Europe In Ruins Mod for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts Europe in Ruins Review review

War has long been an arena that gamers have loved to play within, take the Call of Duty franchise and Medal of Honor series as examples. Employing movie-like explosions and storytelling, they normally follow a squad or a few single soldiers around and document their experiences. The award-winning Company of Heroes series takes the entire timeline of World War 2, allows the player to follow one such company and play out its famous battles from a RTS perspective. The Europe in Ruins mod for Company of Heroes takes this to the next level and allows you to form a company of soldiers to command through a campaign against live opponents online. Soldiers that you can transform from the greenest recruit into battle-hardened veterans over the course of many engagements.

Unlike most RTS games, EIR removes the need for resource management and instead implements a deeper army management. Each player who makes a new account via Europe in Ruins website first chooses their alliance (Axis or Allies) and then picks their doctrine. Upon completion players will receive 3 different types of resources that can be used to purchase squads and upgrades. You can then manage your newly purchased troops, adding them into platoons which you can then call onto the battlefield whenever you need them. Using this system gives the players of EIR more depth into how their matches will play out.

The gameplay of EIR works on the capture territories concept, where you must take territories in order to increase your company’s population maximum. This is done by making sure there are no enemies within the area you’re trying to capture. Once under your control you can then move onto areas adjacent and capture these, the more you capture the harder it is for the enemy to call for additional troops. On that note, spawns are simple and easy to understand, any number of your platoons at any stage can be brought into the game, watch the population cap though because once it has reached the maximum you cannot spawn any more troops until some are removed from play. This goes back to the overall management of the game, if you put too many troops in one platoon it will be harder to spawn when the population cap is low, so it’s all about finding the balance.

Retreating damaged units makes sure they come back to fight another day!

After the battle you can head back to the EIR website and access your War Control Panel, where you can see all the stats for your company. Any squads you lose in battle are lost forever and you will need to re-purchase them, although if some should survive the battle they will come out with any experience they have plus any weapons the squad captures on the field (i.e. mortars and HMG’s). This increases the overall efficiency of the squad - so if your company can survive future battles they could be very powerful force to be reckoned with. You also receive additional resources and 'Command Points' which you can use to increase your skills, overall army size and any additional upgrades like airstrikes.

Europe in Ruins wouldn’t be the mod it is today without its community of dedicated players. Thanks to the external measures set up by the developers behind EIR, connecting and finding a game has never been so easy. Connect to their dedicated Ventrilo channel and find players from the opposite faction to play against. The EIR Launcher displays all available games to join or create yourself. Once a battle has all the people it needs, the program automatically downloads all the files needed for the specific battle and launches the mod for you. The dedicated community stretches further than that, creating tutorials and custom maps that are more focused on the gameplay that comes with EIR. I have never seen a community so passionate and so welcoming before with a mod in such early stages.

Overall Europe in Ruins does have quite a big learning curve but thanks to the video tutorials that have been posted here on ModDB, it’s now a simple affair and the community themselves are very welcoming towards newcomers. If you’re a lover of the RTS genre, or just a fan of the WW2 era then this mod will not disappoint you at all. Considering how I purchased COH purely for this experience makes it all worth the $50 I paid for the game.

Pros:
- Small download in size
- Challenging game style
- Creates new exciting army management systems
- Simple and elegant game setup
- Great community and community related resources

Cons:
- Big learning curve

Score:
8.5/10 - Almost perfect, always updating, friendly community well worth getting into!

~ Henley