I would much rather see another ww2 or like Korea war era than 21st century. Too high tech for a fun theme imo.
This exactly.
Post Korean War, everything becomes incredibly "high tech", and the entire game would revolve around off-map abilities (cruise missiles, air strikes, etc.). Engagement ranges also became incredibly large, which really wouldn't work (even with CoH's compressed ranges).
There's also the problem that Post-WW2, there really weren't any "balanced" large-scale conflicts, in terms of military size, tech and training. WW2 gives us interesting match-ups like Tigers vs. IS2s vs. Pershings, etc. whereas a modern setting just doesn't offer that.
Has there even been a tank battle where
both sides used tanks built in the 21st century?
Edit: Has there been a tank battle post-korea where both sides used tanks built within 20 or even 30 years of each other?
If EA can manage to sell Battlefield 1 with italian and hungarians, the relic can manage to sell CoH3 with afrika wehrmacht, brits, early war US and italians.
All that CoH fans care about is the WW2 setting and good coh gameplay. CoH2 launched without a king tiger or sherman tank after all and still sold well.
Let's be honest; EA sold """WW1""". In that game, everyone has semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons; SMGs are common, as are LMGs. Realistically, 99% of the playerbase should be using bolt-action weapons, but that's "boring" to play, apparently.
CoH has generally been a
bit more faithful to realism, where most/all stock units perform roughly according to the real-world counter parts. Yes, some units are more common in-game than in history, such as the OKW "SturmTiger Saturation" victory strike being
literally impossible since not that many STs were built, or the Ostwind being incredibly rare in reality, but that's about it. Mainline infantry use bolt-action rifles, or at best, semi-auto ones, MGs are common, AT focused tanks are awful against infantry, etc.
Regardless, I think an "early-war" (39-41 or 42) would be really interesting in both theme and game design. Firstly, that era isn't shown very often, but secondly, the whole "German Slow/Expensive Gear vs. Allied Fast/Mass-Produced Gear" thing could be flipped
entirely. For example, an invasion of France era game would have Panzer 2 and short-barrel P3s fighting against Char B1s and 2Cs, which were slower, more armored and better armed.
If we were doing "votes", I'd vote that vCoH3 should start with "The Battle of France" (Germany vs. France, 1940), with the first expansion being "Early Western Desert Campaign" (UKF vs. Italy, 1940), and the 2nd being "The Tunisia Campaign" (US vs. Africa Corps, 1943).
By the end, we'd have 1940 Germany/1943 Germany/Italy vs. France/UKF/US, with maps ranging from France (similar to what we have now) to Africa and Egypt. They could even re-skin the "Blizzard" system into a "sandstorm" system, by deleting the freezing/slow movement penalties (just have it be LOS reducing).
Most importantly, a lot of the "late war" gimmicky stuff we've seen in CoH2 would be absent (super heavies/TDs, IRHTs, fast TDs, etc.).