Well, to be honest, everything is getting dumbed down nowadays. The reason being is that everyone, including game studios, wants to make more money by catering to the widest possible customer base. Unfortunately (or fortunately), people of this day and age have seen/played a lot of different games that the "wow factor" bar rose so high. This especially hit strategy games because of the genre's reliance of similar macro + micro mechanics. You can't excite a hardcore strategy game fanboy with spectacular graphics, crazy good audio, nor a creative narrative or a theme. However, introducing innovative concepts in strategy games is something that can move the genre forward. And along came COH franchise.
The first thing that drew me personally to COH was the strategical mechanic of directional cover. It absolutely matters how you position your units on the field. This to me is the most realistic scenario of the game. No other strategy game even attempted to create anything similar. Sure, you might have a concept of garrison that gives you different bonuses but in most other strategy games that mechanic is a second class citizen. Furthermore, cover system opens new avenues to create the game more dynamic. Due to destructive nature of maps, you can manipulate newly created/destroyed cover to your advantage.
Another big selling point to me was how COH interacted with RNG. I mean, god forbid, a unit in your army doesn't hit its target 100% of the time. If you stick around these lands, you are going to read a lot of bitching about RNG and how a certain moment made somebody lose the game or perform badly. But the fact of the matter remains, had it not been for RNG, none of us would have been so hooked to this game. No matter if you attempt to play the game exactly the same from strategical perspective for 1000 times in a row, it will always feel different. It is similar to poker. You can deal the best cards to a bed player and the worst cards to a good player but in great majority of cases, the good player will win because of better risk management skills.
Finally, the whole historical aspect of COH made me a long term fanboy of the franchise. You will find that most everyone here enjoys WW2 topics in general. Put two and two together and you got yourself a hardcore fanbase. Stuff like squads, veterancy, realistic WW2 weapons, retreats, strategic points, realistic strategical characteristics of all factions is something every WW2 fanatic can appreciate. Alternatively, strategy games that you mentioned are fictional and include a lot of, but not limited to, floating wizards shooting lasers out of their asses, swarms of all sorts of bugs/creatures shooting black jiz out of their mouths, harvesting glowing dildo looking resources from the ground, etc. Needless to say, I am not a big fan of fictional strategy games. #MVGame
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