Company of Heroes 2

Azza

Sequel to the best game of 2006 and the best RTS ever made (my opinion) has been revealed in the latest edition of PC gamer.

Set on the Eastern front with the player playing as the Russians.
Weather will play a factor, with snow providing cover as well as hindering mobility.
Relic Games are once again at the helm.

Due for release in 2013.

I'm hype.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-03-company-of-heroes-2-revealed

gizmo

Varik

Really wished the had added the Russians and Japanese/Italians instead of that last expansion which was ok but i would have preferred playing with a new side rather than limiting the choice to Germans or some other Germans.

pixelburp

These people won't be happy!
http://www.easternfront.org/

It's absolutely brilliant news though - easily the best RTS game in modern times, it brought so many fresh ideas to the RTS table (ironically in one of the more overused game settings) and was just a blast to play.

Azza

Had a quick gander at the PC Gamer preview.

Single player campaign will be told through the eyes of a War Corrospodent reporting on battles and the failings of the communist ideology.

Looks like the single player campaign will start at the Battle of Stalingrad and end with the Battle of Berlin.

Core gameplay will remain very similar to COH 1. They ruled out significant changes like DOW 2 had from DOW 1, although they where considered.

Line of sight has been tweaked, you can only see what your troops can see, you can no longer see behind round buildings and walls just becase you had troops close to them.

Economy will work similar to COH 1. I.E territory control for resources.

pixelburp

Fantastic news: why change a winning formula.

Azza

Varik wrote:

Really wished the had added the Russians and Japanese/Italians instead of that last expansion which was ok but i would have preferred playing with a new side rather than limiting the choice to Germans or some other Germans.

The orginal game was set in France in 1944, the Italians had surrendered by that stage. Further more the Italians had less effective weapons, equipment and tanks and less variety in them. Would of been difficult to make them a fully fleged faction with out making there actually weapons and tanks alot better than they where or giving them fictious weapons.

The Japanese where also drastically different. Firstly they would of looked out of place in COH's European setting. To recreate the type of war that was fought in the Pacific, they would have had to develop a tropical setting and implement jungle warfare. Naval warfare played a large roll in the war in the Pacific something that's not featured in the COH. Like the Italains the developers would have to take liberties with Japanese tanks and equipment if they wanted to a faction that could take on the allies.

I think for these reasons they stuck with the factions they did in COH:OF

Incidently the British where a terrible faction. PE where okay. Still peferred the 2 orginal factions.

Varik

The servers are down for the first game now, spent a bit of time there trying.

Sephiroth_dude

This is fantastic news,today is a good day,elder scrolls mmo and now coh2

pixelburp

Azza wrote: »

[...]
I think for these reasons they stuck with the factions they did in COH:OF

Incidently the British where a terrible faction. PE where okay. Still peferred the 2 orginal factions.

Naw, the PE were much worse imo than the British; being the ultimate turtle-faction with unbelievably slow units, the Brits were fairly limited & once you breached their lines I found them easy to dispose of. They were a fairly interesting take on the turtle mechanic

On the other hand, I lost count the number of times I got smacked by PE players rushing masses of upgraded infantry / tier 1 units. Very spammy faction in my view & felt against the tone of the series. Agree overall though yes, the first two factions were perfectly balanced.

Thinking about it though just makes me want to fire the game up again & enjoy some multilplayer round

degrassinoel

did anyone else think CoH was brilliant but all the expansions were utter crap?

Azza

I remember when Opposing Force first came out the PE trashed the Americans but the British beats both PE and Wehr.

Not sure what the state of balance is like now but the Brits had so much bullcrap, like a glider that crushed whole armies as it was landed on top of you, Commando's that did insane damage with a whole load of stupid abilites that made them impossible to supress. Alot of that should be fixed but they where still a horrible faction to play against.

Dreadfull sim city design to them, pretty much universally loathed when the game came out. Could just turtle up on high resource points and you couldn't push them off it because it had become there damn base.

Overall I didn't like the factions in COH:OF near as much as the orginal.

Tales of Valor was more a single player expansion and not a very good one.

Sierra Oscar

Excellent stuff . . . I am still playing CoH online from time to time - fantastic series.

cherryghost

The original is one awesome game with many awesome mods. We still have it on the top of our LAN games whenever we meet up

ED E

*does a little dance*


YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Even though I've always been terribad at CoH

Kiith

Relic? Make Homeworld 3 god dammit! Please!!

Happy with this news too though.

Maximilian

Kiith wrote: »

Relic? Make Homeworld 3 god dammit! Please!!

Happy with this news too though.

I was about to say the same thing. Still, great news.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

degrassinoel wrote: »

did anyone else think CoH was brilliant but all the expansions were utter crap?

yeeeeeeeeeep

loved the main game, one of the expansions wasn't too bad if I remember properly but the other 2 were awful

Azza

There was only 2.
Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor.

OF was okay, but ToV wasn't great.

Twilightning

I wish they'd focused their efforts more on Dawn of War III but I'll be fine with this too, I liked Company of Heroes. Relic took a lot of cuts to their team though. Patches for Dawn of War II Retribution have stopped completely because the balance team was chopped.

degrassinoel

Twilightning wrote: »

I wish they'd focused their efforts more on Dawn of War III but I'll be fine with this too, I liked Company of Heroes. Relic took a lot of cuts to their team though. Patches for Dawn of War II Retribution have stopped completely because the balance team was chopped.

yeah that and their WH40K MMO was sh1tcanned too. Shame, would have given that a shot too

pixelburp

Azza wrote: »

I remember when Opposing Force first came out the PE trashed the Americans but the British beats both PE and Wehr.

Not sure what the state of balance is like now but the Brits had so much bullcrap, like a glider that crushed whole armies as it was landed on top of you, Commando's that did insane damage with a whole load of stupid abilites that made them impossible to supress. Alot of that should be fixed but they where still a horrible faction to play against.

Dreadfull sim city design to them, pretty much universally loathed when the game came out. Could just turtle up on high resource points and you couldn't push them off it because it had become there damn base.

Overall I didn't like the factions in COH:OF near as much as the orginal.

Tales of Valor was more a single player expansion and not a very good one.

From what I recall, I'm fairly sure they patched out the killer gliders think generally they were toned down. They were fairly high cost for that late stage in the game & didn't see them often once their glider's power was reduced.

Horrible to play against yes, games against them became wars of attrition, but more often than not a Brit would only have about 1/3 of the map (I don't think they had the manpower to keep all a map pegged down) & be trapped by any half-decent PE/German player (like me )

Azza

A Brit player only needed a third of the map as long as it contained one of the high resource points that allowed him to tech up which he could do cheaper than his opponent, and as it was his base, he could not be forced from it or cut off from it even for a small time. One third map control for the Brit was the same as another faction having 50%, they dominated multiplayer games for the first year or year and a half of Opposing Front's multiplayer.

Sephiroth_dude

are they still releasing patch for coh?

Azza

I don't think so, they did release a patch last year with major balance changes. Was in a beta for a long time before it was released.

Still they supported the game for 5 years, which is pretty good. Game got over a dozen patches.

Incidently for anyone who doesn't have the orginal game, its free with the latest edition of PC Gamer magazine.

Some more COH 2 news.
Maps will be bigger to emphasize the scale of combat on the Eastern front.
Dynamic fire. Can set fire to buildings which will eventually case them to collapse.

Sephiroth_dude

Azza wrote: »

I don't think so, they did release a patch last year with major balance changes. Was in a beta for a long time before it was released.

Still they supported the game for 5 years, which is pretty good. Game got over a dozen patches.

Incidently for anyone who doesn't have the orginal game, its free with the latest edition of PC Gamer magazine.

Some more COH 2 news.
Maps will be bigger to emphasize the scale of combat on the Eastern front.
Dynamic fire. Can set fire to buildings which will eventually case them to collapse.

everytime they released a patch something else broke

pixelburp

Yeah the patches for CoH were notoriously inconsistent and while they usually fixed 3 things, they'd end up critically breaking one. Seem to remember the German armoured car becoming massively powerful in one patch.

Azza wrote:

A Brit player only needed a third of the map as long as it contained one of the high resource points that allowed him to tech up which he could do cheaper than his opponent, and as it was his base, he could not be forced from it or cut off from it even for a small time. One third map control for the Brit was the same as another faction having 50%, they dominated multiplayer games for the first year or year and a half of Opposing Front's multiplayer.

First year perhaps, but (and only going by memory and my own matchup stats) the Brits became a very unpopular faction to play as; if you kept them off fuel points and harassed their flanks, there was very little a Brit could do to get lost points back because by Tier 2/3, they had little to be aggressive with. Not disagreeing with you, but their wonkiness was a little overstated, probably due to their turtling nature; the natural kryptonite of any RTS'er

Azza

Offical annoucement coming this monday from Relic Games.

Some promo material

weiland79

What a great day!

Away for a dirty weekend with the wife, Cup final day! (c'mon da Blues)

And to top it all off i wake up to the news that the game i would have on a deserted island is getting a sequel!

:pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

Azza

Offical annoucement from THQ

http://www.thq.com/uk/company-of-heroes-2/go/article/view/homepage_article/257981/company_of_heroes®_2_announced

Not much new info about it but it will be the first game to run on the Essence 3.0 Engine (COH games where on Essence 1.0 and DOW 2 games where on Essence 2.0).

Out early 2013.

Here's some pics I found online.

pixelburp

The latest PC Gamer had an elaborate preview, that contains several screenshots, including the ones above. Worth having a look for.

BlitzKrieg

Just so everyone knows, the original is now only £2 on steam this weekend or if you want the whole series its £8. Its a bloody steal!

Azza

All 3 Company of Heroes games cost €4.99 on steam at the moment, great deal.

pixelburp

Wow; unbelievable value - you can't argue at that price. I presume if it's still for sale that you can still login to the multiplayer hub?

On another note - whatever happened Company of Heroes: Online? That sunk spectacularly didn't it?

BlitzKrieg

Azza wrote: »

All 3 Company of Heroes games cost €4.99 on steam at the moment, great deal.

huh thats odd.

in the uk version its £5.39 for all of them.

weird situation where its actually cheaper in euros then sterling.

Varik

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

huh thats odd.

in the uk version its £5.39 for all of them.

weird situation where its actually cheaper in euros then sterling.

Already own them but Relics didn't do a good job with accounts/downloads but would still have the account problems.


Have time to think about it in any case.

pixelburp

So I decided to have a go at multiplayer CoH1 for the first time in ... well, years really when I thought about it. Given all the talk of the sequel it seemed appropriate.

I quickly remembered why I both loved and hated the game. Still as great to play as ever, much more satisfying than SC2 is. Amazingly the problem with players intentionally dropping games still persists, I 'lost' a few games because of players doing that.

I played as the Brits & while overall they have balanced things, turtling as the Limeys is no longer a legitimate option; it just invites onto you the various upgrades & units that'll wreck your Sim City. PE's still as spammy as ever, but the Brit units are now faster. Fast cromwells is a sweet tactic

Sierra Oscar

The only beef I have with CoH 1 at the moment is that it can take an age to get into a game that actually starts! So many people hopping from game to lobby.

Sephiroth_dude

Is the russian front mod still going?

pixelburp

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Is the russian front mod still going?

http://www.easternfront.org
1.6 release; I've played around with it & it's very good - they completed the Russian side & were working on a new German faction when CoH2 was announced.
Nothing's official on their site, but a quick glance at their forums suggests they'll keep working on the mod for now & decide what to do after CoH2 comes out.

pixelburp

A preview popped up on 'de internet:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/22/first-look-company-of-heroes-2/

It has a couple of new screens in it: it's fairly wordy & goes into detail about the atmopshere / SP campaign's aims, but some interesting points came out about the (new) gameplay mechanics; for instance there'll be proper line of sight this time, where even smoke and fallen trees will change & obscure your view.

promethius42

Sounds good, I am definitely looking forward to this one.

Kerryairsofter

Did any one see the interview were they said this game will be more focused on the infantry i hope its not going to take away from the tanks ?

Sephiroth_dude

Kerryairsofter wrote: »

Did any one see the interview were they said this game will be more focused on the infantry i hope its not going to take away from the tanks ?

Where did you see that?

Kerryairsofter

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Where did you see that?

Gamereplays have a link to the vid somewhere on there page

pixelburp

Kerryairsofter wrote: »

Did any one see the interview were they said this game will be more focused on the infantry i hope its not going to take away from the tanks ?

So was CoH1; tanks were strategy/game changers, but 90% of your forces were squad & infantry based.
I saw the interview anyway and I think what they meant was the SP campaign would focus on the personal stories of those who fought in the war, not that the gameplay would be more infantry focused than previously.

De-emphasizing tanks in game set during the most tank-centric threats of ww2 would be kind of daft anyway. Plus, hands-on previews from game journos have talked about the hot tank action going on, so it's all good.

Kerryairsofter

pixelburp wrote: »

So was CoH1; tanks were strategy/game changers, but 90% of your forces were squad & infantry based.
I saw the interview anyway and I think what they meant was the SP campaign would focus on the personal stories of those who fought in the war, not that the gameplay would be more infantry focused than previously.

De-emphasizing tanks in game set during the most tank-centric threats of ww2 would be kind of daft anyway. Plus, hands-on previews from game journos have talked about the hot tank action going on, so it's all good.

Oh sweet thanks for the reassurance

Eggy Baby!

Hopefully they don't go too OTT with the Russians as most games tend to do

Azza

Some more screenshots





And a teaser trailer that sets the stage. But alas no in game footage.

Sephiroth_dude

cool trailer,wish they'd give us a release date/recommended specs

pixelburp

The screenshots don't exactly look like a massive leap from the previous engine used in CoH1. I suspect if your machine runs the first without bother, it will for the second.