Company of Heroes 3

pixelburp

Thanks to Boards' new Search tool being quite poor, I'm not sure there was already a thread opened. What was arguably one of the best RTS games made, is finally getting a second sequel and TBH, much to my surprise. Between this and the C&C Remaster, the classic base-building RTS is getting a small renaissance.

So the big inclusion here looks to be a "dynamic" campaign map, the comparisons to Total War's own overworld view of things.

I loved the first CoH so much, and ploughed a tonne of time into it - even if I was never that good at it (always maxed out at around Lvl 10 in multiplayer). While like many, I never took to CoH2. The preview seems to talk big about the first game being the inspiration here, rather than the acknowledged, maligned sequel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_sNZLWPgaE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXzkutbAN0

Sephiroth_dude

I absolutely adored the first one , it was all I played for nearly two years , the sequel did not hold my attention at all, I think that might have been from burnout from the RTS genre in general though, I will definitely pick this up , I will need a new computer I think though.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118148074#Comment_118148074

As a turtler, I tended to gravitate towards the British, much to the occasional rage of opponents. They were such a brazenly defensive, dug in faction, but were perfect for a tactical coward like me.

Only briefly played CoH2 but IIRC their DLC was a little crappy? Think they added more factions on dribs and drabs.

pixelburp

For those interested, there's a Multiplayer "pre-alpha" available today; it's free to anyone who wants to try it out; which is nice.

degrassinoel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118153096#Comment_118153096

COH2's Ardennes Offensive was a brilliant DLC. Worth buying just for that tbh.

COH2 Multiplayer is brilliant, i've got nearly 3000 hours logged almost purely playing co-op in it. Great craic

Mr Crispy

Have you been playing the pre-alpha, @pixelburp?

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118252026#Comment_118252026

Haha, uhm, so TBH this thread has been acting more as a Public Service Announcement for those still holding a flame for RTS games. My PC is a potato, and through osmosis become a predominant Switch player (currently playing a RTS game; Northgard. lol) ☺️😂

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118255025#Comment_118255025

Ha! Similar story here. Hopefully someone with a good enough PC to actually play modern RTS games will enlighten us. 🤷‍♂️

KillerShamrock

I gave it a bash, there seems to be fps issues when panning, there are assets missing, it's all a bit janky but for a pre-alpha it's not bad. Seems like a mix of 1 and 2 never played the dawn of war games so don't know how much of an influence they are.

Played way too much coh 2 which I preferred to 1 any way. If it steers towards 2 a bit more I would be happy with that.

Mr Crispy

Sounds promising enough. I see there's a full sequel to Men of War on the way as well!

Sephiroth_dude

I downloaded it but it wouldn't work as the min graphics card is a 1070 or something, hopefully this won't be the case at launch.

pixelburp

And the award for "weirdest trailer to promote a RTS" goes to Company of Heroes; absolutely bizarre choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeiqt_E0KjU

pixelburp

New trailer; one that gives a better view of that Campaign Map. All looks like they're cribbing a fair bit from the Total War series - which is not a bad thing by any stretch. Wonder will this be Steam Deck compatible; I'd jump on the waiting list, if only for this game.

https://youtu.be/ro3YUfwta3Y

Sephiroth_dude

Liking the fact there is rail artillery!

Sephiroth_dude

Been delayed till Feb, gutted!

Mr Crispy

Ah poopsicles.

pixelburp

That's good IMO. Games always benefit from a few more months in the oven

Sephiroth_dude

Anyone else playing the multiplayer tech test?

Azza

Geez I forgot about the tech test, must try it.

Mr Crispy

Reviews are pretty good! There are some missteps (mainly with the campaign it seems) but overall it seems positive.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/company-of-heroes-3-review

https://www.pcgamer.com/company-of-heroes-3-review/

brady12

got it for half price on cd keys

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120268087#Comment_120268087

Same here! see you on the battlefield!

brady12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120268292#Comment_120268292

Yes sir 😄.

pixelburp

Man I wish my PC was able to play modern games; great to see the game is reviewing well, though seems like the Campaign map might be a bit of a PoS ... hopefully they can patch it into shape.

BKtje

Thanks for the tip re cdkeys.!

Loved the first (less so the second) but am dying for a good RTS to play. Hopefully this will scratch the itch.

Azza

Just had a quick play of the opening tutorial and a skirmish match. Yup its more Company of Heroes. I think I'll hold off with the campaign for a while and just get stuck into multiplayer in the next few days. Just need to finish off Elden Ring.

jobrien874ie

Looking forward to picking this up but between this and Hogwarts Legacy my list of games to play is full :D

BlitzKrieg

initial impressions of the italian campaign 'total war' campaign

The tutorial is useless and the world map is buggy.

Those are the two main cons.

Everything else is at minimum interesting, at best a breath of fresh air in the strategy genre.

So working from Best to worst

there is a shocking amount of variety in the mission types. And I dont mean they did what the Total War games did and drop a few Story missions here and there in the campaign. The actual dynamic encounters actually throw up a varied set of circumstances, based on where you fight and what sides are fighting etc to vary the encounters, The story missions play like good solid Company of hero single player missions, they expand, and throw in dynamics etc. All good. They feel a tad on the shorter/smaller side then COH 1 or 2 (but when you consider the overall length I think I can see why) But the skirmish battles. Which happen when two armies dynamically engage are also pretty good, sometimes it'll not be a victory point battle but instead a mission where you got to lock the opposing army into their base by grabbing all the points around their base and then holding it. Sometimes it's a ticket match but it's a race to just hold the majority of the map. Sometimes you've got no base but have to defend 2-3 key emplacements with a set number of units. I dont know if there are more, I think there might be as it could depend on your company that is fighting and I've almost been esclusively fighting with the airborne company (more on this further down)

There a fun variety of secondary objectives too, these are random objectives added to the missions you can do for extra experience. They range from challenges like getting X kills using mines to testing out an AT gun by killing enemy tanks to minimizing casualties. One mission even had a supply plane shot down overhead or a convoy of damaged german tanks on retreat are passed through the area.

There is also variety in your armies and abilities, both from experience and unlocks but also from the circumstances, fighting in an area with partisan forces will get you some partisan abilities and bonuses, fighting near the coast with a battleship off it will get you coastal artillery call is during the battle and so on. I'm still not 100% clear what generates what effects. Some missions I was given the support of a medical unit which meant I had a call in for medical half track. This also effects the germans, they sometimes get bonuses that change their army make up a bit.

The campaign throws a lot of variety at you too, It keeps dropping in potential missions all around you, designed to appeal to the 3 sides on the allied command (British general, American General and Italian Partisan leader) Doing these missions earns you loyalty from the side that benefits from it the most, The british like it when you capture porst, build defences and connect territories. The partisans like it when you support their attacks and bail out their forces when they get surrounded or drop them supplies. The american general likes it when you push forward and break through the german lines. These 3 sides give you boosts if they like you more. But certain actions will upset each side. Taking things slow lowers american loyalty. bombing or bombaring italy using ships or bombers diminishes Partisan support (which is a good touch) not sure what upset the brit yet, I guess I'm playing to his style.

Once you work out how it works, the campaign map actually has a lot of varied features. There is a lot you can do on the map, and a lot to watch out for. There are different type of emplacements you can build and the germans can build, some related to supply, some are defensive (AT guns for armoured companies, mg nests for infantry, AA batteries for dealing with aircraft) every place you capture actually has a bunch of upgrades you can add to them, they vary from ammo dumps to ports to hospitals to partisan towns. Objectives are both marked clearly and have clear turn timers on them if they are time sensitive. It's obviously not HOI deep, but a damn good base for a potential Company of Heroes Total War cross over in the future. It does feel there is a lot of nuance here, its just buried under a bad tutorial and some bugs.

The missions are blessingly quick as well as fun. Those varied missions are also currently designed to be completed quickly, while a normal out of campaign Skirmish match could take up to 30 minutes to complete by draining tickets. Here the missions are designed to go a lot quicker. So I've not run into the issue I have with Total War where I start skipping fights I dont want to bother with. Also because you are not really building up an army size, the game does encourage you to play the missions over letting ai autoresolve as the AI would say both sides are evenly matched but in game you can find yourself easily throttling the enemy. So I dont feel confident in letting the AI decide a fight.

The first ehh not sure aspect is while there are a lot of mechanics in the game I am worried the AI is not using them to their fullest or they've not been fully thought through. I have a single airborne company waay further north then my other companies, I pushed them up to answer a partisan call for support. They are still by a very thin margin in my territory so are still supplied, but because they are behind the german defensive line every turn they get attacked by another german unit trying to push them back. Because I keep winning each of these engagements and I get bonus xp for fighting the battle instead of auto resolving I've now got a super buffed up airborne unit on the frontline. There is no means to exhaust my unit unless they push me out of my territory but they wont. There is nothing stopping the germans from retaking the town I took and putting my infantry out of territory (and thus they start losing resources everyturn) but they dont, instead every turn they attack and I get a bit beefier. Now the last time they attacked they sent a much more experienced luftwaffe unit, that I still beat, so they may just get stronger with each battle, but currently I am still winning easily and getting very experienced off it. I think they need to put in some sort of exhaust mechanic if the same unit keeps getting attacked over and over. Also I'm not 100% the mechanic for draining companies outside their territory 100% works, I have had plenty of german AT guns refuse to go away even after I circumvented them and took the city behind them.

The tutorial is useless, both in that it doesnt really tell you the important bits of the campaign and it does appear to be a bit bugged. My first time through it did not explain detachments to me at all. When I reloaded because I felt I had snookered myself it did explain detachments. It does not give any warning or explanation for emplacements so you are incredibly likely to lose your first company by moving around a corner into the line of sight of 2 AT guns which pulverize you. It doesnt explain the ability to heal or repair yourself. Nor gives a clear explanation of how airports work pass the scout plane. I had to reload the game because as part of the tutorial the game intentional puts you over in population 26/25 (does this by gifting you transport planes after you secure the airfield) so if you lose one of your first two companies you cant replace them without sacrificing your battleship or airforce as well.

The map has bugs, annoying bugs involving destroyed units or pick ups getting 'stuck' and not being able to interact with them but they remain on the map. There are bugs with tutorial prompts not appearing, or a fighter unit disappearing because it got shot down but the animation showed it landing. With a bugged stuka stuck in one of my airfields and my own AA battery keeps shooting at the bugged stuka and not at the actual stukas flying over head. I think the germans are meant to be bombing me but they just circle over head, while some of their AT guns have shot through mountains at me. Put simply BUGS!

Getting pretty bad reviews on steam

BKtje

I absolutely love it, it's a great game. SOme bugs but nothing too bad.

BlitzKrieg

it does feel like a swing back to vanilla coh away from coh 2 which has upset a section of the player base

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120292642#Comment_120292642

I thought the fanbase broadly hated CoH2 though? Suppose there is always a cohort all the same, but didn't think it was especially voiciferous.

BlitzKrieg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120292855#Comment_120292855

There's a big contingent of players who picked up COH 2 well after Relic spent ages updating it so the state it was in when they played it was 'better'

Continued the campaign on sunday and I stand by 'most' of what I said earlier. I am still getting the occasional new bonus objective (steal a panzershrek was a silly one) and I did run into one new game mode (this one basically treated your units as tickets and any casualties you inflict or suffer lower the tickets, so it was a bit different mechanic wise). I do still think the different missions are company based as I got this with the British armour division and hadnt seen it with any other company.

But I am doubling down on the games biggest flaw is how it communicates things to you and how they affect the game + the bugs on the world map.

So its much more structured then you'd think as it actually introduces things with set deadlines in pretty rapid succession, Gustav line, Anzio Annie etc but if you are not where it thinks you should be then it all gets quite confusing as its telling you about things on the other side of the country (for example Anzio has a beach landing occur on it, and I'm told to rush to Anzio to support them, but at the time they told me this I had made almost no progress in the direction of Anzio. forcing me to skip and hop from port to ship to launch a company at anzio from the sea.) Then it has events that seem bugged, Anzio Annie is meant to be a nuisence constantly shelling your companies while active, but the animation is bugged so it only sometimes show it hitting a company. And it always plays the same voice message from the american general saying Anzio Annie is hitting our companies, so I confused for many turns what he meant as I didnt see the animation for ages nor noticed any substantial damage to my companies.

The worse offender has to be Monte Casino, where it gives you a tight deadline to take the monestary before its bombed to hell, but if you get troops over to it you cant attack. Turned out I had to click on the Monte Casino itself where it gave me a list of side objectives where I needed to do one before assaulting monte casino. Which naturally I did not know about at all And I am now rushing to finish one of them in a single turn so I can attack Monte Casino in the next turn.

On some positives the set missions get a lot better as you go further into the campaign. Potenza was a delight of a mission, there are some no build ones that pop up in certain situations.

But the granddaddy (so far) has to be Anzio. Proper difficult hard nose grind of a mission. I have not actually completed it yet. I foolishly sent my weakest company to Anzio (they were closest) and Anzio is a timed mission where the germans are dug in like ticks with multiple pak 88s and a tiger and a bunch of other tanks and horde of infantry both AT equipped and elite. the game also throws 3-4 bonus objectives (two of them timed) at you while also putting the whole mission on a timer as Anzio Annie shells your base constantly. I think 3rd time I'll get it, but its a genuinely big mission and highlights the frustration that there does not appear to be any mid mission saving in the italian campaign.

Which is dumb.

I look forwarding to silencing Annie tonight when I get back. I dont think any mission in COH 2 punished me as hard as this one.

BKtje

Ah that explains Anzio, I don't even know where it is and I keep getting told about those guns. I am currently ignoring the "objectives" for the most part. We'll see if it has a major impact.

With regards to not being able to save mid game, yes it's a pain. I'm playing on a fairly high difficulty level and sometimes I breeze through the skirmishes in minutes but yesterday I ended up doing a skirmish for over 80 minutes. It was fun and very challenging but midway through I wanted to stop but had to keep going or all that time would have been wasted!

BlitzKrieg

I'd be curious what changes for you when you eventually reach anzio because the game put a time limit in turns to do the anzio mission (like with monte casino) so I wonder how they change when you get to them later.

BlitzKrieg

3rd report and pretty much the same issues.

I finished the Italian campaign, the last mission is pretty cool, introduces a unique mechanic. Think final level of warcraft 3. Its genuinely a shame it's the only mission to use this mechanic, it's also a damn shame that you dont realise it's the last level, the game gives you the impression there is a small bit more to push on, but then it just ends. I dont know if this is because I had cleared out every other town before the final assault or if it just ends there every time.

It's a shame overall that the campaign basically ends when it feels the map side of things kick into high gear properly. I got the hang of jumping my infantry units around via paradrops to put out fires and quickly shipping my armoured columns up and down the coast. But by the time I got to gripes with this it was pretty much just mopping things up.

For the 3rd time in a row I can happily report that there are still EVEN MORE varied mission types in the skirmish, I had two more show up tonight, one of which was a cute opposite of an earlier one, which was kind of cool. Another was a rescue mission which I've only got once (I think it's tied to the special forces company which I didnt use much) And on top of that even more secondary missions, including one that just dropped a panther tank on me and another which coated the map in mines which was actually genuinely frustrating and was the only skirmish I outright lost because I kept losing key units to mines.

I can also report for the 3rd time that the same two big issues remain. Awful awful tutorials and map bugs. The final level of the game suffers from the same unclear explanation as Monte Casino, I reached it quite early in my playthrough but it refused to let me take the city, I couldnt work out why and as I had a bunch of secondary objectives I left it. When I came back and realised what I needed to do I spent ages preparing my lines to assault both objectives, but again like Monte Casino, you only need to do one. Very unclear. The game also runs to its own tune regardless of what you do in some aspects. I thought if I attacked Monte Casino before the bombing I'd get a different level to one after the bombing, but nope Once in the mission the monestary is still bombed by bombers prior to your mission start. So it feels like your decisions have little consequences beyond loyalty bonuses from the 3 characters and some bonus resources.

Speaking of the 3 characters, their bonuses are the worst. At least the US and UK general are. The Partisans are actually useful. The generals are just there to ruin your population cap as each have a loyalty bonus that gives you an extra unit every time you do X and at one point in the game I realised I was over my pop limit by 30 points. All because of these 'bonus' units. I had to go through the map salvaging all these units to bring my pop back under control.

And then there's the bugs. This time we had a mission disappear on me. It seems every character has a final loyalty mission and I had done both the generals and was waiting on the partisan, she then called in asking for help on a mission and I was like 'Yes this is it, last loyalty mission' moved my company up to the point, started the mission and it loaded an old mission I had done before. A side mission from earlier. I was confused. So I reloaded a save. But this time she didnt give me a loyalty mission so I kept on playing, then she said the same line again this time about a different town, so I moved to it, but she never gave me a mission. Eventually I took the town and she gave a 'Well done for sorting that out commander' response. Did I just skip the mission?

This was all very silly.

In the end I put 30 hours into it. I enjoyed it enough. It's got its problems but if it's something Relic want to follow up on then I think something in the future where they might end up doing something similar to Immortal empires in Total War where they add multiple theatres and then merge them all into one World War 2 maps would be pretty cool.

On to the africa korps campaign and then finally perhaps some multiplayer.

I guess that's my money's worth.

brady12

Only starting dabble in this now . Loving the campaign so far .