[2.601] USA (Me) vs Wehrmacht on Angoville

[GrenadierSquad]

This is just a replay for my thread I posted about not being able to get better at the game which can be found in the general section of Company of Heroes.

Just some additional info: I don't normally use mines (Should I use them more?), but I saw I had quite a bit of munitions so I decided to use them for some reason, and.. well you'll see what happens. I know my timing is pretty poor on getting stuff out, I got my man points to around 600 or so maximum, which is pretty bad I know. Getting my builds up at a certain time was pretty slow, I don't really have a rough idea of when I should be getting them up, and I kind of think ''Should I spend the fuel on BARs, or stickies, or grenades, instead of building more buildings?''. It's really difficult to make the decision. But any advice from anyone on how to improve would be awesome, and thanks to the people in my thread for posting. I'll upload some more games soon.

[Celution]

Well you won this one since he didn't have any AT throughout the game. However you had like 160 fuel, evn though you already had the Supply Yard, and you didn't even make the Tank Depot, when you have the fuel always get shermans? Also, you had the map from the very beginning of the game.

I did notice you spent time on laying wire instead of capping/building t3/t4, don't do that. Another thing, in the very beginning of the game you capped the strategic point right of your base, but then went for the low fuel and medium munition point, you should've gone for the high fuel point at all times.

Both of you were playing pretty clumsy to be honest. Capping while under fire made Wehr loose lots of squads and stuff like that.

[GrenadierSquad]

Ok thanks for the advice, yeah we both played pretty clumsy in that first game. I took your advice on this next game and tried to link up the points to the high fuel point first, the guy in this one was a very new player by the looks of it, so it wasn't a hard game like I normally have to play. I also went for the Tank Depot straight away instead of motor pool, and started straight away on Shermans, as I knew this guy probably wouldn't be able to get any AT. Any other advice anyone has, please feel free to say. Thanks.

[Carl]

Ok, time to go to work:

Your build order was good, you messed up the capping. Whilst it's ok, and even advisable as Americans to cap both halves of the map, it's always best to concentrate on one side first while a lone engineer squad caps the other half.

As Celestial says, once you grab a strategic point, focus on a High fuel and then High Munitions points connected by it first, then move onto the next SP as SP's have no advantage over F or MU points except for their quicker capping rate, given that F and MU are so valuable they're best grabbed first.

Next you screwed up every fight but the last one badly.

First fight you stayed at range, (persistent error). Volk at any range greater than right next to them will beat rifles. Rifles at 5 feet slaughter Volks. Whilst there are times you don’t want to charge through Volks fire to get so close it's rare. By finishing the first fight faster you could have gone on the offense earlier and grabbed territory. As it was he dragged the fight out till he brought an MG in, at which point you should have retreated, you lost I think 2 separate riflemen to that gun, there was no point.

Second fight, again engaging at range dragged the fight out needlessly. Again when the MG showed up you got hit. This time however you had a rifleman squad coming up from behind and correctly sent them round, you should have also moved the unsuppressed riflesquad out of the pair already there in. The problem was when the volks showed up you stopped to fight them. Don't, run in to 5 feet from the MG, (From behind), and manually tell your rifles to target it. Take it out, then retreat the squad that was being suppressed as it will be damaged and move your remaining rifles in close, put the least damaged squad up front, (i.e. give it the move order first), with the more damaged following it up.

Your third fight was very similar. You where also way too slow at going back in to grab that SP that disconnected the entire left side. You should have had your engineers cutting while the second fight was happening. Then grabbed it ASAP.

As Celestial says you should have had the Supply Yard up much earlier, and just gone straight for TD, a Sherman would have murdered him.

Lastly. NEVER play annihilate games. The whole game is balanced around VP games, that’s why Bases are virtually untouchable without amour. You’re not supposed to be able to take them out without totally demolishing your opponent, and the game is designed to make that very difficult. Playing non-VP games simply renders much of the fist 2/3 of the game of low importance and places an excessive emphasis on fast rushes to heavy amour.

If you want however I can probably arrange some matches later this week with you, I’ll take Wher and we can play a few so you get a idea of how Wher should be played, it will hopefully teach you a lot about the weaknesses in your strategy.

NoobAlertCarl Is the account I use for wher matches BTW.

[GrenadierSquad]

Thanks again for the advice Carl

(Name is Deevib001 in this replay)

Hopefully from this next game I've improved just a little. This guy was much better than the first 2 replay opponents I faced. HMG always give me problems, but luckily I managed to estimate where he had set it up, and successfully flanked the HMG and took it out IIR. But of course he should have been supporting it with something, and he didn't - but at least I managed to exploit that. Any other good tips on taking out HMGs?

Again, a huge problem is that I don't use resources quick enough, I'm too busy microing to really think of much else, and I get pretty high on resources a couple of times. What would you say on the timing of my building buildings? I think I got the Supply Depot out fairly quickly compared to the last 2 times, but does it still need to be greatly improved or is it a little better?

Hopefully in my next game I'll play a really good player, and then that's when my weaknesses will shine through. Thanks again.

NEW REPLAY (temp.rec):

So here's one where I take a beating, and this is what happens 90% of the time. They just seem to have that 1 more squad than me, so it's my 2 squads against his 3 squads and I don't really stand a chance. On that right hand side I did somewhat manage to get them to retreat, but then the deathcars appeared. It's my biggest weakness, I don't have any resources for AT at all, you have to buy the supply depot first and by that time it's too late anyway. Should I have taken stickies first? That's what I can't decide.

[Carl]

Okay I’ve only bothered to watch the temp one where you got beat.

Lets go through it:

1. Again bad capping order, you sent your first squad out to grab the first right side SP, not a bad move, not great but nothing terrible. Your next however went after the second right side SP, That SP is actually totally irrelevant until you've capped al the resources on that side and should be left till last, it also meant your low near you base went uncapped for a long time. At 3 minutes in he had 15 more fuel than you, and even at i think was 6 minutes when he started researching T2 he had +10F over you. I'll come back to this in a moment.

Next up your first rifle went left side, Never do that, whichever side you are not going to focus on should be capped by whatever Engineer squad caps the first Sp on your main side and nothing else. If your first rifle squad had gone right instead you could have used it to drive off the Volks that in reality drove off your engineers. After that we saw more of the same, your rifles where too split up and you spread yourself too thin trying to hold onto everything. Concentrate on one side whilst grabbing what bits you can of the other to slow the enemy down.

Lastly, by all means grab VP's as opportunity allows, and never leave one secured in your own territory uncapped for long, but don't go for them till you have some basic territory secured, if your opponent does, then good, he's lowering his initial F and MU income for 30 or 40 VP's.

2. In combat you weren’t too shabby, you should have retreated the engineer squad from the first skirmish sooner, you left a squad under fire from the MG bunker while trying to cap that SP far too long, and later on after very successfully driving off the first MG team you left another full squad in front of the second MG for to long and then when it ran into the bunker you tried to cap in range of it, at that point nothing you had could really hurt it, so you should have just pulled back, focused right side till you where ready to hit it, then surprised him when he thought himself safe there.

Mostly though you messed up by splitting up far too much, once that first MG hits you need to concentrate your rifles more, or you won't be able to drive the MG and support off as it costs one Rifle to keep the MG occupied while you flank, and if he has 2 volks you'll need 3 rifles to convincingly beat him with low losses. You can do it with 2 under the right circumstances, but it's not ideal.

Other than that you didn't make any major mistakes i noticed.

3. The big issue, you floated badly, at around 5 and a half minutes you had eniough F and MP for a SY. By the time he got his first Halftrack out at 8 and a half minutes you had had the F and MP to build an MP and then an M8 for some time, your cutting off of his high F giving you a F advantage at last, your first M8 should have been coming out of your MP around the time you first saw his Halftrack at the latest, ideally given your respective F incomes you should have had it a while by now.

Your underlying issue is that when you get an advantage, i.e. F or MP you don't exploit it. Whilst getting VP's wins games, to get them you need to make use of every bit of MP you save by minimizing your losses, and every bit of F you earn, (Well not literally, don't build stuff for the sake of it, but don't float unless you have a very good reason to do so either). By never using what you had fully you let your opponent take the advantage. And he used that then to start pushing you off the map. Once the first Halftrack hit I basically stopped watching as I could see which way it was going, and the flaws really lay in the things that allowed this situation to develop.

p.s. when it comes to getting a game with me, best to pre-arrange somthing via the forums as i don;t play CoH massive amounts online anymore, the sheer number of bad balance issues has soured me for quiet a while. I'm at work between 9AM GM and around 2:30 PM GMT, and i'm a bit yuck feeling atm as didn;t sleep well als night so can't be tonight, maybe tomorrow or wensday.

[GrenadierSquad]

Thanks a lot for the advice Carl, I've played about 8 more games and out of those 8 I've won 6, so this advice is definitely helping. I can't say my opponents were amazing players, but out of the 6 I won about 4 did give me a really good, close match. 2 times the opponent dropped when I'd managed to destroy his strike force, but he was actually doing better than me at capturing points and stuff, so he still had time to fight back and he may have taken the game, but some people do drop earlier than they have to.

I've really only been focusing on my American play, would it be advised to play as Wehrmacht and Panzer Elite just as much as I play American? Or should I just stick with American?

Thanks