Company of Heroes-Force Multipliers

This is an article I wrote a couple years ago about the RTS game Company of Heroes. One of the most interesting game concepts found in Company of Heroes is the presence of units that can turn the tide of battle against a much larger army. In most other RTS games, this sort of mechanism is accomplished through a rigid counter system, such as a spearman unit that can kill two light cavalry units, or an archer that can kill two spearman units. Company of Heroes has a much more interesting take on this, where support units like HMGs, buildings, and the map’s terrain itself serve to let a skilled player take advantage of this force multiplication concept. However, you can use the strategies in this article and apply them to almost any game, you just have to look at what methods you can use to defeat a numerically superior force.

HMGs: Heavy machine guns, such as the Wehrmacht MG42 and American .30 cal, are one of the most obvious tools that enable a smaller army to beat a larger one. They get accuracy bonuses against larger groups of troops and can suppress the enemy. This causes troops to crawl around on the ground, lowering their movement speed and making them more susceptible to the firepower of your main infantry, such as Grenadiers. Soon after becoming suppressed, those troops then become pinned, completely unable to fire or move. A well placed MG can stop a large infantry-based attack in its tracks.


MG-42 forcing British infantry to retreat


A 260 manpower brings 2000 manpower in British troops to a halt

Though MGs lose some effectiveness as the game progresses due to the increased availability of indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, howitzers, and doctrine based artillery call-ins, their suppression effect can still be very effective throughout an entire match. A well supported MG can be one of the best tools for stopping the current mainstream tactic of ‘blobbing.’

Tanks: With complete invulnerability to small arms fire and a powerful main gun (and potentially even an upgradeable turret-mounted HMG,) tanks serve as an extremely potent force multiplier for your army. Tanks that have heavier frontal armor, such as Tigers, StuGs, StuHs, and Hetzers, can laugh as weaker projectiles, like bazookas, bounce right off their hood.


A Hetzer watches as a bazooka round bounces off its hull, no penetration achieved


Riflemen and Rangers are forced to retreat with heavy casualties, Hetzer suffered no damage

A tank with infantry support can dish out a lot of damage, while any damage it suffers (short of death) does not cost any resources to repair - it only requires some of your repair crew’s time. In comparison, every soldier your tank kills will cost your opponent Manpower to replace. It’s important to keep in mind that you need to have infantry support with your tank for it to be truly effective and game changing. If you send in a tank solo, it will tend to die unless it is facing inferior forces.

Cover: This is easily the most available and widely used method of force multiplication. Yellow cover is frequently present all over a map in the form of small trees and brush dotted along the ground. Yellow cover gives your forces a moderate amount of protection from gunfire, allowing your squad to take fewer casualties as it faces off against a squad not in cover. Green cover, usually seen in the form of stone fences or hay piles, offers considerably greater benefits. If you have two Grenadier squads in green cover behind a stone wall, they can defeat three charging Riflemen squads. Obviously, the more cover you utilize, the better.


These grenadiers would be in trouble in the open


But behind their heavy cover they defeat these riflemen with ease

However, there are also ways to use the negative cover on the map (which causes soldiers to take additional damage) to your benefit as well. On maps like Semois and Angoville, the roads are common retreat routes. If you position some troops or a MG along these routes, you can easily get a squad kill as your opponent is attempting to flee.

Buildable defenses: Unless you’re playing as British, these tend to be forgotten in terms of improving your position on the map. A well thought out system of fortifications can make your opponent hemmed into a tiny area of the map, losing precious Manpower every time he attempts to leave that area. Each type of defense has advantages that merit individual discussion:

Barbed Wire: Currently, this isn’t used anymore due to the crappy wiring AI of the game, but I hear that this is fixed in the beta so it merits a mention. The point of barbed wire is to deny your opponent easy access to an area, because only weaker units, like Engineers and Pioneers, are able to cut it in the early game, and they suffer increased vulnerability to enemy fire as they do so. It can be built for free and VERY quickly by a variety of units from each side.

If you have secured an important area of the map, you can use these idle troops to sculpt the terrain to your advantage for when your opponent inevitably returns to contest your holdings. You can wire off some of the entrance routes to the area, button-holing him into only one access point, which leaves him as easy prey to a HMG team. You can also take advantage of negative cover on the maps and wire off access to heavy or yellow cover, forcing his infantry to walk down the main road and take additional damage from any troops you have in the area. The infamous ‘Semois Pin’ involved significant use of barbed wire to leave an opponent stuck in his base, unable to do anything of value.

Sandbags: These provide the bonuses of green cover to wherever you choose to build them. They allow for you to fortify open areas of the map, such as the left side of Angoville or many areas of Langres, giving your troops a great deal of protection from enemy fire. Another creative use that players have come up with is to build sandbags at small entrance paths to key areas, such as the high fuel on Sturzdorf. This allows it to function like barbed wire, except that it cannot be cut. In either case, they can allow your army to win against technically superior forces by providing a powerful cover bonus.


Sandbags buy time for this grenadier squad to upgrade a panzerschrek, so they can damage the armored car

Tank Traps: Basically the same as barbed wire, except it is used against vehicles. They are difficult to destroy and allow you to hem your opponent’s vehicles into your anti-tank weapons' kill zones.

Land Mines: These are the buildable defense that I see most often in 1v1 play. They only cost 25 Munitions and have a lot of power for their price - it’s highly recommended to use extra munitions you have on these! Many players do not choose to buy minesweepers, so they continually step on these. There are several varieties in the game - Panzer Elite Tellermines that only trigger on vehicles; regular land mines that trigger on anything and can be built by Sappers, Engineers, and Pioneers; and the more powerful M8 land mines that also trigger on anything.


This sniper took one step too far


Hetzer receives a damaged engine from rolling over a mine. It would now be easy prey for any enemy tanks or anti-tank infantry to destroy

Against Infantry: Mines suppress the squad temporarily, deal a bunch of damage (usually killing at least one squad member) and generally can stop an opponent in his tracks. Mines function as a force multiplier simply because they kill enemy troops as they walk around on the map, but they can be used in support of your troops to work even more effectively. For example, you can put a mine on the obvious flanking route to your MG position, resulting in your opponent’s troops blowing up as they get ready to throw a grenade. They can also be put on critical points, such as the +16 fuel points or the connecting strategic points on Angoville, Victory Points, or on major roads to give you a warning about what your opponent is doing.

Against Vehicles: Land mines do a significant amount of damage to vehicles and also frequently cause engine damage, slowing your opponent’s vehicle to a crawl. This makes them easy prey for a nearby AT gun, Panzerschreck-equipped unit, or a tank of your own. At best, when used with support it can almost guarantee the destruction of that vehicle. At worst, it still puts your opponent’s vehicle out of the fight for a significant amount of time, as he has to move a repair squad out to fix the crippled vehicle.

Buildings: Lastly, I am going to discuss the use of the buildings that are typically spread throughout each map. Though they are frequently used merely to stick a MG in (to provide a more secure base of fire for it,) they have a great deal of value for your ordinary infantry as well. They provide a significant amount of cover that can allow your squad to defeat larger numbers or superior quality opponents.


Out in the open, this rifle squad would be no match for the panzer grenadiers. As it is fortified in a building, the grenadiers must bypass that point to avoid losing men


These volksgrenadiers would normally die in seconds to these infantry squads. Within the building, they can hold out for reinforcements

Also, some squads, such as MP40-equipped Volks and Assault Grenadiers, are devastating to face in the open but do very poor damage to troops in buildings. When you run into these types of troops, you can garrison a nearby building with a Rifle squad or Infantry Section, easily winning the day.

If you approach your CoH game with these ideas of how to make your army work more efficiently to defeat your opponent, your victories will come much easier than they might have otherwise. When using all of these ideas to maximum effect, you will inflict considerable casualties on your opponent while suffering few with your own army. This will drain your opponent of Manpower while preserving your own for teching, purchasing upgrades, or training more soldiers to overwhelm him in later encounters.

Developer Focus: Single Player or Multi Player

After playing through the single player campaign of Starcraft II, one of the best RTS campaigns I've ever played, I had to think about whether it's worth it for developers to invest so much energy into the single player components of their games. All of the cut scenes, movies, voice actors, different maps, special units, and other material that's needed can eat up a huge portion of development time and money for a project. In a developer that isn't Blizzard, this may lead to an issue where there isn't sufficient time spent on the multi player and single player portions of the game to make them both enjoyable for players.

The problem is usually most obvious in the multi player portion of the game, as the single player is the most played part of a game, with only a small portion of the community continuing to play online. There may be gigantic balance issues in the game where one faction or strategy is basically impossible to beat. Support to fix these problems is also frequently lacking. Many developers take months to put out a balance patch, and even when it comes it may not be tested properly, causing more problems than it solves. This leads to an irate community and a hemorrhage of players until the problems are fixed, assuming they are at some point.

The problem is certainly not limited to RTS games, FPS titles and any other game that includes a online component as well. Many feature a superficial online system that minimal effort was put into, including a couple popular modes like team deathmatch and free for all, and that's about it. The real development effort was put into the game's single player mode. Sadly, in many cases the single player mode is also forgettable. I haven't finished a single player campaign for a FPS in an extremely long time and I have never played them more than once.

This begs the question, should developers continue to funnel ever larger amounts of money into creating a single player experience that most players will only complete maybe once or should it instead be invested into the multi player component, which may build a community that lasts for years, building a loyal community to the title?

The biggest barrier to the creation of games that focus exclusively on the multi player content is that most people who buy games do so for the single player. Many players simply don't feel comfortable with playing online because of many factors. They don't like to lose, the rudeness of other members of the community, latency issues, poor interface design of the online features, etc. Most players are unwilling to get their ass kicked by better players for the required number of games to develop enough talent to win.

Fortunately, many of these barriers are not insurmountable. Starcraft II introduced a lot of features that could potentially make new online players feel comfortable playing. There is the option to play a number of unranked games before diving into ranked play using special maps. These maps feature rock barriers at the ramps to the base, allowing a player to have some protection from attack so that they can develop some comfort with how the game works and how to build their army. Additionally, the first 5 games are played in a placement mode, placing the player in a league appropriate to their skill level. The interface is well designed to make it easy to figure out how to start games and get into the action. The map editor is great, giving mapmakers a lot of options for creating unique scenarios, such as tower defenses, adding custom maps to the community. In Warcraft III these custom maps became a large part of the online population, especially Defense of the Ancients, a custom map that developed its own tournaments! Lastly, the addition of achievements to the game allows players, even bad players, to feel that they are accomplishing something when they get new portraits they can use in multi player.

Although it is still unfeasible to expect developers to be able to focus exclusively on multi player content, if steps are taken to make the online experience more friendly to new players, it may be possible in the future. It will be interesting to see the data on the online player base for Starcraft II to see if these steps encouraged more people to play online or not. If they did, it seems like every developer who wants an online component should take similar initiative to get more people playing the multi player part of the game.