Your army will be split up as well, but if you can design your army to be superior in isolated engagements, you’ll have the advantage. Throw a grenade using an infantry squad while your target artillery at a different area of the map.Īt the strategic level, sending units to capture points in multiple areas of the map will force your opponent to split up his army. Send a tank to attack from a flank while you move up your infantry for a frontal attack. The more you divide your opponent’s attention, the more mistakes he’ll make. Panzergrenadiers have the ability to engage any unit type, while an MG42 team can beat infantry, but it will lose to mortars, snipers, and vehicles. A T-34 can be effective against vehicles and infantry while an SU-85 is only effective against vehicles. Usually you won’t know what your opponent has or what he intends to build, so the safer choices will be versatile units. For example, tank destroyers to counter tanks, and heavy machine guns to counter basic infantry. If you know exactly what units your opponent has, build specialized units that counter them. Later in the game, you’ll be spending most of your resources building tanks, artillery, and other vehicles, but don’t forget that infantry are required for capturing points and games are won by point control. You first need to build up an infantry force of three to four units and then begin adding on team weapons like heavy machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank guns.
Construct a balanced force of units that complement each other. A heavy tank is not useful if you’re already far behind and the rest of your army is weakened or destroyed. As a rule, it’s better to have multiple medium vehicles on the battlefield earlier in the game than to wait for a heavy tank. If you have excess Fuel, you’re not building as many vehicles as you should be, or you’re waiting to build a very expensive heavy tank. Remember to use grenades and other unit abilities that cost munitions.
Upgrade weapons on your infantry squads, like the LMG42 for Grenadiers.
If you have excess Munitions, use your Combat Engineers or Pioneers to lay mines in commonly used areas of the map. More than one can be good, but if you aren’t sure about what you need, build a versatile infantry squad like Conscripts or Grenadiers or an elite infantry squad like Panzergrenadiers, Shock Troops, or Guards Rifle Infantry. If you have excess Manpower, look to see whether you have at least one of each team weapon – heavy machine gun, mortar, and anti-tank gun. Holding onto resources is a larger mistake than spending them unwisely.
It’s easy to forget to spend resources in the heat of battle, and you may not know how to spend them best, so you delay to avoid making a mistake. Spend them unless you’re saving for something specific. If you continue to send units there and garrison the nearby buildings, you can fight battles on your opponent’s ground while you safely capture the rest of the map with only one or two units. How might you do that? If you send units to capture points around the #3 icon, near your opponent’s base, you’ll provoke a response. You do want to capture these points, but you don’t want to fight for them.
Where should you focus your attention at the beginning of the game? The points surrounding the #1 and #2 icons are close to your base and look like the obvious choices. Imagine that you’re fighting a battle on the summer version of the Kholodny map as the player with the blue Headquarters in the bottom right. As a new player, it’s far easier to defend a position than to attack one, and the more aggressive you are at the beginning of a match, the more defending you’ll be doing. In Company of Heroes 2, this means forcing your opponent to fight on his side of the map and attack units of yours that are garrisoned in important buildings. In a match between two equally-skilled players, the one who is able to dictate the course of the battle and hold more of the map will be victorious. This is not the approach that will win you games, especially when you’re just starting off. New players often try to play carefully and conservatively. Be aggressive in capturing points and seizing control over key buildings.