RTS Revisiting Dawn of War

[Mark Richard]

At the end of the map it actually looks like a battle took place there with the terrain being deformed from shelling and untold amount of corpses lying strewn about. Does any other RTS game do this?

The Men of War series goes one further, with dynamic terrain deformation having gameplay applications. Damaged buildings, destroyed tanks, and bombed craters all become a new source of cover and concealment. In terms of the aesthetical value though, each battlefield looks like it's been absolutely devestated. By the end there's kinda this sense of 'I won... but at what price?'

 

[Norfleet]

Damn, that look after a heavy battle was awesome. The classic Total Annihilation did that as well, and it was even more important since due the 2d map, fallen units could be used as cover (or unintentional obstructions!).

Or intentional obstructions, in the direct opposite of the Zapp Brannigan tactic. If an enormous horde of enemies filed directly into your death cannons, pretty soon their advance would be clogged by their wreckage.

 

[Jaedar]

Speaking of that mission in Winter Assault, where you have to protect Eldars going through their warpgates - for some reason control points income was strangely hindered despite decent number, +89 or +110 or something like that? but it felt like you just started in skirmish match.

iirc a lot of wa maps start you out with a lot of resources but reduced income compared to a normal skirmish or base game mission.

 

[baud]

this thread made me realize I had never played the original campaign. It was fun and I understand those who'd call the campaign maps of Dark Crusade and Soulstorm decline compared to it, just with the better narrative (also I like how the landscape gets more and more "chaosy" in the cutscenes as the campaign progress, shows how the situation is going to shit on the planet) and no skirmish missions. The difficulty curve was also lopsided, with the later missions being easier, (and I don't think my macro improved that much) with the IA leaving their best units all alone

 

[Dexter]

Finished Dawn of War II Main Campaign in CoOp on Captain/Hard? difficulty. It's "Good For What It Is"™, but it got a bit repetitive near the end there. Better to play it on a higher difficulty or it might get boring, even with that some of the missions got a bit easy/trivial near the end there when you hit Lvl20 and get proper gear and Terminator armor. Does the "Defense Mission" spam ever end once you unlock "The Last Stand" btw. or is it just about getting some better gear starting in the next Campaign? Also started Chaos Rising and it seems like more of the same, but with more linear/"designed" mission maps so far, with some of the Early ones being a bit "Eh". Regarding the new Corruption mechanic, what's more fun to do and what does it change for a more "Complete" experience? Also what's the Retribution Campaign about and how does it play compared to the previous two?

 

[Jaedar]

Finished Dawn of War II Main Campaign in CoOp on Captain/Hard? difficulty. It's "Good For What It Is"™, but it got a bit repetitive near the end there. Better to play it on a higher difficulty or it might get boring, even with that some of the missions got a bit easy/trivial near the end there when you hit Lvl20 and get proper gear and Terminator armor. Does the "Defense Mission" spam ever end once you unlock "The Last Stand" btw. or is it just about getting some better gear starting in the next Campaign? Also started Chaos Rising and it seems like more of the same, but with more linear/"designed" mission maps so far, with some of the Early ones being a bit "Eh". Regarding the new Corruption mechanic, what's more fun to do and what does it change for a more "Complete" experience? Also what's the Retribution Campaign about and how does it play compared to the previous two?

I strongly STRONGLY do not recommend playing on more than hard. It's good fun for most of the mission but the bosses become entirely insane bullet sponges that take 30+ minutes to take down.

Imo chaos rising is the best dow2 campaign. Shorter campaign with more unique missions and a focus on replayability.
Retribution is maybe fun for one playthrough, but it is of much lower quality than the others. They spread their content way too thin by allowing you to play it with all races. Maybe play it once, then look up the good cutscenes on youtube (mostly the IG ones).

 

[Theodora]

Ho, btw, any way to fix the fucking UI on widesceen resolutions? Either i suck at google or nobody fixed this which seems strange considering all the big mods out there. Surely if you can add tons of units and factions you can fix the fucking UI, right?

Not really, the accessibility of different components to mods isn't the same.

 

[baud]

Finished Dawn of War II Main Campaign in CoOp on Captain/Hard? difficulty. It's "Good For What It Is"™, but it got a bit repetitive near the end there. Better to play it on a higher difficulty or it might get boring, even with that some of the missions got a bit easy/trivial near the end there when you hit Lvl20 and get proper gear and Terminator armor. Does the "Defense Mission" spam ever end once you unlock "The Last Stand" btw. or is it just about getting some better gear starting in the next Campaign? Also started Chaos Rising and it seems like more of the same, but with more linear/"designed" mission maps so far, with some of the Early ones being a bit "Eh". Regarding the new Corruption mechanic, what's more fun to do and what does it change for a more "Complete" experience? Also what's the Retribution Campaign about and how does it play compared to the previous two?

For the corruption, I'd say go all in or not at all (with no corruption being slightly harder, I think, since you give up on a bunch of boni and some loot).
For retribution, it's kinda more of the same, with some changes (you can switch heroes for squads before mission and recruits basic squad during the mission); each campaign is also way shorter; but since the missions are mostly totally copied from one campaign to the others, you'd only play your favorite faction and that's it.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Orks are best as always.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I hear you niggas are interested in revisiting DoW

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/dawn-of-war-tournament-season-3-sign-ups.143080/

 

[Lagi]

main menu

do you have some opinion about Tyranid mod? https://www.moddb.com/mods/tyranid-mod/downloads
just play it, and im surprise with new units models and buildings.
there is no power. you have some green goo bar as 2nd resource. Buildings are construct automatically everywhere on map - no need of workers.

Minor bugs really: sometimes wrong audio voice line is played, and late units are rescaled models of earlier units. I dont know anything about WHM lore, maybe its how it should be.
Also the main UI force me to click interface each time when i want to build anything.

ui

 

[Darth Roxor]

do you have some opinion about Tyranid mod

mods are for fags

 

[thesheeep]

do you have some opinion about Tyranid mod

mods are for fags

So they're good?

 

[Lyric Suite]

They are ok if you like quantity over quality. The way i have it set up is that i have the games untouched from original to Dark Crusade but then i use Soulstorm to install shit like Unification and other mods since the base game there is already janky from the get go so it doesn't matter if the modded races aren't perfect (and obviously they can't be as even Relic would have trouble balancing so many. Plus, some of the new voices for the new units is obviously unprofessional sounding. They did they best they could there and it's probably the best voice over i've ever heard a modder make but there's still no comparison with the voices made by Relic with professional actors and that's why i prefer to keep the first game and the first two expansions "clean" and just use Soulstorm as a dirty rag to try the mods, as i said).

 

[Galdred]

They are ok if you like quantity over quality. The way i have it set up is that i have the games untouched from original to Dark Crusade but then i use Soulstorm to install shit like Unification and other mods since the base game there is already janky from the get go so it doesn't matter if the modded races aren't perfect (and obviously they can't be as even Relic would have trouble balancing so many. Plus, some of the new voices for the new units is obviously unprofessional sounding. They did they best they could there and it's probably the best voice over i've ever heard a modder make but there's still no comparison with the voices made by Relic with professional actors and that's why i prefer to keep the first game and the first two expansions "clean" and just use Soulstorm as a dirty rag to try the mods, as i said).

To be fair, Relic already had trouble with balancing 4 races at release. When I was playing Chaos in ladder, there were 2 viable builds vs SM/CSM, and 1 vs Orks/Eldars. It felt like playing random was easier than playing Chaos until they overbalanced Chaos and made it super strong a few months later (with the defiler getting both its targeting AI sorted out, and a huge damage buff making him OP for a short time).
The main issue was the very long delay between patches, that would introduce almost as many imbalances as they fixed.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lmao, so out of a whim i loaded Dawn of War 2, and the damn thing just crashes instantly.

Went on google and found basically nothing. Something about CPU cores (even found a dll on github that's supposed to help with that) but apparently that's not the issue i'm having. Am i shit out of luck basically? Seems a ton of people are having this problem but there's zero actual solutions anywhere. Nice that they are still selling this thing on steam of course.

 

[markec]

Lmao, so out of a whim i loaded Dawn of War 2, and the damn thing just crashes instantly.

Went on google and found basically nothing. Something about CPU cores (even found a dll on github that's supposed to help with that) but apparently that's not the issue i'm having. Am i shit out of luck basically? Seems a ton of people are having this problem but there's zero actual solutions anywhere. Nice that they are still selling this thing on steam of course.

You are not missing out on anything, Chaos Rising is the only part of the sequel worth playing, and its standalone so try that.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lmao, so out of a whim i loaded Dawn of War 2, and the damn thing just crashes instantly.

Went on google and found basically nothing. Something about CPU cores (even found a dll on github that's supposed to help with that) but apparently that's not the issue i'm having. Am i shit out of luck basically? Seems a ton of people are having this problem but there's zero actual solutions anywhere. Nice that they are still selling this thing on steam of course.

You are not missing out on anything, Chaos Rising is the only part of the sequel worth playing, and its standalone so try that.

None of them work.

I thought the shit one was Dawn of War 3 if even the second game is mediocre how shit is Dawn of War 3 exactly?

 

[markec]

Lmao, so out of a whim i loaded Dawn of War 2, and the damn thing just crashes instantly.

Went on google and found basically nothing. Something about CPU cores (even found a dll on github that's supposed to help with that) but apparently that's not the issue i'm having. Am i shit out of luck basically? Seems a ton of people are having this problem but there's zero actual solutions anywhere. Nice that they are still selling this thing on steam of course.

You are not missing out on anything, Chaos Rising is the only part of the sequel worth playing, and its standalone so try that.

None of them work.

I thought the shit one was Dawn of War 3 if even the second game is mediocre how shit is Dawn of War 3 exactly?

Never played third game since every single person I know said its bad game. Also little footage I saw made it look even more dumb down then DoW2.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Is DoW2 not like Company of Heroes? That's what i always assumed but i guess is something more simplistic then?

 

[markec]

Is DoW2 not like Company of Heroes? That's what i always assumed but i guess is something more simplistic then?

Yes, in CoH you can build buildings, bunkers, minefields, obstacles etc. Cover is far more important then in DoW2, you have far more units to choose from and bigger unit limit. Also in CoH choice of doctrine greatly changes the way you play. Its a far superior game, one of the best MP RTS with only real fault (beside balance) very poor SP.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I see. Still, i paid for this shit i would at least like to have the option to try it.

I was able to make all of them start with the -nosound in the command line. So it's not the CPU cores that are the problem, but something with the audio. Getting there at least.

 

[markec]

I see. Still, i paid for this shit i would at least like to have the option to try it.

I was able to make all of them start with the -nosound in the command line. So it's not the CPU cores that are the problem, but something with the audio. Getting there at least.

So much trouble for a mediocre game, still maybe you like it and it will be worthwhile effort.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, i got it going. All i had to do is set the default format of my onboard audio to 16 bit 44hz.

Of course, i'm now poised for disappointment where as in the beginning i had some hopes this wasn't a shit game lmao. Ho well.

 

[Jaedar]

Is DoW2 not like Company of Heroes? That's what i always assumed but i guess is something more simplistic then?

It is in the mp/skirmish. The campaign doesn't have any base building, or unit building, just a set of heroes with equipment. It's more of a real time RPG than RTS.