Tips for playing USA? (no whine please)

[JoeVonFo]

Hi there :)

I just realised that me and my mates have to play eighter Axis or Allies for ranked 2v2/3v3, and since there seems to be five times as many Axis players i might as well join the victors of the war right away :P
Now the only problem with that is that i just had gotten a grasp of all the Oberkommand units, so now i look to you guys for guidance, for how to play USA effectively :)
I would appreciate if you would refrain from writing any "Forget it.. US SUCKS!"-type posts..
I get that many people think they're up, but i'm gonna try them anyway..

1) What are the best USA infantry units? Oberkommands and falmschirm, seems to dominate most of US infantry forces, but am i missing something?
Maby something about the weapon equip system?

2) What veichels are worth buying as US?
As Oberkommand i mostly went infantry (maby with a few half-tracks) until i could get the heavy armor out.

3) How big a role does mines play in the US gameplay? Is that one of the main ways to dispatch of heavy armor vs Axis?

4) If you got any good tips bring them here ;)

Thank you for reading.

[Return To Monke]

1. Best USA American infantry soldier is rifleman spam with dual BAR. These will raep fallschirmjaegers in a head to head fight. Obersoldaten must be taken out with tanks.

2. No vehicles are necessary, just spam Rifleman and upgrade with grenades. Use smoke grenades and move your Rifleman blob in, they will shute everything dead.

3. No mines are needed, just Rifleman blob. For heavy armor I find dual Jackson to be good. The Jacksons do not hunt tanks, they stay behind your Rifleman blob to deny area to the enemy tanks. Even if they are hurt but run away do not chase them, just let them run. Concentrate on your push and keeping your men alive and reinforced. The manpower drain will keeeel OKW

4. I only have sucky tips, sorry.

[Supertino]

IMHO

Riflemen with Bar x2 are a must mid game just run them at german inf and you normaly come out on top as long as you're not outnumbered. Early game they're good as long as the german player is not on the ball and does not rush you with their strumpeons, you'll lose 1on1 in close quarters.

Echelon I only build a few per game when i need to build defences cus they're usless for anything else, dont bother with their volley fire it does nothing at the moment (used to be usful).

Dont underestimate the lutenient who comes with a bar squad hes rather powerful too.

Half track is good for early game and can take on light vechicals, just remember to point its ass at the enemy. combine with MG squad for good effect.

Wolverine is only good for tank killing if you have three or more and they're usless against inf, if you get a vet Wolverine keep it alive the AP shells are top notch.

Sherman with the HE shells is excellent against inf, dont put them up against med\heavy tanks.

The bunker the Echelon can build it good early\mid game dont forget to add the machine gun upgrade.

Mines i dont use much as the maps in COH2 are so open it's not worth the off chance a tank will trundle over one.

If you're going for an inf build the ambulance and the captian are a good combo to setup a retreat and reforcement point.

And finaly the M8A1 Howitzer mortor is great on inf, static defences and light tanks.

[butterfingers158]

What part of no whining do you not get? There are a zillion other threads you can cry "riflemen OP" in.

1. Riflemen are your backbone, once they get some vet and BAR or lmgs (infantry doctrine) they are good against all infantry except perhaps obersoldaten. Paratroopers are better (and cost the same to reinforce).

2. AA halftrack and utility car are both good early game. Shermans are all around tanks, great against infantry and light vehicles while being so so against tanks. The M8 mortar carrier (from the t4 building) is very good. The Jackson is your best bet against enemy tanks, keep it at range.

3. Aside from the utility car mines, US has no non-doctrine mines.

4. Use smoke, lots of US units have smoke and it can save your butt. Set up a forward retreat point with your major and put an ambulence there.

[Return To Monke]

Lieutenant is like Rambo, get him close (without getting hit) using true sight blocker and let him rip. He will gun down entire squads before they can react. He can throw grenades and pop smoke also, thereby complementing his Rambo nature.

[JoeVonFo]

Thanks alot for the tips guys :)
So i guess i should focus on reinforcing ammunition with echelon, for the 2x bar?

How does the smoke grenades work?
Never really found that i needed them as Oberkommand, but only played against AI (hard/expert)

Are the pathfinders any good and are the paratroopers comparable to Oberkommand elite infantry or are they inferior?

[Aristotle Full Throttle]

Originally posted by Raijin:

Thanks alot for the tips guys :)
So i guess i should focus on reinforcing ammunition with echelon, for the 2x bar?

Are the pathfinders any good and are the paratroopers comparable to Oberkommand elite infantry or are they inferior?

Paratroopers are only good when upgraded with the LMG 30 cals. because if you upgrade for Thompsons then you have the same effect as upgrading conscripts with PPsh-41s, you lose significant effective DPS at all ranges for some increased effectiveness at long range. Overall when not upgraded OKW elite infantry like Obersoldaten and Fallschirmjaegar are superior by a considerable chunk to paratroopers.

[Return To Monke]

You won't have enough ammo to reinforce all your squads with dual bar. The squads with BAR will get focused on and therefore killed fast, therefore keep them hidden from view and pop them out only to do business. Therefore wasting manpower on munitions cache is not useful. One smoke grenade and one lieutenant can destroy two squads before they can react, use John Rambo's grandfather to your advantage. You must observe how much the enemy invests in worthless volksgrenadiers and sturmpansies that get killed when you sneeze at them, versus things like machineguns and vehicles.

Pathfinders take very long to kill anything, they are good for scouting and taking potshots behind your machineguns until they vet up. After they vet up they do SOME damage.

Paratroopers are inferior to Wolfenstein Ubersoldat because Ubersoldat are sniper machinegunners placed there only to make sure OKW players don't cry because all three of their infantry units suck, instead of just two out of three.

But especially paratroopers are inferior to everything because unlike the ones in the first game they lost the "Fire Up" ability that made them truly useful and fearsome.

[Medryn]

Depends on the commander you choose. I prefer inf company, and armor company if the map is something like hurtgen forest. I usually roll 3 rifle squads, 1 BAR 1 LMG Browning. Lead them with a captain, and set up your major coupled with an ambulence in a forward position. SMOKE GRENADES AE YOUR FRIEND Blind enemy MGs with them, and surround it. I usually use 2 AT guns instead of tanks, save fuel for Priest

Also keep in mind, that to fight Volksgrens and Grens you'll need to close the gap. Get close so their rifles are ♥♥♥♥, nad pound away with your semi autos

[Return To Monke]

Relic nerfed Rear Echelon troops by making volley fire COMPLETELY useless, as opposed to just toning it down a bit. Or else we would recommend some more tactics you can use instead of just rifle spam. For example, if you manage to slip in a flank with John Rambo's grandfather and a pre-secret patch Rear Echelon troop, you could have done more damage than if an extra rifleman were with him.

So now you just need to do rifleman blob, or rifleman spam converging on a single point to destroy all other infantry. No other tactics are necessary since just one works for every situation.

Way to go Relic, way to go. "Balancing" the game means ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with the mechanics and by extension the players.

[mustachewarfare]

in my personal opinion and experience (So my answer can be wrong)

1) Your riflemen is great for early and migame but will later face challenge dealing with OKW's high tier infantry.

Your action will be defined by how much the enemy have put on recruiting high tier infantry.
If they have high emphasis for high tier infantry, they would not have enough MP to field the infantry support gun, The best strategy is relying on combined arms and relying on 50cal HMG (This unit gets neglected quite a lot but it is not a terrible unit and definitely cost efficient since they are cheaper than enemy unit and you can cover good chunk of area and prevents enemy from doing anything)
If they only use high tier infantry to supplement their force, they are more than likely to field at least 1 infantry support gun. In this kind of situation just continuing churning out riflemen is quite nice since they are more mobile than HMG and by the time OKW high tier infantry, good chunk of riflemen have gained some vet.

2) military truck<=0CP you can field it after your 2nd rifle and this one is US's equivalent of clowncar. Since OKW need dedicated AT investment (Combat package upgrade of 90 munition or buying a AT gun) this will allow you to have field domminance for early game.

Later when you see some presence of AT units in the field, you can just use withdraw and refit and get a refund of most of resource. (Which will allow you to quickly catch up in the teching game)

Good vehicle to use will be AA halftrack and 7.5cm howitzer armed stuart.


3) Mine is doctrinal and I rarely use it. Other player might have a better insight on this matter

[ShodaN]

Originally posted by mustachewarfare:

3) Mine is doctrinal and I rarely use it. Other player might have a better insight on this matter

You can place very effective mines using the utility car aviable on T1. The crew of the car has a bazooka too.

1.) Riflemen for their versatility and general usefulness. Always arm them with 2 weapons of the same kind.

2.) The M8A1 Howitzer Motor Carriage is a great unit to take out vetted OKW infantry (especially Obersoldaten) in the lategame. It has exceptional range, can fire over obstacles and is fairly precise. With vet it usually takes out at least a model with a shot. It has smoke canisters and is really fast to help you keep it alive.

The Sherman is pretty good at AI and can finish off tanks. The two aviable rounds make it quite versatile.

The Jackson has good range/speed and is after AT guns your best bet against armour. its special rounds ability is great for a quick flank with max damage.

3.) see above.

4.) Against heavy armour you will need to use a combined effort of your primary AT sources. Let long range units like the Jackson or Wolverine take pop-shots at the enemies while you keep some other source of AT (infanrty and/or AT guns) in the back. That way you can prevent them from chasing down your tank destroyers and may eliminate some overcommitting tanks.

Use your AT grenades and the special shells on your AT-guns. It's really important to keep those units alive so they can vet-up and become more of a threat to heavier units.

[JoeVonFo]

Thanks alot guys!
Just had my first succesful game as USA vs a hard AI (sure aint much, but better than being beaten by it ;) )
Damn that M8A1 is a beast :P
I didnt notice until now that USA has heavy machine gunners by default..
That's also a very nice bonus :)
Always assumed that it was a doctrine specific unit like with the Oberkommand.

Seems to me that you can go a long way just by going riflemen and 1-2 heavy machine guns in the beginning..
And once things start getting more complicated get out the M8A1 and stock up on bazookas, until the heavy armor starts to mass up - and by that time i guess jacksons are the name of the game, along with smoke from M8A1 :)

[N'Zoth]

I can tell you what is effective against me and what isn't.

1.)OKW Sturmpios chew american infantry to pieces. Use volley on them whenever you can, and try to stay as far away as possible when engadging them early.
2.)Be careful of the OKW flaktrack, it chews blobs to pieces. Even Zookas get insta suppresed and killed by them before firing. The best option is to attack it from mulitple angles and chase it down. It has to breakdown (like a mg) and move everytime it attempts to relocate, and then has to set back up.
3). PAY ATTENTION to what units you are seeing. Basically all the OKW doctrines are bad but you need to see what they are going into. Fallchimjagers/MGS= defense doctrine, Assualt nads (abunch of nads being thrown at once)/Not seeing units on the map=assualt doctinre "This doctrine you need to be very careful against because you could and most likely will see elite german troops with STG44s that completely chew through all forms of infantry and are one of the only things rightnow that are flat out OP, Jager light infantry/Officer means a sort of "TD doctine", nothing to good about this doctrine at all other than the Jagdtiger.

I hope I helped a bit, I haven't tried US yet so I can't give you the run down of how they exactly work. Also keep in mind that both OKW and werhmacht have a hard time with suppression (okw in particular).

[Aristotle Full Throttle]

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