Profile of ZombiFrancis

See, I've always found the DoW games to be largely unplayable. They felt boring, two dimensional, and without any sort of competitive depth. The only reason I ever played them was because they were acquired for free (for preordering CoH2 or something, iirc), and the other along with a Humble Bundle I think. I was able to invest a total of an hour in each of the games, including the installation time. I kind of expected this from the games, as they were pretty much given to me without me even trying or wanting them.

But there seems to be a lot of fans of the DoW games, many of whom are playing CoH2. And that's why CoH2 is the way that it is, because let's not forget that Relic was recently acquired by SEGA, who I assume is pressuring them to prove that purchasing the franchise wasn't a poor decision. Which sucks, as it appears that it's forcing Relic to cannibalize their own game.

I think the CoH2 community would be much friendlier if the game had been shipped as "DoW:WW2" to prevent the confusion that exists among so much of the fanbase. CoH2 has never felt like a CoH game. If I ever could say that it has: it's felt like a perpetual Beta test of a CoH game.

In small arms combat, the armor vs numerical advantage, works.

Which is all that ever gets 'balanced'. It seems like many changes are based off the spreadsheet and from theoretical combat vacuums as far as balance is concerned. Greater factors that heavily impact game mechanics aren't really taken into account I feel: (for instance, the dynamic of flanking and frontal/rear armor. Many units (german at least) are impenetrable walls from the front, but pieces of paper from the rear. (There is no side armor, those shots just tend to scatter 50/50 on either side of the vehicles' front or rear.) There's no numerical stat that translates directly towards a unit being used in an effective fashion. There's no stat that causes a unit to use better tactics.

But there is something to be said about the general maneuverability, pathing, and mobility of units on the gameworld, which is often a map design issue, and is almost as big of a factor as any units' stats.

A wide open map will make these 7 muni AP mines relatively ineffective, but on cramped maps, or any map that features a chokepoint, it can be devastating. And you know, that's something that's really hard to balance: when used correctly it is absolutely devastating. When used incorrectly it is useless... Like so many things in CoH2.

Now I personally enjoy having my MP matches feature a fair bit of combat where my units, from the first to the last, are able to hold territory and gather veterancy, and then ultimately field counters to my opponents counters until VPs end or a clear victor emerges.

But the more of a gamble every decision is, and the more volatile and 'all or nothing' aspects of CoH2 just seems to support a style of gameplay where each player avoids as much combat as possible until the first largely uncounterable shock unit hits the field. In an overwhelmingly simplified sense: the first armor units generally evaporate any gains or losses from the early game, and the heavy armor units typically do the same for the middle game.

I ended up installing CoH2 on my laptop (which has no real hope of actually running the game itself) to see if I could get the Worldbuilder going on that.

No go, same thing on the laptop. Instacrash, nothing written to log.

I found Noun has this posted on the Steam community page from yesterday:

1. You can start the WorldBuilder by running:
…\Steam\steamapps\common\Company of Heroes 2 - Test Build\WorldBuilder_CoH_2.exe
2. You must save their scenario in:
…\Steam\steamapps\common\Company of Heroes 2 - Test Build\CoH2\Data\Scenarios\MP\
3. You can only create MP scenarios at this time.
4. If you run the following command from their Steam install folder:
Archive.exe -a CoH2\Archives\MPScenarios.sga -e CoH2\Data
The archive tool will extract all our MP maps, which you can then load to figure out how we’ve done things.
5. When you save their scenario it will generate a bunch of files, you can:
a. Edit the .options file in NotePad for more options.
b. Create a custom minimap by creating a file called _mm_low.tga. If you add a boarder, the minimap_size in the .options file is the size in pixels of the playable area of the scenario (original size minus boarder size).
c. Create a custom preview by creating a file called _mm_preview.tga. (Usually the same image as the minimap.)
d. Create a custom loading screen by creating a file called _loading_background.tga.
6. You can create a Scenario Pack (an archive containing all scenario files including the custom ones named above) by going File->Export Package.
7. Any Scenario Packs in their …\My Documents\My Games\Company of Heroes 2\mods\scenarios\ folder will be available in the Custom Match lobby.
8. All users must have the same Scenario Pack installed to be able to start a custom game.

I bolded the key parts: His directory is seeking a "Test Build" version of the CoH2 directory, which I have, but it is otherwise empty except for 2 Benchmark documents from April. I wonder if it's a matter of files not being in the right folder, or the program is looking for key files in the wrong place.

Fresh install (again) to a new directory that's not Program Files has done nothing.

I'm now at a loss for things to do short of reinstalling windows to see if that shakes something out. It's that or wait for a fix, but I'm not sure how long or even possible that is. I feel like it's something that's excruciatingly basic or I will just simply be unable to use the worldbuilder. (Which is incidentally and unfortunately the whole reason I got CoH2 in the first place.)