Profile of Nuclear Arbitor

That's a silly thing to say.

RTS has always been about choosing what production structures to get. If you did something stupid and found your army lacking, it was your own fault.

It worked well in Dawn of War 2 because Hero/wargear choice and a myriad of unit upgrades replaced overall tech trees, but it wouldn't work as well in a game with far less in the way of upgrades.

There's a reason no faction in this game (well Soviets almost do now) has a linear tech tree. Even Ostheer had the option of researching battlephase independently from the structure that actually builds those units: allowing them the option to fast tech to other tiers and open up new strategies that way.

Even Brits have the decisions between Bofors/AEC or Hammer/Anvil to give some sort of tech tree decision making to the game.

Soviets old design never limited you to half your arsenal, you just had to spend the resources to get it.

If it weren't for the community whining about game pacing and having Relic hike up all the tech fuel costs significantly, it was actually quite affordable to buy all four tech structures in a game.

DoW2 doesn't work the same way though. you tier up, you have a selection of options, and then you choose what to build. the big difference there being that you don't have to choose before teching. the only time you cann't build a counter is when you're in t1 and the other player had vehicles. most faction didn't have any counters to vehicles (a few did, SM had vengeance rounds, nades would technically work if you landed a hit) but basically you were fucked against vehicles unless you could tech in time. there were a few other issues relating to design (PM vs snipers) but as a rule of thumb you were never locked out of options by tech choice.

SC does force you to make a choice between the units you build but within that selection you have some kind of counter to everything you face. as terran, if you go mech you have AA ad if you go bio you still have AA.
(bare in mind that i have almost no competitive knowledge of SC2 so i may get something wrong there)

coh2 actually excludes certain units through teching. soviets do not get any form of hard AT if they go t1. before t3/4 were, uh, linked, the soviets could either choose t3 for much better AI and weaker AT or t4 for weaker AI and much better AT. USF does not get hard AT with their own t1. USF also get's fundamentally different suppression platforms between t1 and t2 and while they still have suppression, the units are used and countered much differently. OKW is actually relatively balanced, on paper, between the tiers (they have artillery and AT in both with t1 getting a utility unit and t2 getting a AI unit) but the situation is complicated by their fuel income reduction. OKH is similar to the dow2 system in that teching does not prevent you from getting units, although due to costs t3/t4 is more of a trade off then a natural progression. they still don't have anything in t3 that t4 doesn't have (and vice-versa) apart from the pwerfer, the units simply differ in cost and performance.

another key difference between dow2 and coh2 is that coh2 has a severe lack of role changing upgrades; the only ones i can think of are the handheld AT (schreck, bazooka, piat, sort of PTRS) and the M5/251/UC upgrades. all the other upgrades either buff or enhance the unit's primary role. i suspect this is partly due to there being less unit types in coh2 then dow2; the only thing separating the two types (infantry/vehicle) is target size and armour rather then damage/target tables.

apologies for any missing/extra "n"s; my keyboard is broken.

Well the sound is sure different when the two fire; and its consistent with the one that used HEAT shells and the one that didn't. I would upload a video to show the difference more clearly but I don't know how to use moviemaker or edit.

do you have a recent (600 series or newer) nvidia card?

The thing with soviet units is even though they suck, you can keep rushing them at the enemy and slowly snowball.

Maxim spam, conspam, penal spam vs OKW, T34/76 spam, etc.

If you go commander you get quality and don't have to zerg

soviet units don't suck as a general rule of thumb. their vehicles were terrible for a while at the beginning of the game but their infantry have always been decent, even if it was because of crutch units like snipers or shocks.

i saw someone else report the same thing for a different faction. don't remember which thread it was in though. i don't think it has to do with a specific unit recrewing though

Centaur? KV-8? Crocodile. What does OKW have that compares to them?

well, they don't have a flamer vehicle but the stiger, stuka, flaktrack (when it actually deals damage), VI B, and lusch are all very good AI, if not as straightforward as a flamer tank. the pIV is also decent.