Nobody is playing this
I am!
I played the alpha long ago and found it to be a bit weird. the weather dynamic seemed tacked on and pointless.
Playing through the campaign, it rolls out features very slowly. Relic likely realizes that these mechanics are pretty unique so they don't want people to get too frustrating.
So far there are two important new concepts:
1.) Reinforcing squads using other squads.
Essentially you have the ability to take a full healthy squad and use men from it to enforce a weakened squad. So you'll go from having 1 six man squad and 1 two man squad to have 2 four man squads. It doesn't change the fundamental gameplay too much. It does provide the opportunity to save squads instead of allowing them to die, which is a big concept in an RTS. Relic has really been pushing the idea that your units are important and letting them die is a bad idea. It's mostly successful since in a lot of these missions you don't have enough resources to bring in tons of reinforcements.
2.) Weather
As mentioned, this is the big new feature in COH2. In the alpha I played months ago, it felt tacked on. In the campaign, it's much more of a fleshed out concept. What this mechanic does is force you to pay attention to what your squads are doing at all times. Squads have a temperature gauge that drops if they are exposed to the elements. If the gauge drops to empty they will begin to die one by one until the entire squad is eliminated. To prevent this, you have to move your squads from cover to cover, reducing their exposer.
When in cover squads do not regain temperature, but they do not lose it.
When near fires, squads regain temperature
They also regain temperature when inside structures.
They LOSE temperature when out in the middle of a field, or large road, or walking on ice.
Squads losing temperature also appear to far weaker in combat. So really, this mechanics puts a HUGE emphasis on cover much moreso than the previous game. In addition, enemies are also susceptible to these elements as well. In the missions I last played I saw two of my squads in good cover defeat four or five German squads who were losing temperature. I remember in past COH games, you really could spam mass units and brute force the game. The weather mechanics seems to be an attempt at nullifying this.
Mission wise, I've only played for about 2 hours but I've been enjoying the missions so far. I've always been a fan of Relics take on the RTS over stuff like Starcraft. The emphasis on cover, squads, and maneuver makes it much more dynamic and fun. Many times the game will only give you two or three squads and expect you to use them effectively.
In the last missions I had a large number of units but I was tasked with taking out a base across a river. The problem here is that the entrance was very open and I could very easily lose all my units on the run-up. So instead I took the two sniper squads I was provided and moved them into flanking positions on either side of the base. Using their unique "powers" I threw a flare up to get extended sight ranges. Once I knew what I was up against I used the snipers to take out a few of the more challenging enemy squads while moving my main squad force up the middle. The combined effort of snipers on the flanks, and force up the middle resulted me successfully taking over the base.
One other cool concept is that you can break the ice over rivers and drown enemies. I've already had to do it several times in the campaign. Against tanks and humans.
So, so far I'm having fun with this game. Seems to tow the line from the original while also provided some interesting new ideas.
