Does something happen on the frontlines while you are building back in your base? Need to get there quickly? Have no fear, just use the spacebar. This will allow you to browse events. You can use that, or click on the icon that shows up on the middle left-hand side. This is a very important Company of Heroes tip indeed, because it centers the point right where the event occurred. (And lets you find that pesky sniper).

A great Company of Heroes tip is to use the mini map to your advantage. It is a great and efficient way to move around the map quickly, and locate key areas of intrest. The tactical map is another great way to keep an eye on things. To access the tactical map, just hit the numpad zero key.

Another great CoH tip has to deal with your precious Armor. The worst thing you can do when your tank runs into an anti-tank gun or another tank, is to let it show it’s rear armor. The rear armor is less protected than the front, and this means your tank will more than likely die as it retreats. So what you do is to select the tank(s) and then do the drag and click method from above. Make sure you keep the command close to the tank and face the arrow in the direction of the attack; this will make your tank reverse to that point instead of turning around and showing its rear end. Be warned though, the path finding in Company of Heroes can ruin this… keep an eye on your tanks!

Also, try to learn how each tank moves and try not to put tanks in too large of groups, that path finding will make you pull your hair out. Also, make sure you know what tanks are good against what targets. The Panzer Elite PIV will only kill infantry; it will NOT kill a Sherman (it can sometimes kill a Stewart). With some of the faster tanks, a good tactic is to have one engage and take the focus of the enemy tank and use it to show its rear to your other tanks. This way your tanks will get better penetration and you will kill it quicker.

To help keep your unit’s moving towards the front, use Rally Points. All you have to do is click on the building and then right click someplace on the map (or another unit).

To help keep your units alive and well in Company of Heroes, a great tip is to put them into good cover. If you move your cursor over some cover, it will bring up a green (best) yellow (so-so) or red (negative cover) shield icon. Always try to keep your units in green cover, as it is the best kind of cover. Stay away from red cover, because your units will take more damage than normal.
A CoH tip regarding machine guns (and houses in general); houses and bunkers have better than green cover, but not all houses are created equal. Try to stay out of the wooden house (they burn up easily). Also, just try to stick with machine guns in the houses; if you put a riflemen unit in there, only a few of the squad members can fire out, while the enemy units can all fire at you.

That leads into the next Company of Heroes Tip; DON’T let the AI fight the battles for you. If you leave a unit alone, the Ai will more often than not.. kill it for you. It likes to move your guys out o cover to get a better position.

A Company of Heroes tip for keeping your units alive; make sure you know how each of your units goes against every other. Some units are better at long range, others are better at close range, cover will keep them alive longer. Some matchups require very little micro, others require a lot. This brings into the ability to micro well enough to “kite” a unit. So, constantly micromanaging your puma to stay at max range against the riflemen’s sticky bombs (while still doing damage and killing the unit).

This is pretty short notice, but the Team Fortress 2 heavy update comes in tommorow (August 19). Not only does this update give thirty-five achievements for the heavy, it also brings in a new community map (Steel!). I have cp_steel_b4 running now on my team fortress 2 dedicated server, but it will be nice to have it (so people don’t have to download it from me).

The update also brings new unlocks for the heavy. So far it is the K.G.B (or Killing Gloves of Boxing) and Natascha (level 5 minigun). I was hoping for a completely different gun for the heavy, but Natascha will have it’s uses (slows down the enemy for an instant, but does 25% less damage than Sasha). The KGB gloves are going to be a must have. Any time a Heavy kills an enemy with the K.G.B he receives five seconds of guaranteed critical hits. This crit-boost can be used to punch and kill further enemies, extending the boost time.

This update also brings a new PL map, Badwater Basin. Unlike pl_goldrush, which is three stages, Badwater Basin will be one stage and will offer the Blu team a better chance of completing the stage. When valve released their stats about which side wins more on a particular map, it seemed that the red team (defenders) usually (about 70% of the time) were successful in defending goldrush.

For more info on the heavy update, here is a link to Valve’s site.

It is going to be awesome to play this update, because I love being a heavy (and love playing medic). Hopefully it wont be like the pyro update (where half the team would be pyros and nothing would get done).

As soon as that update goes live, I will update my TF2 server and hopefully get some play time in! You can find the info for my Team Fortress 2 server right here.

Edit: I bring to you! The SANDVICH

Tags: Achievements, Heavy, Heavy Update, Pyro, Steel, Team Fortress 2, TF2

So I alluded to this video awhile back, and it isn’t a Company of Heroes tip OR trick; it is just a funny video. I had posted a series of screen shots here that showed some jeeps (23 in fact) trying to kick some jerry butt. But, a jeep .50 cal machine gun does next to nothing for damage, so me and my team mate decided to call in the big guns; Namely, the Sherman Calliope and the Airborne Doctrine’s Bombing Run.

The game that led up to the point of this video was pretty bland. We went for early map control, and then teched for M8 greyhounds and Half tracks. (remember, fuel is VERY important for this strategy). I had went Weapons Support Center and Airborne doctrine, and my team mate Armor with Riflemen instead by building the Barracks.

So, thankfully, the guy we were going against was nice and decided to stay in to watch the fireworks show. Again, this is a great video of why Company of Heroes has such a great physics engine (even if it is rag doll based). I wish I could have gotten more time of the explosions in action, but the Bombing Run and Calliope pretty much destroyed the guy’s HQ.

Tags: Company of Heroes

So what I want to do here is to give some tips and tricks to the new players of Company of Heroes. The purpose of this guide is to teach players how to micromanage in Company Of Heroes more efficiently. This does not mean that every bit of advice below should be used over and over if someone wants to become a better Company Of Heroes player. This advice will give you some tools, tips and tricks to improve your game in Company of Heroes. It is really up to you to develop you own play style.

So my first Company of Heroes tip is all about if you use the keyboard or the mouse? Personally, I use the keyboard mostly for the shortcuts (the F keys select your base structures) and the mouse for just about everything else. To play effectively in Company of Heroes it takes a mixture of both.

Now, a Company of Heroes tip on camera control; for those of you who are REALLY new to Company of Heroes, this tip is for you. If you hold the Alt key and drag the mouse, it will rotate the camera. To reset it, double tap the backspace button. I hardly use the camera in other position than default.

A big CoH tip for those of you who play 2v2s and up in Company of Heroes, communication is key. You have two options: Hit the enter button to talk to your teammates, and hit shift+enter to trash talk the enemies.

Now we move onto tips and tricks for Company of Heroes dealing with managing your units in the game. First off, lets talk about Control Groups; Control groups are made by selecting a group of units and hitting CTRL + a # (such as 1 through 10). After you make that control group, you can select it again by hitting that number, and if you double tap that number, it will center the screen to that control group. If those units are spread apart, Company of Heroes will do its best to center.

To add a unit to an existing control group, hit the number for that group and add the unit by holding shift and selecting it. Once you have all the units you need, just do the CTRL+ # again to update the control unit.

To drop a unit from that control group, just un-select that unit by hitting SHIFT + Click and then reform the control group by doing CTRL +#

A really good Company of Heroes tip is to use your function keys to the fullest. F1 usually selects your HQ, F2 your barracks, etc. If you hit that function key twice, it will center the screen to that location. You can also select your buildings by using the little row on the user interface on the control bar (they are usually small, yellow buttons).

To move between members of a control group, use the tab button and shift+tab. To select all the on screen units of a specific type, use CTRL+ Left Click. Another great Company of Heroes tip is to use the buttons to cycle through your idle units. Use the “,” to go through builders, “.” (period) for infantry and “/” for vehicles.

This Company of Heroes tip is very important, I tend to see this quite a bit for newer players who don’t know how to properly face a machine gun or an AT gun. This tip deals with directional deployment; hold and drag with the mouse to set the direction a unit will face. Like I said, this is VERY important with AT guns and MGs

Another great Company of Heroes trick is to keep your units moving is to que orders. All you have to do is hold down SHIFT when you are giving your units orders. The units will do whatever you tell them in the order you set. This means you can use your engineers to cap a point (while you hold shift) select another point, and after they finish caping the first, they will automatically go to the next.

When your queued troops encounter an enemy, they will defend/seek cover/attack until the enemy dies or retreats before continuing the queue. If you want them to continue their assignment, you should cancel the queue and micro them manually until there are no enemies in sight.

It seems that I have way too many Company of Heroes tips and tricks for one post, so I will finish up my list and post the rest soon. I do hope that this advice will help out the newer Company of Heroes players and maybe even teach the old dogs some new tricks!

Tags: Company of Heroes, strategy, Tips, Tricks

So these images are from a game I had awhile back with a friend. It was a 2v2 in Company of Heroes on Wolfheze. We did a good job of holding the resources and then teching up to M8 (greyhounds). We were two Americans vs two Panzer Elite.The one guy dropped, and the other guy decided to let us have our fun with our jeeps.

They did remark that we had greyhounds out pretty quick, but we did control most of the fuel, and that really is the big push to do now in Company of Heroes. Fast tech to Greyhounds in Company of Heroes is best reserved for another post! So without further ado, here is the pictures of Jeeps go Beep Beep.

Jeeps V Building

But wait, WHATS THIS?!

Jeeps Vs Building img 2

Jeeps V Building img 3

Jeeps V Building img 4

Jeeps v Building img 5

Jeeps V Building img 6

Also, a Bonus
http://coh.last-save.com/jeepslol/relic00125.jpg

This is just a teaser for the video! At least in the video you get to see more of the awesome physics that Company of Heroes has.

So this really isn’t anything that is related to Company of Hero Videos, but it is computer gaming related. So along with my Team Fortress 2 dedicated server, I also host a Call of Duty 4 dedicated server. It is mostly used by the local Treasure I-Lan crew here in Aberdeen SD. It is a 24 man server that mostly runs Team Death Match.

As for why I don’t have any Company of Hero Videos this week is because of summer courses, it got really crazy with trying to get a six page paper and a twelve paper “final” for my Political Science 250 class.

I will do another post with some awesome pictures from a awesome Jeep goes Beep Beep game from a week or two ago. It was crazy, and Jeeps don’t do much damage against Wermacht Headquarters, but they are fun :D.

So here is an awesome little banner for the Call of Duty 4 server in Aberdeen. It usally sees a lot of usage during the evening when all the local kid’s play. All the info (IP address, port, etc) should show up in the image banner. The server primarily runs domination as the gametype (due to popular demand) So hit it up and enjoy!

Today’s Company of Heroes Video comes from a 4v4 on Route N13. I am British and I had setup base along the main road. One of my teammates was calling for artillery for his position. He was being assaulted by a large group of Panzer Grenadiers and a couple of halftracks. I had just completed my arty and decided, why the hell not, lets rain some terror on those dirty krauts.

So down the arty comes and takes out most of the Panzer Elite army in one fell swoop, along with one of his half tracks. It was a wall of green XP numbers. The other part of the video comes from when I was being assaulted on my main line and my Priest was sitting there and I needed to stop that assault right away. The second part goes to show what a GREAT physics system that Company of Heroes has and I am glad that Dawn of War 2 is going to use the Havok game engine as well.

So I hope you enjoyed today’s Company of Heroes video and I hope that you learned not to blob your guys!

So today’s installment of Company of Heroes videos brings to you; Flaming Pioneers (no, not those kind of flamers). My buddy Dukka had this great idea for getting rid of an entrenched British player.

The entrenched British player was obviously expecting a big tank rush to get him out of his (worthless) spot. Instead, he got a group of level three vet Wermacht pioneers, each equipped with flame throwers. It is a great strategy for the most part, Dukka was lucky that the British player had not covered all of the entrances with Vickers machine gun nests. So for you British Company of Heroes players out there, make sure you know where your weak/choke points are so you do not get flanked.

To get level three vet (for the support) is pretty cheap on fuel, and if it works, and can devastate infantry and emplacements alike.

This is just one way that you can counter British emplacement spam though, another good one would to send in a bunch of cloaked Sturm Troopers with panzerschrecks (with vet of course). You could also give walking stukas or nebels a try, although those are way less mobile and are only really good against emplacements. Or to take out those Brit emplacements, you could always try tanks, but with that much AT there, that would have been really risky.

I was playing a pretty average game of Company of Heroes the other day and I ran into a amusing sight at the end of the game.

It was a two vs. two match on Wolfheze; I was American and my partner was British vs a Panzer Elite and Wermacht player. The game itself was pretty average, but towards the end, we ran into a pretty funny thing; at the point of utter defeat, the Wermacht player kept on trying. I really do admire his perseverance, but sometimes, you just need to know when the battle is lost in Company of Heroes.

As his Panzer Elite buddies base was destroyed (and that player dropped shortly after the first part of the video); We moved on the Wermacht player and destroyed most of his base and went on a hunt the forward base that was prolonging the game.

I had three snipers with my Airborne squads and had taken the PE player’s Flakvierling (Basically, Anti-Infantry); which was right by the map’s only call in point. So as the Wermacht player tried to do his call in (to repair his base) it was met by that Flakvierling and three snipers, which would win every time. I don’t know if he would have actually stopped calling in his forces if we wouldn’t have found the forward base or not, but three times for the call in is just crazy.

Enough talk, here is that video of When to quit in Company of Heroes, and it even includes a bonus Strafing Run/Artillery shot!.

Edit: Also, this video (at the beginning at least) shows the awesome physics of Company of Heroes; you can see how the bodies of the Volksgrenadiers just rag doll.

For those of you out there that play Team Fortess 2, this is a little side note form all the Company of Heros stuff I have been writing about; I have a TF2 server up. It is mostly empty, but I am really good at making sure updates get applied right as they come out. The address is tf2.last-save.com:27015 (note: you need to have the 27015 at the end)and for maps I run: Goldrush, Dustbowl, PL_Dustbowl, and Steel_B4.

Mainly it is used for the local game center; they were always complaining that it was very difficult to find a server for them to all play on. The server itself sits on a 50/50 mb fiber line (in South Dakota none the less).

So go ahead and come play!