Company of Heroes 3 - set in the Mediterranean theatre

[Parsimonious cook]

I wouldnt call Men of War shit, but it is certainly true that the AI of your units is horrible and the game requires much more micro than it should.

Anyway, just a few observations about CoH3 after some two hours:

- snipers are now genuinly useful (in CoH2 people mostly dont take them, here I see them pretty much in every match), obviously require a lot of micro, but can be very rewarding
- early halftrack spam is a big thing now, though devs also made it much easier to get AT (there are dedicated AT squads you can deploy in circa first 30 seconds of the match if you want to)
- flamers got much stronger in comparison to CoH2 and have even some cool graphic effects (troops running around while on fire), taking flamers for engineer squads is now much better investment than it was in CoH2

 

[markec]

I wouldnt call Men of War shit, but it is certainly true that the AI of your units is horrible and the game requires much more micro than it should.

Anyway, just a few observations about CoH3 after some two hours:

- snipers are now genuinly useful (in CoH2 people mostly dont take them, here I see them pretty much in every match), obviously require a lot of micro, but can be very rewarding
- early halftrack spam is a big thing now, though devs also made it much easier to get AT (there are dedicated AT squads you can deploy in circa first 30 seconds of the match if you want to)
- flamers got much stronger in comparison to CoH2 and have even some cool graphic effects (troops running around while on fire), taking flamers for engineer squads is now much better investment than it was in CoH2

Snipers being useful and Piospam makes it sound like early version of CoH1.

 

[DemonKing]

Locking down areas with MGs in buildings doesn’t work very well now as every faction has early access to mortars which wreck buildings in short order. Howitzers and rocket launchers are even quicker at wrecking buildings.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

I wouldnt call Men of War shit, but it is certainly true that the AI of your units is horrible and the game requires much more micro than it should.

Anyway, just a few observations about CoH3 after some two hours:

- snipers are now genuinly useful (in CoH2 people mostly dont take them, here I see them pretty much in every match), obviously require a lot of micro, but can be very rewarding
- early halftrack spam is a big thing now, though devs also made it much easier to get AT (there are dedicated AT squads you can deploy in circa first 30 seconds of the match if you want to)
- flamers got much stronger in comparison to CoH2 and have even some cool graphic effects (troops running around while on fire), taking flamers for engineer squads is now much better investment than it was in CoH2

Early game (5 fist units u pull) it's essencial u pull at least 1 half track or similar followed by anti tank or u gonna get rekt. Usually bring then as 3rd or 4th unit on my games to help hold the fist 2 flags.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Why doesn't it have much better graphics than CoH2 (2013)?

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

So people don't bitch "why game not running on my system" while testing the mp.

 

[DemonKing]

Developer followup on Tech Test (including comments on perceived graphical inadequacies):

 

[fizzelopeguss]

It runs like shit?

They still using that god awful, ancient COH2 engine?

 

[MuffinBun]

It runs like shit?

They still using that god awful, ancient COH2 engine?

They are using the AoE4 engine I think, and the game's been remade from scratch

 

[DemonKing]

They still using that god awful, ancient COH2 engine?

I played some COH2 on the weekend and the engine still looks and runs pretty well for a 2013 game. Some of the explosions and sound effects in particular still have plenty of impact.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Yeah, I still play CoH2 a lot and never considered the engine to be a problem tbh fam. Not in 2013 and not nowadays. If anything I think that CoH3 looks somewhat worse, but perhaps the graphics were downgraded for the MP test or w/e.

 

[None]

Bongoloids overview:


I have fond memories of CoH1, CoH2 seemed like shit and I never really got into it. I like what I see so far, going to end up grabbing this once released.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I watched some of the videos, and it seems like the game is basically the same as other CoH games (which makes sense), but I guess I don't really get the concept of them as a 'wargame' sort of..they seem like capture the flag games with ww2 equipment and uniforms and as if you could just put different equipment and uniforms on them and call it something else and have them play capture the flag. I guess it does not actually feel like commanding an actual war to me..I realize these are all games, but I lose my ability to imagine it is anything but just 'capture the flag' for some reason w/ this series of games. Maybe because the battles are timed and it feels more built around being multiplayer online experince skirmish games.

 

[ferratilis]

Just what I expected because Relic never fixed their broken, bug-ridden Ardennes Assault dynamic campaign for CoH2: the dynamic Italian campaign in CoH3 is borderline broken. AI is braindead, barely reacting to player's actions. Such a shame, because it's a unique and interesting take on a typical strategy campaign. Relic will never learn.


Also, I understand how this game can look worse than CoH2 that came out ten years ago, because we live in the current year when everything sucks. But how the fuck do they manage to achieve such an ugly art style that a game from 17 years ago still looks light years ahead. Something is very, very wrong over there at Relic.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

one word, console port.

 

[Alienman]

hehe, the north african campaign has a narrative about a north african jewish family, that apparently does not have anything to do with the actual missions. Got to get that ESG rating in there, I guess.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Of course there's all to do with the jews, then the reason the germans are in africa to begin with.

 

[DemonKing]

Metacritic looks decent so far at 84:

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/company-of-heroes-3

Most are saying the Total War style campaign is a letdown with passive AI but that the multiplayer is as good as ever.

 

[ferratilis]

I'm playing it now. It's crazy how shitty it looks. Graphics are not everything, of course, but this is godawful. The gameplay is not that bad, luckily, but it's such a step down compared to previous games.
max settings:

Vehicles clip through buildings lol:

At least Panther looks better than in Coh2, but the problem is that sounds are now much worse than before. Artillery sounds like firecrackers.

 

[Alfgart]

Console ports. What did you expect? I'm not even pirating this piece of shit

 

[ferratilis]

They removed so many small things that were useful, or straight up downgraded some mechanics that it's infuriating. For example, you can't queue up capture orders on the tactical map anymore, or when you double press the command structure hotkey, it just selects the building without centering the camera on it. Units sometimes spin out of control, or they clip through buildings and each other. There are so many of these little annoyances that were not there in Coh1 and 2.

The funniest thing is, the skirmish AI is actually quite good: they use cover well, they know how to avoid grenades, they man unused team weapons etc. Against the hardest AI, I didn't get a single squad wipe, which as quite common in previous installments. But the campaign AI is completely braindead, they are so passive that it makes me wonder if this is the Aliens Colonial Marines situation where the devs made a typo in the code and the AI doesn't work.

Overall, it's shit. The only reason I bought it is because CoH1 is my favorite tactical game of all time (together with Homeworld), so I was hoping to get at least some of that experience here. Of course, after DoW3, Relic is officially dead, this is just a confirmation.

 

[Alienman]

I'm playing it now. It's crazy how shitty it looks. Graphics are not everything, of course, but this is godawful. The gameplay is not that bad, luckily, but it's such a step down compared to previous games.
max settings:

Vehicles clip through buildings lol:

At least Panther looks better than in Coh2, but the problem is that sounds are now much worse than before. Artillery sounds like firecrackers.

Damn, that is bad! That looks almost like the graphics have bugged out or something.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Relic died when Sega bought them. These japs are the worst thing to happen to some of my favorite games.

 

[LizardWizard]

Relic died when Sega bought them. These japs are the worst thing to happen to some of my favorite games.

All the talent fled Relic by that point. SEGA is just shilling the nostalgia corpse, same as EA with Bioware

 

[DemonKing]

you can't queue up capture orders on the tactical map anymore

Works fine for me - you just hold shift and tap the points you want your unit to capture in order.

 

[ferratilis]

you can't queue up capture orders on the tactical map anymore

Works fine for me - you just hold shift and tap the points you want your unit to capture in order.

If you hold shift on the tacmap, you can just issue move orders, squads will just walk by the points without actually capturing them. Maybe you're talking about the minimap, which works just fine. But tacmap is a big part of the game.


So, there's a funny thing about censorship in this game. If you type Hitler or nazi in the chat, it's replaced with dictator and Axis, respectively. But Mussolini, Stalin and other words are just fine lol