Company of Heroes

British Tip #5

British Base Placement

When playing as the british it's very important to know how to set up a base in open terrain, making emplacements is sometimes not optional for the British as they may need a 17 pounder to counter units like the Marder III, or a mortar pit to destroy machine guns. It's important to keep all emplacements confined to the same sector, not only so that the captain can provide his defensive bonuses to them all but so that all the emplacements can protect eachother.

All 3 emplacements built by sappers together make a British base able to take on almost any threat or at least hold out until reinforcements. The bofors for anti-infantry and anti-air, the 17 pounder for anti-tank, and the 25 pounder for anti-artillery and for bombarding almost anything else too. The captain can sit safely in a nearby trench providing his defensive bonuses, not only that but he can be used as a quick rally point for british tommy squads if an assault is happening on the base.

Vs Panzer Elite it's very important to put the 17 pounder at the front of other emplacements, otherwise Marder III's will be able to take out a bofors/25 pounder and won't take any damage in return. Place the bofors near to the 17 pounder gun and the 25 pounder right at the back, with trenches at the front near the 17 pounder. Vs wehrmacht, you can put the bofors nearer to or right besides the 17 pounder.

Lastly remember to over-repair all emplacements, in combination with the captain and improved emplacements, this makes a british base extremely hard to take down.

By: Sepha

Yeah it looks like a credible defense, but it is assuming they will all come from 1 side, what if its from 3 sides.

Scenario: You capture middle territories and dig in, your sections keep moving forward capturing while you set up a defensive line should anything go wrong. Then say a wehrmacht mg starts mowing your guys down covering the pioneers behind him capping the sector. You retreat your men to your already viable defense, but the enemy is closing in surrounding your base while your american ally is sitting in your starting base sucking his thumb. Then that would require placement of 17's a little bit back, and the 25's in your old base territory. Bofors wouldnt be too necessary unless he came with puma spam or blobs of shreck wielding grenadiers. otherwise 3 bren sections in trenches should hold the line against mostly anything (except flame). Pioneer flammenwerfers would be destroyed or suppressed before they closed range, and either your bofors or 17 would own the flammenwerfer halftrack. This should provide you with time until you can rebuild an assault force and push back.

I'm not a very good player (only lvl 7, but still learning), but here's my opinion:
The nebel hardly does any damage to emplacements. The stuka does, but it is t4, at which point you might already be losing the game and are unable to recover. Stormtroopers are good. Maybe the brit should put some barbed wire around his emplacements to slow the troopers down. Btw are you sure a bundled nade 1-hit-kills a trenched captain?
And.. suppose you're not playing wehrmacht, then emplacements are awesome =D

The 25 pounder is great for countering artillery, I usually have counter battery on mine when there's lots of enemy artillery around like nebels.

Oh and this is how i've set up a british base in almost all my games and it works fine, sappers can repair anything anyway before artillery strikes can doo too much dmg.

This post has been edited by Sepha: Jan 23 2008, 18:22 PM

The only risk I see for this is that it isn't very good at covering multiple victory points. And it's a considerable resource investment for protecting one VP. In this case, since it's Angoville and you picked Left side-he can hold those two VPs the whole game, ignore your defenses, and win.

until counter battery destroys your almost 1000 manpower 3 nebs in a couple seconds. really i would hate it if i had to attack this. especially with counter battery...

It's an example. I use the same setup on the right hand side and it's just as effective, or maybe more so, because you can mine the chokepoints that approach the RHS to prevent the aforementioned Storm infiltration. Also, once the 25-lbr starts throwing its weight around, you generally find that your opponent does come looking for you...

It needs to be mentioned that with a Bofors it is actually bad to set it on high terrain because then it will not be able to hit anything due to its firing angle.

In my experience Bofors really sucks at killing infantry. You probably need mulitiple Bofors if you expect it to actually defend against infantry, or just use it as part of scaring your enemy while your infantry actually does the damage.

I don't think perceived elevation has any effect in this game. I also find Bofors to be excellent against infantry, particularly against the 4-man grenadier and storm squads. Ouch.

Elevation definitely affects the 88s capability to hit opponents behind a hill so i'd assume it affects other weapons as well but i'm not entirely sure.

Heh, left Side angoville defense is pretty much what I always do when I play British on that map.

The trick is to siege the enemy's base use Royal Engineers. AVRE's can hit and run and take his buildings out one at a time, and the 25pdrs can provide good Arty support for things like AT guns and enemy artillery. If you distract him with a tank raid and then arty his vulnerables (like a Nebelwerfer or something) you'll probably claim your target and be able to strike again later. Remember to keep your captain's Victor target just in case of emergencies and keep your Captain's sector and your HQ truck in different areas so you always have somewhere to fall back to.

The three things to watch out for are:
1) King Tiger. Blowing up Base buildings gives XP, so going for the HQ first might be a good idea. Watch out for King Tigers. One 17pdr can take a King Tiger head on, and so can a firefly but you have sod all else that can handle a King Tiger.
2) Stormtroopers. Stormtroopers dismantle Brittish defenses with their sneaky Schrek raids. If the enemy is playing Blitz, you are probably better off countering with Commandoes and not bothering with a static defense.
3) Enemy Artillery. Yes, enemy artillery is a pain. Nebelwerfers will de-trench you, given time, and Stukas will hurt. You need to be able to deal with enemy artillery. Even simple Mortar Halftracks need destroying.

Elevation affects many many weapons.

I have noticed that even machine guns such as the MG42, while still doing the same suppression, causes much less damage when a hill is in the way.

Similarly for the Bofors. Projectile weapons will phase through the hill if they roll a hit on their target, but if they miss, they will still fire in the general direction with scatter, but will be blocked by any obstructions such as cover, walls, buildings and hills.

I find Bofors specially adept at knockin out nosy puma and the like. Theyre incredibly good at it, even rear hits to the stug's armor will do visible damage. And since you wont often find the Axis throwin planes at you, I say the Bofors is an excellent light armor destroyer.

Especially on Seine River Docks, in the middle of the center island theres an elevated "outpost" on the left so to speak, where i find a Bofors fits perfectly, and certainly makes the other guy unhappy.

This post has been edited by -Napalm-: Jan 25 2008, 12:36 PM

Excellent tip, it has a similarity to Finch's guide to British Emplacements.

what? no medic station?

I'd like to see you fit all the emplacements so neatly together on anything not Angoville

It would also work on Langres

But other than those two maps, I have to agree, very difficult to build all those emplacements in one location where they aren't going to screwed by line of sight issues.

Could be done on Beaux possibly, I've set up a few defenses on that bastard before (this one time, I relocated from LHS to RHS with my British HQ trucks and wired up the bridge with demolition sappers. Took out like 6 PG squads when they tried to pursue me. Was awesome. Ended up winning that one after a combination of hardcore RSE defenses and some great Churchills.)

Nebels don't do shit to british emplacements. Who on earth gave you that idea?

Your right, Nebels dont do anything to british emplacements... but they cook all the infantry inside! Where is that Medic Station! soons as those nebels start raining.. fire up the med stations to counter it.. then you have a solid D...

Cheers