Gameplay Overview

Company of Heroes is back and delivers the core gameplay that players have come to expect and love. Looking to its roots, Company of Heroes 3 focuses on the gameplay that made it the number one rated RTS of all time while also bringing forward the best elements of Company of Heroes 2. Familiar mechanics such as Directional Cover, Destructible Environments, and TrueSight are back and better than ever, and new features such as Breach and Vertical Gameplay add new layers of strategy and tactics for the player to discover and enjoy.

Gameplay Pillars

Authentic, Fun, Cinematic Warfare
While Company of Heroes 3 puts gameplay first, we also strive to be as authentic to history as possible. We want the player to feel like they’re in control of their favorite WWII movie, where authenticity and cinematic warfare blend into a fun, bombastic, and immersive experience.

Strategy & Tactics Beats Dexterity
Unlike many traditional RTS, a player’s actions per minute (APM) in CoH doesn’t mean much if their strategy and tactics are not up to the task. In Company of Heroes 3, a small force can beat a larger, more powerful one if the player uses things like combined arms, defenses, positioning, and the environment to their advantage.

Player-Led Emergent Moments
Company of Heroes 2’s game director Quinn Duffy once said, “every battle tells a story,” and in Company of Heroes 3 the number of stories to tell are endless. As the commander you decide how to lead your army and what strategy and tactics to implement. As each battle unfolds in a diverse, constantly changing environment, a new story will be written by the variety of choices and actions you make on the battlefield.

Unique Armies with Immense Variety
Company of Heroes 3 will include more factions than any of our previous launches, and each one will have its own unique asymmetrical design. Each army will also have more units in their core roster than ever before, allowing for more unit variety and diverse build orders. Whether you are hyper-aggressive or prefer to build elaborate defenses, CoH3 has an army that fits your playstyle.

Immersive, Strategic Environments
Thanks to the breathtaking landscapes of the Mediterranean, Company of Heroes 3 will have the most diverse and beautiful maps and environment in the franchise to date. Tank shells and artillery generate craters to use as new cover positions, destroy buildings and walls to prevent or remove enemy strong points, and use height to their advantage. Knowing and taking advantage of the ever-changing battlefield will be key to victory. 

Core Mechanics

All the classic core mechanics from the CoH franchise are back and better than ever. Below are some of the core features that will be making a return in Company of Heroes 3.

Immersive, Strategic Environments

• Flanking & Directional Cover: A core component to every Company of Heroes match is the use of cover to reduce accuracy and damage of incoming fire. Position your troops behind walls, foliage, vehicles, or any other type of heavy or light cover object to hold ground and defend territory. To root out a well dug in enemy, flank your opponent’s exposed cover positions to inflict the most damage and push them back.
• Garrisons: Infantry can garrison buildings on the battlefield to use as strong points and defend territory. An enemy garrison causing you problems? No big deal, destroy that building with artillery or breach it to remove the threat.
• Destructible Environments: The battlefield in Company of Heroes is an ever-changing landscape that evolves through player inflicted explosions and destruction. Turn beautiful, pristine vineyards and towns into piles of ash, craters, and rubble that can be used as cover, open new pathways, and reveal previously blocked Lines of Sight.
• TrueSight: The innovative feature of TrueSight from COH2 makes a return to Company of Heroes 3 with the new added component of Line of Sight blocking terrain. Use tall walls, hedges, buildings, and terrain to conceal your movement and ambush your enemy.

Resource System

Territory Capture: CoH’s classic territory capture system will be making a return with a throwback to the original Company of Heroes resource system design. Capture resource points such as fuel and munitions points to build more powerful units and use unique abilities, secure cut-offs to deny your enemy supplies, and finally capture and control Victory Points to defeat your opponent.

Strategy & Tactics

• Combined Arms: In Company of Heroes 3, players will need to use a combination of unique infantry, team weapons, vehicles, off-map support, and defenses to defeat your opponent. Each different type of unit has a unique role to fill, such as suppressing infantry with Heavy Machine Gun fire, assaulting garrisons with flamethrowers, softening defenses with mortars, howitzers and off-map artillery, penetrating heavy armor with anti-tank weapons, and spearheading enemy lines with armored vehicles. Only by using these components in orchestra can a player be successful on the battlefield.
• Squad Preservation: Two of the player’s most vital resources in Company of Heroes 3 are manpower and veterancy. The best way to maximize both is to keep your soldiers alive, healed, and reinforced. The strongest soldiers on the battlefield will be the veterans that know when to retreat and when to stay in the fight.

New Features

Height Gameplay

Verticality in terrain now plays an important role in Company of Heroes. Terrain is now both Line of Sight and shot blocking, making the player think more carefully about unit placement and facing. In addition, units with a height advantage also receive a combat bonus to their weapon accuracy and will negate an enemy’s cover bonus.

Breach 

Breach is a new feature to Company of Heroes 3 that allows certain squads to clear an enemy from an occupied building. Flank a garrisoned enemy position and activate the Breach ability to take control of a strategic, defensive position. 

Tactical Pause 

Tactical Pause allows players to play the Campaign Missions and Single Player skirmishes versus the AI at their own pace. At any moment during a match, players can pause the game and take a moment to re-assess the battlefield, their current engagements and strategy. While paused, players can queue up all the same commands that can be done in real-time such as move /attack orders, abilities, build commands, etc. Once ready to resume the fight, simply un-pause the game and watch the queued commands unfold in real-time.

Side Armor 

Armor profiles of vehicles in Company of Heroes 3 has been updated to now include side armor. This addition makes vehicle positioning and facing all that more important as exposed, weaker side armor will be an attractive target when flanking the enemy. 

Destruction 2.0 

Destruction in Company of Heroes 3 is getting a major facelift. In addition to significantly improved visual fidelity, destroyed buildings will now also have up to three different states:

• Shot and sight blocking: Similar to CoH2, the building will no longer be garrisonable but will also block shots, Line of Sight, and pathing 
• Cover: The building will no longer be garrisonable but units can path through the destroyed building and use its ruined state as cover 
• Flattened: The building will no longer be garrisonable but will not block Line of Sight, shots, or pathing 

Battlegroups represent the next installment of the Command Doctrines from Company of Heroes 1 or the Commanders from Company of Heroes 2. In Multiplayer, Battlegroups will augment and supplement core armies with unique tools, units, upgrades and abilities.  

Each Battlegroup is comprised of 10 Battlegroup Abilities and is split into two differently themed branches. Like Company of Heroes 1, players will earn Command Points via combat that they can spend to unlock abilities down each branch of a Battlegroup tree. Each branch will include exclusive choices. At these decision points the player will need to choose which ability they want to unlock for that battle, with the un-chosen ability locked for the remainder of the match. Below is a work-in-progress example of the US Forces Airborne Battlegroup and the linear unlock flow of the abilities in each branch. 

Choose Your Army

US Forces

Company of Heroes 3’s US Forces is designed to represent the US armed forces that fought in the Mediterranean theater in 1943 through to 1944. The faction caters to an aggressive playstyle that benefits from superior production, weapon upgrades, mobility, and combined arms. Featuring a familiar unit roster while introducing new faction mechanics and an updated tech structure, the US Forces allows the player to be flexible with their strategy and adapt their tactics at each stage of a match.

Commonwealth Forces 

The Commonwealth Forces are intended to represent the British and the Commonwealth Forces that fought alongside the US Forces in the Mediterranean theater. The faction is designed to be a mix of defensive infantry and team weapons, fast and mobile light vehicles, and heavy armor that can soak up damage and incoming fire. They are a well-balanced army with a simple to understand tech tree that allows the player to choose the strategy that best suits their playstyle. This is by far the most offensive version of the British in the Company of Heroes franchise, with a well-rounded toolset and roster that should appeal to both casual and competitive players alike.

Wehrmacht 

The Wehrmacht in Company of Heroes 3 are designed to represent the German army pitted against the Allied Forces in Italy. The Wehrmacht benefit from superior defensive capabilities, overwhelming firepower, and elite training and experience to attempt to push the Allied Forces back into the sea. In addition to their strong defensive toolset, the Wehrmacht can also hit hard on the counterattack with a mix of elite infantry, superior armor, and heavy-hitting artillery. The Wehrmacht will feature a strong mix of familiar and new units, a more complex tech structure, and unique faction mechanics to ensure this army stands out as new, fresh, and exciting to play. 

Not wanting to flame or anything, I'm just checking (I usually do that when I hear stuff like *the best rated game*) and here are the scores:

- Company of Heroes 1 -> Metascore: 93 and User Score: 8.8

- Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos -> Metascore: 92 and User Score: 9.2 (so, higher than COH1 by the users)

- StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty -> Metascore: 93 (so the same as COH1) and User Score: 8.3

- Age of Empires 2 The Age of Kings -> Metascore: 92 and User Score: 9.0 (again higher here)

- Company of Heroes 2 -> Metascore: 80 and User Score: 2.2 (a sad score here, I'm not sure why, I didn't play COH2 in the first 2-3 years, but the game is pretty good now)

So, it's not technically a lie because as of Metascore, it is the highest (equal to StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty) and I'm surprised by that, usually when a company says stuff like *highest rating* is just PR (they didn't mention which rating, so ye, as of Metascore, the highest, as of User Score, not really, but very high anyway). 

The COH3 looks promising so far. I still suggest an option to see units stats by selecting the unit (just like in StarCraft, WarCraft 3, Age of Empires and so on) and also, maybe, an in-game page with all the stats of the units just like in StarCraft 2 (literally all of the stats).

Here is an example of that page from StarCraft 2 (btw, you can access this in the main menu of the game as well, not just while being in a match)

Maybe you could add it here in the helping menu.

Really looking forward to this, just hope the battlegroups will come in limited amount per nation like in coh1, thus they'll be more managable from developer standpoint, resulting in player having less diverse but more balanced and competitive options in case of addition of new nations, instead of a bunch of commanders collecting dust falling out of meta

Is there only one axis faction at release? I really hope for a second one until release - either Italy or Afrika Korps (Mixture of german and italian units).

Otherwise great overview! Really looking forward to this game :)

This plan/overview has got me very excited for the final game (the Battlegroups/Commanders element in particular). Good stuff!