play a ton of Street Fighter, and I loved every single moment of it, the moves, the combos. I played the first Halo, I saw how people waited for the second and the third installation of Halo. We'll see how big Street Fighter IV goes, but at least I know I will be buying it.

Harrassement by Steven "Suprise" Uray.

I'll start off this article with one definition of harassment: Under the United States Code Title 18 Subsection 1514©1. Harassment is defined as "a course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress in such a person and serves no legitimate purpose". Now, my definition of harassment for RTS is putting stress on your opponent's map control, forces, resources, base, and mind. I would also like to add that although a judge is not likely to agree on this one, harassment serves a very legitimate purpose: an essential part of your victory and defeat. Incorporating harassment into your overall strategy and gameplay is what I am going to teach you here. Harassment can at its very least, be a way to take the fight to the enemy's homeland and force him to defend his territory and keep him off yours. It is a diversion and keeps your base safe while putting theirs in danger.

"If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them."
- The Art of War, Chapter 1

Now, I am going to apply harassment to specific CoH scenarios. I'll give you a rundown of a few of your options as far as that goes, along with a few map-specific examples. It is important to remember that the terrain has the ability to limit/help your harassment. My first example is Angoville, where you have two distinct sides, both of which have many ways to access each other. Sides may be cut off but taking the resource points or by taking special strategic points that cut off entire sides, unless of course you link your side up through other strategic points on their side.

Fighting on Angoville is fast and furious, and most of the main fighting takes place in the center of the map where the all important cut off strategic points are. Buildings and heavy cover help players defend these points, or can actually help the harasser hold the cut off points provided he has taken control of that area. In addition you can take points off your enemy the 'old fashion way' and just take them one by one, or you can take 2 points on their side and cut off anything between those points and the players connecting base.

This is thrown into whack by the british player's almost certain forward base, which is harder to harass economically but much easier to harass in terms of forces. A forward base can be manipulated by the threat of your men charging it, and in the later game it is likely that they bring base-destroying weapons such as armor and anti-tank rockets. Your opponent will be afraid to leave his base, because if he does what stops you from charging in? He must make sure that your forces have been swept from the map or distracted elsewhere (at least termporarily) before he can stop sitting on that egg.

A completely different example would be a map like Semois, which has a ton of buildings and cover on it, which make it a much slower map because you have to slog through your opponent's lines before actually being able to cut off any of his stuff. It is going to be hard to fight through enemy squads in buildings to capture a point, and even harder to ignore them without taking heavy casualties. Sides really aren't chosen, the north and south parts of the map are pretty much given to you. Players on this map mostly fight for control of decisive buildings, but this allows for some interesting, if less glorious harassment. It is easy to take advantage of the fact that north and south are given sides, and so you can send an engineer squad or a lone rifleman squad out to go and take your enemy's munition or fuel points. Your opponent will have to recapture these at some point, and you can take advantage of when he does there will be one less enemy squad on the field to deal with. Remember that you are deep behind enemy lines at this point and sometimes may end up retreating through your enemy's base defenses. With the release of OF, the important munitions points have been moved to the far left and right of the map, while strategic points that cut them off are pretty much in the center of the map and difficult to defend.

To sum this part up, there are pretty much 2 ways a CoH map can go in terms of economic harassment, open or closed. Open maps, like Angovile and Langres, are maps where open strategic points connect well defined sides to a player's base. These points may or may not be easy to defend/assault. Closed maps may lack major cutoff points and distinct sides such as Sturzdorf or Wrecked Train, or these points are simply too hard to get without map control (such as Semois and Hinderdam)

The second part of this article is going to focus on a given faction's ability to harass and defend against harassment. There are pretty much two ways a faction can go in terms of this, light and agile or heavy and methodical. Each faction has variety in their harassment, but in the end they all have a focus. I will state the obvious here and say that Americans and Panzer Elite are generally fast and agile, while Wehrmacht and British are heavy and methodical. The Americans have a very nice advantage early on with the most powerful early 'capping power' units in the game, Riflemen and Engineers. Engineers, generally speaking will have an advantage over Kettenrads (that can't fire back) or Pioneers, (that usually lose head on against Engineers). This allows the American player to split his Engineers on the map and not have to guard them against other enemy Kettenrads or Pioneers. Riflemen have it easy with Engineers because they can focus on fighting or capturing important points, because they won't have to go scare off basic units to save their engineers. American players also have a 1.5 capture rate with a Rifleman squad, which helps him execute decaps on major points with stunning speed and allow his opponent less time to react. It also means that riflemen can spend more time fighting and less time capping.

Another light and agile faction is the infamous Panzer Elite. They have a vehicle unit as their initial capping power (Kettenrads) Kettenrads cheap and fast, and have a good capturing rate. They are also weak and defenseless, and have serious issues with jeeps. What a Panzer Elite player does have is a very mobile main force that can repair itself in the field with Half-tracks loaded with Panzergrenadiers. A Panzer Elite player can quickly defend his Kettenrads against enemy units by speeding across the map, and then going back to harassing enemy units within a very short period of time.

"My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either." - George S. Patton

The heavier factions have to adapt to these light and agile factions by sticking to one side of the map. This is because they either have frail capturing units (Pioneers) or not enough of them (British). Wehrmacht players must send their pioneers to one side of the map if they want a fair chance of taking territory. Enemy engineers will pick them off with relative ease, so Wehrmacht players have learned to keep their Volksgrenadiers and machine guns close by to defend their Pioneers. You should note that Wehrmacht players need to actually split up their pioneers against a British player, as if they focus on the same side as the British players they are likely to get overwhelmed by Recon squads. The Wehrmacht player should take advantage of the fact that the British opponent can only take a few points on the map, while leaving the rest to your Pioneers to capture. Wehrmacht players have good opportunities to harass however, as if they manage to push back an American player's Riflemen (not terribly difficult with Bunkers, Volks, and MGs) They can go for the kill on a vulnerable opponent by taking his cut-off point and camping it with Machine Guns, Bunkers, and Volks. An American player will have a very hard time dislodging his enemy from his cutoff point if he gets fully established, simply because of how well the Whermacht enemy can dig in on important points on the map.

The same idea goes for the British, but to an even greater extreme. The British were designed to operate with less map control than than other factions, but with more sheer power. It is pretty hard to harass with the British, as their capping power is quite limited to weak officers and Recon squads, which are not very numerous or cheap. A British player can launch a devastating cut-off attack if given the initiative, and can camp your cutoff point much harder than anyone else and for much less resource cost. In addition, the British trucks secure points on the map making side switching difficult without weapons to take the trucks off points you want to capture, weapons that can dislodge a truck are often weapons you don't have readily available early game.

I'll end this article and say that harassment is one of the core elements of warfare, battles are won when you wear your enemy down and give him no rest. If you can manage to successfully harass your enemy you will have him weary while you are strong, you may have his economy struggle while yours thrives, you can tire him while you keep up your strength. I will end with this quote from our friend Sun Tzu.

"Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible
as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams;
like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew;
like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more."- The Art of War chapter 5

May not be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit written permission of Steven "Suprise" Uray.

The Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess FISHING!!!

Every Zelda game has its puzzles and most of the time they are intricate, but there is one thing that I'm currently hating from start to end. And by the picture above you might of guessed what it is, fishing. I know I can finish the game quite fast and that it'll be among my favorite games, I know all of that because I've seen gameplay and reviews, yet I cannot stand more than two minutes trying to catch fish for the cat. It has to be one of dumbest assignments in the Zelda games, either that, or I'm truly not in the mood to get this fish for the cat! It's truly annoying that I catch some fish and the game tells me they're not fat enough, maybe, just maybe, I haven't played Zelda in a long while. Well, maybe it's time to play Assassins Creed.

RelicOnline down/or seriously bad.

My smurf hasn't been able to go up in rank at all, I beat two level 8s with the new factions ! And Relic Online seems to be down, and when I'm playing a game the majority of players drop, this is insane, RO hasn't been stable ever since the release of Company of Heroes beta, that is yet another reason why Company of Heroes' popularity hasn't increased, well, for now I can wait for it to be fixed and at least it isn't GameSpy.

Mentoring DRAGONzer0.

Replay of the game

Now I have only played around 10 games since I came back to playing Company of Heroes, however, I think this one is the one most entertaining of all so far, it is an early close game and then it becomes into many skirmishes. I discussed with my mentee the need for quick-response in the situation of grenades and the positioning of his troops. I came to the conclusion that grenades need to be accommodated to your opponent, say you are playing someone who knows how to evade the "obvious" trajectory of your grenade then you will have to throw it to the place he is most likely to move towards ( usually the right or the left ). In the end, the more you know about your opponent, the more likely you will find out his weaknesses.

Adaptability by Steven "Suprise" Uray

“Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” –Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter 4

In Company of Heroes adaptability is essential to victory. In one sentence, it can be summed up with negating your opponent’s advantages. If you can learn to master it perfectly you put defeat behind you because you are ready for anything the game, or your opponent can throw at you. It is my goal to teach you how to adapt in any circumstance that you will find in CoH, and you will learn to capitalize on what your opponent does – no matter what “super-over-powered-completely-unbeatable-strategy” he is using. The truth is that in any remotely well designed game there is no sequence of actions that will allow you to win no matter what your opponent does. A player wins in strategy by forcing his opponent into a series of actions that are going to make him lose. Just like a game of chess is over many moves before the last one, so is CoH. There are certainly imbalances in CoH, but there is no magic mixture of units that can beat any other unit mixes, equal resources provided. Some units do their job too well, but it is your job to take that advantage away from your opponent. How will his horde of Marders beat your horde of AT infantry? How will his Commandos or Fallschrimjagers beat your tanks?

“To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” –Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter 4

This quote means that you can secure yourself against being beaten by making sure you are prepared for anything, but you must actually win by exploiting what your opponent does. Basically, what you need to do is play the game so you force your opponent down a path he can’t win with. A good example of this is by gaining fuel control you decide where you tech up, you don’t get forced into it. It is crucial you adapt to what your opponent does, but you actually initiate the cycle of adaptation by forcing your opponent to adapt first, and then you capitalize on his initial adaptation with one of your own. You need to force your opponents hand and then adapt, not have your hand forced and your opponent adapt to you. This helps you change the battlefield so that you don’t get stuck in a hole that you can’t get out of. It is entirely possible to win without initiating the first cycle of adaptation, but much harder. My goal is to teach you how to win in both cases in case something goes wrong (which is very likely to happen, this is warfare).

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - George S Patton

If in this example you are the American faction, playing against a Wehrmacht opponent and you have control of both fuels. In this situation you decide if you want to get upgraded Rifleman or rush a Quad or even a Crocodile. Your opponent is forced into either teching to tier 2 (and thereby forfeiting a fast tier 3), which counters your upgraded Rifleman) because if a Quad comes out too quickly he won’t have any way to respond. This is something you can use to your advantage because if you think he is worried about you getting tanks you can get snipers and upgraded rifleman – the perfect counter to a T2 army. Your opponent will probably adapt to this and ease up on buying anti-tank to increase his chances in the game vs. your infantry strong army. This is where you spring your trap because all along you meant for him to do this and now you have a crocodile tank out because you still controlled the fuel. This doesn’t sound much like adapting, and it really is not because you force your opponent into something– but the point is to show a good example of how you trap your opponent and force him into a hole he can not possibly hope to climb out of.

Now it is going to be a rare game where you manage to defeat your opponent without altering your plan at all. The key to adaptation is to realize that victory is your only goal all along – you give your opponent a slight push to force his hand and then you punish him for showing that hand. What you do is force your opponent to make a decision like going tier 2, or tier 3, and then you purchase what units you need to defeat what your opponent bought. Adaptability in CoH is achieving victory no matter what circumstances affect the battlefield. These are often hard to fore-see before the fight begins no matter how much you play and how many replays you watch. Whatever happens, you need to be able to make up traps for your opponent dynamically – not just watching what the ‘pros’ do or using pre-programmed responses. Always remember that you are never in the exact same situation as anyone else, and no one else will ever be in your exact same situation as you so trying to use the same tools as someone else to solve your problem is going to be disastrous.

Next we are going to focus on the ‘shit hits the fan’ side of adaptation. It obviously takes more skill to successfully pull this off than making a strong first move and simply riding out your opponent’s attempted counters. What happens after all, if you get in a situation where your attempt at a strong first move is a failure? Or you get pushed into making a permanent decision? Here is an example: you trying to force your opponent on to the left side of Angoville by taking control of the bottom right-hand side house (you are top, your opponent is bottom) and you take the house but your opponent has taken the top-right hand side house and cut you off. You both have each other cut off from the right hand side, so do you try to push him off your cut-off point to get the ‘blood flowing’ again? Do you try to link up by the left hand side to negate the advantage of your opponent’s strong position on your cut-off point (which has now lost its advantage as you are not really cut off)? There are technically millions of moves that you can execute now, but only a few optimal ones (meaning you’re massing your troops in the strongest formations and distributions).

Remember, you want to negate your opponent’s advantage of having the left-hand side and cutting you off on your right-hand side by taking away the actual cut-off. This can be done by linking your territory up with a few strategic points. He can move his forces to try and cut off your new route of supply, but then you can take back the buildings guarding your original resource route. He can move a small amount of forces to the new route, while keeping a few men in the crucial houses so you can’t move in there. Now he is split and provided you have all your forces together, you can fight him off at your new link-up route. This should be easy, as he does not have all his men in one place and you do (provided an even battle at this point) you will win by a landslide. 5 Rifleman Squads vs. 3 Volksgrenadier Squads means that the American player will win not just with two Rifle Squads left, but somewhere around 4 relatively healthy ones. Now the American player (you) can go and take out the two remaining squads in the buildings with relative ease and take control of the map while your opponent sits in his base and regroups.

“And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter 6

Here is an example a little later on in the game, with you as the adapter. You are playing Wehrmacht on the bottom of Angoville, and your opponent as Americans on the top. Your opponent has controlled the fuel the entire game up to this point (about 7 minutes into the game) and his absence of Rifleman upgrades tells you that he is rushing an anti infantry impact unit (most likely a quad). You do not have the fuel to beat him to tier 3 or even match him – but you have had two high munitions and a medium munitions connected almost the entire time. You should have enough fuel to get to T2 and pump out some grenadiers with Panzershreks. This negates practically any advantage your opponent had in rushing a Quad, as it can only stay in combat for around 10-15 seconds before it is forced to retreat against even one Panzershrek. The Grenadiers also help out against Riflemen, and with a bit of veterancy they will eat even fully upgraded Riflemen alive. By negating your opponent’s advantage you take the initiative and now get to attack, as opposed to being forced to try and fend off your opponent’s advances without being over-run.Now let’s say shit has really hit the fan and you don’t have enough munitions for more than a single Panzershrek. This may be enough to fend off armored cars but will have a hard time against two Quads, or even a supported Quad and M8. You will need to get a PaK gun out as manpower-only anti tank, because you don’t have the munitions to invest in a more rounded solution (grenadiers with shrecks do well against both Riflemen and armor, the PaK does not). It is a classic example of negating your opponent’s advantages.

It is also important to remember that you should adapt to the map and terrain as well. Don't forget what I have taught you about negating the enemy's advantages and maximizing your own. It is also important to remember that your opponent is likely to adapt to your strategy, even if your strategy is just an adaption to what he did. Remember to strike while your iron is hot, if you have the initiative you need to milk it for all its worth, because when your opponent counters you'll lose ground. In the end this cycle is about maximization/minimization. Maximize your time that you have with your superior (adapted) forces, and minimize your opponent's time when he has hard counters on his side.

May not be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of Steven "Suprise" Uray.

Current strategy with Allies(Americans).

From reading most of the chat and some gamereplays.org I've realized that the majority of people claim that Rangers are overpowered/just too strong, that comes to me as a surprise since I've been away and they always were horrible. Frankly I've always loved armored cars, the m8s mined and poof, however, now I've noticed that they take longer to drop the mine, which makes suicide mines very inefficient, also making a big part of my suicide m8 strategy obsolete. So, in conclusion we end up with airborne, but I never have been a fan of paratroopers or airborne, so we'll stick to the infantry with rangers and see what results they yield us. Rifles->Rangers->Shermans->Upgun. Let's see how this one works out, if you have any suggestions feel free to comment on it, or if you have any replays you'd like to get reviewed.

Configuration...

My key-configuration is the default hotkeys, but when I was playing Dawn of War, the grid configuration saved me a lot of trouble. You can check out the grid hotkeys here . I just recently built my custom-pc which is very good at running the game at high specifications, but don't worry, even on low settings everything is fine. Micromanagement isn't all that in Company of Heroes, but a well-micromanaged army can defeat a bad-micromanaged one.

Introduction....

I hate introductions! But here it goes, this blog is basically another project to launch articles and tips for my mentees or other passionate Company of Heroes and gamers combined!

Se habla español!