Company of Heroes 3 hands-on preview — War isn’t easy

The Italian and North African campaigns of World War II were brutal Hero company 3 captures the difficulty of fighting a chaotic battle on both a tactical and strategic level.

I played the latest beta of the real-time strategy game Hero Company 3 earlier this month, and it looks much better than when I played it a few times before. After playing, I spoke with executive producer Steve Mele at Relic Entertainment, the division of Sega launching the PC game on February 23.

I was able to play for hours in this demo. I saw the start of the campaign game on a strategic map, where the Allies invaded the Gela region of Italy on July 9, 1943. I also played the German side in North Africa, where the British are battling the Afrika Korps for control of Gazala. And I got a taste for the tactical combat in single player landings and multiplayer battles.

Mele said there are 40 tactical cards in the game, reflecting the wide range of combat and environments in the game, compared to 22 cards for Company of Heroes 2. Those card numbers tell you that this is a pretty big game and you can see why it took so long to finish the game.

Multiplayer battles are tough

It was a lot to take in, and I had some clear observations. When I played multiplayer against a developer from the Relic team, I got my head turned. Humans are always much smarter than computer AI. I took an early lead on unit development and resource gathering at the beginning, but my human enemy surpassed me halfway through the game and dominated by the end.

I was able to see this by seeing a very interesting graph that showed my points over time compared to my enemies. Just looking at the tactical view, I never knew where the exact turning point was.

Mele told me afterwards some tips on how to build a situational awareness of what your enemy is building and how to get your own base to craft the units to counter that threat. There are many things to keep track of, from the cooldown timers on your artillery or airstrikes to the resource war.

Multiplayer battles will be 1v1 or 2v2, and it will be the thing that will give this game legs. Mele told me that one of the things I need to be aware of is to have a real line for my army and not push it too aggressively. If your battle plan relies on a single tank propelling you on the offensive, you’ll be quite surprised to come across a few anti-tank guns. That means you’ll need reinforcements to fight the battle if you push forward.

Single player battles

You can see some of my single player battles in the video embedded in this story. I spent a lot of time fighting in North Africa, where I first had to defend an encircled German force. Then I was to go on the offensive and take the high ground occupied by the entrenched British. It turned out that I could perfect my defense (through repetitions) against the attacks quite easily. But it wasn’t easy to figure out where to move forward for my counterattack.

In the beginning there was also an Italian battle where I had to get my soldiers off the beach and take out the German artillery. This turned out to be quite easy as I flanked the Germans and then took them out from behind using a flamethrower squad. That flamethrower seemed a little overpowered.

And the biggest battle I fought was an attempt to take the city of Salerno and blow up the bridges before a German counter-attack could come. This battle took a long time and had to build many units and send them to their deaths. But I eventually reached the bridges and stopped the German counter-offensive.

In the battles that took place in the desert, it mattered whether you were on high or low ground and how many enemy troops you could see. Sometimes the enemy was well protected in bunkers and trenches. The use of smoke was important in these battles, as was pounding the enemy with mortars or artillery.

In the Italian cities it was important to keep an eye on just about everything. I had to keep generating new units on the production line, from tanks to anti-tank guns to different types of infantry units. And I had to send my units to capture objective points, fuel depots and ammunition dumps to win the resource war. And where the two sides met in battle, I had to keep a close eye on the action.

It always paid to have combined weapons like armor and infantry and machine guns and bazookas, but in many battles it was just one squad against another for a victory point. I had to move my soldiers to buildings and chase away the enemies with attacks. I even had to micromanage combat by having soldiers attack and throw grenades at a certain place.

There were times when I got too dependent on my offmap artillery and dropped it on the enemies very close to my own soldiers hoping to drive them back. Perhaps that meant the artillery was much more accurate than the reality of World War II.

Strategic gameplay

I played the beginning of the Italian campaign on the strategic map, which is more like a chessboard with large scale tank, infantry, artillery, air or sea units. You take command of a unit such as a regiment or battalion and move it around the map in a turn-based style.

It’s actually still quite fun to play in this mode, well above the tactical combat level, and figure out how to spend your limited resources. You can take an airfield and then bring in more planes from the coast. They can help you with reconnaissance or strategic bombing, putting the Germans on the defensive while you punch holes in their lines. But you still have to fight tooth and nail for the main cities on the map.

It felt like it took forever to reload the naval and air force bombing, but I guess they can’t make the Allies too powerful on that front. I really enjoyed the strategic map, so I often auto-solved tactical battles so I could keep playing on a strategic level. Mele said the team is very happy to let players decide whether to fight strategically or tactically.

Improvements

Mele said the team has made a lot of tweaks to the heads-up display (HUD) over time to make it easier to use. I liked it better but can’t put my finger on it. I found I could track the artillery cooldowns better and make full use of them by firing the artillery off the map on the map when it reloaded.

I also noticed that the gunfights were longer and less one-sided. In the past I would send some units to face an enemy unit and then when I came back I would find one side or the other (usually my soldiers) dead. Mele said the team tinkered with the “time to kill” calculations to make it feel more authentic.

The missions are tailored to the level of aggression required, especially in the first missions. That gives you a chance to get to grips with the mechanics before you get too deep into the battle, Mele said.

Conclusion

It was challenging to play without first going through a learning process to build and use my units. But that’s what the first part of the game will be about.

If I had a flaw, it was beyond maintaining my line and making a big investment in a certain advancement on the cards. That always seemed to be the key to victory. I was having a hard enough time keeping up with production and holding onto the territory I had taken.

But whether I fought against humans or against the computer AI, I never felt that war was easy and my opponent was easy to defeat. That’s the way it should be.