Company of Heroes 2 - this time with extra T-34s!

Ah, I was just thinking within the CoH franchise. Retribution would have been a far better game with a better campaign, I agree. I couldn't be bothered to play through it with all of the races. I was sick of it after just three times.

Tales of Valor's mini campaigns were alright. It was a weird expansion in general with an odd spread of SP and MP stuff. Given how inexpensive it was I was pretty happy with it. It certainly wasn't a big game changer like Opposing Fronts though.

According to the blog of an obsessive* fan, it may be somewhat less crass than was feared.

*And possibly disturbed. Illustrious, what the fuck?

That seems a decidedly poor choice of words. I hope they meant infamous.

http://beefjack.com/features/company-of-heroes-2-preview-interview/2/

There's lot of stuff for you nerds in there (and loaaaads of bad writing) but I wanted to bitch about a line used by one of the devs:

Please don't say this. You're designing factions or sides or armies. Not races. In fact if game development could just move past the horrifically offensive 'race war' concept that has all sorts of nasty connotations we'd

oh come the fuck on.

Saying "race design" in this context is hilariously inappropriate, precisely because the Eastern Front was prosecuted as a racial war by the Germans.

"Racial war to the death," the interviewer's phraseology, sounds a bit purple in that "racial war" in and of itself connotes gross violations of the laws of war, mistreatment or killing of prisoners and things of that nature. And if one is being careful about words and meaning, obviously it was "racial" by the terms of crackpot German racial "science." But describing the Eastern Front as an exceptionally inhumane racial war (by German terms) is an historiographical commonplace.

And in an academic historical context I won't argue that there are times when referring to a war as a racial war is totally appropriate. In game development? No, never. Nope nope nope nope nope.

But seriously RACE DESIGN. So if the Germans are op, now I know I should just say "german race superior to russians."

The interviewer said the racial war to the death line.

Yeah I know thanks, I'm making a point about how it's gross discourse on both sides. 'Race design' is way worser though.

Yeah but the "race design" thing is a huge gaffe, whereas if the interviewer had just left off the "to the death" purpleness he'd basically be reading a back-cover blurb from any recent book on the Eastern Front.

There probably is a good paper to be written about game attitudes towards the concept. It all comes from Tolkien's thinly-veiled racism IMHO.

There's a new trailer out:



It includes Katyushas!

Man, if THQ sinks and I don't get this game I will have a sad.

I also had a Katyusha Micro-Machine. Rather here nor there but it is a fact.

Trailer sure looks good.

It blinks too fucking much so I can't see what's going on.

I'm afraid to pre-order because THQ :/

So multiplayer is up to 4v4. Which makes me wonder what the unit count will be and what the map size will be like. DoW II had a fairly anemic unit count, and fairly small maps. CoH II should have more units and larger maps.

(Also, I really hope that isn't the typical range of engagement for tanks as shown in the video)

I assumed 4v4 would be the minimum since CoH had 4v4

Oh you're right, memory failure. For some reason I thought it was just 2v2s.

4v4 was a lot better in CoHo then it was in retail CoH. matched multiplayer beyond 2v2 in retail CoH was terrible.

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/com...-feel-the-chill-in-relics-eastern-front-epic/

preview from pcgamer

Anyone happen to have a spare beta key?

Because Jason would like you to send it my way.

So, I read a bunch of posts before realizing they're a year old. But because something is wrong on the internet:

The NKVD, under the auspices of STAVKA Directives 227, 270, and 1919 executed no more than 10 201 "deserters" out of 657 364. The rest got fed into penal battalions and used as living mine sweepers. Waste not, want not.
The Germans in a mockery of the "legendary" efficiency of their armed forces, had two organizations which summarily executed suspected deserters. EDIT: Make that three.
I just read through Enemy at the Gates a few days ago. There are absolutely zero references within to the "two men one rifle" myth.


EDIT: Goddamn, the "well, the Russians had no equipment or leadership," bullshit is tiring.

...Or they just called upon what was likely the largest artillery force on the face of the earth. It could go either way.

And what the hell is up with giving molotov cocktails to Soviet conscripts? Those were used against the Soviet army, not by it. They were also used as an anti-tank weapon, not as an anti-personnel weapon.

I have to imagine that everyone at that point was aware of how to make a molotov cocktail, but it's sort of irrelevant because by the end of the war the Red Army had an utterly ridiculous number of AT artillery pieces. The "two guns for every German tank ever made up to that point" sort of ridiculous; in addition to AT grenades, AT rifles, AT mines, and a tank force much larger than that of Germany if you exclude useless shit like Pzkfw II's.

It's pretty weird to hear conscripts referring to the bombs as Molotov cocktails when the name itself is an insult to their own foreign minister.

It has a Russian name-duh, obviously it was invented by the Russians. Do you think these game developers haven't thoroughly researched their topic or something? No doubt, their snipers probably have an accuracy bonus due to all those years of shooting wolves in Siberia but only half of the riflemen actually have rifles.

No, no, feel free to include the useless shit. It barely makes a dent in the ratio. The T-34 alone was produced in the amount of a staggering 56,000 something vehicles between 1940-1945. Germany's total war production of tanks, all classes, was around 20,000 vehicles iirc. The useless German shit barely made up 2,000 vehicles in total. Hell, the Soviets had a 6:1 advantage in armored vehicles and tanks when the Germans launched Barbarossa in 1941(!).

I fucking love Company of Heroes, but I really do need to know what the fuck is going on with the in-game currency/microtransaction elements of the sequel before I get even the slightest bit excited, much less throw down $60 for a preorder. I never want to pay full price for a game that's going to include some kind of in-game currency.

What a horrible title to pick for a comparison. BF3's DLC was fractious and confusing.

Interestingly enough, the Steam preorder page that used to include a bit about getting in-game currency for a preorder bonus has been changed. In fact, the entire "unlock tiered rewards with a certain number of preorders!" bit is gone too, which either means it succeeded or they've changed the preorder structure. I can't remember specifically what the rewards were, but I do remember a mention of in-game currency being there. It's gone now.

From THQ to Sega as publisher is pretty hilarious.

I'm going to guess that the transition to Sega was what killed that tier unlock thing.

Edit; After looking at the Steam page, I change my opinion. It looks like they got enough preorders to just include everything since it all looks like it's there under "pre-order" bonii.

Yep, got some in-game stuff, the Dawn of War 2 bonus and some kind of headgear I believe.

Apologies for the derail, but is anyone still playing the original Company of Heroes? I've repeatedly tried and failed to enjoy the singleplayer (and been through a couple of cycles of uninstall->reinstall->uninstall), but if you guys are still active in MP I might give it another shot.

That's because the single-player campaign blows. Never understood the love.

If you can't get MP, try this SP AI mod - Tactical AI Mod

The campaign didn't quite click with me, but what really drove me up the wall was skirmish - aka playing whack-a-mole against raiding parties that miraculously knew which sectors I hadn't defended. Chokepoint maps had the opposite problem - there the AI would just repeatedly suicide-charge my defences. *headdesk*

If I reinstall the game, I'll be sure to check out that mod. Thanks for the link!

AFAIK the AI doesn't cheat with map vision. It doesn't cheat at all except on the hardest difficulty, and then it gets resource and HP bonuses. The AI mod changes this to resource bonuses only, but introduces them at the second hardest difficulty instead of only the hardest.

It might ignore fog of war though, I wasn't able to find anything definitive.

I've got it installed, and I think it's been floated in the Geriatric RTS club thread a few times, but nothing definitive ever sprung up.

I play off and on with my brother, as he's fucking cheap as hell and won't buy anything new. Personally, I suck and usually lose, and so usually prefer skirm, but he's pretty dang good. Hit me up if you're interested.

I forget if i have it installed on steam, I recall buying one of the later expansions for fun and to have a steam version. The one with an attempt at a DotA / Dawn of War Arena like mode with tanks.

If you like the Company of Heroes 2 facebook page, you get a steam beta invite.

Please let me know if anyone else is playing this, as I am terrible and currently everyone playing it just wants to curbstomp all opposition.