Profile of sluzbenik

The general feeling of the non-1v1 playing public is that Soviets are underpowered, difficult to play, and extremely bad in team games. This attitude is expressed by the ratios of Germans to Soviets in any other game mode other than 1v1, which at best seems to be 60/40, but is usually worse.

Amidst cries of "learn to play," always a fan favorite, there is more than a little truth to what the majority is encountering. Why exactly are Soviets so tricky? Essentially, everyone is playing them wrong, but they're also badly designed, in my opinion, for a competitive RTS. The normal rules that COH imposed on us don't apply to this faction, the rules of counter and counter-counter, and combined arms is only necessary as a fallback to avoid failure.

Essentially what's difficult with Soviets is that they seem to favor the design scheme of Panzer Elite in COH1 - they favor aggression and shock value units over a more playable combined arms strategy. With Ostheer, every unit has a function, and every function has a unit. The tier system is logical and intuitive, and so Ostheer is eminently playable even by beginner players. But as many people have pointed out Soviets are gimicky and have a rather tricky slippery-slope mechanic where using shock units can quickly devolve into game failure due to luck or when facing a really well-composed Ostheer army. For instance, SU-85s are extremely potent vs tanks, but extraordinarily vulnerable to flanking and infantry. Shock troops are great vs. infantry, but will be wiped by any vehicle that comes by them. Penal battalions and KV-8s are perhaps the ultimate example of this: the satchel charge can wipe two squads, but the chances of the penal squad getting safely away from their own destruction are slim. KV-8s might be able to charge in and wreck a defended position, but if any armor is on the field (which there should be unless the Soviet player is dominating) they will be quickly hunted down and destroyed or severely damaged before they can reach the safety of an AT wall or SU-85.

That's why most players find Soviets, including me, extraordinarily frustrating. Soviets just can't play the combined arms game as well as the Ostheer. For instance, many players make the mistake of constantly reinforcing and spending manpower on conscripts, which scale terribly late game, when what they need to be doing is gambling on the next shock unit that could change the tide of battle. I watched a recent replay with Siberian where he lost two conscript squads, but was able to utilize the superior infantry-killing power of Soviet snipers and SU-85s to win the game despite the Ostheer player doing very well most of the match. In other words, direct, extraordinary reliance on shock units. This meta remains the best way to play Soviets in my opinion. Since the T34 buff, many players are attempting to adopt a support-T34s style strat, but there's a huge hole in this strat - conscripts just don't scale as well as Ostheer infantry, leaving Soviet fallback positions too vulnerable to vetted infantry.

But - Soviets actually do have all the tools they need to win with combined arms, but they're just hard to get on the field in time to make a difference, given that the construction time of Soviet buildings is very long. It was almost entirely necessary to use both WSC and Motor Pool against Wehrmakt in COh1, but too dangerous to use both T1 and T2 against Ostheer as Soviets as the build times are so long. I'd propose that Soviets be reconfigured to make the tiering system more intuitive and easy to use, essentially reproducing the US tech system in COH1.

1) Move conscript construction and conscript upgrades to T1.
2) Move snipers to the WSC, but sniper build-time might need to be looked at.
3) Move the Zis to T3, but make it cheaper to build T3.
4) Move the T34 to T4.
5) Cut in half the construction time of Soviet buildings, it should be somewhere between the Ostheer build-time and the current one.

But we still have a huge problem - conscripts don't scale. More than the damage bars did, it was the ability to suppress superior Wehrmakt forces that made US rifles playable in COH. In my opinion, the gaping hole in the Soviet arsenal is the ability to suppress. Only Maxims and the quad-mount can do this. I think the only way to achieve parity is to give conscripts a suppress ability, like the G43 slow PE had in COH. This could be a global upgrade and fairly large cost.

A lot of things would then have to be re-balanced if Soviets are able to really field a great combined arms army - especially SU-85 build time and cost.

I know what the instant counter-argument is going to be - Soviets are fine in 1v1. Well, they are, but that's purely because in 1v1 the shock units scale so much better and the capping power of conscript spam is much greater. To re-balance for 1v1 with this proposal, sniper firing speed, health, T-34 crush, etc., would all need to be changed, but that's quite feasible.

I'm just curious.

I went away for a month or so and there are definitely some replays I missed, and with another patch having taken effect, there's a whole 'nother swathe of replays I shan't be watching, unfortunately. And I may get back into casting some if there is any interest, but the viewership went way down and it's pretty time-consuming to do.

Does anyone know if there are any games that manage to achieve this? Just curious.

Interestingly, there are hardcore COH casters who have actually went through the bother of installing patches one by one to cast replays. Definitely check out this guy: http://www.youtube.com/user/AECoH?feature=watch. I am astounded he's gone through the trouble of doing some of these for Youtube and he hasn't gotten nearly the views he deserves for doing so. I certainly got a kick out of watching a few of these and watching the meta and skill of players evolve, many are way before my time as a player.

In my experience the one who's camping almost always loses the game.

Why? because they hand the initiative over to their opponent.

I also disagree on the point that attacking is not rewarding, because if an attack is successful you most likely destroy a significant part of your opponents army as well as you take some territory off him.

Tactical camping is the best way to win, even with Soviets (past 5 mins or so), ie., wait for the enemy to move in then bring all your forces to bear, beat him off, and cap more territory. It works because the defender has a micro advantage - his units are probably already in ok positions, or can quickly get to them. The guy moving 4-6 units in has to micro all of them into cover while also using abilities. This is why generally Soviets are more difficult, 2-3 conscripts plus a sniper or M3 requires more APM than 2 grens and an MG.

This map is another funny Relic joke, c'mon guys, don't you get it?

Actually, I'm having a hard time laughing too. Seriously, how did this get past playtesting?

What Inverse said...

If you don't know any good players, play automatch till you get one...If it's a loss, see if they will rematch you, or if you win, they will probably be game for a rematch.

Have to make buds, automatch IS ok, but it's mostly a waste of time as you won't hit top players much. And we all have limited game time (well most of us).