When your companies clash with those of the Wehrmacht, the game jumps into real-time battles, on farms, beaches, and cramped city streets. Capturing airfields expands your ability to dominate the skies, and capturing ports allows you to land more companies on the peninsula, each with their own strengths and play styles. On this map, you maneuver individual companies, build defensive emplacements, send aircraft on scouting missions, bombard outposts with naval ships, and manage a litany of cities across Italy.

Whereas Company of Heroes set the series apart with its focus on squad tactics in World War II, and Company of Heroes 2 incorporated weather effects, Company of Heroes 3 introduces a turn-based overworld map in its Italian campaign. These games’ influence is all over Company of Heroes 3, specifically in regard to the “completely new” third of its design tenets. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the aforementioned doctrine actually came from Sid Meier, the co-founder of Microprose and Firaxis Games, where he created Pirates!, Alpha Centauri, and Civilization, to name a few.

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