First up: The Great War 1918 Mod
The Great War Mod is a free complete overhaul mod for Company of Heroes, completely changing the game. The mod is still under development and currently includes the BEF and Imperial Germany as factions, with France and Austria Hungary currently under development. Both factions are well balanced, have unique units and tech trees, some more useful than others, and weapon damage and range is drastically increased from the base game.
At first by biggest worry was whether or not the game would portray trench warfare correctly, seen as how in base CoH gameplay is very mobile and fast moving. Not the case here. As machine guns are so effective and heavy base destroying weapons like artillery or tanks come very late in the game, it is impossible to destroy the enemies base buildings early on in the game. Machine gun emplacements are cheap and infantry die so quickly in the open that the battlefield becomes lined with trenches and machine gun nests protecting the game command points, as well as protecting your own infantry. Trench building is much easier with lines being built as long as a player wants rather than being a standard size as in the base game. It is much easier to defend than attack so the the game becomes a build up defenses and wait for the heavy equipment to arrive. Even late game heavy equipment often doesn't break the stalemate. Tanks are slow and can be easily taken out by field guns and artillery is limited, prone to counter battery fire and have a long cool down. Gas is a new weapon in the game, but acts more as an area denial weapon than a way of mass killing infantry. The mod currently has 5 custom maps that encourage trench warfare, with large open killing lanes and lines of pre-built defenses to hammer home the idea of playing defensively.
As a result, even games against the AI can take up to an hour, and games against human opponents can take ages, the last one I played running for 6 hours before one of us surrendered with no overall victor in game terms. Casualties ramp up drastically as infantry can be produced very cheaply, with British infantry being able to be organised into platoons for ease of ordering around as the game has an unlimited population cap so huge numbers of troops can be fielded for added carnage, although some units have limited numbers, like the British stokes mortar and the German A7V both being limited to 2 units per player.
There's way too many changes from the base game to look at here, so if you have CoH it's well worth picking the game up yourself and giving it a play. With CoH being a relatively old game not the mod will run on pretty much anything and the base game is pretty cheap to pick up now anyway. As the mod is still in development there is more to come from this and I'm looking forward to it.
At first by biggest worry was whether or not the game would portray trench warfare correctly, seen as how in base CoH gameplay is very mobile and fast moving. Not the case here. As machine guns are so effective and heavy base destroying weapons like artillery or tanks come very late in the game, it is impossible to destroy the enemies base buildings early on in the game. Machine gun emplacements are cheap and infantry die so quickly in the open that the battlefield becomes lined with trenches and machine gun nests protecting the game command points, as well as protecting your own infantry. Trench building is much easier with lines being built as long as a player wants rather than being a standard size as in the base game. It is much easier to defend than attack so the the game becomes a build up defenses and wait for the heavy equipment to arrive. Even late game heavy equipment often doesn't break the stalemate. Tanks are slow and can be easily taken out by field guns and artillery is limited, prone to counter battery fire and have a long cool down. Gas is a new weapon in the game, but acts more as an area denial weapon than a way of mass killing infantry. The mod currently has 5 custom maps that encourage trench warfare, with large open killing lanes and lines of pre-built defenses to hammer home the idea of playing defensively.
As a result, even games against the AI can take up to an hour, and games against human opponents can take ages, the last one I played running for 6 hours before one of us surrendered with no overall victor in game terms. Casualties ramp up drastically as infantry can be produced very cheaply, with British infantry being able to be organised into platoons for ease of ordering around as the game has an unlimited population cap so huge numbers of troops can be fielded for added carnage, although some units have limited numbers, like the British stokes mortar and the German A7V both being limited to 2 units per player.
There's way too many changes from the base game to look at here, so if you have CoH it's well worth picking the game up yourself and giving it a play. With CoH being a relatively old game not the mod will run on pretty much anything and the base game is pretty cheap to pick up now anyway. As the mod is still in development there is more to come from this and I'm looking forward to it.
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