[PC] Warhammer 40K - Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

So the new Dawn of War expansion that technically isn't an expansion because you can play it without owning or installing the original game and Winter Assault is out now.

I'm really loving this RTS series for its extreme simplicity and love for detail. Dawn of War essentially reduced the RTS experience to the most fun part and the awesome Winter Assault expansion featured one of the most exciting single player campaigns in a game ever.

Now Dark Crusade comes along, offering everything (7 races total: Space Marines, Chaos, Orks, Eldar, Imperial Guard, Tau, Necron) featured in DoW and WA as well as new units for most of the races and a brand new strategic campaign mode.

Dark Crusade takes place on the planet of Kronus where all the mighty armies of the galaxy clash in an epic battle. Although the game now lacks a storyline for the single player campaign, the strategic map and the possibility to take command of each of the seven races more than makes up for it, allowing for a totally new experience everytime you decide to start a new conquest.

At the core of the new mode is the strategic map or planetary overview, where you can move your leader around and attack or defend new territories, each offering a unique bonus to your army. Occupied territories award you requisition points, equal to the points awarded for holding control points in the game. You can either choose to add new troops to your own leader's "honor guard" or boast a territory's garrison. Gameplay is turn-based while the AI takes control of the other leaders. Of course, your goal is to defeat all other races on Kronus. Oh and you can customize your own leader's equipment and abilities by gaining experience points.

Needless to say, I'm absolutely impressed by this game and the entire series at that. Even if you're not a fan of the WH40K universe, the game's mechanics work so well that even a simple skirmish game against AI enemies can be lots of fun. Seriously, nothing beats sending a Baneblade heavy tank around the map and wreaking havoc on defenseless enemies. Also, the Dawn of War games are the first of their kind to introduce halfway realistic artillery that can fire across multiple screens. Infantry is organized in squads that can be reinforced and upgraded with special weapons and characters. Despite all this, the game itself never gets chaotic and the moderate speed allows for tactical decisions even in the midst of intense fighting.

I didn't find a thread on this yet so feel free to discuss this game and the series here.

Official site for further info and reference:

- Dawn of War series: http://www.dawnofwargame.com/homepage.php
- Dark Crusade: http://www.dow-darkcrusade.com

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Gotta love the Necrons. And the Tau. And the new system of Officer weapon customization.

How ya doing, buddy?

I have a desire to bump this thread because this game is just too much fun, and unfortunately no one's posting here. Does everyone have a favourite race yet? Do you think Necrons and Tau are cheap as hell? Did you know terminator space marines do less close combat damage than tacticals, and have a wind-up time for each attack, making them worse CC than fire warriors? But the tool tip says they do good damage to all units!

I'd have to say SM and Tau are probably becoming my favourites. Ork is way more fun than it was in Vanilla - cheap mass with a few rock-solid super units. I even like playing Guard, it's really interesting. The only side that doesn't excite me as Chaos, and Eldar seems a lot less fun than it used to.

I don't find Necrons too imbalanced, except for the flayed one/res orb combo. Flayed ones can be dropped anywhere, and your Necron Lord will always get up where he died when you buy him. So you march your army into his base, drop flayed to smash buildings (Which they do superbly), and if everyone dies so what? You re-buy your lord and raise your army. Your opponent ends up having to leave an army at home, or just build a new base. It's shit.

Also: I'll pillage from my journal my thoughts on the single player campaign:

Quote:

Yeah, so apparently "easy" is way to easy in this game. And not just because the computer never attacks me; no, there's a greater problem.

I give my necron lord (commander) the regeneration wargear, right? Seems like a good buy. Plus I get the regeneration research each level. And bang, and he's fucking nigh-invincible. Wargear-boost his health a little and teleport when you need to, and I have him taking on entire quarters of the race's final strongholds (read: final levels) on his own. There's like only a half-dozen units that can kill him, and then only when they outnumber him 6-1. My stategy becomes rushing one corner with the lord, and the other corner with the rest of my army.

Not to mention that if he gets real hurt or ambushed by people who can knock him down, you turn into the Nightbringer who is invincible and drains health as he attacks. That'll set you right. And if he ever does die, like maybe you left to get a sandwhich after sending him into 7 fire prisms, you buy him again and he gets back up right where he died. Tch. And they say the monolith is cheap.


So yeah, I went for more of a challenge and I've almost got Tau standard campaign beat too. They didn't impress me at first but I'm warming to massed fire warriors. But I must say, I go through Kroot like cheap matches. (Where you stand there breaking heads for two minutes before one takes...). And my pathfinders keep flopping too.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Ah, so it's another risk style conquer map type campaign. I'll have to look into getting this at some point.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Has anybody else found a good way to use the tau broadsides besides turrets? Apparantly you can sneak them in with devilfish but i haven't tried this yet.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I never liked broadsides. Horrible pathing and so slow. Too bad Tau anti-vehicle is so bad. I need to start getting better about using stealth teams for anti-vehicle, because a few skyrays aren't enough.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I am currently downloading(I know I should not, but I can't just buy a new thing without trying it first) the Dawn of War and the Winter Assault.

If I find them good, as most of my friends say, I think I will definitely buy one.
The thing is, where can I buy them? they are pretty old...

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by NewZeta

If I find them good, as most of my friends say, I think I will definitely buy one.
The thing is, where can I buy them? they are pretty old...

They are not that old. Around here, Hastings & both Gamestop's have both DoW Gold (includes original DoW game plus WA) and DoWC. They go for $30 each, so you get the original game plus 2 expansion paks.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by How Unfortunate

I never liked broadsides. Horrible pathing and so slow. Too bad Tau anti-vehicle is so bad. I need to start getting better about using stealth teams for anti-vehicle, because a few skyrays aren't enough.

Stealth suits take out wraithlords in like 5 seconds..... literally. Well if you fully upgrade them at least.

But i whenever i play tau i do the really cheap thing and send like 7 krootox in the front and have like 10 squads of firewarriors in the back obliterating everything from really long range. Krootoxs seriously have the health of like 8 defilers its amazing (i used to play chaos). So 8X8X60=
3640 damage every 2 seconds or so; not subtracting armor or those missed shots. So ya, i kinda don't have to worry about anti-vehicle, or anti building as much after i get krootox.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The first Dawn of War was a nice tribute to Warhammer 40k, being a huge tabletop fan myself; however, I don't like how they removed the linear story line away from the game in Dark Crusade. I actually prefer Mark of Chaos if I need a tabletop fix. Just seems closer to the real thing than Dawn of War, albeit a great game I just don't get the same feeling. As far as an rts, yes Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is amazing in my opinion especially the multi-player aspect. Long live Sanguinius

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Have any of you guys ever played a battle where YOU lost morale. I played this one like 2 hour game and needless to say it got really boring. My marines kept dieing and i had to rebuild them over and over and over and over again. By like the end of the two hours when my guys were dieing they yelled "SUPPORT US!!!!" and at that point MY morale broke. I was like I'M SORRY GUYS I CAN'T!!!!! And I seriously broke down and started deleting all my buildings; it was horrible.

But ya, that game was ENDLESS..... We basically sieged each other in our bases and nobody got anywhere.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah, I've had that happen. You get so exhausted by the match you just don't care how it goes anymore. I find that happens the most when I'm playing Necrons (boredom) or Eldar (exhaustion). If it gets to that point, you're probably in a team game, all at the end of the tech tree and with great economies. I find it best to start ignoring troops and just focusing on pulverising the buildings of the weakest player. (Or if 1 v 1, tech-critical buildings that may not have been doubled).

You can probably do this by having players pool cheap tactics, like 3 players deepstriking or jumping in crisis suits with bugged flamers. :-/ ...Which is why you always double-build your tech tree if you're floating resouces in end-game matches like that.

If it's the single player campaign, then just get a bigger honor guard before trying that map. And if the CPU has two bases, make sure to rush one of them at the very start. Unfortunately, I can remember wasting an hour or two fruitlessly being stalemated by two computers endlessly massing me.

Re: broadsides, I've been reading that to have them take down vehicles it's better that you don't entrench them. Instead, you'd only entrench vs. infantry or when you needed range more than damage. I haven't tried it yet though. I really should, since skyrays aren't very good antivehicle.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by How Unfortunate

Yeah, I've had that happen. You get so exhausted by the match you just don't care how it goes anymore. I find that happens the most when I'm playing Necrons (boredom) or Eldar (exhaustion). If it gets to that point, you're probably in a team game, all at the end of the tech tree and with great economies. I find it best to start ignoring troops and just focusing on pulverising the buildings of the weakest player. (Or if 1 v 1, tech-critical buildings that may not have been doubled).

You can probably do this by having players pool cheap tactics, like 3 players deepstriking or jumping in crisis suits with bugged flamers. :-/ ...Which is why you always double-build your tech tree if you're floating resouces in end-game matches like that.

If it's the single player campaign, then just get a bigger honor guard before trying that map. And if the CPU has two bases, make sure to rush one of them at the very start. Unfortunately, I can remember wasting an hour or two fruitlessly being stalemated by two computers endlessly massing me.

Re: broadsides, I've been reading that to have them take down vehicles it's better that you don't entrench them. Instead, you'd only entrench vs. infantry or when you needed range more than damage. I haven't tried it yet though. I really should, since skyrays aren't very good antivehicle.

Well i had already thought about jumping; but raptors suck(i was chaos).

And since we were at a LAN the guy i was playing against knew how i used chaos and had a bunch of pathfinders so i couldn't sneak in my cloaked marines. and my defilers couldn't stand prolonged fire anymore(what happened????!!!) So after getting horrendous kill counts me and my ally just quit and we said we're done.

But ya, the guy knew exactly what he was doing, and almost exactly what i was going to do.

And for Tau i still like using stealthsuits as anti-vehicle. They are quick, can cloak, jump, fire quick, and do tonnes of damage. And they only take 1 pop; can't find a better anti-armor unit anywhere.

I was speaking idiomatically.