This is the first guide I have ever written, and is intended for new players to get started with EiR. Constructive Criticism is welcome.Donkey Radar’s Basic Guide – A Noob’s guide through Noob EyesThis guide should show you exactly what to do if you are a completely new player trying to get into the game and play. All I can say is that patience is the key, it takes time to set up a company, time to set up a game and during battle you will be playing longer while deploying less units. The main guide will show you only what you NEED to know, while the footnotes and other sections contain things I wish I knew when I started.
Contents:Main Screen-
War control Panel Guide- -Player information
-Inside your war control panel
-Your first company
The Launcher-
Footnotes--The actual battle and it’s rules
-Slightly more detail on ‘The Wars’
-Europe in Ruins maps
Other- -Guides I have used and other links.
Main ScreenHere is the main screen with the most important box highlighted. 
1- This shows you what is going on in the current war. (The War can be found in slightly more detail at the bottom of this guide.) It shows how many territories each faction has and by looking at this you can guess who is winning. It also shows how many battles are going on and how many territories can be potentially lost / gained. Just below this, it will say whether it is your faction that is defending or attacking and tells you if the defence or offence is going well.
2- This is the war control panel, from here you will manage your resource bonuses, doctrine choices and company units. This will be covered in more detail later.
3- This will load up the EiR Ventrilo server’s details for you. (It is advisable to download it and create your user name on it first.)
If you don’t have Ventrilo it is easy to set up and is basically essential in EiR. Even if you don’t have a microphone yourself, you can hear your allies talking about their tactics and attacks, and that is just as important. Although, to become a really competent player you will need a microphone. If you do not have Ventrilo at all even after reading this guide, you will probably be told to go and get it, or may have people refuse to play with you because it is so useful.
So bloody well download it! -
http://www.ventrilo.com/4- The actual download link. This will take you to the page where you can download the setup file for EiR. You can also choose a nice skin pack to play with, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The setup is very simple and easy, it’s just like any game you might pick off the shelf and install on your computer, and it DOES NOT interfere with your original Company of Heroes installation, so you can play freely on the normal servers as much as you’d like.
You will see two new icons on your desktop after installing the EiR files. 
Don’t be afraid, they’re here to help.‘Europe In Ruins’ simply opens up Company of Heroes with the Mod enabled, this is usually only used for when you need to rehost / redownload a game, or if you do not use the launcher. (NOT RECOMMENDED)
‘EIR Launcher’ opens the ‘Launcher.’ This shows you all the games going on, and you may feel the need to join one, but without creating your company you will not be able to.
The War control Panel GuideIf you are new, you will see this message in your War control Panel.
Click the words “War Control Panel.” And you will be taken to the screen where you can register to it.
Player Information
1-This is your username which you chose when you registered.
2-This is where you enter the Relic Online Profile you wish to use. Not the account name, but the PROFILE name. It must correspond exactly with what you are about to write in this box, and yes it is case sensitive. It does not have to be the same as your EiR username, although it does help if it’s similar.
3-Faction and Doctrine are quite personal choices, based on what your prefer from Vanilla Company Of Heroes. The doctrines are slightly different however, may have global effects that you have not encountered before, so browse through each doctrine before you choose. When you select a doctrine the abilities of that doctrine are shown under the abilities tab, and you can browse through them at your leisure.
4-Battalion number can be any number between 1 and 999. Feel free to place whatever number you want in there. This will show up with your Doctrine choice on your war control panel.
Inside your War Control Panel
1-If you start a few days into the war, you are given some Command points (CP) and Resource Bonuses (RB). Using the war control panel you can choose doctrine abilities which will spend CP, and you can assign resource bonuses which allocate you more resources to spend on making your company fit for duty.
2-This is the screen where you will make your company, it’s fairly easy to do, but may take several battles (Or even wars) to master. You can rename your company to whatever you like, you have 3 companies to play with, usually one is made for defence and one is made for offence.
3-Feel free to browse the leader boards as much as you want, and be sickened by the fact that there are Howitzers with more Xp than your sniper or King Tiger.
Your first Company! 
1-This is your resources which you may spend freely as you wish. These are increased by your resource bonuses. The red box shows that you have overspent your resources, and must rethink your squad sizes and selections before you can save the changes.
2-Here is where you can browse over new squads, see their costs and drag them into your squad boxes.
3-Your squad boxes, in game, you will call these into the battle, so make sure they are the correct pop cap. As you can see there is a red box and a green box, the red denotes that your squad is too big, the green denotes your squad is an acceptable size.
24 is the max pop cap for a squad, 8 is the minimum pop cap for a squad, and the max pop cap you will be able to have in a battle is 40. Therefore do not make all of your squads 20 pop cap or 8 pop cap, but balance it according to your tastes.
This guide will not cover this in anymore detail, but you can check out this dirty American faction's guide to company structuring, here; http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php/topic,5159.0.html(Made by MasonDon)
4-Unit details showing any veterancy you have gained, any upgrades you have purchased and also, all the upgrades left to purchase. Also listed are population cost and resource costs.
5-
DO NOT FORGET TO SAVE THE CHANGES YOU HAVE MADE. I once spent an hour trying to make my perfect company and then I clicked on the return to control panel link and thought to myself “Why hasn’t it updated my…OMFG.”The LauncherOne step until battle 
1-Don’t fancy playing with anyone already on? Feel free to create a game, 1v1s are not counted towards territory gains and are considered practice runs, you may want to consider trying one of those first just to get a feel of EiR.
2-Select your company, select a game already created and join a game. If you just recently played a battle but have not lost all of your units, you will still be able to select the same company to play your next one, but FFS, don’t. You can simply go back to your War Control Panel and click the magic “Resupply” button to replenish your resources, and then buy more units to fill out your company again, your allies won’t mind if you do that, really.
3-When the game you have joined is full, you need to click the ready button. If you’re not paying attention, let everyone know in Ventrilo to tell you when it is ready. After you click ready you will be prompted to download the battle files and to start EiR, so you go straight from the launcher into your favourite game, Company of Heroes. Simply go onto your multiplayer screen, and your filter has already been changed to only show EiR games running, and join the one with people you recognize in it. Yay! If you need to re-download your game you can use the download button.
4-This shows which player’s you are going to be playing with and who you are playing against. When a game is full of your side’s players, you can not see who they are. However if it is not full you will see the name, the name of their company and their win ratio.
You will not be able to see which players on the other faction are in your game until you download it.
5-There is a chat feature on the launcher, usually it is used to tell people to get onto Ventrilo but if you’re desperate or you’re a newb basher, feel free to use that to communicate.
Your First Battle awaits! Now you should be ready to play EiR. Remember this is a game and the idea is to have fun. Your first game will most likely end in defeat, but you may pleasantly surprise yourself and your team mate if you are an EiR prodigy. If you find yourself stuck at any moment, try asking in Ventrilo for help, most people are willing to help because they remember being a newb themselves.
Good Luck and Have Fun!
FootnotesFootnote: The actual battle and it’s rulesThe defenders deploy first when it comes to the battle, this usually takes 3 minutes, but can be changed by doctrine abilities on both sides. If you venture too close to where the enemy will spawn to attack you, you will be attacked by lethal off map artillery, so play fair.
Territories are not captured by dandy little flags which you raise, but by simply being in them, they will turn your colour if you stay in them for long enough, the more units in a sector the faster it is captured, this can also be changed by faction doctrine choices. If more enemy units are positioned in a sector than allied units, the enemy will control the sector.
Once you hit the retreat button on a unit it is gone from the battle for good, it will not come back, it is too tired.
After the defenders time is over the attackers will deploy, trying to displace the defenders and take over the map. There are a few ways for you to win;
- Win by annihilation of all enemy units
- Win by surrender (The enemy has no units on the field for 60 seconds)
- Win by attrition- The enemy runs out of population, IE: it goes below 15 or they have not captured a territory for some time.
Population:
Pop cap, is what drives the whole battle. The victory ticker at the top, displays how many population you are gaining per minute, and this is determined by how many sectors you have captured. You can see the increase at the top of the screen. The maximum pop cap you can achieve is 40. As above, if you go below 15 pop cap it is deemed you have lost. Half an hour into the battle, the pop cap ticker starts to take popcap away rather than giving it out, which means although you may have had 40 pop cap 2 minutes ago, you may well have only 35 now.
Squads do not arrive on the battle site as soon as you call them, it takes time to deploy, which can also be altered by faction doctrine choices.
Footnote: Slightly more detailed guide on ‘The Wars’At the beginning of each war, both factions start with 500 territories. One team is on the offensive and the other team is on the defensive. Territories can only be gained when your faction is on the offensive. You will see different ‘phases’ of attack and defence, some of which are translated here.
The offensive has advanced! / The defence is holding strong. - Your team has won the last few battles.
The offensive is going as planned. - Your team has won and lost about the same amount.
The offensive is nearly broken. / The defence has just failed! - Your team has lost the last few battles.
When one team’s offensive is broken for too long, it will change and the defenders become the attackers and so they can now gain territories.
When a faction’s territory reaches 0, the war ends and the other faction is the winner. A new war correspondingly starts because we’re not all hippies.
When a faction’s territory reaches 50 and below, they gain a “Homeland Defence” bonus.
Footnote: The Map Packs and Europe in Ruins maps. While Europe in Ruins does work with some stock maps of Vanilla Company of Heroes, the maps created for Europe in Ruins are infinitely better, and a breath of fresh air if you are already an avid Company of Heroes player.
Here is the Map Database:
http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php/topic,4899.0.htmlI recommend you download all of the final maps AT LEAST. Other maps are technically optional but I would get them too. (I think some of these maps are out of date and I will update this as soon as I find the updated versions.) If you do find yourself with an out of date map, simply state so when you starting up a game, and someone will usually give you the link to the new one.
Installing the Maps:
In the above link there is a setup file that installs the maps, but if you prefer to install them yourself or find you are having problems with the setup file. Simply save the map files into this directory:
Company of Heroes > Europe in Ruins > Archives
That is, the Archives folder, inside your Europe in ruins folder, inside your Company of Heroes game folder. Enjoy those maps!
Note on maps: Sometimes Maps are updated without too much notice going around, so be sure to watch out for that! Also some of the maps in the link (In the map pack) are out of date.
Other--Guides I have used and other links.
Unkown’s Ultimate Guide to EiR-
http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php/topic,420.0.htmlSalan’s Europe in Ruins Video Guide-
http://www.moddb.com/mods/8627/europe-in-ruins/videos/82744/europe-in-ruins-full-tutorial#imageboxRikiRude's Beginner's guide-
http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php/topic,4303.0.htmlMasonDon’s Company Structuring Guide-
http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php/topic,5159.0.htmlMap Database Thread by Unknown-
http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php/topic,4899.0.htmlVentilo -
http://www.ventrilo.com/
