Dawn of War

Anyone playing this game?

I found the demo even better then most full games I have.

The full game rocks if you like the Warhammer universe, very faithful to the fluffy side.

It has some nice features, even the gamey parts make if flow better (like reinforcements and weapon upgrades teleporting into the team).

Sending out scouts then hitting an area with drop-podding Dreadnaughts is fun, so is getting Terminators for the first time.

Eldar are great... the Banshees voice thou sounds like chipmunks.

All in all I have found it a good game that I can save and play despite my hectic lifestyle.

I played it for a while, but uninstalled it not long ago.

I rather enjoyed it. It does stay pretty faithful to the 40k setting, but I do get a little frustrated at how Tankbustas are better in close quarters than normal orks.

The expansion comes out pretty soon, and a proper Imperial Guard army will be a blast to use and squish, I'm sure.

I never took to the Eldar, though. The ability to transport troops from end of the map to the other is quite useful/annoying, but I just need more green in my troops.

I enjoyed the demo a lot, but the full game - which I bought - had the misfortune to come out a week before RTW. I was a little disappointed that the mission in the demo was the final one vs. the orcs in the single player campaign - to some extent, we'd already seen the best the game had to offer - and lost interested by the time the eldar appeared.

I agree it's very faithful to the source material and has great graphics. The gameplay is about as good as you can make an RTS, but it still ultimately feels like an RTS rather than something more a "real" wargame. I may finish off the SP campaign and try it MP with my son some time in the future.

I never played the demo, but I bought the full game and to my dissapointment it was horrible. I played it for approx. 3 days straight but then it just lost its appeal, (to me anyway.)

Oh well, it was good while it lasted. ~:)

I be thinkin' it be grand. yarr. ~:cheers:

I be testing it in thearr open beta.
Then be playin' thearr demo.
Then I be buyin' it.
On Friday I will be buyin'g thearr x-pack.

YARR!!!

I think it's all right. I've been playing all races, while the orcs are funny, the eldar is sneaky and the space marines are invincible.

oh, and the chaos marines are just scary.

I was very excited about it when it was first released, but it was one of those 'Play it avidly for a week and then forget about it' games.

The imagery and so forth was very true to 40K (especially 2nd edition 40K, if you know what I mean :wink: ) but beyond that it felt very similar to other RTS games. I don't do MP, I'm not particularly interested in skirmish, so I place a lot of reliance on the SP side and it was just so gosh-darned short. I finished the SP campaign and I expected it to be the first one of four or something :sad:. Plus by and large, the gameplay was pretty repetitive - initial base defence, amass a large enough force of dreadnoughts and tanks, romp over battlemap. I was losing my entire chapter's compliment of dreadnoughts pretty much every game :beam: (which is a problem in itself fluff-wise).

The whole strategic point thing was neat, but to be honest, it's not too far removed from tiberium fields or metal deposits or whatever.

And those cut-scenes... :no:

I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it had had some kind of strategic element to it - having limited forces, assigning them to different battlezones, duplicate the ebb & flow of a whole planetary invasion rather than just an A -> B -> C scenario progression.

Overall, yeah it was fine, and I know my brother got a lot more mileage out of it than I did, but it didn't deliver the strategic/tactical 40K game that I'm still waiting for.

As for the book, I got through one chapter and that was enough for me... :rolleyes:

I was thinking of getting this game with the expansion?

Is the single player game any good?

short, you only get to play space marines. I don't know about the expansion, but I suggest that you play it in skirmish and/or multiplayer mode, or else it is a poor game.

Bought it, installed it, played it, uninstalled it.

There wasn't much that set it apart from any other game of the same genre, collect some resources, build your troops and overrun the enemy.

Just not my cup of tea, though the graphics are impressive.

i used to play it quite a bit when it first came out

eventually they patched the game to make the lobby font text be microscopic, with no option to change it to a reasonable size. that peeved me off a lot

i found the gameplay to be very grating after months of play. the marketing claims said they revolutionized resource collecting in RTS games.

but in reality, all they did was make resource collecting even more tedious than in any other RTS game. because to collect resources in Dawn of War you have to use your army to touch points all over the map, and then you have to manually micro-manage peons to build a structure upon every one of the points, and then you have to upgrade each of those structures when you have enough resources to do so

eventually i just thought: "do i really wanna go through this resource collecting tedium each and every time i start a new game?". the answer was no, so i lost interest.

there are also some very stupid game mechanics. like you cannot build any other building if your Stronghold is destroyed, even if you have a ton of other buildings standing. which makes any sort of recovery impossible because Strongholds take forever to build and cost a ridiculous amount of resources.

it's an ok game, but highly over-rated.

Thearr x-pack gives thee two campaigns, order and disorder.

With order yee play thee Imperial Guard and Eldar (me thinks). With disorder you Choas and thee Orks.

YARR!!!

Enough with the pirate routine.

ER, did you switch factions a lot? The strategies tend to change when you use the Orks or Eldar.

"Da orkses is 'ere! 'et's git to da fightin' boss!"

~D yeah i liked this game. It was a good game that blended the wh 40k universe and an rts style of gameplay. Though at times gathering resources got tedius, the fun of slaughtering dem humies made up for it a bit.

The sp storyline was, i thought, very well done and put me right back into the 40k universe after not playing the tabletop for a long time. Though it was too short, iirc only about 10 or 11 missions. The space marines are the only playable race in the mission mode, and though i like them i like my ork boyz betta.

All in all, the sp is good, but i eventually uninstalled it. Even with the orks, there wasn't enough content to keep me interested.

"Waaaaaaagh!!!"

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Enough with the pirate routine.

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Never!!!

YARR!!!

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Enough with the pirate routine.

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Avast, me hearty! Ye needs to learn about TLAP day, ye scurvey dog!

Yarr!

Crazed Rabbit

Me be just finishn' thearr last mission of Dawn of War. ~:cheers:

I generally detest RTS games but I found DOW to be quite enjoyable, even though the single player campaign was too damn short. It is also a crying shame the developers didn't include solo campaigns for the Orcs, the Eldar and the Chaos Marines because those races were already fully fleshed out for multiplayer games. The Orc faction was so funny and fun to play I was especially bitter about the them not getting their own single player campaign.

The game scored huge points for me in the graphics, animation, sound and music categories. Because of these factors DoW was just oozing with atmosphere.

After clearing DoW's single player campaign I tried my hand in multiplayer vs. the AI and it didn't take long for me to remember why I hate RTS games so much. Harvest, build, mass, swarm. Rinse, repeat... uggh. The game was back in my friend's hands after only a weekend's worth of play.

After playing DoW I must confess I was secretly hoping two things would happen; 1) someone would make a Battlefield like multiplayer game in the WH 40K universe and 2) someone would make an epic single or massive online rpg in the WH40K universe.

It would be good if somebody made a WH40K:Total War type of game.

It could have Homeworld type space battles and DOW type ground battle.

I've still got it installed, and play it every so often. It's the first decent comp game based on Warhammer 40K I've seen, and it was threatening to suck me back into the table top scene (like I have time for that now :dizzy2:, haven't pulled out my miniatures in 10 years). The new X-pack is coming out soon (this week or next), with the Imperial Guard added as mentioned by NeonGod. I switched to DoW for a while after I got fed up with Rome:TW, it just felt good. The blood, the gore, the darkness....

The single player campaign is pretty good, but the game is really meant to be online multiplayer. Relic has a ladder system online for competitive play. If you can put up with the usual net morons, it's supposed to be ok. If you don't like the online RTS "culture", you can play the skirmish mode against the AI.

The game is fairly mod-friendly. You can create or download different color and badge schemes for your army to match the fluff. There is a skirmish AI mod that improves the computer players significantly if you get bored with the standard. There are 3 community mappacks out as well. A lot of these (as well as other discussion) can be found at the Dawn of War forums:
http://forums.relicnews.com/forumdisplay.php?f=89

If you play the game, save the replays, and watch the replay while zooming in at various points. There are lots of little things in the animations that you miss when RTS-clickfesting, Relic put a lot of time into kill animations and other ambience. And the intro movie is the best I've ever seen. :thumbsup:

I'm still waiting for a decent Warhammer Fantasy based strategy game. Dark Omen was ok, but that was a while ago. I don't have the time or knowledge to mod RTW for it, and the engine wouldn't really be able to handle Chaos.

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I'm still waiting for a decent Warhammer Fantasy based strategy game. Dark Omen was ok, but that was a while ago. I don't have the time or knowledge to mod RTW for it, and the engine wouldn't really be able to handle Chaos.

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There is supposed to be one being made.

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Originally Posted by Martinus

There is supposed to be one being made.

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Apparently, the rights to it get passed around every few years. I think somebody just got the rights recently, maybe they can do something with it.

There is a Warhammer fantasy mod for RTW in development. Seen some screens with imperials, orks, and high elves.

On topic I have Dawn of war. Enjoy it greatly. I tend to prefer the marines chaos and imperial. The Orks are alright but there lack of tanks dismay me. The Eldar are amusing as they are just high elves in space but you'd never now it if you just played the game.

Oh, I thought TLaP day was in June.

Accept me condolences, me hearties.

Played the demo, it looked great, but I thought it would quickly turn out to be very boring, cause I'm not much of a MP players, so I decided to buy Chaos League, one of the funniest game I've ever played.

I enjoyed it. It was good fun and really bought the world of WH40K to life.

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Originally Posted by Martinus

There is supposed to be one being made.

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Found it, finally. Black Hole Games is making Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. Not really RTS by the sounds of it. Gamespot has a review with screenies here:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/..._flashtop_read

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Originally Posted by drone

Not really RTS by the sounds of it.

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Well, we can always hope. But the article you linked to kept repeating that the game was in the "RTS" genre about a dozen times, so we won't be able to sue them if it is.

I think it will be in the Battle for Middle Earth/ Dawn of War category of RTS. Not much building or exploration, but a lot of good-looking but still RTS style combat.

I'll probably have to buy it though, just to see my metal High Elf army on screen.

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Mark of Chaos will include four of the 17 armies found in the Warhammer universe. These include the empire, high elves, skaven, and chaos, along with several units from other Warhammer armies, introduced as "mercenaries" that you can add to your ranks.

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Is he joking ? I mean, 4 out of 17 in the game ? What's the point of making a Warhammer game if you may play with only a few factions ?

Yeah..I was mad enough when they removed Chaos Dwarfs as a separate army. 4 playable factions sounds like a money grab to me.

Dawn of War has 4 playable factions. I think there are two constraints.

First, there's a trade-off between quality and quantity. When you look at how lovingly the factions in Dawn of War have been done - the animations, the voicework, the upgrades etc - I think you might prefer that to a more generic, cookie-cutter type approach to more factions.

Second, Games Workshop presumably does not want gamers to get the full Warhammer experience on the computer, as that may undermine its more profitable sales of minatures. That's why I fear we will never see a Total War type game with all the factions and deep strategy, but some smaller, fluffy RTS.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

Well, we can always hope. But the article you linked to kept repeating that the game was in the "RTS" genre about a dozen times, so we won't be able to sue them if it is.

I think it will be in the Battle for Middle Earth/ Dawn of War category of RTS. Not much building or exploration, but a lot of good-looking but still RTS style combat.

I'll probably have to buy it though, just to see my metal High Elf army on screen.

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There is mention of a strategic screen and tactical screen, so it might be simliar to TW, with an RTS combat mode. Looks like resource accumulation will be smarter than just capping points. We can always hope.

My guess is they will be gunning for an X-pack with more factions. Although if it is truly a RTS (at least from a combat multiplayer/ladder system like they talked about), balance will be a problem with more factions.

Anyone tried out some of the mods available ?

I'm thinking about dling Steel Legions and Danse Macabre Beta version. I can't wait for the Thousand sons and Adeptas Sororitas mods.

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Second, Games Workshop presumably does not want gamers to get the full Warhammer experience on the computer, as that may undermine its more profitable sales of minatures

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OT warning.

What's happened to minatures these days? When I was a teenager I used to enjoy painting minatures up. There were quite a few manufacturers (IIRC the one whose style I like the best was grenadier, the only ones who could make dwarves look fearsome rather than stupid). They weren't really "for" anything, (well, you could use them for D and D but I don't think many people did.) I seem to remember most towns of any size had a hobby shop with racks of little lead figures of various sorts on the wall. There were some really skilled sculptors working too.

I went on to other things just as the citadel miniatures/warhammer/GW juggernaut was starting to roll. I never see hobby shops any more, but then, I'm not looking for them. Is it all still there or has it all been crushed under piles of plastic chaos undead ratmen?

Mind you I salute anyone who can paint up a warhammer army, I think the most I ever did in one group was about 12 grenadier dwarves in one go, and although they did look good when I was finished it was a lot of work.

Yes, I remember being depressed when White Dwarf got taken over by Games Workshop and dropped all the good DnD content for what I then regarded as rather naff house products. About twenty years later, prodded by my son, I've softened as the GW minatures now really are rather good aesthetically. [I compared my Lamming minatures from the 1970s with some GW products from today and it is like comparing Bob the Builder to a Ridley Scott film.] And the games do seem pretty sound, if open to abuse.

There are still other minatures producers but maybe they have been squeezed into the margins by GW. A rather good one is related to GW and also based in Nottingham. Here's some of their Macedonians:

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/WG/WG11.asp

Gosh, that took me back. Grenadier must have gone bust because some of those figures I am sure were in their range (I distinctly remember painting up a fair few of what wargamesfoundry call the 1066 range as generic vikings from Grenadier, they were some of the last ones I did and I was quite proud of them as by then I was pretty good if I say so myself). I guess they bought the moulds.

A quick google shows that another favourite, Essex miniatures, are still going, and from the same address too ! They were mail order only and it was rubbishy xeroxed price lists in those days. Ordering "Naked attacking fanatics" was a bit of a leap of faith ! But the figures were mostly good, if a bit crude by what today's standards look like. They didn't do much fantasy but had plenty of historic figures from all sorts of periods.

Ah, another hobby to revive when I retire, then...

To be fair to GW they have kept figure painting and tabletop gaming going in the face of a lot more competition for peoples leisure time then there was in the early 80s so fair play to them.

Dawn of War is pretty fun, but the AI is a joke, its going to lose the game if it doesn't beat you in its first attack. But aside from that its fun multi or playing against many computers. The campaign starts off slow, but then on later missions they start throwing tons of units at you, makes it a challenge to survive. The armys are pretty varied too, but the thing that pulled me into it was the battles. Just sit and watch the battles some time, its not just guys making attack motions and enemies falling over. Theres lots of nice little animations, especially in melee combat. You also have to love the intro, watching the Dreadnought pick up the ork in its claw then snapping its back before flinging it aside is just amazing. Haven't seen an intro that good in an RTS since Broodwars. "Where is the air support!?"

But anyway, if you really want a Warhammer Fantasy strategy game and can live with turn based combat you should check out the Warhammer Fantasy mod 2.1 for Civ3: Conquests. They have High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, Orks, Goblins, Sylvania, Khemri, Lahmia, Chaos, Lizardmen, Amazonia, Dwarves, Chaos Dwarves, Kislev, Westlanders, Reikland, Norse, Araby, Ind, Estalia, Bretonnia, Albion. and maybe a few more i'm forgetting as playable factions. The only major faction that isn't playable(from what I remember of my Warhammer Fantasy days) are the Skaven. And they're represented as the Civ3 barbarians(buffed up appropiately).

If any Civ3 players are interested, check out the Completed Modpacks section of the Civ3 forums on www.civfanatics.com

yeah i liked it. but GW has a terrible reputation for video games support (for obvious reasons - it makes their tabletop games obsolete to the casual player).

I preferred their turn-based games like Chaos Gate and Final Liberation to their RTS ones.

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Originally Posted by ChaosLord

Dawn of War is pretty fun, but the AI is a joke, its going to lose the game if it doesn't beat you in its first attack.

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Try the Dawn of Skirmish AI mod if you want a challenge and don't want to deal with the usual internet a-hats. Significantly improves the build orders and unit control. The pertinent Relic forum thread with download link here:
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=73069

Just a quick bump : a new X-pack will be released and will feature 2 new races : the Tau Empire and the [insert a theory here, as long as you're not thinking about the Tyrannids]. Since I don't like the newest races (the ones that were released after the Dark Eldars) I guess I'd prefered them to fill the already released people (Eldars, Orks, Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines and Imperial Guard), but heh. Anyway, that's still better than nothing.

Wait. I'm lost. I got Dawn of War: Winter Assault XPACK and the only addition is Imperial Guard.

This is true Imperial Guard, not the crap mod imperials everyone put out for original DOW (they were way overpowered)

That being said, I love it. They are a great anti-zerg faction to beat the chopper and guardian mob rushes, but the hero system is a lot different than witht he other factions and the squads quite literallyu FALL APART if they dont have a leader attached.

Also, I love the buildings-as-bunkers idea, and the garrisons can xfer from building to building essentially thwarting enemy scouts from pinpointing your defenses

and the CHIMERA kicks butt. a heavy transport that can carry 3 units, gets dual bolters and has slots so the squads can fire out of the truck at enemy.....hahahah chimeras rolling around with dudes lobbing grenades and long range lasers at enemies as they pass I love it.


So far my online games have been very limited since xpack, hell they were limited before xpack as well, I just dont dig slam-bam-thank-you-maams with strangers because I'm not that good. I'd rather play the AI on insane on slow setting and enjoy the game, sounds and animations

That being said, if anyone else has the game and wants to do some co-ops or MP ill try to brush up when i have time, havent played it in a few weeks now


PS-the xpack campaign is pretty cool. General Sturn in John Wayne incarnate, and Big Orkamungus is exactly what an Ork leader is supposed to be, especially the part where he has to kick his owns armys butt to whip them into shape...unfortuantley, the chaos and order campaigns overlap, so after you play one order side its pretty easy to figure out how the other order campaign will flow, and vice versa

ARmored Nobs pwn, but not as much as Chimeras

There is another X-pack in the making. It will have the Tau and somone else.

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

Wait. I'm lost. I got Dawn of War: Winter Assault XPACK and the only addition is Imperial Guard.

This is true Imperial Guard, not the crap mod imperials everyone put out for original DOW (they were way overpowered)

That being said, I love it. They are a great anti-zerg faction to beat the chopper and guardian mob rushes, but the hero system is a lot different than witht he other factions and the squads quite literallyu FALL APART if they dont have a leader attached.

Also, I love the buildings-as-bunkers idea, and the garrisons can xfer from building to building essentially thwarting enemy scouts from pinpointing your defenses

and the CHIMERA kicks butt. a heavy transport that can carry 3 units, gets dual bolters and has slots so the squads can fire out of the truck at enemy.....hahahah chimeras rolling around with dudes lobbing grenades and long range lasers at enemies as they pass I love it.


So far my online games have been very limited since xpack, hell they were limited before xpack as well, I just dont dig slam-bam-thank-you-maams with strangers because I'm not that good. I'd rather play the AI on insane on slow setting and enjoy the game, sounds and animations

That being said, if anyone else has the game and wants to do some co-ops or MP ill try to brush up when i have time, havent played it in a few weeks now


PS-the xpack campaign is pretty cool. General Sturn in John Wayne incarnate, and Big Orkamungus is exactly what an Ork leader is supposed to be, especially the part where he has to kick his owns armys butt to whip them into shape...unfortuantley, the chaos and order campaigns overlap, so after you play one order side its pretty easy to figure out how the other order campaign will flow, and vice versa

ARmored Nobs pwn, but not as much as Chimeras

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it chimeras dont have bolters they have hellguns

In the game the IG Chimera have a multilaser and gun-ports.

Got the game and the expansion and love it! One of the best RTSs that I have played in a long while. The detail in the gameplay alone is wonderful, but the graphics and the animations are top-notch. The new X-Pack is titled Dark Crusade and will include the Tau and the Necron.

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Originally Posted by lars573

There is another X-pack in the making. It will have the Tau and somone else.

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It's the Necrons.....and they've got nightbringer.

Dawn of wars engine is quite good and the battles are just pure eye-candy. But the single Missions simplisity and easyness let them down. This is improved quite a bit in winter assault where more elaborate and tricky missions show up.

I always get a chuckle out of the clicking on the ork hut.

"orks orks orks orks"