Neat! What's the consensus on CoH2? Is it one of the better Relic "small squad RTS" games?
After many updates it's good but it took a while to get there and it still performs relatively poorly while not looking stunning.
It is the most detailed RTS on the market after all these years. It performs adequate: if you prefer higher than 60 FPS, then you need to make reductions in quality. If you don't mind the game dropping below 60 FPS, you can leave settings on high. Part of the reason why the game is not well optimized is because it is built more like a shooter: bullets and shells are rendered, everything has their own lines of sight, hit chances or trajectories. Units leave their footsteps in the snow, tanks alter the terrain driving over it. Sturmtiger reloading has the crew exit the chassis and manually moving the shell using the crane. The level of detail which went into CoH2 is remarkable, because the competition (Dawn of War 3, Normandy 44, Starcraft II, Halo Wars 2) does not have it.
It has the second most active (RTS levels active) community after Starcraft.
I played the first and second games for 500+ hours each so I certainly know what hey look like. The first game was insane for 2006, the second was underwhelming. It's more detailed, but definitely doesn't look "7 years better", nor does its performance feel great even on a 980ti and i5 4670. This is not a controversial statement, really, the technical aspects of 2 were not and are not great.
You should give some examples of RTS games which are more detailed than CoH2, because the planes crashing in CoH2 have the better sense of speed and impact than Battlefield 1.
I am going to agree with the statement that the performance is not great: it is not well optimized compared to Starcraft II. But the reasons why it isn't as well optimized aren't just "bad optimization", the game has way more going both in terms of details and under-the-hood mechanics.