Dawn of War; Dark Crusade

murfie

I am gonna get this I think, out on the 10th, It says its an expansion and a standalone game. I have the original DOW but not Winter Assault. I want to get back into playing this online so would I be recommended to get winter assault also or does it matter?
The two new races in the Dark Crusade look very interesting,Tau Empire and the Necrons, hope they can give the strongest races chaos/marines some competition.

Edit: sorry didnt see the Demo thread below for this game, mods please merge if you wish.

Pugsley

I think the way it works is if you only have Dark Crusade, you can only play as Tau or Necron online, but you can play against any other army, and you only get the new campaigns. Im not sure if you get the other armies for skirmish games though.

murfie

Ah I see thanks, I installed back in original DOW last night anyway, trying to get back into online play. Was a little rusty!:rolleyes:
Reserved my copy anyway of Dark Crusade, looking forward to trying out the new races.

Venom

Just played the Necrons so far and damm there fun. Hard as ****ing nails from start to finish but really a turtle race. The wargear upgrades for your hero are really cool and some upgrades make a huge difference like the see stealth troops one.

The campaign is huge with a nice mix of mission types ranging from destroy HQ to timed slaughter x amount of troops type missions. After 6 hours of play, Iv just gotten about 6 zones and seen off the IG and Chaos so I expect a serious amount of replay value

Pyr0

Aye the signle players is pretty good ! Spent about 4-5 hours crawling through the IG stronghold, taking my time really, that is until the power in my house cut out and i realised I never saved. I cried. Is it me or do some units seem way stronger than I thought they'd be ? IG get slaughterd by the Necrons (and any other army) Necrons are easily taken by the Space Marines and Choas, as are the other armies. I also like how they added the Champions in the game, very handy to use when rushing to win a quick game.

hairball

only played the demo, but its great fun....preordered

kencleary

Where are the people who are playing this getting it? Anyone got a decent American site where it can be imported from or are they getting it from their "cousin in America"?

I can't wait to play online. The new unit caps whould make battles much more interesting!

Pyr0

"cousin in America" Yeah you could put it that way if you like :P

The until caps arn't much different, I think Chaos can get +4 to vehicle and infantry.

Mantel

Pyr0 wrote:

The until caps arn't much different, I think Chaos can get +4 to vehicle and infantry.

One of the regions gives a bonus to pop cap once you take it.

Great game. The Necrons are insane. The only sides that gave me trouble while playing them was the IG in one region and the Orks because of the sheer numbers they had. The rest of the time it's just like a wall of metal moveing slowly to it's objective.

murfie

Got it last week but have only had a chance to play it for a couple of hours. I really like the new campaign mode, started playing as the tau. Only have come up against the necrons yet, they are tough on hard setting! Have not gone into online play yet but i guess there wil be a delay in the numbers online until people start playing the game.

I got mine in the US, but i thought the game had the same release date in Europe also. Must have been mistaken.

humanji

Just started playing this last night. The new campaign mode is a fantastic addition that really ups the replayability of it. I love the Necrons, but am not to infatuated with the Tau lads. Give it time thought.

The only bad thing about it that was pointed out by a few reviewers is that this add-on didn't include the Tyrannids

Froot

Its hard to incorporate 2 evil races and one good race into an expansion...

The Tyrannids will be in the next expansion with another race or in DoW 2.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Great game though.

I'm finding that its becoming much more complete, specifically regarding capturing points and the way not all units can now capture them etc...Little touches make it a better gaming experience. They have managed to keep it fresh in my eyes after two years. then again the makers of Homeworld 2 made it so it has to have some level of quality.

Venom

Tyrannids will never be on DoW due to the developers saying they could not do the race justice and are not going to try. Relic have something big lined up for 2007 tho so maybe DoW2 with a new engine?

Nietzschean

i dunno one thing that still bugs me in DoW , is the poor pathfinding for units, really obvious with the orc's but noticable with all races... would have been nice if they grabbed the pathfinding code that they wrote for COH and ported it back to DoW, i assume the engines are pretty similar....

Manic Moran

Venom wrote:

Relic have something big lined up for 2007 tho so maybe DoW2 with a new engine?

Keying on 'something big', maybe the Squats?

NTM

Froot

That would be cool but one has to question Relic's "ace up the sleeve" being tiny snipers...

ButcherOfNog

Something big would be Titans, and Epic 40K scale game.

Venom

Manic Moran wrote:

Keying on 'something big', maybe the Squats?

NTM

Relic have to tow the official GW line when it comes to the 40k universe so I dont see Squats ever appearing as GW claim Squats are gone for ever. My guess would be DoW2 using the new CoH engine tho Nogies idea of titans and ship combat would be cool.

Brother To God

What a great game, the only game that ever made me think while having a romantic dinner with the missus, "I wish i was playing DOW" .
Theres mods for Squats, Titans and Tyrannids if you wish to play them!
Check out http://dawnofwar.filefront.com/

Manic Moran

Froot wrote:

That would be cool but one has to question Relic's "ace up the sleeve" being tiny snipers...

Those are Ratlings.

You've got to go back a couple of editions of 40K to get to the Squats. They're basically Snow White meets Mad Max. Violent dwarves on machine-gun equipped trikes.

NTM

Manic Moran

Well, picked it up and started playing it. Dove into a campaign as the Guardsmen, I ended up starting next to Necron territory. Great. The one side that starts off with nothing bigger than a lasgun facing off big, solid, regenerating metal robots. The battles are tough. The heavy weapons teams are kick-ass though.

The enemy campaign moves don't seem to be doing overly much, they usually just sit still. Every now and then they'll take a crack at another territory, then fall back, presumably they lost. Haven't played any defensive games yet, but I've not seen yet how the 'main army' can really be much stronger than any other garrisoned territory.

NTM

murfie

Ya the AI armies sit there alot, i have defended a good few times however but have never lost a province that I have defended myself, ( Never use the auto resolve option).
One thing though with playing as the Tau, i am finding it so tough going fighting the Eldar, every time i do it turns into those epic battles over 1 hr long things! Its getting really frustrating as I have taken out everyone else and the eldar are putting up a massive resistance. makes it value for money as regards game-play but still i need to make more progress.

Anyone have any tactics i can use to fight the Eldar using the Tau, I am getting cut to bit by their infantry and heavy vehicles and i have tried every unit the tau has to combat this.

robnubis

Great game, i am however appauled that they have limited Terminators to 1 squad of each!! i mean wtf?

new tactics time, the terminator rush is long dead...

bizmark

robnubis wrote:

Great game, i am however appauled that they have limited Terminators to 1 squad of each!! i mean wtf?

new tactics time, the terminator rush is long dead...

Makes sence only the first company should have termy armour afaik haveing tons of dreadnoughts and terminators running around is a bit stupid if you read the books/backstorie

Froot

The Eldar are cheap, specialised and fast troops with unimpressive command units and average morale.

So either use morale based offensives, ie: lots of flamers, or just play on the fact that they are terrible all-rounds and field as varied a force as you can.i would say get lots of kroots up close into melee and then just pound them with hammerheads.

The Eldar have large number even by Orc standard so maybe AOE would be the best idea, build lots of artillery and get it to attack the ground which the Eldar will surely walk over.

Thats what I used to do in C&C:Generals, just ctrl click scud lunchers to fire at base entrances and ou dont have to worry about the enemy getting up close.

bizmark

The necrons are obscene :eek: the only thing that works against them is heavy bolter fire or knocking them off their feet over and over think they need a bit of a nerf in a patch....

Anyone finish it? see the bit at the end? Wonder whats coming

Pyr0

Finished it ? Yeah I finished it as Chaos there awhile back. Pretty cool game, although I get tired of playing the same maps over again. When the enemy attacks your stronghold, do you get a big base already built just like the AI have when you attack their stronghold, or is it from scratch ?

ButcherOfNog

I would assume theres a big base already built, just like when the AI attacks one of your sectors you own. Playing thru it at the moment on Hard as Imperial Guard, tough going as the honor guard units I have at the moment can't hold off the Necron and Chaos commanders honor units. I'm seesawing between holding 4 to 5 sectors, I gain a sector, I lose a sector.

nesf

Playing with it a fair bit, see-sawing between it and Caesar 4. The AI has definitely been tweaked to the better, it's a lot more aggressive. The single player campaign is ok, but I'd have preferred a bit more of a storyline myself.

garrethg

Venom wrote:

Tyrannids will never be on DoW due to the developers saying they could not do the race justice and are not going to try.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! Why? Granted it'd be hard to balance them, but then it's not as if Relic ever bothered balancing any of the existing sides.

bizmark

garrethg wrote:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! Why? Granted it'd be hard to balance them, but then it's not as if Relic ever bothered balancing any of the existing sides.

1 million units cap vrs a hand full of space marines sounds fun ;p

garrethg

bizmark wrote:

1 million units cap vrs a hand full of space marines sounds fun ;p

The Emperor's holy fire cleanses all. Praise be his name!

uberpixie

bizmark wrote:

The necrons are obscene :eek: the only thing that works against them is heavy bolter fire or knocking them off their feet over and over think they need a bit of a nerf in a patch....

Yeah finally got around to installing DC last night and decided to play as necrons for the laugh....

Slow mass march of death across the map!

They may need to be tweaked :-)

I notice that they only need to cap a few points to get their reinforce rate up to 100%, after that you max their power out and you just pump out mass numbers and casually stroll across the map and steam roll everything.

Also like the fact your HQ turns into a floating mobile oppression palace and you can send it in the to cripple the emeny's HQ and still pump men out of it at the same time.

Yeah a patch might be needed :-)

bizmark

Army strengths defo seems to be Best :necrons/chaos/orks Medium :eldar/tau Worst : space marines/imperial guard.
Necrons are nuts you can’t build a huge army or afford to leave a defense army at home but it doesn’t matter as you can simply transport them home anyway (we will be back!) they have no resource problems at all and the monolith is a great little thing.Chaos can cloak most of their army have 2 hard ass demons and can get tanks/dreadnaughts much easer than their imperial brother's eldar and tau are decent enough but the space marines are very weak imho iv seen marine squads being wiped out by grenade welding imperial guards men and they are very resources heavy as for the guards men well ..meh

The emperor will be spinning on terra ;p

Manic Moran

I've been still trying to get a bit of a grip on the Guard in DC. I think my problem is I'm relying too much on the vehicles (Basilisk, Russ, Baneblade) and not enough on the troops. When you spend the full 20 cap on rankers, you can have a whole crapload of lasguns blasting away, and relatively cheaply. Anti-armour is a problem: The heavy weapons teams are great, and very tough, but they're a bloody nuisance to transport around and set up. Interestingly, I'm finding the Necrons (AI control) to be the easiest victims for the Guard, and the Orks and Eldar are causing me conniptions.

NTM

uberpixie

bizmark wrote:

Army strengths defo seems to be Best :necrons/chaos/orks Medium :eldar/tau Worst : space marines/imperial guard.
Necrons are nuts you can’t build a huge army or afford to leave a defense army at home but it doesn’t matter as you can simply transport them home anyway (we will be back!) they have no resource problems at all and the monolith is a great little thing.Chaos can cloak most of their army have 2 hard ass demons and can get tanks/dreadnaughts much easer than their imperial brother's eldar and tau are decent enough but the space marines are very weak imho iv seen marine squads being wiped out by grenade welding imperial guards men and they are very resources heavy as for the guards men well ..meh

The emperor will be spinning on terra ;p

Never have a problem building a huge army with Necrons.

True you start of very slow, but once you get the ball rolling and your power up, you very quickly get them up to speed with a huge army.

I always seem to hit my unit caps for men a vehicles without too much graft.

Usually I just build my forces up to max and then march. Very simple to play.

As long as you expand slowly and build up your forces, Necrons seem pretty hard to beat.

bizmark

uberpixie wrote:

Never have a problem building a huge army with Necrons.

True you start of very slow, but once you get the ball rolling and your power up, you very quickly get them up to speed with a huge army.

I always seem to hit my unit caps for men a vehicles without too much graft.

Usually I just build my forces up to max and then march. Very simple to play.

As long as you expand slowly and build up your forces, Necrons seem pretty hard to beat.

Ya thats true iv taken to building up a man only attack army and useing the destroyer/heavy destroyers / lords to mop up around the place or defend my point's

murfie

Manic Moran wrote:

I'm finding the Necrons (AI control) to be the easiest victims for the Guard, and the Orks and Eldar are causing me conniptions.

NTM

Really, i found the Necrons impossible going last night in the campaign mode using the Imperial Guard, although it was the very first time playing as the IG, i didnt get Winter Assault. Is it better to rush the necrons as they would be weaker early on, with the Tau i had no problem but that was on normal difficulty. I could easily take on the Chaos with the IG for some reason.

uberpixie

murfie wrote:

Really, i found the Necrons impossible going last night in the campaign mode using the Imperial Guard, although it was the very first time playing as the IG, i didnt get Winter Assault. Is it better to rush the necrons as they would be weaker early on, with the Tau i had no problem but that was on normal difficulty. I could easily take on the Chaos with the IG for some reason.

Nasty thing about Necrons is that they cut through IG infantry like a hot knife through butter.

So if you rush too early, you will get your ass handed to you.
(don't even think about it unless you have a few squads with nade launchers)

Leave Necrons too long and they will be a pain in the ass!

Haven't played as IG yet, but I just did 2 maps against the IG with Necrons and I rushed them with a handful of troops and just steam rolled them.

Didn't even give the IG the chance to build vehicles.

You will have to steal as many map points back of them as possible as this slows down their rate of reinforcement.

Nietzschean

uberpixie wrote:

Slow mass march of death across the map!

They may need to be tweaked :-)

i dunno i think people just need better tatics against them, i've slaughtered necron army's using the tau a good few times. You just need to set up your lines right and most of the necron troops will be dead before they can even fire, missile tanks can fire from miles out keeping them behind the lines will kill a monolith at a decent rate

robnubis

bizmark wrote:

Makes sence only the first company should have termy armour afaik haveing tons of dreadnoughts and terminators running around is a bit stupid if you read the books/backstorie

Aye, just about 100 terminators PER chapter, word by teh leetest of the leet.

But i miss my termies

I suppose the grey knights make up for it though

nesf

Nietzschean wrote:

i dunno i think people just need better tatics against them, i've slaughtered necron army's using the tau a good few times. You just need to set up your lines right and most of the necron troops will be dead before they can even fire, missile tanks can fire from miles out keeping them behind the lines will kill a monolith at a decent rate

Crowd control is badly needed versus the Necrons tbh. It was the same in 3rd ed tabletop though. You need to keep them disrupted.


Space Marines aren't all that bad tbh, am most of the way finished the campaign on hard with them. You pretty much have to forget how they were played in DoW and Winter Assault though and treat them as a totally new army.

Manic Moran

Still playing as IG on intermediate. Have beaten all but the Eldar, but I just can't seem to finish them off. They have more troops coming at me than the Orks do. Very un-Eldar-like.

NTM

uberpixie

Manic Moran wrote:

I've been still trying to get a bit of a grip on the Guard in DC. I think my problem is I'm relying too much on the vehicles (Basilisk, Russ, Baneblade) and not enough on the troops. When you spend the full 20 cap on rankers, you can have a whole crapload of lasguns blasting away, and relatively cheaply. Anti-armour is a problem: The heavy weapons teams are great, and very tough, but they're a bloody nuisance to transport around and set up. Interestingly, I'm finding the Necrons (AI control) to be the easiest victims for the Guard, and the Orks and Eldar are causing me conniptions.

Ran into difficulty with the IG as Necrons last night.

Took a second bash at a map to get it right.

I found that the IG had a good meat shield that I didn't break down properly and my troops got wiped.

I also found once you get the necrons on the back foot, they are very slow to build back up in numbers.

What the Necrons lack is blast radius weapons to break up the IG ranks.
(monolith is the only blast radius weapon afaik)

Necrons really need to work their HtH troops to break the IG, which is bit difficult in the cluster fcuk the Necron army usually get's it's self into.

You really need to bring the monolith along to help with the IG tanks and mass numbers.

Mass IG plasma gun is very effective against Necrons, most of the Necron troops are classed as Heavy infantry.

IG tanks didn't bother me too much. Took a baneblade or two very handily with a little support from the monolith.

bizmark

Has anyone taken the forward base bonus provance from the orks with the imperial guard? im finding it almost impossible non upgraded guards men vrs ork choppa rush = ****e

Manic Moran

Yes, with no huge troubles. Similarly I had to wait until the Orks captured Bulwark from the Eldar before I had any success. I just can't seem to beat Eldar with the Guard. The Northern province, right next to the Eldar stronghold is causing me absolute fits. I just keep getting totally swamped. That's not supposed to happen with Guard vs Eldar: There seem to be more of them than me, and they're all better than my Guardsmen.

NTM

ButcherOfNog

bizmark wrote:

Has anyone taken the forward base bonus provance from the orks with the imperial guard? im finding it almost impossible non upgraded guards men vrs ork choppa rush = ****e

Took it at the 2nd attempt, I rushed the relics to ensure the Orks didn't get Squiggoths out, kept my entire force moving to the relic in the righthand corner, capped it then pointed most of my units at the other relic and told them to move there. I kept a Baneblade, an IG, the builder and a kaskrin squad separate and stopped them along the narrow high ground along the bottom of the map while the rest moved on towards the 2nd relic. Meant the orks split up and for the most were trying to CC moving stuff. Once I'd both the relics I moved out from those positions slowly, wiping out Ork building as I went. I lost most of the IG infantry doing this but it held the Orks off me till my baneblades and arty had knocked down alot of their buildings, enough to stop them swarming me. If you stop pushing the Orks on this map they'll swap you worse than usual.

At the moment its my IG and the Orks that are left, all other races have been defeated. Having taken the forward base now tho, I should be able to push on and win.

Manic Moran

Finally took the damned Deimos Northlands. Took multiple attempts. I'm too much of a turtler, I guess.

Still, the combination of vindicare spotting for a battery of three Basilisks w/ earthshakers is really quite effective.

NTM

ButcherOfNog

It just dawned on me this evening that every time my IG attack, or are attacked, its 2 Ork AI players I'm up against, so thats why the orks are able to get so many troops out. Rule #1, find and kill one of the ork bases quickly

Manic Moran

Eldar do two bases when they attack you as well, I can't remember about Marines.

When you're attacking, have a gander of the right-side of the screen when you've zoomed in on the province in question, it'll tell you how many bases they start with.

NTM

NeoSlicerZ

Just got the game... doing the slow march of death across the campaign map with the Necrons now, I actually got beaten once in defense, Space Marines popped up with a bunch of dreadnaughts and SM squads, the other defense I did was damn funny though vs the IG, loaded up the map, oh look 1k power, Hit the unit cap in minutes and swarmed the IG. Are you supposed to be able to get by the unit cap with the resurrection orb though? I've had multiples of the honour guard squads and 35/20 squad cap, was just a little broken..