Strategy Theory

How do you think about strategy? Becoming a good strategist takes place outside of the game. You cannot think carefully while you’re forced to constantly make decisions during a battle. However, the information you’ll need to become a good strategist comes partially through game experience. You need to get a feel for battlefield situations that do not have clear-cut answers. You need to identify whether an engagement went poorly because you had built a suboptimal mix of units, or because you made tactical errors in your unit control.

Defense and Offense

I want to speak a bit about offense and defense in Company of Heroes 2. One of the most difficult skills to acquire is the intuitive feel for how aggressive or cautious you should be at a given time, and how this translates into positioning your units. From the perspective of an expert, I would liken this sense to wrestling in that you feel how precarious your footing is at a given moment, how solid your opponent’s position is, and which side of his body could most easily be manipulated through pushing or pulling. Company of Heroes 2 is very similar to this on a strategic level, except you lack the physical indicators of wrestling and instead must intuit data about your opponent’s position through scouting, prediction, and game knowledge. When you counter an aggressive play, drive your opponent’s forces on one side of the map off the field, and cut off his rear sectors, it’s as exhilarating as any physical exploit in demonstrating your mastery and technique.

I don’t want to spend much time discussing theories of attack and defense in the abstract, as understanding how to react in specific game situations is a rather different matter. Still, when you’re waiting for a match to start and considering the broad contours of your battlefield strategy, these ideas might prove useful.

Defense Through Offense

The best way to protect an area is to strike forcefully somewhere else that requires your opponent to defend. So long as your army is equal or superior to your opponent’s, it’s ideal to continuously pressure him such that he has little ability to attack you elsewhere. Seize the initiative as soon as you can in a match, and never let it go. Defense through offense is the most aggressive approach, but it works regardless of your opponent’s information about your unit positions—he may be perfectly aware that an area you control is undefended, but if he cannot spare units to exploit the weakness, that information is meaningless.

Imaginary Defense

This exploits your opponent’s lack of information by causing him to believe your units occupy certain positions and therefore decide not to attack. This form of defense is hard to maintain as any form of scouting renders it useless, but its desirability lies in its lack of cost to you. There’s no need to risk units or spend resources to defend territory in this manner.

Mobile Defense

This form of defense relies on a rapid response force to respond to enemy movements, rather than a fortified position. It’s best suited to defending an area with minimal units while attacking elsewhere. Armored cars, light tanks, and elite infantry function best in this role due to their speed, versatility, and suitability to one-versus-one engagement against most enemy unit types.

Fortified Position

The most obvious form of defense, this entails placing units in static positions that afford tactical advantages. Usually fortification consists of infantry units in heavy cover or buildings, and often relies upon weapons teams like HMGs, Mortars, and AT guns. This is the most powerful form of defense against a direct assault, but it suffers against enemy artillery and Mortar bombardment. Constructing a fortified position is a good option when you have control over a critical area of the battlefield that you know your opponent absolutely must attack (for example, cut-off points and Victory Points). Often such a position can effectively fight much larger enemy forces, so it’s generally unnecessary to dedicate your whole army to a fortified position. It’s better to pair this defence approach with a mobile strike force that can reinforce areas that need assistance or take ground.

Defense in Depth

Delay an advance by yielding territory to inflict greater casualties and break momentum. This is best when you have map control and cannot defend the front line without creating vulnerabilities on the flanks. For example, if your opponent has a Flammenwerfer and your only form of anti-vehicle weaponry is an AT gun, you absolutely cannot afford to be flanked. Instead, weakly defend the front line, place your AT gun safely in the rear, and withdraw wherever the Flammenwerfer attacks. Once you know its location, reposition your AT gun accordingly.

Envelopment

This is the practice of surrounding enemy units so that they’re isolated in a pocket, and it works best against enemies in a fortified position. As much as possible, avoid engaging an opponent where he’s strongest and instead dominate other areas of the map. The isolated enemy units may continue to hold their position even when it’s of little strategic value, or reposition and open themselves up to a multi-directional attack.

Feigned Retreat

This is the practice of attacking and then quickly withdrawing an intentionally under-strength force to draw the enemy into a vulnerable position. One example might be engaging a Tiger with a single T-34 and then backing away after suffering a couple of hits. If your opponent takes the bait and attempts to chase down your T-34, you turn around and ram the Tiger as soon as it has moved into a position away from supporting units and near other units of yours. This allows you to finish off the Tiger with your other forces while preventing enemy Pioneers from immediately repairing the damaged tank, Mortars and artillery from bombarding your AT guns, HMGs from suppressing your infantry, and AT guns as well as other tanks from striking your vehicles.

Bounding Overwatch

This is a form of steady advance in which weapon teams alternate covering each other and moving into new positions. This is best used with a force that relies upon HMGs and AT guns to counter enemy infantry and vehicles. Scouting with forward infantry enables a force of this type to advance more quickly in safety.

Strategic Aggression

What is an early-game advantage and how do you make the most of it? How does the value of a unit change throughout the stages of a game? Army (what units do you want your army to be made of in 15 minutes?), Unit Analysis (how they fit into different groups). When is it safe to be aggressive? What is a timing push and how can you use it? How can you predict your opponent’s available resources and the next units he’ll build based on what you’ve seen so far in terms of his map control, build order, and units he has lost?

You need to continuously ask yourself: Am I the aggressor or the defender in this area of the map? If you have idle units, the answer to that question determines whether you should advance and take ground or fortify your current position.

Establish the Front Line

If you’ve mastered the basics and have a good feel for advanced tactics, I want you to practice playing more aggressively than is typical for you. One significant difference between experts and everyone else is the degree to which they place pressure on their opponents from the very beginning of games.

Imagine a map with a base at either end and three standard territory points in a line leading from one base to the other. What would the expert player do on such a map? Try to establish a front line at the third point away from his base, the one closest to the enemy base. Why? The other two points further back don’t even need to be defended if the opponent’s attention is focused on fighting over the third point.

Novices tend to move their units as a large group rather than selecting them individually, and they tend to retreat units all together rather than individually. This is inefficient for many reasons, but I want to focus on how it relates to establishing a front line. If you Retreat all of your units at once, you instantaneously give up all map control to your opponent. What’s to stop him from pushing up and seizing not just the area over which you were fighting, but also other points under your control? Now the front line has been moved far closer to your own base, putting the pressure on you to retake lost ground. The superior approach to a losing battle is Retreating only those units that may be destroyed while moving back your other units into stronger defensive positions, giving up some ground but delaying your opponent’s further advances. In doing this you buy yourself time to reinforce units and send new units to the front line.

Ignore the Front Line

Once you understand how to establish and manage a front line, you should start ignoring it when choosing where to target your attacks. The ideal is for your opponent to concentrate his forces on the front line, where you are most prepared to defend, while you attack your opponent in lightly defended areas elsewhere, causing him to split his attention and make mistakes. This is how expert players put pressure on their opponents and make it feel like there’s nothing you can do to stop them. It sounds easy—attack where your opponent is weakest and defend where you are strongest—but it’s a piece of advice that novices need to take to heart.

Predicting Your Opponent

Accurately predicting what units your opponent will build, and where and when he’s likely to attack will win you games. How are you to do this? The simplest way is learning to use a variety of strategies with each faction. You want to be able to ask yourself during a game, when I play using the strategy my opponent is using right now, and I get into the situation my opponent is in right now, what do I typically do? This is a hard question, but it’s what distinguishes competent players from experts. Initially, you just want to become comfortable controlling your own units and executing your own strategy, but as you acquire more experience, you should begin pushing yourself to think from your opponent’s perspective as much as you can. The best players are so good at this sort of thing that a spectator might think an expert is playing a modified version of the game without fog of war! At the high level, all sorts of mind games begin happening as each player tries to reveal information that throws off the other and causes him to predict incorrectly. Until you have sufficient experience to make your own prediction, take note of the examples in the “What Should I Worry About?” section, as these refer to the most common responses by players facing specific strategic situations.

One type of prediction that doesn’t require extensive experience relates to resources. How much Fuel and how many Command Points does your opponent have? This information will tell you whether you need to be preparing for a breakthrough unit like a Tiger to enter the battlefield soon. For Command Points, your opponent likely has about the same number as you if you both have won a similar number of fights, but adjust your estimate if you’re either clearly ahead or behind. For Fuel, if your opponent has held more points, and especially more Fuel Points, or built Fuel Caches, his Fuel income will be higher than yours. Has he been spending it? How much? If it’s twenty minutes into a game, you and your opponent have held equal amounts of territory, and you’ve seen him build only a single Half-track in the entire game, you ought to assume he’s saving for heavy tanks and is likely close to building one. It’s ideal to use scouting units to confirm your predictions so that you don’t build counters to units that never appear. For example, an Ostheer player might lead you to believe he’s saving for a Tiger, yet continue to produce infantry squads even as you build AT guns and SU-85 tank destroyers—it’s a good idea to get some amount of anti-vehicle weapons preemptively, but be sure to scout his base and see whether he has built the Tier 4 structure before you heavily invest in countering a Tiger.

Timing Attacks

These take advantage of a temporary disparity between the units you have on the field and your opponent’s ability to counter them. For example, if you get a T-34 on the field before your opponent has a tank of his own to counter it you can dominate any area of the map not defended by an AT gun.

Timing attacks have timing windows, which are the period of time during which the advantage exists. Using my example, the window is open from the time the T-34 is built until the first German tank comes on the field. If your strategy involves a timing attack, it’s critical to take full advantage of the timing window—whichever player does this best will generally win if he preserves the advantage he gains.

Often, several timing attacks and their related windows exist throughout a game. They are usually related to having the required tech and resources to build a breakthrough unit or to use a decisive Commander ability. Unit weapon upgrades can also be used in timing attacks. For example, if you rush an opponent’s Conscript squad with a Pioneer squad, he is likely to remain where he is and worry very little. If the same Pioneer squad had a Flamethrower, he would likely back away, retreat, or send another unit to support the Conscripts. You can capitalize on this difference in responses by beginning the Flamethrower upgrade on the Pioneer squad such that it finishes just as you reach the Conscripts rather than before, thereby surprising your opponent and gaining you a tactical advantage. The same principle applies to upgrading Panzerschrecks on Panzergrenadiers, or AT grenades on Conscripts. Against an expert player, you can sometimes scare away enemy vehicles with Conscripts by running directly at them, even before you have AT grenades, as your opponent expects that you’d only charge if you had the AT grenades.

Timing attacks can also occur in response to your opponent’s decisions: If you see your opponent build Fuel or Munitions Caches, you know that he will have fewer units on the battlefield than you do and that it’s worth attacking before he can take advantage of his heightened resource income.

A final type of timing attack relates to blizzards. Blizzards reduce line of sight and cause infantry to freeze in the open; this makes Blizzards a good time to initiate vehicle-based assaults. For example, a Half-track carrying infantry squads can rapidly reach an opponent’s undefended points and capture them in relative safety from counters like AT guns and anti-vehicle infantry weapons. Another example, if you’re planning to attack a defensive position with an assault tank, doing so during a blizzard allows you to get closer to your target before AT guns are able to attack you, creating easier opportunities to flank.

Additional Strategic Behavior

Forcing

You want to dictate the pace of the game. It’s far better to force your opponent to respond to the units you choose to build and fight where you want to than to be continuously responding. The concept of forcing in a strategic sense means taking an action that demands a response from your opponent, and ideally a specific response that you’re able to predict. For example, as Soviets, if you build multiple Scout Cars in the early game, your opponent will be forced to play more cautiously until he can build his own Scout Cars at Tier 2, or spend a large amount of Munitions in using Panzerfausts with his Grenadiers.

Assault units and fire support units are most typically used in forcing. Early Soviet Scout Cars, the German Half-track with Flame Projectors, and fast T-34s are all units that demand defensive responses, otherwise they’ll run their enemies off the field. While the marauding T-34 can be scary, once you have the proper counter available, it’s just a matter of waiting for it to come to you, or else steadily advancing under the cover of your counter unit. Snipers, Mortars, and artillery units are different: They demand offensive responses. Novice players especially struggle against well-defended artillery because the proper response is often far less clear. Not only must the proper counter units be built, an offensive must also be planned and directed against a prepared enemy force.

If you’re successful in forcing certain responses from your opponent, the task of predicting his strategy will be simplified, allowing you to respond to his future choices preemptively.

Harassment

You can send mobile units to capture your opponent’s rear points, usually without needing to fight, so long as you don’t intend to hold them. Not only is this useful in restricting your opponent’s Fuel income, but also it’s great for dividing your opponent’s attention. Psychological warfare is powerful, especially against non-experts, so whatever you can do to stress out your opponent and force him to pay attention to more things than he’s comfortable with will lead him to make mistakes.

Diversions

A diversion is an action specifically aimed at causing your opponent to pay attention to an area of your choice while you take decisive action in a separate area. One common diversion is throwing a grenade on one side of the map immediately before throwing a grenade elsewhere—a competent opponent will typically dodge the first of these. Against an expert, try to throw several grenades simultaneously to truly tax his attention. You can use this same principle with off-map Commander abilities like air strikes and artillery: You don’t want your opponent to notice the ability indicator when you activate it, so first try to distract him by throwing a grenade or attacking a unit in a completely different area of the map. Another form of diversion relates to line of sight. If your opponent is using units that have defined firing arcs, like HMGs and AT guns, threaten him with a unit from one direction to force him to reposition right before you attack him from another direction.

Scouting

Research build orders for both factions so that you know what routes your opponent is likely to take, then determine what information will let you know which route your opponent is actually taking, and finally acquire that information. One way to know what your opponent is doing is to consider what he isn’t doing (for example, if you don’t see an early Scout Car from Soviets, you can reasonably expect a build order of four Conscripts into Tier 2 for an HMG and a Mortar).

What to Worry About: Strategy

I’m going to ask the question “What should I build now?” regarding several strategic situations in the mid or late game that build orders don’t cover. You should already have a strategy in mind going into a game, but some situations may cause you to consider deviating, what are these situations and what are the best responses?

Situation: Battlefield superiority and map control are about equal, and my opponent has strong mobile infantry (Shock Troops/Conscripts), light vehicles, and T-34s. My force consists of Grenadiers supported by weapon teams and AT guns, I just finished building Tier 4, and I have plenty of Fuel.

Response: Your main issue will be dealing with the Soviet vehicles when you’re not fighting near your AT guns. You have Tier 4 and Fuel, so a heavy tank is your best option to add a new fighting capability to your army. Which should you choose? It depends on whether you are more concerned with attacking the Soviet vehicles or repulsing their attacks, and whether you need additional anti-infantry power. Both the Brummbar and Elefant are capable of defeating anything your opponent has in a direct fight, but both are too slow to chase down and destroy vehicles. If you are fine with advancing conservatively using a large force, one of these tanks is best—the Brummbar’s anti-infantry power is very useful, but if you think your opponent might have heavier tanks soon (IS-2, ISU-152, or T-34/85) then the Elefant is a safer option. The Panther is the most mobile and versatile, able to hold its own against any infantry or vehicle, but it lacks the increased effectiveness in a specific role that more specialized units provide. If you need to protect a large amount of territory against harassment by light vehicles, the speed and turret of the Panther is what you seek.

Situation: Opponent is playing very conservatively. He is likely stalling to tech.

Response: Attack key locations that will force a response. Ramp up your aggression until you receive a response. Prepare counters for the predicted higher tech unit.

Situation You’re behind in battlefield superiority due to a tactical error or a lost unit.

Response: Play conservatively and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. Often players will feel pressured to “get even” and lose battles when they’re already at a disadvantage and destroy their chance at a comeback.

Example of Creating a Strategy

Dawnstar vs. Allstars

Let me walk you through an example of strategic planning in Company of Heroes 2. During the SNF Closed Beta tournament, my partner SunAngel and I (Golradaer) were preparing for a match against the Allstars team of Symbiosis and Gamorr, renowned experts who used a unique build order.

Symbiosis likes Snipers. Instead of using the common Special Rifle Command build order of two M3A1 Scout Cars and Combat Engineers with Flamethrowers in addition to a mobile infantry force, Symbiosis builds early Snipers. By mid game he had built three in the tournament match against us. German infantry squads are only four men each, and German team weapons are only three men each, meaning that Snipers are dangerous adversaries, especially when several shoot simultaneously. Imagine a Panzergrenadier squad of assault infantry moving to engage a Conscript squad and losing three out of four men in a split-second from long-range fire. What can you do other than immediately Retreat? After this Sniper-heavy early game, Symbiosis transitioned into building T-70 light tanks and/or T-34 medium tanks to aggressively seize map control, especially over flank sectors that are unlikely to be guarded by mines and AT guns.

Alongside this, Gamorr uses a more traditional build of Conscripts, Maxim HMGs, and AT guns to create a defensive wall for Symbiosis’ Snipers. German players often love to use Panzergrenadiers in large numbers, and the Allstars’ strategy counters this tendency. Their strategy also punishes aggressive play by building a very tough wall and putting an enticing pot of gold inside. What happens when you see a Sniper? You want to kill it—preferably with a vehicle or an assault with a bunch of infantry. HMGs and AT guns with proper infantry support will destroy light vehicles and infantry assaults without a problem. After weathering assaults in the early game, the Allstars’ mid game strikes back aggressively which can throw teams into disarray. When you’re focusing all of your efforts on breaking into a specific area defended by infantry and support weapons, you’re not thinking about defending the rest of the map and you’re not thinking about countering vehicles. Who builds an AT gun against an enemy with three Snipers and no tanks?

That is the strategic problem I needed to solve. Here is my thought process. Assaulting a heavily defended position is a terrible idea unless it’s absolutely necessary, so how can I make it unnecessary to attack? If we spread out our forces across the entire map and avoid direct engagement with the Snipers, HMGs, and AT guns, we will be able to win fights and take territory elsewhere because all three of those unit types are slow and terrible at assaulting points. Against inexperienced players, I might try this approach with the hope that the units will break formation and split up, allowing us to pick off the Snipers when they’re not covered by HMGs and AT guns, but when playing against experts you cannot rely on your opponents to make a mistake. At some point we would need to engage in decisive battles, so when in the game would I like this to occur? Heavy tanks are the units most suited to fighting a combined group of Snipers, HMGs, and AT guns, so I decided that our strategy would be directed at winning in the late game. Fortunately, the Germans have access to a wonderful arsenal of heavy tanks. The trick would be surviving long enough for the heavy tanks to make a difference. If we’re pushed off the map and deprived of Fuel before the heavy tanks can be built in sufficient numbers, there will be no way to come back.

My Objectives

• 1. Seize as much of the map as possible at the beginning of the game before the enemy’s defensive group was completely constructed. If your opponent is building units like Snipers at the beginning of the game, you will have more mobile units and more capping power (a greater quantity of mobile infantry squads able to capture territory).
• 2. Tie down the defensive, combined arms force in a prolonged fight on the left flank. Our game was on the map Oka River, which is divided into a dense city on the left side and a relatively open farm and lake area on the right. My partner SunAngel is typically tasked with the left side while I take the right, and I also suspected that Allstars were going to focus on the left side because it’s easier to defend and more valuable. I told SunAngel, “Don’t worry about attacking or winning fights, all you need to do is hold onto a bit of territory so they keep focusing on destroying you.” A weakened enemy is a supremely inviting target. Some of the most difficult decisions you’ll face as a player are withdrawing when you’re just about to wipe out a unit, finish off a tank with 5% HP remaining, or in this case, close to pushing a player entirely off one side of the map.
• 3. SunAngel’s army composition would be designed to punish any advances of the combined arms group by using indirect fire from Mortars, suppressing fire from HMGs garrisoned in buildings, and the constant threat of a Flammenwerfer. None of this would completely halt the advance of a larger force unless your opponents make a severe mistake, like moving all of their AT guns simultaneously when a Flammenwerfer is close enough to attack, but it would cause opponents to be more cautious while advancing.
• 4. My army composition would be aimed at creating a mobile, versatile force of infantry and light vehicles to alternate pressure between the right flank and the center.
• 5. Minimize the duration of the mid game and prepare to defend against a mid-game armor offensive. Our most vulnerable time would be the mid game when the Soviets can build T-70s and T-34s while German Tier 4 armor like Panthers and Brummbars are still several minutes away. The main plan was to invest Manpower in Fuel Caches and Opel Supply Trucks to increase Fuel income and reduce the time it would take to counterattack with heavy tanks. Still, we would likely face some window during which we would need to defend against light and medium tanks. We thought an AT gun supported by Panzerfausts from Grenadiers ought to be sufficient to defend the left flank against one or two light vehicles. However, the right flank is far too broad for a single AT gun to be useful, and I wanted to have a mobile force on the right capable of pushing into the middle whenever the opportunity arose. What should I do? I could aim to get a squad of Panzergrenadiers with Panzerschrecks, but it’s expensive in Munitions, it can be severely wounded by a lucky shot from a T-34, and if one of those Snipers from the left decided to journey over to the right, I’d be in trouble. I could lay anti-tank mines on key movement areas and hope that they’d be sufficient to slow down Soviet tanks, but they’re also expensive in Munitions and not something I could rely upon solely. I needed some type of anti-tank vehicle. I finally decided that the safest thing to do would be to go Tier 3 instead of Tier 4, initially, and build a StuG to support my infantry and light vehicles against any early Soviet tanks. As it happened, I was able to overrun the Soviets more easily than expected on the right flank, so I thought, “I’m in a strong position and I think I can hold it for a while, so I’m just going to speed up teching even further by building more Fuel Caches than I initially intended and assume the risk of waiting for Tier 4.”
• 6. Use heavy tanks to take back lost ground and reclaim the Victory Points. Spread out the tanks to force the opponents to weaken their defensive line by extending it or face a multi-pronged attack. Once a strong map position is secured, use the heavy tanks to repeatedly poke at the enemy’s defensive line and fall back to secure positions at the Victory Points to repair.

Commander Selection

The Assault Support Doctrine provides the Opel Supply Truck to increase Fuel income, the Tiger heavy tank for late game battles, and two Munitions-based fire support abilities to counter massed infantry and fortified positions. All of these characteristics synergize well with the strategy I outlined, so both SunAngel and I picked this Commander.

Example of Strategic Reflection

In game 1 of Dawnstar vs. NKVD in the SNF 2 vs. 2 Beta Tournament we were able to get NKVD down to 35 Victory Points while we had 485. Our early game was dominant and mid game was fairly solid.

There was a problem: I realized in the mid game that NKVD were creating strong combined arms groups that we couldn’t effectively deal with using our current forces. If we wanted to beat them in straight-up combat we would need to fall back, give up ground, and wait till we could finish building more balanced forces ourselves. The other option was to sacrifice units and try as hard as possible to hold on to the majority of the Victory Points just a little while longer and win the game.

We chose the latter option and we lost.

By the time I realized that we absolutely needed to regroup and carefully consider our next move, NKVD had established strong field positions, completely reversing our early-game advantage. This illustrates one point very well: When you’re ahead, do not get impatient in trying to end the game. You need to be perfectly comfortable with giving up map control if you don’t have the proper force to hold it.

Look at it this way: Even if the score had been 500 to 1 before they retook two of the Victory Points, if we had no way to beat one of the forces defending the points, there is no way we would have won. A Victory Point count of 500 to 1 doesn’t make your army any more powerful than 300 to 300.