Resources and point "capping"

There are three resources, manpower, fuel, and munitions. Manpower is something you receive a constant stream of and is required for everything. Floating manpower (collecting a lot and not having a plan for spending it) is the most dangerous mistake you can make in CoH. Fuel is purely for teching to stronger units. The more fuel you have, the sooner you can get to bigger, stronger units in the late-game and research powerful upgrades for your units. Munitions is the one resource you do not receive a constant stream of. You must capture points to receive an income of munitions. This is for special unit abilities and doctrine abilities (essentially your "mana" or "energy" but it does not refill itself).Company of Heroes is unique because resource "gathering" is tied directly to how much map you control. Infantry capture points, and in turn they increase the amount of resources you receive. There are four kinds of map points: Fuel, Munitions, Victory, and strategic. Fuel and munitions points come in three flavors, high, medium, and low. Low points only add +5 per minute to your income, medium add +10, and high add +16. Each of these points add +3 to your manpower per minute as well. Strategic points only add +3 to manpower, but they are very important because they connect resources to your HQ. If there is not a direct line from resources to your HQ, you will not receive those resources.Units cap these points at different rates. Strategic points are the easiest to cap and decap. These points are usually highly contested, because losing them can cut you off from higher resource points.Many people seem to believe that placing an obs post on these points means they will never get cut off, but that is not the purpose of an observation post. An observation post is supposed to be used to gain you more resources, not protect you from being cut off from the rest of the map.Victory points are the second-fastest points to cap, and decap more quickly than they cap. These points are only available in victory point control victory conditions, the standard for ranked play. These points cannot have an observation post on them, and controlling a majority of them causes your opponents "victory points" to drain. When your opponent's (or opponents', if in a 2v2 or higher) victory points reach zero, you win. Early on these points are not as important to control. It is more important to capture resource points early-on, then focus on controlling victory points.Low resource points are next in line, followed by medium and high. High resource points are usually pretty rare, but are very important to control. It is not uncommon to see units go for these points first, then connect them to the base via strat points, but develop a "capping order" that is best suited to your strategy. Do you want to tech quickly and caputre more fuel, or do you want to be aggressive with your units' special abilities? In reality, it is a good idea to have a mix of munitions and fuel, and try to cut your opponent off from his.