the dingo buff is really insane.. it can easily EASILY solo a 250 now, and can pretty much hold against any single infantry unit of the axis
however, mid/late game it doesnt matter how vet it becomes its basically a nonfactor, dies too easily and just cant interact with blobs. this is totally fine, its fine to have a really strong early unit that falls off
im not sure even its arty ability at vet 1 will matter. it strongly suggests going armored battlegroup refund to just ditch them at tier 3
i tried doing section skip to either gurka or commandos and I liked it a lot... you have so much more muni to spend on other fun things. grant is just a DPS powerhouse against other mediums and infantry, if the game somehow reaches that point
i didnt think brit was that bad just very singular in its approach.. i think the dingo opener gives ukf a viable new standard opener and its certainly no more broken than USF double jeep was last patch
I haven't played since the patch, but the US was THE Allied power to play as. They were carried mainly by the power of their Riflemen and Chaffee light tanks, with Mortars and Greyhounds being good as well.
Played right, great faction. They just won't have the flexibility of the Axis factions and need more micro IMO.
the US is very good and has been for months. im not even sure i would say they dont have flexbility. they have multiple great battlegroups... their dominant strategy just had a mild nerf and they got a huge amount of buffs to other strategies
they have excellent units at every tier, more build orders than i can count, and have probably the best late-game
Relic are already "looking at" Royal Engineers, so expect them to be nerfed back into the ground with a hotfix. British buffs take months to materialise, nerfs take days after all.
the RE buff really surprised me because they're already pretty close to the best engi in the game... they probably didn't need the health bonus.. i think the cap bonus would be nice to have though
but im not mad if they take the HP back, RE's were already good.
i will be slightly mad if they take the cap speed back
i will not be mad at all if they increase the MP cost either, its 165 i think with the battlegroup modifier which is not very much for an incredible infantry unit... consider that pgrens are 300!
It's the general principle though. Are they overpowered? Don't know, can't honestly say. Also keep in mind they're one of three stock infantry and that sections still mostly suck. But Relic have immediately decided they must be nerfed. The whole faction broken for several months? Axis units massiverly overperforming? We'll just let that sit for a few months. Allied unit might be overperforming? Announce the hotfix within 24 hours. There's a very notable difference there.
And there's the 'hotfix'. Two days after their overhaul and they get kicked in the teeth. Not only is the RE health buff reverted, they now also cost more to reinforce and take longer to build. But that's not all! The training centre upgrades now get locked behind the platoon command post and there are bonus nerfs to theCentaur and Crusader AA, which both get fuel cost increases. The justification on the latter is hilarious: "With a stronger early game available to the British Forces, some mid game call-ins have become far too powerful and can often catch Axis players at a point where they cannot field a reasonable counter." Or, put another way, the british might have had an actual power spike at some point of the game and we couldn't have that - only axis are allowed to have that. The same logic applied to the L6 spam that DAK was using for months - but that wasn't seen as an urgent issue. https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/blogs/104-pc-year-1-anniversary-1-5-1-hotfix-patch-notes
You'll have to forgive me for being a bit exasparated over all this but Relic's approach to balance is hilariously one sided - or at the very least it's clear they just straight up don't like the british faction. If there were similarly quick adjustments to axis factions I'd be less annoyed, but there simply haven't been. They didn't even wait to see how it played out, if there were reasonable counters that hadn't been found out yet after a meta shift. Instead it looks like they rushed to appease axis players.
Over sixty percent is quite a lot. There is not match data on this site to say how bad things were at launch, but all patches since 1.3 have been all factions existing between 45-55% win rate. Fairly reasonable.
DAK had a 53% average win rate last patch with L6 spam. This like ten points higher than that... and generally trending upwards as people realize their strength.
Sadly statistics is all I have to go off of right now though because I am on a trip and haven't had any chance to play. This nerf reaction seems... interesting. I never thought someone would say the Air-And-Sea Centaur was OP, but here we are. I feel like two nerfs to the engineers plus a revert is too much but the idea of making Royal Engineers better in the first place was somewhat questionable (outside of a capture rate bonus which seemed quite smart).
63% is gigabananas, i dont follow the metrics but if that was legit and representative of a higher end set of play then its warranted
i dont think the training center change is going to be material
im mildly unhappy about the fuel nerfs on the callins but im content to wait and see
'
at least they also nerfed jagers correctly because dak was having an equally batty build brewing with quintuple jager double flampanzer that was pretty much insurmountable at minute 10
It was at best one proper day worth of data, right after a patch that buffed the most underplayed and poorest performing faction. Perhaps wait a day or two at least? If they cared about win rates then maybe they should have done something about the 55-65% win rates in team games DAK have been enjoying for the past five months.
The truth is more likely to be that they're listening exclusively to a small number of "top" players who have some distinct biases. They're probably the same ones that gutted the CoH2 brits. There's no design or planning going on there. The reasoning behind the call in nerf is insulting and contradictory. They say it's because of a stronger early game - but they've just nerfed it to be worse than it was pre-patch. They say axis can't field a reasonable counter - but the same logic applies ot many axis units and the brits are just told to "get AT". There's ample time for AT before the Centaur or Crusader turn up, certainly more than when L6's can turn up.
Speaking of L6's, there was a good example of the underlying problems with the game on reddit. A brit gets rushed by flame L6's about the point where he can get a humber. He only had 1 boys squad. Underprepared, yes, but the end result was his army wiped and base destroyed. Even with no preparation the Centaur and Crusader would be unable to pull that off. A mistake from an allied player results in a crushing loss - mistakes from axis players do not carry that level of punishment.
Edit: Would also be nice if they actually made the new training centre bonuses actually work with their hotfix, but alas no. Nerfing the faction was seen as more important.
I think you're exaggerating a little here. DAK has only had a 56-54% average win rate in 4v4s, depending on the patch over the last 5 months.
I can't disagree though that having it go for more than like... 40 something hours would have given a better picture. More data is nice, but having your multiplayer be complete tilted during your big anniversary event is a bad look as well. I think this was warranted.
I don't think there's some "shadow council" of top Axis players orchestrating Relic like puppets to make sure germans are always OP. No, there are probably is more feedback and focus put on 1v1s and very little immediate concern for 2v2+. It's not an Axis v Allies bias. It's a team game vs 1v1 bias.
I'll give an example. This happened before in version 1.2, according to the data. Allies enjoying massive win rates in 4v4s and team games. Like even worse than now, and for around 2 months. The release was particularly bad:
Seems like it took them a week and a bit to fix? Why? Could be anything really... development is complicated. But probably because the 1v1 scene was much healthier and the feedback for team games takes longer to understand. 1v1 players generally take a very dismissive view of team games in RTS.
1v1 win rate for the same patch:
Same has been going on for months here. DAK has only been like averaging 51% winrate in 1v1 during this whole time. Sure, the 4v4 rate is like 55% and filled with toxic cheese but whatever, thats the chaos playground that doesn't matter, right?
Look, as someone who plays team games, I get it... I don't like being second class either, but I really don't think there's some sort of anti-british design streak at Relic that has existed for years. Balancing around multiple game sizes is really hard and because RTS evolved out of competitive 1v1s it continues to (wrongly, in my opinion) focus its attention there. A fact that has stagnated it as a genre over a decade.
One of those top players (Havoc) literally had an hours long one-on-one session with one of the developers discussing patch balance. The RE nerf was a direct result of that. They're exactly the people Relic are listening to. At best it's just driving it to favouring 1v1 games, but everyone has bias at some level. The same guy getting the one-one-one also mouthed off when a brit player beat his tired L6 spam. Anecdotally, the 'top' players have an ingrained view that the brits are a 'low skill faction', so any time a brit strategy gives them bother it must be overpowered.
Unfortunately for Relic, 3v3 and 4v4 are the most popular modes. I get that they're hard to balance but they could at least try now and again. DAK have averaged in 3v3, at worst, 52.4% for one patch since September with new patches often seeing them jump into the 60-65 range for a week or more - figures that are so alarming that they apparently warrant an immediate hotfix. The british in the same timeframe manage, at best, 50.1%. I believe the 1.2.0 patch you've cited was the ASC patch which was way over the top. Incidentally that patch also made it impossible to build the 17pdr (and DAK's Flak 36, to be fair). It took over a week to fix that.
That's the core of the frustration really - double standards. They could have fixed balance issues much faster in the past but chose not to. The axis imblanaces should ahve been addressed, but weren't. The brits have been hit with nothing but nerfs since launch. The changes in 1.5.0, while welcome, were also mostly just bringing units like the Humber and Dingo up to functional - something that should have been done long before now. Core issues like a lack of flexibility, sub par sections, broken or absent vet1 abilties and predictable battlegroups have not really been touched. They haven't even tested that all of their changes functionally worked! Relic have put basically no effort into the brits for the entire lifetime of the game, instead favouring swingeing nerfs with zero consideration for the overall effect all while the axis are allowed to run riot with things like L6 spam that are left untouched for months.
E: I'm mostly vocal on this because I'm extremely disappointed in Relic's attitude throughout the lifetime of the game. Five months waiting for any improvement and instead the fastest balance hotfix in the game's lifetime with some insulting logic to defend the additional nerfs. Beyond that though, Relic just haven't given a shit about the game or the setting in general.
i have been playing mostly ukf since the patch. a couple of days ago I had a rough game and i started to have doubts. i started wondering if maybe axis is just empirically and insurmountably OP
i started watching a bunch of Wehr replays considering a faction switch
after a while of that, a great calm washed over me and granted me peace... and i realized that if it wasn't for the wirb then wehr would be the worst faction in the game, and the fact that they are bound by this incredibly OP unit is not a blessing but a curse
because they must play greedy as fuck in order to get that unit out as fast as they can, and i can punish that greed and dominate... i went 6-0 tonight and none of them were particularly close
DAK are the faction of easy answers to everything. I cannot fathom how half the stuff they have is considered even remotely fair. The flakvierling immediately renders infantry useless. High damage, long range, fast and suppression? What on earth were they thinking? If you thought you could try and chase it down with a light vehicle, don't bother because it'll run faster than you can hurt it and they'll have panzerjagers knocking around to immediately snare and remove your much less durable light vehicle. For some reason an unarmoured truck is more durable and maneverable than an armoured car! Even getting to that point is a struggle when using distinctly underwhelming infantry sections against a horde of panzergrenadiers (now with their downside all but removed!). If all of that fails them, DAK can fall back on spamming Pz3's. If even that fails, click to remove tanks can win games for you anyway. I'm at the point where if it's an all-DAK opposition I don't even bother trying, there's no point.
Wehr are much more beatable because they're rather predictable - and because they require at least some basic skill to play. Tactics like "flanking", "manevering" and "taking on infantry fights" mostly work against Wehr, especially against the many players that don't bother to reposition. That said, they aren't without their cheese either. Coastal reserves can quite literally attack move to clear off most positions. If there's an MG holding them back, just use the artillery officer to force it to move. The Wirbelwind is in much the same boat as the flakvierling - stupidly powerful, spammable and next to impossible to kill. Of course they're unlikely to work well against AT guns - but that's why the nebelwerfer exists. One click and all setup teams are gone!
Slight hyperbole aside, there is a massive difference in how punishing axis and allied units are. The penalty for getting caught by units like the flakvierling, wirbelwind or even just 250 + flamer against good players is that your squads get wiped. The punishment for getting caught unprepared for a humber is you lose a model or two and a bit of ground. At every point of the game allies absolutely must prepare for the next axis unit thrown at them whereas the axis can just sit back and roll a counter out without much loss. The end result is that it's simply much easier to lose the game as allies than it is as axis.
As for the brits, well sections are still rubbish. They'll do ok at best with brens or as light AT in a pinch but rarely do I feel they're worth the cost and upkeep. I've had much more success minimising their use and leaning heavily on HMGs and mortars instead, at least until some better infantry becomes available. Humbers are usable but on a permanent knife edge due to having no health. Light vehicles in general are just so trivial for DAK to counter that there's, again, no point trying them half the time.
I think the balance is in a much better state. Looking at stats online its pretty even except for the DAK in large team games. I'd but that down to their mobility and how easy it is to move across the map for them. I'll also point out that the DAK only have a 55% win rate in 4v4 and 3v3, which is noticeable but not the end of the world.
The DAK are tricky to balance because they feel the most "high risk, high reward" to me. I'll willing to listen about how I'm just a noob and wrong but this game really feels like losing early game fights can really snowball on you. The DAK really excel here with the 250 with Flamethrowers. But at the same time everytime I play DAK and lose my starting 250 I really feel it, the enemy now has more squads on the field than me and can either concentrate on fighting before I get an mg out or focus on map control.
Honestly Wehr annoy me more, trying to use kill their bunkers while dodging Nebelwerfer barrages is not fun. But the stats show that the Wehr is pretty balanced, so that's probably a me issues.
you can have great units and still be bad... wehr is like the case study for this. they have a small selection of truly excellent units but a lot of their army is piss poor
dak is considered relatively strong right now but the meta is still developing... their winrate in large team games is related to a new meta that has been emerging where they do a mass pjager blob with medtruck. dak medtruck is unique because it comes out earlier and cheaper than anyone elses AND it gives combined arms buff.. so they blob pjagers around the truck and its basically a mobile DDL parked in every lane that is VERY hard to counter until the game is already over
that doesn't play well in 1v1s but it looks like Dak is settling in as viable but at this point its hard to say if they are even great, much less broken. i think they're fine and well tuned.
most of the high level players I follow are consensus that allies are probably better overall but axis has more cheese and because wehr is poorly designed it can be soul crushing to play against, this is at high level where virtually every wehr player is playing coastals and DDL
on units, i get it, the flakveirling is annoying but it IS counterable, the wirble is annoying, and while the wirble is in indeed very hard to deal with, something that has come to me is that your challenge as the allies isnt to deal with the wirble at face value, its to kick ass in the opener to delay the wirble to the point where its no longer your biggest problem... and you can absolutely do that in the current meta.
if you're an allies fanboy like me there has not been a better patch to play on and i dont expect it to last, a wehr patch is probably coming soon where DDL gets evaporated and the rest of their army is buffed to compensate
I'm sticking with "DAK are fucking broken". They seriously need their units curtailed. Take panzerjaegers for example - balanced around only having one available every few minutes, now always available and not adjusted to account for it so they're stupidly powerful and also stupidly easy to roll out if needed.
The key thing is that they always have the initiative. They have about 4 or 5 different ways to completely wipe your amy if you aren't prepared. Flamers in a 250? Squad wiped. Flakvierling? Squad wiped. 8Rad? Yep, squads wiped. Any number of light vehicles with the durability and damage to destroy their opponent. And what if I take boys sections to try and defend against this? They either have to be in exactly the right spot, or if the DAK player feels like it they can just use their superior infantry to roll over the sections. They don't even need to spend any munitions on half the stuff they do, so it's mine central if you do try and push them back. Really, DAK can only lose if they fuck up. The balance of effort is horrifically one sided.
you have to look at what your faction has as well. i will admit I am not a USF understander at all, i dont like the faction and I dont know it inside and out, but I know UKF pretty well..
UKF has the best tier 3 in the game, period. not even close. footguards, insane all purpose elite that fucks on everything, recently buffed. matilda, DAK only has one unit its entire army that can pen a matilda from the front, does massive infantry damage. grant, currently the best tank in the game. soloes a P4 with ease while also being cheaper, wipes 4 model squads in a single salvo.
these are serious advantages that rank up with what DAK can bring to the table midgame.
axis currently MUST contend and deal with and respond to UKF tier 3 in the same way UKF has to respond to DAK tier 2. UKF opener is so good they had to nerf it within 18 hours of releasing it. its still good. sappers might be the best T0 in the game. Wehr has no practical answer for the Dingo.
thats just RTSes. power spikes happen at different times. the anger was justified when axis had the same old midgame power spike and UKFs reward for surviving that was... crusader spam....?
but now the reward is total domination. if you get to grants, you win
If you get a Chaffee out you should be able to start cleaning up enemy light vehicles. Getting a Bazooka squad out early to to help with 250s also helps. Chaffees should also be able to trade prety easily against P3s until the DAK really start stacking upgrades on them, which means you might be able to skip T4 and just keep the pressure on.
Apparently since the last patch the Axis have actually been underpowered, if anything.
I've been using Dingos to chase and murder 250s long before the patch where they actually became usable.
Anyway, Relic delayed their next patch to April, but it will include DAK and UKF battlegroups for free this time, three community maps, and a host of features and improvements.
its going to have map veto for online which is huge... there's a couple of maps that are just vile
that 2v2 map... the city one with the big bridge in the middle. thats so bad its going end up getting removed from the pool when every allied player in the game vetoes it
I actually kinda like that map! Large, decent flanking routes and some mix of urban and open terrain. It also looks pretty good. It's not perfect but I like it much more than Elst Outskirts - a ported CoH2 map that doesn't look anything like CoH3's setting and hasn't been adjusted in any way to account for changes in the gameplay like fast capping kettenkrads, artillery ranges, unit availability etc. It was a decent CoH2 map but it's a bad CoH3 map. The new 3v3 map is better but has similar problems - namely that the cutoff is too easy to cap and secure with 0 CP units like the USF airborne HMG drop.
E: My worry with ported CoH2 maps and the likes is that they'll repeat the mistakes of CoH2 - namely removing any map with even an ounce of character in favour of small scale maps.
I actually kinda like that map! Large, decent flanking routes and some mix of urban and open terrain. It also looks pretty good. It's not perfect but I like it much more than Elst Outskirts - a ported CoH2 map that doesn't look anything like CoH3's setting and hasn't been adjusted in any way to account for changes in the gameplay like fast capping kettenkrads, artillery ranges, unit availability etc. It was a decent CoH2 map but it's a bad CoH3 map. The new 3v3 map is better but has similar problems - namely that the cutoff is too easy to cap and secure with 0 CP units like the USF airborne HMG drop.
E: My worry with ported CoH2 maps and the likes is that they'll repeat the mistakes of CoH2 - namely removing any map with even an ounce of character in favour of small scale maps.
I think you might be talking about Day 101, while Jasconius is talking about Are Perrenius. 'Cos the latter has zero open terrain and is the laniest of lanes.
Nah, I'm definitely talking about Aere Perrenius. I get that it is a fairly laney map but at the very least it's 3 lanes to two players. There is some open ground on each of the side lanes to work with (although admittedly not much) and there's a number of routes to sneak around or push from one lane to another. I'm not saying it's the best map in the world, it's not great for vehicle movement and tools like the 17pdr are largely useless, while the steep side on the bottom/left lane makes it easier to defend the VP than on the right/top lane - but I have found it fun enough for infantry moves (just be sure to bring a mortar at some point).
Maybe I'll turn against it eventually but there are certainly far worse out there (here's looking at you Mignano Summit!)
Summit is the worse. With the addition height advantage and the placement of the VPs it quickly becomes a grind for the hilltop, and rarely in a fun way.
Im going to be honest, I miss bridge maps. Some of my best memories in CoH1 and 2 were cranking up the difficulty to Expert and holding off the waves of enemies with my buddies.
Lyon, the Scheldt. I can see how the competitive community would hate them, but man, great times.
I would like to see them add a 5th and 6th difficulty level to the AI because sometimes my 2v2 buddy and I like to just chill but we're at the point where expert is less than no challenge... But it would be fun to do some of the extra maps
In my experience Day 101 is a pretty shit map for allies. Axis can comfortably camp and win any artillery duel with better options and, crucially, much better sight. The kettenkrad's sight range is just ridiculous for something that's fast, invisible and can cap. Reminds me of 222 + spotting scopes in CoH2 which could literally see from one end of some maps to the other (which was apparently totally fair and balanced...). The bottom VP lane is also much too narrow.
My buddy and I had a good 6ish games as the Allies without any losses. Idk what exactly changed but he game feels pretty good as them.
I still love the US Airborne and Infantry center combo. It gives me the flexibility to skip Weapon Support Centers and the Motor Pool if needed while giving me very cheap BARs or M1919s on my Paras to chew up Axis infantry. If vehicles show up then I can call in a 57mm or build a Motor Pool for Chaffees.
I've also learned to love landmines. They can be so pesky to deal with a a single one can stop a dedicated assault.
Does anyone know if they've touched up the campaign at all since release? I'm not really a multiplayer guy, and I remember the campaign reviews being less that glowing at release.
Does anyone know if they've touched up the campaign at all since release? I'm not really a multiplayer guy, and I remember the campaign reviews being less that glowing at release.
they have done quite a bit.. i cant recount it all because i havent beaten the campaign but here's some things I can personally attest to...
- All the random map unit encounters no longer result in actual battles, its all auto-resolve only, this reduces some of the tedium of the campaign map
- The AI actually attacks you now and you stand a real chance of losing your units to the AI using map tactics if you're not paying attention
- A lot of bug fixes
I still think its not a strong game mode but compared to launch its playable now and some of the scenarios are good
Does anyone know if they've touched up the campaign at all since release? I'm not really a multiplayer guy, and I remember the campaign reviews being less that glowing at release.
they have done quite a bit.. i cant recount it all because i havent beaten the campaign but here's some things I can personally attest to...
- All the random map unit encounters no longer result in actual battles, its all auto-resolve only, this reduces some of the tedium of the campaign map
- The AI actually attacks you now and you stand a real chance of losing your units to the AI using map tactics if you're not paying attention
- A lot of bug fixes
I still think its not a strong game mode but compared to launch its playable now and some of the scenarios are good
Oh, maybe I should give the campaign another go. Aside from the bugs and lack of explanation of... anything useful, the constant grind of battles was just boring.
Seems like a bad game design decision to ask every 2 minutes 'Would you like to play this skirmish for 20m? Or would you like to auto resolve and miss out on rewards?'. So, waste 20 minutes or get handicapped... great choice. It's not like losing those skirmish battles was remotely possible either since the AI was a dunce.
My big problem with the campaign was it seemed to punish you for trying to be aggressive. Maybe I just needed to play slow and steady constantly scouting but having companies wiped from artillery you did not see was not fun.
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however, mid/late game it doesnt matter how vet it becomes its basically a nonfactor, dies too easily and just cant interact with blobs. this is totally fine, its fine to have a really strong early unit that falls off
im not sure even its arty ability at vet 1 will matter. it strongly suggests going armored battlegroup refund to just ditch them at tier 3
i tried doing section skip to either gurka or commandos and I liked it a lot... you have so much more muni to spend on other fun things. grant is just a DPS powerhouse against other mediums and infantry, if the game somehow reaches that point
i didnt think brit was that bad just very singular in its approach.. i think the dingo opener gives ukf a viable new standard opener and its certainly no more broken than USF double jeep was last patch
thumbs up from me
Played right, great faction. They just won't have the flexibility of the Axis factions and need more micro IMO.
they have excellent units at every tier, more build orders than i can count, and have probably the best late-game
but im not mad if they take the HP back, RE's were already good.
i will be slightly mad if they take the cap speed back
i will not be mad at all if they increase the MP cost either, its 165 i think with the battlegroup modifier which is not very much for an incredible infantry unit... consider that pgrens are 300!
https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/blogs/104-pc-year-1-anniversary-1-5-1-hotfix-patch-notes
You'll have to forgive me for being a bit exasparated over all this but Relic's approach to balance is hilariously one sided - or at the very least it's clear they just straight up don't like the british faction. If there were similarly quick adjustments to axis factions I'd be less annoyed, but there simply haven't been. They didn't even wait to see how it played out, if there were reasonable counters that hadn't been found out yet after a meta shift. Instead it looks like they rushed to appease axis players.
Over sixty percent is quite a lot. There is not match data on this site to say how bad things were at launch, but all patches since 1.3 have been all factions existing between 45-55% win rate. Fairly reasonable.
DAK had a 53% average win rate last patch with L6 spam. This like ten points higher than that... and generally trending upwards as people realize their strength.
Sadly statistics is all I have to go off of right now though because I am on a trip and haven't had any chance to play. This nerf reaction seems... interesting. I never thought someone would say the Air-And-Sea Centaur was OP, but here we are. I feel like two nerfs to the engineers plus a revert is too much but the idea of making Royal Engineers better in the first place was somewhat questionable (outside of a capture rate bonus which seemed quite smart).
i dont think the training center change is going to be material
im mildly unhappy about the fuel nerfs on the callins but im content to wait and see
'
at least they also nerfed jagers correctly because dak was having an equally batty build brewing with quintuple jager double flampanzer that was pretty much insurmountable at minute 10
The truth is more likely to be that they're listening exclusively to a small number of "top" players who have some distinct biases. They're probably the same ones that gutted the CoH2 brits. There's no design or planning going on there. The reasoning behind the call in nerf is insulting and contradictory. They say it's because of a stronger early game - but they've just nerfed it to be worse than it was pre-patch. They say axis can't field a reasonable counter - but the same logic applies ot many axis units and the brits are just told to "get AT". There's ample time for AT before the Centaur or Crusader turn up, certainly more than when L6's can turn up.
Speaking of L6's, there was a good example of the underlying problems with the game on reddit. A brit gets rushed by flame L6's about the point where he can get a humber. He only had 1 boys squad. Underprepared, yes, but the end result was his army wiped and base destroyed. Even with no preparation the Centaur and Crusader would be unable to pull that off. A mistake from an allied player results in a crushing loss - mistakes from axis players do not carry that level of punishment.
Edit: Would also be nice if they actually made the new training centre bonuses actually work with their hotfix, but alas no. Nerfing the faction was seen as more important.
I can't disagree though that having it go for more than like... 40 something hours would have given a better picture. More data is nice, but having your multiplayer be complete tilted during your big anniversary event is a bad look as well. I think this was warranted.
I don't think there's some "shadow council" of top Axis players orchestrating Relic like puppets to make sure germans are always OP. No, there are probably is more feedback and focus put on 1v1s and very little immediate concern for 2v2+. It's not an Axis v Allies bias. It's a team game vs 1v1 bias.
I'll give an example. This happened before in version 1.2, according to the data. Allies enjoying massive win rates in 4v4s and team games. Like even worse than now, and for around 2 months. The release was particularly bad:
Seems like it took them a week and a bit to fix? Why? Could be anything really... development is complicated. But probably because the 1v1 scene was much healthier and the feedback for team games takes longer to understand. 1v1 players generally take a very dismissive view of team games in RTS.
1v1 win rate for the same patch:
Same has been going on for months here. DAK has only been like averaging 51% winrate in 1v1 during this whole time. Sure, the 4v4 rate is like 55% and filled with toxic cheese but whatever, thats the chaos playground that doesn't matter, right?
Look, as someone who plays team games, I get it... I don't like being second class either, but I really don't think there's some sort of anti-british design streak at Relic that has existed for years. Balancing around multiple game sizes is really hard and because RTS evolved out of competitive 1v1s it continues to (wrongly, in my opinion) focus its attention there. A fact that has stagnated it as a genre over a decade.
Unfortunately for Relic, 3v3 and 4v4 are the most popular modes. I get that they're hard to balance but they could at least try now and again. DAK have averaged in 3v3, at worst, 52.4% for one patch since September with new patches often seeing them jump into the 60-65 range for a week or more - figures that are so alarming that they apparently warrant an immediate hotfix. The british in the same timeframe manage, at best, 50.1%. I believe the 1.2.0 patch you've cited was the ASC patch which was way over the top. Incidentally that patch also made it impossible to build the 17pdr (and DAK's Flak 36, to be fair). It took over a week to fix that.
That's the core of the frustration really - double standards. They could have fixed balance issues much faster in the past but chose not to. The axis imblanaces should ahve been addressed, but weren't. The brits have been hit with nothing but nerfs since launch. The changes in 1.5.0, while welcome, were also mostly just bringing units like the Humber and Dingo up to functional - something that should have been done long before now. Core issues like a lack of flexibility, sub par sections, broken or absent vet1 abilties and predictable battlegroups have not really been touched. They haven't even tested that all of their changes functionally worked! Relic have put basically no effort into the brits for the entire lifetime of the game, instead favouring swingeing nerfs with zero consideration for the overall effect all while the axis are allowed to run riot with things like L6 spam that are left untouched for months.
E: I'm mostly vocal on this because I'm extremely disappointed in Relic's attitude throughout the lifetime of the game. Five months waiting for any improvement and instead the fastest balance hotfix in the game's lifetime with some insulting logic to defend the additional nerfs. Beyond that though, Relic just haven't given a shit about the game or the setting in general.
If nothing else, I do think they're falling into the trap of making a game for elite 1v1 play at the expense of everyone else. It never works.
i have been playing mostly ukf since the patch. a couple of days ago I had a rough game and i started to have doubts. i started wondering if maybe axis is just empirically and insurmountably OP
i started watching a bunch of Wehr replays considering a faction switch
after a while of that, a great calm washed over me and granted me peace... and i realized that if it wasn't for the wirb then wehr would be the worst faction in the game, and the fact that they are bound by this incredibly OP unit is not a blessing but a curse
because they must play greedy as fuck in order to get that unit out as fast as they can, and i can punish that greed and dominate... i went 6-0 tonight and none of them were particularly close
i feel like i have finally ascended
DAK are the faction of easy answers to everything. I cannot fathom how half the stuff they have is considered even remotely fair. The flakvierling immediately renders infantry useless. High damage, long range, fast and suppression? What on earth were they thinking? If you thought you could try and chase it down with a light vehicle, don't bother because it'll run faster than you can hurt it and they'll have panzerjagers knocking around to immediately snare and remove your much less durable light vehicle. For some reason an unarmoured truck is more durable and maneverable than an armoured car! Even getting to that point is a struggle when using distinctly underwhelming infantry sections against a horde of panzergrenadiers (now with their downside all but removed!). If all of that fails them, DAK can fall back on spamming Pz3's. If even that fails, click to remove tanks can win games for you anyway. I'm at the point where if it's an all-DAK opposition I don't even bother trying, there's no point.
Wehr are much more beatable because they're rather predictable - and because they require at least some basic skill to play. Tactics like "flanking", "manevering" and "taking on infantry fights" mostly work against Wehr, especially against the many players that don't bother to reposition. That said, they aren't without their cheese either. Coastal reserves can quite literally attack move to clear off most positions. If there's an MG holding them back, just use the artillery officer to force it to move. The Wirbelwind is in much the same boat as the flakvierling - stupidly powerful, spammable and next to impossible to kill. Of course they're unlikely to work well against AT guns - but that's why the nebelwerfer exists. One click and all setup teams are gone!
Slight hyperbole aside, there is a massive difference in how punishing axis and allied units are. The penalty for getting caught by units like the flakvierling, wirbelwind or even just 250 + flamer against good players is that your squads get wiped. The punishment for getting caught unprepared for a humber is you lose a model or two and a bit of ground. At every point of the game allies absolutely must prepare for the next axis unit thrown at them whereas the axis can just sit back and roll a counter out without much loss. The end result is that it's simply much easier to lose the game as allies than it is as axis.
As for the brits, well sections are still rubbish. They'll do ok at best with brens or as light AT in a pinch but rarely do I feel they're worth the cost and upkeep. I've had much more success minimising their use and leaning heavily on HMGs and mortars instead, at least until some better infantry becomes available. Humbers are usable but on a permanent knife edge due to having no health. Light vehicles in general are just so trivial for DAK to counter that there's, again, no point trying them half the time.
The DAK are tricky to balance because they feel the most "high risk, high reward" to me. I'll willing to listen about how I'm just a noob and wrong but this game really feels like losing early game fights can really snowball on you. The DAK really excel here with the 250 with Flamethrowers. But at the same time everytime I play DAK and lose my starting 250 I really feel it, the enemy now has more squads on the field than me and can either concentrate on fighting before I get an mg out or focus on map control.
Honestly Wehr annoy me more, trying to use kill their bunkers while dodging Nebelwerfer barrages is not fun. But the stats show that the Wehr is pretty balanced, so that's probably a me issues.
dak is considered relatively strong right now but the meta is still developing... their winrate in large team games is related to a new meta that has been emerging where they do a mass pjager blob with medtruck. dak medtruck is unique because it comes out earlier and cheaper than anyone elses AND it gives combined arms buff.. so they blob pjagers around the truck and its basically a mobile DDL parked in every lane that is VERY hard to counter until the game is already over
that doesn't play well in 1v1s but it looks like Dak is settling in as viable but at this point its hard to say if they are even great, much less broken. i think they're fine and well tuned.
most of the high level players I follow are consensus that allies are probably better overall but axis has more cheese and because wehr is poorly designed it can be soul crushing to play against, this is at high level where virtually every wehr player is playing coastals and DDL
on units, i get it, the flakveirling is annoying but it IS counterable, the wirble is annoying, and while the wirble is in indeed very hard to deal with, something that has come to me is that your challenge as the allies isnt to deal with the wirble at face value, its to kick ass in the opener to delay the wirble to the point where its no longer your biggest problem... and you can absolutely do that in the current meta.
if you're an allies fanboy like me there has not been a better patch to play on and i dont expect it to last, a wehr patch is probably coming soon where DDL gets evaporated and the rest of their army is buffed to compensate
The key thing is that they always have the initiative. They have about 4 or 5 different ways to completely wipe your amy if you aren't prepared. Flamers in a 250? Squad wiped. Flakvierling? Squad wiped. 8Rad? Yep, squads wiped. Any number of light vehicles with the durability and damage to destroy their opponent. And what if I take boys sections to try and defend against this? They either have to be in exactly the right spot, or if the DAK player feels like it they can just use their superior infantry to roll over the sections. They don't even need to spend any munitions on half the stuff they do, so it's mine central if you do try and push them back. Really, DAK can only lose if they fuck up. The balance of effort is horrifically one sided.
UKF has the best tier 3 in the game, period. not even close. footguards, insane all purpose elite that fucks on everything, recently buffed. matilda, DAK only has one unit its entire army that can pen a matilda from the front, does massive infantry damage. grant, currently the best tank in the game. soloes a P4 with ease while also being cheaper, wipes 4 model squads in a single salvo.
these are serious advantages that rank up with what DAK can bring to the table midgame.
axis currently MUST contend and deal with and respond to UKF tier 3 in the same way UKF has to respond to DAK tier 2. UKF opener is so good they had to nerf it within 18 hours of releasing it. its still good. sappers might be the best T0 in the game. Wehr has no practical answer for the Dingo.
thats just RTSes. power spikes happen at different times. the anger was justified when axis had the same old midgame power spike and UKFs reward for surviving that was... crusader spam....?
but now the reward is total domination. if you get to grants, you win
Apparently since the last patch the Axis have actually been underpowered, if anything.
https://coh3stats.com/stats/games?from=2024-02-27&to=now&mode=4v4
Anyway, Relic delayed their next patch to April, but it will include DAK and UKF battlegroups for free this time, three community maps, and a host of features and improvements.
that 2v2 map... the city one with the big bridge in the middle. thats so bad its going end up getting removed from the pool when every allied player in the game vetoes it
E: My worry with ported CoH2 maps and the likes is that they'll repeat the mistakes of CoH2 - namely removing any map with even an ounce of character in favour of small scale maps.
Maybe I'll turn against it eventually but there are certainly far worse out there (here's looking at you Mignano Summit!)
Day 101 is pretty lit
Campbells convoy is the goat of all time
Lyon, the Scheldt. I can see how the competitive community would hate them, but man, great times.
I still love the US Airborne and Infantry center combo. It gives me the flexibility to skip Weapon Support Centers and the Motor Pool if needed while giving me very cheap BARs or M1919s on my Paras to chew up Axis infantry. If vehicles show up then I can call in a 57mm or build a Motor Pool for Chaffees.
I've also learned to love landmines. They can be so pesky to deal with a a single one can stop a dedicated assault.
they have done quite a bit.. i cant recount it all because i havent beaten the campaign but here's some things I can personally attest to...
- All the random map unit encounters no longer result in actual battles, its all auto-resolve only, this reduces some of the tedium of the campaign map
- The AI actually attacks you now and you stand a real chance of losing your units to the AI using map tactics if you're not paying attention
- A lot of bug fixes
I still think its not a strong game mode but compared to launch its playable now and some of the scenarios are good
Oh, maybe I should give the campaign another go. Aside from the bugs and lack of explanation of... anything useful, the constant grind of battles was just boring.
Seems like a bad game design decision to ask every 2 minutes 'Would you like to play this skirmish for 20m? Or would you like to auto resolve and miss out on rewards?'. So, waste 20 minutes or get handicapped... great choice. It's not like losing those skirmish battles was remotely possible either since the AI was a dunce.