Profile of Lumpy

felt I had an early game lead. got greedy and lost. tips please.

First, I want to apologize in advance if this is a question that has been repeated multiple times. I looked around and couldn't find anything recently, so I made a thread.

With that out of the way, on to my questions. Sadly, I have no replays on hand that I can link here for specific analysis. this is more of a general problem. so if anyone wanted to get a general idea of my skill level/ability, here is my player card:
http://www.coh2.org/ladders/playercard/steamid/76561198031861039


I understand Ostheer is pretty weak in the early game, and I am a bit undecisive/confused about what would be the best method to survive the early game and set myself up for a good mid game.

1. Capping order

I understand as Ost you really want to make sure you hold at least one fuel/muni point, but my question pertains more to HOW you go about capping. Do you use your precious grenadiers to cap points? or do you keep them together to support each other and defend your fuel/muni/cutoff/HMG early and just let your pio do the capping. I've experimented with several different ways to go about doing this but I can't tell what is more efficient.

2. Engagements

Another thing I really struggle with, not just with Ostheer but all factions in the early game, is determining when/where and how long to stay around in the first few opening engagements. often I feel I stick around in fights that I have no reason or ability to win, and it cost me in heavy MP bleed. If this question is a bit confusing, basically what I'm asking is when is it better to soft retreat and give ground/lose maybe one model rather than just full on retreating.

a pretty entertaining back and forth match. well played to my opponent

And if you want an oldie but goodie that applies to microing in RTS' in general, I highly recommend this video from Inverse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP-Sm9QkdHo

Also, here is another good video from Day9 about RTS micro in general. This video focuses on starcraft, but the concepts here are still fundamentally relevant to just about any RTS you can play:

https://youtu.be/RUohpQKVf_A?t=981 - I linked the video here to a portion of the video that is most relevant to coh2. Screen movement, mouse control, and hotkeys are all skills that apply to every RTS.

these two videos are the most help by far. the Day9 one is ok, but the Inverse video helped me tremendously. I watched it last night before going to bed and I am amazed at how well my play has improved when I put those tips into practice. it helped me cut down on idle squads/lack of map awareness tremendously.

thank you for linking that

This map is clearly Allied biased. It's practically a free win

well played to my opponent, this map is so bad