Company of Heroes 2

[The collapse of THQ] didn't help. I'll probably get shot for saying this, but the budget for CoH2 (not counting SEGA money) was about a quarter of the budget for the original game, and it had a MUCH shorter development cycle. Hell, DoW2 had a larger budget. It really didn't start until mid-2011 (stalled when the entire programming team and most of the artists had to pile on to Space Marine) and the original code base was somewhat gutted thanks to being re-purposed for Company of Heroes Online and then we had mass layoffs after Space Marine shipped, further gutting the company, then a steady trickle of "survivors" leaving what they (rightly) saw as a sinking ship for other, more secure companies.

Contrast that to the original which had a Blizzard-level budget and timeline, allowing for experimentation, iteration, and lots of polish, and high morale coming off the success of Dawn of War and THQ with stock riding high and money flowing.

Even with SEGA rescuing the studio this year and giving it four more months on the project, there's only so much you can do when the entire structure of the project was aimed at a February release. It did allow more polish time and bug fixing and it is a better product for having the extra time, but it was destined to be a limited sequel from the start.

So if you look at it from that perspective, I'd call a 80ish Metacritic score a success, and the team pulled off something close to a miracle.

That was a bit of bridge burning there, I'm sure, but I have the luxury of being able to speak up a bit, and the team really can't say this sort of thing for themselves.

Apparently someone with insider knowledge of Relic talking about COH 2 over on the penny arcade forums. Very sad to hear.

Russians tanks go like this.
T-70m light tank is used to take out light vehicles and infantry. Will take out scout cars and half tracks with ease. Its an impact tank that can be fielded before the enemy get there own tanks out. Can chase down and kill retreating infantry. Once enemy tanks are fielded it drops to a support role.

T-34/76. Ditto an impact tank that has a brief window where it can be fielded before a German tank can
and can force a decisive enemy retreat and loss of map control before they can field there tanks. Good against infantry

In a straight fight this will loose to every German tank in the game bar the Ostwind. Being cheaper the idea is to field 2 of this to every single tanks the Germans make. And then flank with one tank or use the ram ability to take out the single enemy tank.

T-34/85, has better armor and more firepower than a regular T-34 but costs more I'm not sure how it does it compared to the Stug III and Panzer 4.

SU-76M. Counter to light vehicles and is also an artillery unit. Not good against any enemy tanks unless it gets a side or rear flank

KV-8
Flamer tank. Purely anti infantry. Quite durable.

SU-85
Best anti tank unit the Russians have in terms of cost and availability. Powerful gun but lacks armor. Not much as a problem as this unit has 50% more range than most German tanks. Can easily kite and kill Stug's, Panzer 4 and Tigers. Will loose to a Panther in a straight fight but has a small range advantage over it, though maintaining that range is difficult because Panther is fast. But against Panther and Tiger you should be able to field 2 SU-85 to counter them. Russian players should look to slow German tanks with AT grenades which allow for easy kiting. Biggest threat is the slow ass Elephant tank which completely out ranges every tank Russian game with ease bar the ISU-152.

IS-2 should beat everything up to a Panther but loose to a Tiger or Elpehant, against them it needs additional support.

ISU-152. Not that tough but high damage with super range equal to that of the Elephant. Can used from a distance well out of enemy tank range to make mince meat out all enemy tanks but don't let the enemy tanks get near it.

Break down of some of the units and how they compare.

German Sniper Versus Russian Sniper Team

German sniper has a slightly higher rate of fire as well as re-cloaking quicker after each shot. Maintains cloak for a short while after leaving cover often allowing him to move and remained cloaked indefinitely.

Russian Sniper Team has the benefit of being two man team and is thus each better able to counter snipe the German sniper. The Russian sniper can also be placed in a scout car early on making him brokenly effective.

Snipers have 40 health, which is half that of a normal solider. The German sniper has double the body armor Soviet units have so in effect there equally tough to kill with small arms fire despite the Soviet Sniper being two man.

Due to the German units being smaller in size than Russian squads the Russian Sniper far more effective overall.

Maxim VS MG42

MG42 has superior arc of fire and surpresses faster.
Maxim does more damage, has a quicker set up and unset up time of 1 second compared to the MGS 42 3 seconds. Maxim having twice as many crew members making it twice as durable.

Maxim can walk into MG42 fire get suppressed and still deploy itself then over time beat out the MG42 at range, even if the MG42 is in green cover.
Maxim with vet 2 is extremely damaging.

Incendiary rounds ability in MG42 at vet 1 do double damage and have superior armor penetration. Good counter to hit the dirt.

Overall Maxim is better.

Mortars
German 81cm vs Russian 82cm
Both do equal damage and have the same range. The have the same area of effect as well.
German mortar has slightly higher rate of fire.
Russian mortar is twice as durable.
Russian mortar unlocks precision strike at vet 1 that fires a single mortar that does double damage.
German mortar unlocks counter barrage at vet 1, which automatically fire a barrage of mortars at enemy mortars and artillery. Counter barrage mortars do double damage.

Russian mortar again superior due to greater durability.

Russian 120 mortar does the same damage as regular mortars but has a much wider area of damage so it does not need to land as close. It also out ranges the German mortar.
Precision strike unlocked at vet 1 does 2 and a half times the damage as a normal mortar hit.

German mortar half track. Same damage, range and area of effect as normal German and Russian mortar but greater durability and cheaper, more mobile as well. Unlocks counter barrage at vet 1 but it does not get the double damage increase the regular mortar get with this ability.
Has an incendiary mortar ability that does damage over time.

Overall Russian 120mm mortar is best, followed by the German Half track mortar, then Russian 82mm mortar and the German 81 mortar least effective. Again due to smaller squad size the Germans have mortars are more of a threat to them than they are to the Russian.

Anti tank guns.
Pak-40 vs Zis-3
Pak has higher rate of fire.
At vet 1 pak unlocks the stun crew shot which temporarily disables Russians tanks allowing it to score more shots.
Each has the same range.
Zis-3 has wider arc of fire and an artillery mode to counter fixed defenses and infantry at long range.
Is also more durable the German anti tank gun due to crew being double size. Overall its a close match between them. Both weapons are a counter up to medium armor but struggle against heavy armor units.

Germans have Pak 43 fixed emplacement anti tank gun.
Can't move once built can only rotate.
Has a lot more range. Double the damage and well over double penetration of Zis-3 and Pak-40.
The interesting thing about this is that if you get line of sight with any unit the Pak 43 will fire through any obstacle, be it a treeline or a house. Massive threat to any Russian armor.

Link to patch notes.

http://community.companyofheroes.com/forums/company-of-heroes-2-discussion/topics/CoH-2-Changelog

Yeah that's fine. I normally shop on G2Play myself. With this game I pre-purchased on Steam to get beta access.

It is but only in custom games where you can select it in the options tab. Its not available in auto match against either human or A.I opponents.

You need to invite people to your custom game, as there is no lobbies.

The Soviets are the slightly more powerful faction at the moment but balance isn't too bad.

However the Soviets being slightly more powerful only applies to multi player. The reason the challenges are so tough is simply the sheers numbers they throw at you. In a multi player game the numbers will be more evenly balanced.

If you need advice for multiplayer tactics, purpose of units, counters etc I can help out with that.

One way of getting by Schildkroteberg the challenge mission on General difficulty is to build 2 MG's and a flamer upgrade for the first wave. Have the Pio wire off the 3 bridges at the start.

Fighting off the first wave isn't too hard. Build an additional MG or two for wave 2 and in conjunction with the wiring you should be able to control most access points in wave 2 by having 1 MG cover the point and a second MG further behind covering that MG and gradually falling back to HQ and reinforcing losses.

Wave 3 you want to do something similar but if you have vet MG's use the incendary rounds on the scout car that shows up. This wave brings russian mgs and the goal here is to towards the end of the wave leave one enemy MG alive indefinitely so you can farm resources and prepare for all the waves. This takes along time but since the single MG squad is no threat to the base and can be bypassed by your units your free to set up whatever defenses you want. You can literally farm resources for however long you want and prepare yourself for all the upcoming waves. You can lace the area in barbed wire, build dozens of bunkers with machines guns and medic stations, tech up and max out your pop cap. Its cheap and it takes along time but hey the enemy waves are cheap so what the hell.

By the way there is 7 waves in the that mission but there is 3 bonus waves as well after you complete the 7. :P