The most in-your-face, fast-paced, on-the-fly strategic, RTS game you will ever play.
Company of Heroes on the other hand...loaded with strategy, simple base building, NO TURTLING TACTICS (OMG SO BORING IN RTS PLAY), and units that do not go obsolete but manage to play important roles during all stages of battle.
In CoH base building is pretty simple. Both factions have about 7 or so structures that they build. Both build orders have different ways of getting teched up.
Best part of the whole game, resource gathering. I have always hated how easy it is just to get money. Always conveniently placed tiberium fields, or forests close to your base. In CoH you have to capture territory to increase your population cap just so you can build more units. The territories produce one of three resources: man-power, munitions, or fuel. Man power produces...well you guessed it infantry. Munitions are used to purchase upgrades such a ranger squad buying Thompson SMGs, or to use abilities like throw grenades. Fuel is used to build base structures and to build vehicles and armored vehicles.
So instead of sitting by your money you have to go and claim your territories to start producing your economy so you can build more powerful units. Only one problem...so does your enemy. From start to finish it is an absolute in your face, quick change of strategy, pulse pounding battle.
CoH actually makes terrain play an important role in battle. Some of the resource points are placed in areas to where they pose as choke points and places to cut off your enemies resources. Even though you may have a point under your control it must be connected to everything else or else you gain nothing from it. Roads are important because capturing a point near the main roads cut really wreak havoc and cut off an enemies supply lines. Infantry actually respond to debris, walls, sandbags, etc. and use it as cover. If they are out in the open with no cover than an mg42 will tear them to pieces.
Units in CoH do not become obsolete. Every unit is almost identical to what it was in WWII history. Sherman tanks are great mid tier heavy armor support but King Tigers are going to make quick work of them and take a heck of a lot of damage. If youve always wanted to be like the ranger squad in "Saving Private Ryan" will now you can. Infantry is not cut down so quickly like in other RTS games, they can pose serious threats to even the toughest , most heavily armored units with sticky bombs and bazookas or panzerchrecks.
Graphically speaking CoH is beautiful. Awesome amounts of detail on every unit, building, and environment. CoH's graphics settings can be lowered to even the lowest GPU. I run a GeForce 6600le and can still play the game at 1024x768 and still have the game looking great.
*UPDATED*
Now that I have my new computer I recently had the chance to play CoH Maxed out. I have a 680i LT, Q6600, 8800gt Superclocked, GeIL 2GB DDR2 800. I can play the game at the highest resolution and every feature at its highest setting and never shutter below the games max fps limit of 60fps.....Simply put the game will blow your mind by its detail. You have to see it for yourself. I can not describe how cool it looks when an mg42 is unloading on an armored car and the bullets are ricocheting everywhere or an entire area is getting hammered by artillery support.
The only con about this game is patching and updating. If you recently bought CoH then getting all the patches is going to be a pain in the a**. Patches download fairly fast but theyre just so many to get now that if youre expecting to buy the game and play it right away you'll be dissapointed, because you'll waste a good hour or two patching and updating your game. Relic is awesome and fast with their patching system but it is just so time consuming and prevents you for a couple hours from playing a spectacular, if not the best RTS game.
Once you get up to date, youre in for one hell of an RTS game
The expansion Opposing Fronts adds to the gameplay with 2 new sides. I have it and love that too I recommend it to you because experienced players of the first game should love what the new sides have to offer.
*Final Thoughts* Company of Heroes is the Call of Duty of RTS. It brings up the intensity of RTS play and presents a very authentic WWII feeling to it. I don't know why people complain about this game involving no strategy because you can not have a predetermined "build order" or know exactly what to expect. That kind of defeats the purpose of strategy, and reacting to enemies strategies. Its actually funny because when you study WWII lots of mistakes and total guesses happened a lot of the time...don't believe me read further...
(Company of Heroes 10++++++++++++++++/10 All time favorite RTS)