Developer Interview

You’ve likely played CoH2 more than anyone. What is your favorite unit? Favorite ability? Favorite campaign mission? Favorite Theater of War mission? How did this change from when you first started playing the game to now?

Favorite unit: ISU-152; favorite ability: Sector Artillery; favorite campaign: Mission 7; favorite Theatre of War mission: Blitzkrieg challenge. Unit balance changed a lot over time and some unit roles also were adjusted. Early on, normal infantry were more preferred; balance eventually lead to more late-game units being employed. Campaign missions didn’t exist in a reformed state for a period of time and Theatre of War as a feature came later. My preference for Theatre of War was established early and stayed.

In multiplayer, what is your favorite early build order to use with each faction? Favorite strategy? Favorite commander? Favorite map?

I prefer to make large numbers of basic infantry units and win early on; this strategy is also the most entertaining against weaker opponents who may feel cheated when their more varied approaches are beaten by brute force. To go along with this, I like to bring commanders with the “Hit the Dirt” ability or the Light Infantry Package upgrade. My favorite map is Kholodny because it’s small.

Were any units comically overpowered or underpowered at some point during development?

There has been a lot of variance in what was considered strong during development. There was a period of time where the Soviets could dispatch Conscript squads without a resource cost that was generally considered grossly unbalanced.

Are there any bugs that were eventually turned into features?

Not sure if anything started as a bug and became a feature, but many design features are often logged as bugs.

What has been the most difficult thing to balance?

Subjective features on units such as movement speed or range have always been difficult to value in the game, as a lot of our balancing is based around statistics.

What’s the silliest bug that you saw?

The Pak 43 used to be a mobile unit and for a period of time it could garrison inside buildings. It looked quite funny when garrisoned inside a building that it was larger than.