Profile of Joshua85

As I've been unable to play in my holiday, I've saturated my thirst for the game by watching quite a few casts and it seems to me that the luftwaffe doctrine is all the rage in high level games.

I must admit that I struggle to see the appeal of this compared to some of the other OKW commanders available.

Don't get me wong, the fallschirmjaegers seem great, but OKW already has a lot of great infantry at hand, both doctrinal and not, and other that this, the doctrine seems to be somewhat lacking.

The cheap recon sweep is always nice I suppose and the valiant assault seem nice if you're ever at a point as OKW where you can spare 100 munis. I haven't seen anyone use the heavy fortifications and the airborne assault seems to be way overpriced for what it does.


So is is primarily for the versatile beind-enemy-lines assault of the falls that I should pick this doctrine? Or are these guys just so much better that it is worth spending a whole doctrine on getting them, rather than volks, obers, fusiliers or some other thing at my disposal?

OKW walking stuka will be able to bring almost any building down in one single volley. This should effectively solve your problem any time you have just one OKW player on your side.

If you can't handle this strat before the walking stuka arrives (which is like 8-10 minutes max.) then you probably have some much more serious issues. A replay might help.

I would pick two, depending on who your ally is playing.

If your ally is Soviet, then Special Weapons is where it's at, because you can drop vickers lmg and piats for his penals, effectively removing the one last weakness for the soviet infantry prowess.

For anyone else I would argue the tactical support, primarily because of its "kill, stun and maim everything in the area" Artillery Cover ability.

I hardly play team games anymore and the advice I give also depends on whether your friends also play OKW or if you hav some wehrmacht players amongst them? At least for your mg troubles, this should be quite easily counters with ostheer mortar smoke and mg42s.

As for your general strat and build order I would say that you should really reconsider whether the benefits of a forward retreat hq outweighs the cost and risk?
The rally point upgrade alone costs more than an additional volks squad, so it will take a long time to compensate for the additional map presence from reduced retreat. Also you seem to have problems with it getting destroyed, which indicates that you are probably putting it too far forward. This both makes it easier to destroy and a semi decent player will make sure to bombard it with indirect fire as soon as your men are retreating, thus potentially wiping most of your army. from a 1v1 perspective I never use the forward retreat, prefering to place it safely in my base instead. On large 3v3 and 4v4 maps I suppose it could make a bit more sense to occationally place it a bit more ahead. However, if one of your friends are playing Ostheer, it might be better for him to build a command bunker or resupply half-track that you can soft retreat back to and replenish from there.

If your luchs comes too late, you might also consider initally skipping the battlegroup and go straight for the mechanized. Healing can come through the med drop from your sturmpios and you can always back tech a bit later.

I would personally rarely open with an additional sturmpio and never with two consecutive ones. while sturmpios can provide an initial shock and occational early wipe, they are not the most cost-effective combat unit in the OKW roster and in the later phases should be more relied on as a supporting unit, harrasing lone squads, wiping on retreat and of course reparing veichles and planting mines and wire.

And on that point: Mines-Win-Games! This is an old coh saying, but it is probably the more consistent truth in the game, so brace yourself for my tribute to mines:

Any semi-seasoned player will be hard pressed to say that a mine is ever a waste of munitions. The reason for this is that mines have a very significant impact both directly and indirectly.

Most mines will for 30 munis provide you with a certain death of two enemy soldirs, this means that any squad that size sneaking around and ninja-capping will be at risk of instant death. same mine will also knock the threads of ANY veichle, rendering it very exposed and weakened. If the Pershing is planning on bum rushing your base that plan is immediately canceled as soon as it stumbles on a mine. When placed on a retreat path any fleeing two-man squad is sent home to their loved ones as a jigsaw puzzle. I can not think of a single time I thought back on a match saying "that specific shreck/grenade/weapon upgrade really won me the game" but I can think back on dozens of times when this was the case for a mine.

And this is only the direct effect of mines. Half the damage is the mental and psychological effect mines have. As soon as your first mine has blown up a squad or set alight a scout car, the mental attack on your enemies begin. Anywhere they go could be a potential death trap and any deep pushes will suddenly seem like a high risk investment. to circumvent this the engineers will have to get sweepers, which effectively takes away 20-25% of their core DPS and occupies a weapon slot. The mental attack on a human player depends on that persons experience, but regardless of skill it requieres the person to adapt and change strategy or suffer even more from constantly walking into mine fields.

Focus elsewhere. If his forces are near your cut off, his part of map is opened for your IS and vickers (only 2 vilka should be there)

Also providing us a replay, where this happens can greatly help us, so we can see your common mistakes better and give you a superb review on your play

Thanks for the solid advice all around. For my game I think that I should probably have followed Hectors advice and pushed elsewhere.

Unfortunately I forgot to save a replay from this one, but at the end of the day I lost the game by being outplayed by a surperior (lvl 16 or 17) opponent.

In my current situation of being above 30, having a full time job as well as wife and a kid, I must come to accept that I have natural limitations in this game, when I at best have time to put in 4-5 matches a week often playing against people half my age and with twice the amount of experience.

I don't think my micro is getting much better than it currently is, so I try to work around this by improving my macro, using the strat map and crunch the numbers in some serious theorycrafting.

It has really paid off, lifting me from an average 1v1 player at level 7-8 a year ago to a level 11-12 player with all factions (except USF who I don't really play). Currently I'm still winning a lot more than I'm loosing against players at the same level, so I expect that I can probably go one or two levels higher with most factions, but from then on the gates will be closed as it takes a natural talent above and beyond what can be studied