Company of Heroes is a tactical real-time strategy game with an emphasis on squad-based combat, positioning, and cover. Unlike typical RTS games, resource collection is directly tied to the amount of territory you control. Instead of building individual soldiers, your army is composed of squads of units. If you have played Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, this type of unit control may be familiar to you. Like Dawn of War, this game was also developed by Relic Entertainment.

There is a lot less emphasis on base building, and you only require one of each building to produce the units you need. The lower rate at which you receive resources compared to other RTS games means that multiple buildings of the same type are not necessary, but this means there is much more emphasis on tech and building order. This can and will be very visible to your opponent during each stage of a match.

The most unique aspect of this game compared to other games is the retreat mechanic. When your units in the field areat risk of being wiped out (losing an entire squad) you can order them to retreat back to headquarters. This is not just recommended, but an absolute necessity to winning a game. It is cheaper to retreat and reinforce units than to completely lose them.

In Company of Heroes, we have four absolute essentials:

1. Don't lose squads, don't lose squads, don't lose squads.
2. Mines win games.
3. When in doubt, 'T' it out (retreat if things look bad).
4. Cap with one, but not under the gun (Capture points with only one squad, and don't cap if it's being attacked).

I'll be refering to these fundamentals throughout the guide.

There are three resources, manpower, fuel, and munitions. Manpower is something you receive a constant stream of and is required for everything. Floating manpower (collecting a lot and not having a plan for spending it) is the most dangerous mistake you can make in CoH. Fuel is purely for teching to stronger units. The more fuel you have, the sooner you can get to bigger, stronger units in the late-game and research powerful upgrades for your units. Munitions is the one resource you do not receive a constant stream of. You must capture points to receive an income of munitions. This is for special unit abilities and doctrine abilities (essentially your "mana" or "energy" but it does not refill itself).

Company of Heroes is unique because resource "gathering" is tied directly to how much map you control. Infantry capture points, and in turn they increase the amount of resources you receive. There are four kinds of map points: Fuel, Munitions, Victory, and strategic. Fuel and munitions points come in three flavors, high, medium, and low. Low points only add +5 per minute to your income, medium add +10, and high add +16. Each of these points add +3 to your manpower per minute as well. Strategic points only add +3 to manpower, but they are very important because they connect resources to your HQ. If there is not a direct line from resources to your HQ, you will not receive those resources.

Units cap these points at different rates. Strategic points are the easiest to cap and decap. These points are usually highly contested, because losing them can cut you off from higher resource points. Under no circumstances should you place an observation post on these points. Many people seem to believe that placing an obs post on these points means they will never get cut off, but that is not the purpose of an observation post. An observation post is supposed to be used to gain you more resources, not protect you from being cut off from the rest of the map.

Animation courtesy of OnkelSam

Victory points are the second-fastest points to cap, and decap more quickly than they cap. These points are only available in victory point control victory conditions, the standard for ranked play. These points cannot have an observation post on them, and controlling a majority of them causes your opponents "victory points" to drain. When your opponent's (or opponents', if in a 2v2 or higher) victory points reach zero, you win. Early on these points are not as important to control. It is more important to capture resource points early-on, then focus on controlling victory points.

Low resource points are next in line, followed by medium and high. High resource points are usually pretty rare, but are very important to control. It is not uncommon to see units go for these points first, then connect them to the base via strat points, but develop a "capping order" that is best suited to your strategy. Do you want to tech quickly and caputre more fuel, or do you want to be aggressive with your units' special abilities? In reality, it is a good idea to have a mix of munitions and fuel, and try to cut your opponent off from his.

There are four playable factions in Company of Heroes, and they vary widely in playstyle. There are also no "mirror matches" in Company of Heroes: Axis factions can only play against allied factions, and vice-versa.

• Allies
  
  • Americans
    
  • British (Commonwealth)
• Axis
  
  • Wehrmacht
    
  • Panzer Elite

Factions' main differences lie in the way they gain veterancy, but the four fundamentals listed at the start of this guide apply to each.

Americans are a good starting faction because their play is very straightforward. The backbone of the american army are their riflemen, which cap points the fastest (1.5 capping speed, only other unit with this speed is the Wehrmacht grenadier) and get very powerful upgrades. They have very limited "suppression" powers for stopping large blobs of infantry, and their Heavy Machine Gun unit offers very little in the way of suppression. The faction relies on combined arms, with many different units and a strong motor pool and tank depot to back them up. It is ABSOLUTELY PARAMOUNT that the Americans do not lose squads. Their veterancy is on a per-kill basis, which means that whenever a squad kills a unit, they get the experience for that kill. Their benefits for veterancy are the best in the game, and a vet 3 versus a vet 0 rifle is literally the difference between night and day. There are games won simply because an American player managed to get a vet 3 rifleman that picked up a panzershrek, and no unit could kill it, and it killed everything. Not to say these units are invulnerable. MG42s are the bane of every American player, and they must be flanked, which requires a fair amount of micro and map awareness.

Mines are also critical to this faction, and they are laid by the Engineer. When you kill enemy units with mines, your engineers gain experience for those kills. When you choose the "infantry" doctrine one of the first abilities you can research is "Defensive Operations" which allow your riflemen to not only lay wire and build tank traps, but also lay mines. These also help your riflemen gain experience and begin snowballing more quickly.

The Commonwealth faction is probably the least intuitive of all the factions. Their Headquarters moves (sometimes referred to as the resource bus) and can "lock down" any point in the game, giving them bonus resources from that point. It's very common for an HQ to build a Lieutenant ("Lt") or Bren carrier first, then move to a high munitions or fuel and lock it down, then tech quickly to stuarts from the Support truck or Cromwells from the Armor truck. They also have the most powerful non-doctrine artillery in the game, with mortar pits and on-map 25-pounder howitzers cleaning up blobs and buildings alike. They are a very tricky faction to play because their veterancy comes in the form of officers. Your units must be followed by a lieutenant or captain, and any kills the units under the officer's command get give the officer veterancy. This veterancy makes the units even more powerful (HUGE benefits the more units there are under his command) and a Heroic Charge at vet 1. At vet 3 the Lt becomes very hard to kill and gives amazing accuracy and damage bonuses to the units, however these officers are very fragile and can get sniped. Losing an Lt early on can cost you the game.

Officers don't have to be very close or right in the action, so keep them behind hedges, inside buildings, or even in trenches. Trenches are the greatest static defenses in the game. They are free and can be built nearly everywhere, and all units inside take very little (practically zero) damage. These are fairly critical early-on, but as the enemy researches upgrades they are nullified entirely by grenades (flame grenades from PE, regular grenades from wehrmacht grenadiers). When you see a grenade headed toward your trench, simply delete the trench (hit "del" twice while selecting your trench) and your units will instantly pop out of it taking far less damage than they would have had they stayed in the trench. It is very important to delete the trench if things look bad, because the enemy can use an empty trench, and the british have very few options for clearing them out.

Wehrmacht are a very technical faction. Their teching decisions are very important, and rely heavily on momentum. They require possibly the least amount of map control, because most of their units require only manpower. The MG42 is the most important unit in the early game. It'll maintain your field presence, has a wide range, and has usefulness as long as the allies have infantry (which should be all the time). Their late-game units are VERY fuel heavy, however, and they boast the strongest armored units in the game. The Panther, a staggering 600 manpower and 110 fuel, is the most powerful non-doctrinal tank unit in the game (with very little anti-infantry power). The Ostwind flakpanzer (aka "the oversized lawnmower") is the most powerful anti-infantry tank in the game.

Wehr veterancy is interesting because it is bought. You pay for veterancy, and your units get stronger. Their benefits aren't as powerful as American veterancy, but they are definitely not to be ignored. If you keep your squads alive here, they simply overpower the enemy with greater numbers and superior damage. If you don't lose squads and combine that with late-game units like the King Tiger (strongest, slowest tank in the game) they have the strongest late-game of any other faction.

The last faction is the Panzer Elite, a faction geared toward sweeping attacks and vehicle play. They have only one basic infantry, the panzer grenadier, and they basically do everything: They build base buildings, repair vehicles, capture points, and get upgrades increasing their effectiveness against anything. The starting unit, the kettenkrad, can only capture points, but it is your primary mine detector and reconnaisance unit. It receives abilities based on what doctrine you pick. The panzer elite depend on combined arms, with infantry supported by vehicles and the other way around. Their veterancy is interesting because it is shared. This means that if a unit gets a kill, it get 100% of the exp, while the next closest unit gets 50%, the next gets 25%, and so on within a certain small radius around the unit. This means that their units should RARELY travel alone. A split up PE faction is a dead PE faction. They sweep an area with all of their units or none at all. This makes timing pushes and flanking of the utmost importance, and as a result they require the most micro of any faction in the game. This faction is extremely difficult to play at lower levels, but past the level 10 barrier it quickly becomes one of the easiest.

They also pick their veterancy bonuses. They can choose offenseive or defensive vet. Defensive increases hit points, vehicle speed where applicable, received accuracy reduction, reduced received suppression (for infantry) and reduced received penetration (for vehicles). Offensive veterancy reduces reload (fires more often), increases accuracy, reduced cooldown (fires sooner between shots), and increased penetration (for vehicles). Usually their vet is referred to as "O" or "D". At-a-glance, defensive vet seems great, but offensive G43 squads and offensive Fallshirmjager squads (a doctrinal unit) are the most powerful infantry they have, demolishing entire squads of infantry in seconds.

They can't readily or easily lay mines (a vehicle from the Logistik Kompany lays mines and it's usually not worth it) except for one of their abilities. Under the Tank Destroyer Tactics tree, the panzer grenadiers can lay the "teller mine" that only explodes on contact with a vehicle, usually completely destroying it. If you choose this doctrine, do not neglect to lay these mines, as they can easily win you the game.

Company of Heroes multiplayer has a very steep learning curve, and the game has been out for 6 years at the time of this writing. Skill range varies widely and there are no specific regions so you will be playing people from all corners of the world who play with a very wide range of strategies. What is very important is that you keep the 4 fundamentals in mind, and play in any way you are comfortable.

Changelog:

1/22/13: created changelog, added screenshots to commonwealth; Panzer Elite. Made changes to commonwealth section as per user TzerO's request- LT to Lieutenant. Removed "hokey of all the factions," changed to "least intuitive..."