[1.2] The downside to armor tree

[damocles]

This replay shows a flaw when allied players choose to forego the tank depot and rely purely on off-map call-ins for their tank support.

at about 2/3 into this game, I thought I was a goner for sure. I was losing territory, VPs, and men left, right, and centre. I just managed to scrape up to tiger aces and get one out, and fortunately for me, the lack of shermans allowed my ace to run riot, obliterating everything. If the allied player had a single sherman, I don't think I would have won this game, but fortunately he was more interested in calliopes and using raid to snag points.

http://forums.relicnews.com/images/replays/Semois (2).gifReplay Name: semois flipflopper
Map: Semois (2)
Filename: 2p_semois.2006-10-23.13-53-53.rec

Allied players: Avaricia (http://coh.relicnews.com/stats/search.php?player_name=Avaricia)
Axis players: Damocles (http://coh.relicnews.com/stats/search.php?player_name=Damocles)

Download (http://forums.relicnews.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6711)

[SmellyTerror]

...but a Calliope *is* a Sherman - it just has a stonking great artillery piece strapped on.

Edit: and having watched it - dear god, where to start. He built not one single AT gun the whole game. He saw Stugs, and he built another AC. WTF?

You destroyed his first motor pool, and then killed the engineers building the second. He then sat the new engineer next to the half finished motor pool for ten minutes. He didn't think to try finishing it until you had another stug in his base. What on earth was he spending his fuel on?

Over and over again he built new riflemen instead of reinforcing depleted, experienced ones. Did he reinforce at all during the game? I don't think so - half-dead units just sat out in the middle of nowhere until they got picked off.

And when he had a Calliope and you had pretty much nothing left, did he press his advantage? No. He used it to cover VPs!!! ZOMG. And he had more than 400 points at the time. Astounding.

With two Calliopes facing a single Tiger Ace (yes, not a good position), did he use one to flank? Hell no. Did he repeatedly turn his rear armour to it? Oh yes, yes he did.

Terrible Allied play. Just terrible.

...and one tip for you: wire takes vastly less time to lay than sandbags. Use wire to block at the start, not sandbags. That engineer should have been capping points, not spending an extra minute just because you wanted sand instead of wire.

[damocles]

I sometimes use wire, and sometimes sand. Some allied players will happily spend resources on the wire cutter upgrade so that they can come in from the bottom areas where I don't defend much. By using sand, sure it takes longer, but they can't pass it till they have armor which gives you some breathing time and lets you focus your units on the west side of the map.