Company of Heroes - Carpiquet - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Carpiquet, a user made that was evenly balanced and featured a wide center road that ran from the Allied base to the Axis base.

For the second week in a row, the transition from Dawn to Dusk was sudden and severe, suggesting that the map designers did not fully understand how to implement the simulated day night cycle that is featured in the game.

This was a decidedly challenging mission as my initial efforts to deny the enemy their resource points were pushed back quite effectively and had the enemy pressed the action once they had a Panzer Command up and Panther tanks on the battlefield, they could have simply rolled down the center road and taken my base with ease. At that point I had nothing to stop them.

My selection of the Airborne Company (although nothing more than an afterthought in weeks past) is what saved the day this time. Three successive bombing runs did heavy damage while I pooled enough resources to stage a massive battle group of M10 Wolverines and a M4 Sherman Flamethrower tank by their high munitions resource point.

While I was developing this force for a final push, I had an Airborne Ranger unit moving around the map capturing resource and territory points which accelerated my Fuel reserve and allowed me the luxury of having enough Manpower and other resources to build up for the final assault. The ongoing aerial bombardment had a far greater effect than I had hoped for.

By the time I rolled my five Wolverines into the Axis base, the only thing left to destroy was a machinegun bunker which was quickly dispatched by a salvo of rounds from the tank killers for the victory. The M4 Sherman that I had built with the flamethrower to deal with any Volksgrenadier barely made it to the staging area before the mission was won.

Other thoughts: I had some trouble signing into Relic today and almost did play this skirmish scenario (that is the reason why there is no replay screen shots posted because I have not been able to get back into the game to review the replay yet).

This is definitely a user made map as the loading screen is simply the captain on the box cover of the game with the white background. Although the map is very well done and looks great (albeit with the harsh transition from dawn to dusk), I found it odd that Relic would allow this map to be put out in a patch update without at least making an attempt to provide a decent loading screen (like Massive does with user made maps they push out in patches for World in Conflict).

That said, I am wondering if these user made maps are best suited for PVP multiplayer and not skirmishes with AI bots. While there were Volksgrenadier and some Pioneer units out and about along with some Sniper units, the Panthers did not venture out of the Axis base and most certainly would have won the match for the AI had they simply rolled down the street into my Allied base.