Company of Heroes balance problems??

[frozentundra123456]

I recently purchased the Tales of Valor Expansion for Company of Heroes for half price from Steam. I know nearly everyone loves the game and I played it before and liked it too.

However, now it seems very unbalanced when playing a skirmish against the computer. I have been playing as British against the Germans. I hate to admit it, but I was playing against an EASY computer player, just to get reacquainted with the game. Even with this, some of the computer units seem almost invincible. For instance one squad of german infantry occupied a slit trench. I shot them at point blank range with four tanks, including a mortar tank with basically no effect. This must have gone on for at least ten minutes of constant bombardment from four tanks before I finally killed the squad. Are you kidding me???
Also, you can shoot an antitank gun at point blank range over and over with a tank with little effect, while one or two shots from the gun will take out your tank.

I know the game is not "realistic" to what would happen in real life, but this seems to be very unbalanced to me. It is like the game totally requires a certain unit to destroy units of a certain type, no matter how overwhelming ones other forces are. Has anyone else noticed this aspect of the game?? Is my download glitched somehow, or does the game just play this way?
I understand the concept of one unit countering another, but this seems really crazy.

 

[AmberClad]

You need to understand weaknesses and tactics.

Slit trenches - Fire-based attacks, incendiary grenades, and snipers will quickly kill the occupants of trenches

Anti-tank guns - They have a shield that protects them from attacks from the front. Either flank them with your tanks, or use a grenade or sniper to kill the crew

 

[Lonyo]

Everyone complains that everything is overpowered against everything else.

The units weren't invincible, you were just totally ineffective at killing them due to your unit choices.
AT guns are supposed to be difficult for a tank to kill, otherwise they would stand little chance of killing a tank. Try sending in a squad of infantry and see what happens, or flank the AT gun. It only has a limited firing arc.
Next you'll say it's unfair that an MG unit can pin a squad of troops.

Sending in a unit against something meant to kill it isn't going to end well. Trying to attack a unit in some defences meant to stop that type of attack isn't going to be productive.

 

[Elcs]

Cover, Directional Armour and Hard Counters.

Simple additions into the RTS flavour of game which when tied into a familiar WW2 scenario come out with a much more realistic and tactical game. (of course not 100% accurate but it is closer to real life than most games)
Tanks are weak against anti-tank weapons but attacking one head on is much more difficult. It's front armour is much more resistant to damage than the sides and the back especially. Amberclad mentions the specific counters for your queries but to summarise you need to understand the units weakness to certain damage types and understand where they are weakest. That is the key.

 

[Maximilian]

No offense but if you cant beat the easy AI then you are in no position to moan about balance.

 

[Kromis]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
No offense but if you cant beat the easy AI then you are in no position to moan about balance.

 

[Fox5]

The British are a poorly designed army that defies the conventions of the game. Rather than giving them reasonable balance, they make them overpowered in some areas and way deficient in others.

British trenches give by far the best cover in the game (95% damage reduction), with the only real weaknesses being fire or a well-placed grenade. Unfortunately for the British, they have neither. As the British, you never want to lose a trench to the enemy in a valuable area. Either build trenches in positions where they can't be used against you, or delete the trench (can only be done while you have it occupied). In general though, don't give up trenches.

The way the game works, the better protection cover something has (and infantry armor counts toward their cover), the less effective normal arms are and the more effective fire based weapons and grenades are.

There's red cover, which allows for the fastest movement but you take slightly more damage.
Yellow cover gives a moderate increase in defense, say 25%.
Green cover gives either 50% or 75% defense increase. Buildings are close to green cover but slightly inferior and make garrisoned units more vulnerable to explosives and tank rounds. This means that the sandbags you're allowed to build anywhere as the Americans or Wermacht are better cover than garrisoning a building as sandbags provide green cover.
Similar to trenches, an enemy can use your sandbags to their advantage. You can block this by building barbed wire on one side to prevent that side from being used.

The game is based on hard counters. You need to know what rock-paper-scissors match-up wins against what, in the most extreme cases (as you saw) even overwhelming forces won't win a bad match up.

For vehicles, there's both health and vehicle armor. Infantry AT weapons are typically high damage but low piercing weapons, though the german AT weapons have better piercing values in exchange for lower damage, and thus are very valuable if picked up by the Americans or British.
The American Ranger anti tank squad and British sappers with PIATs have the most highly damaging infantry AT weapons in the game, but the lowest piercing. This makes infantry AT extremely effective against lightly armored vehicles, but not against tanks. PIATs are an exception though, they have poor accuracy but since they fire up into the air like a mortar, they hit the top of the tanks. Most tanks in the game don't have thick top armor. Tanks always have the weakest armor in the rear.

Anti-tank guns are highly piercing weapons. Anything called a tank destroyer ha a highly piercing weapon. Most of the American and British tanks have high damage, large radius, low piercing rounds that work best against light vehicles and infantry, but not against tanks.
The Americans rely on AT guns and m10 tank destroyers to fight tanks.
The British rely on the AT gun emplacements and Sherman Fireflys to fight tanks.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Thanks Fox5 for the detailed reply and the other posters also. I can beat an easy computer, and in the original game it seemed quite "easy". I guess I just was wondering if anyone else had noticed the extreme counter issues.

Fox5, you seem to get the point of my original post. A friend of mine loves to play the British, but I don't like them at all. That is why the situation I mentioned was so absurd. I really wanted to throw in a grenade, but the British have no unit that uses them.

However, at the risk of being argumentative, isn't it rather crazy that a one grenade could have destroyed the squad in the trench, while literally hundreds of tank (and mortar) shells could not??

Again, I have played a lot of strategy games and understand the concept of one unit countering another. This just seem extreme. Also, many strategy games are criticized for following the rock, paper, scissors formula too closely these days, but I have never seen this mentioned about COH.

 

[AmberClad]

In real life, how would a tank kill entrenched troops when the barrel of the main gun can't even depress low enough to do anything other than cause a shell to go whizzing past their heads ?

At least that's the way I read the situation. I'm no expert on military history, so there might be other factors I'm not thinking of. Also, afaik, in real situations, tanks are supported by infantry. You don't just roll over the opposition by throwing tanks at them alone.

You can easily kill entrenched troops with a mortar - by using the incendiary mortar from the Panzer Elite's mortar halftrack. As the British, you have Churchill Crocodiles which have flamethrowers. But I'm also wondering how the Wehrmacht player managed to get trenches to begin with, unless the British player let them take it after he dug it.

 

[Daverino]

Tanks would usually destroy slit trenches by driving on top of them and turning 360 degrees in place. You really did not want to be in a slit trench with a tank bearing down on you.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: AmberClad
In real life, how would a tank kill entrenched troops when the barrel of the main gun can't even depress low enough to do anything other than cause a shell to go whizzing past their heads ?

At least that's the way I read the situation. I'm no expert on military history, so there might be other factors I'm not thinking of. Also, afaik, in real situations, tanks are supported by infantry. You don't just roll over the opposition by throwing tanks at them alone.

You can easily kill entrenched troops with a mortar - by using the incendiary mortar from the Panzer Elite's mortar halftrack. As the British, you have Churchill Crocodiles which have flamethrowers. But I'm also wondering how the Wehrmacht player managed to get trenches to begin with, unless the British player let them take it after he dug it.

The wermacht player would have taken an empty one. Still, the British losing a trench can be quite game ending as they have no effective way to deal with it outside of their special units. the Crocodile is a late, expensive, vulnerable unit down the rather sub-par tank commander path. The other option would be the Commando path, which is the best British path and they can be gotten relatively early. They have grenades, but recently the German infantry have received massive close combat upgrades which really hurts the commandos unless in the new Kangaroo armored transport.

And yes, in real life, tanks would just bury the troops in the trench.

 

[natebigdawg]

One thing I have not seen mentioned as general strategy is to simply...go around. Static defenses weakness such as Slit trenches is that you can simply avoid them. As long as it is not in a critical location (such as the middle of your base) why deal with the hassle until you have the proper counter unit?

CoH does a great job of emphasizing the need to hit the enemy in the weak spots and work on cutting of their supplies. I think the AI does a great job of doing that which annoys the heck out of me!