After playing DoW2, I am having a hard time getting used to Dark Crusade, one of the first game's expansion packs.

I didn't like only controlling 4 leaders with a few guys each in DoW2, I felt like I needed more numbers to really feel like I was in an epic battle. Dark Crusade does that, with me needing to generate your normal hundred unit zerg fest.

Each Space Marine squad has 9ish guys, which you have to individually upgrade and add (you start with 4 guys) to the squad. When one dies, you have to readd, and reequip him, which is a pain in the ass.

Playing on normal, outside of a few maps, you get bumrushed by the computer early on and will be fighting your ass off if you don't build right, FAST, and tank rush their asses. I had one map where I was assaulting the Imperial Guard home province, and even with a trainer, I spent an hour on it, cranking out nonstop dreadnaught assault waves.

Better then the 5 minute maps of DoW2, but you can't really zoom out to see shit, your eye is in Iso view around 40 feet off the ground. UI isn't super friendly, and the troop's pathing (movement) is horrible.

The story is incredible with the amount of effort they put into it, it's about what I'm coming to expect from Relic/Warhammer. Once I'm done with this, I'm moving on to DoW : Soulstorm, and then going to play the base game and Winter Assault.

 

Make sure to download the Maktaka's Soulstorm Bugfix mod 1.41 and both patches if you plan on playing Soulstorm. Soulstorm is probably the most balanced of all the DOW games but also incredibly buggy straight out of the box.

I also suggest getting the Dawn of Skirmish mod by Thudmeizer. It turns the default Insane Ai from being a walk in the park to being absolutely brutal. This mod comes included with Makatak's mod as well as few texture packs.

I originally expected to have a massive zerg vs zerg for Orks and Tyranids when DoW 2 came out instead of a couple bugs here and there. Both races outnumber everything substantially in the background after all.

EDIT: Winter Assault was the weakest of the four because of Fire Prism and Terminator spam. You couldn't do shit with 8-12 Fire Prisms and an Avatar scattering your army constantly.

 

Any mods specifically I should look for for Dark Crusade? The AI seems to be set on mass zerg, and appears to get one hell of a headstart, even when attacking providences where they're supposed to be weak. I turned off Fog of War on one Necron controlled map, rated at the low scale of defense, and saw more fucking units then I could make in a half hour at the start.

Texture mods would be great, it def. looks aged some.

 

Well I'm not entirely sure how the Skirmish AI mod works for the campaign, but you can adjust the times of the initial zerg rush, tech speed and dancing for normal skirmishes. If I remember right I think you needed to rely on your honour guard to help stem the zerg. Also, if you attack a province with the enemy commander standing on top of it he'll come in with his full army right off the bat.

I thought there were more texture mods available for DOW but the only one I can seem to find nowadays is this for soulstorm...

 

I said the hell with it and abused the hell out of the trainer and beat it. Shit gets impossible on some levels as the game goes on. ESPECIALLY the last level. Nearly no room to work with, Chaos Marines, Orcs, Eldar, all zerging you. If not for the Forward Base I won, I'd of never even got set back up. The Space Marine honor guard blew ass. Single units, they'd get wiped out pretty easy later on in the game.

Hyperion Peaks. You get a handful of units, to fight the orc force, who outnumbers you 30 to 1, without counting all the orc buildings, which has TURRETS on them1!1 I finally wound up, after multiple tries, spamming the hell out of the reinforce unit button, with infinite req, and instant reinforce cheats on, and it still took over an hour.

 

Lol, yeah that map got pretty ridiculous. The two teams I found that managed it the best were the Necrons because they got two monoliths and Orks simply because they fought Tau instead. Having two squiggoths with their pathing issues was frustrating as hell though. I usually had to skip it with the other teams.

Space Marines and Chaos get the worst honour guard as they come in single units instead of squads like the other armies.

 

I always prefered playing the Eldar in Dark Crusade, once you've got all of the tech upgrades for their warp gates researched the sheer number of tricks you can pull off is ridiculous.

 

I played as the Tau mostly, they were certainly the most versatile of the lot with their powerful long range weapons + the Kroot (that leap special attack let me take down units three times their strength with plasma weapon support). The only things I found them lacking in was taking down vehicles, their weapons just didn't seem as effective as a krak missile to the rear or a prism cannon. The Eldar I found were too specialised for most things and required a shit load of micromanagement if you wanted to use them with any degree of skill. Unlike the Tau, or even the Space Marines, their infantry had one thing they were terrifyingly good at but not much else. This was especially annoying with the Dark Reapers, who were amazing at taking down heavy infantry but sucked at fighting light ones. It just frustrated me so damn much that I needed two different units were most others could make do with one. Plus, Banshees were much more expensive when compared to Kroot.

That said, the Eldar did rock at taking out vehicles/buildings. That prism cannon is a fucking beast.

 

Definitely, but what I absolutely loved were the warp gates, those little things were sickeningly useful, instant transportation of large numbers of soldiers, cloaking of all buildings nearby and a regeneration field that healed any units close by I usually put one next to every building I put up anywhere so my entire base would be hidden. The surprise tactic was so very useful.

In terms of units Id have to agree with most of your assessment but I always found that the trick was to never send a single unit type after anything. Id always back up a unit with a squad to counter whatever the other was weak too, Dark Reapers? Banshee squad backup fully upgraded I could scythe right anything short of the Necrons. For building assaults I agree the prism cannon was beastly but for insurance you send in a fully upgraded squad of Fire Dragons with the cannon and thats almost a guaranteed win.

 

Good strategy, though I personally went for sneaking the Fire Dragons in around the back to take out his structures while my main force attacked his outlying regions. Taking out armouries and Soul Stones (can't remember the proper name right now) always pisses people off.

 

Started playing Soulstorm as Necron. I like the multi planet aspect of it.

Necrons are annoying the piss out of me learning, the builder scarabs seem to be the only unit capable of capping points? The Wraiths are awesome for uncovering infiltrators, I got the Wargear mask for my commander, so I keep a few at the base, and a few with the other units.

I don't get why there's three different units that are attached to skimmers, that all do the same thing. The Lesser Lord can take control of enemy vehicles, but it takes so long it's easier to just kill it. Haven't gotten a map yet where I've gotten a relic so havent gotten a mobile Monolith yet.

The units for the Necron seem heavily overlapping, there's not just one good at melee, one range, one infiltrator, wind up having a ton of different units fielded to cover your own ass.

I don't understand Tomb Spiders either. I sent them to recycle bodies, slaughter a shitload of Eldar, and they only picked up a few bodies, while sitting idle above a giant field of corpses.

 

Very fun trick Ive used that one too, a personal favorite trick, was that I would sneak in a couple of builders and have them set up a cloaked warp gate behind the enemy base then Id send a small group of units to attack the front and when their units came out to get those Id warp in my main force through the gate and annihilate their base before they could back then murder them on the way in. That was fun.

Middy-The Necrons I never played much but all I really do know is you want a full monolith up, those things are monstrously powerful, it doesnt matter what race you are all of them are hard pressed to stop a final stage Necron Monolith and if you back it up with a good size selection of units then all but the rarest of circumstances, you win, period.

 

I found Necrons to really be the most brainless of all the races in vanilla Dark Crusade & Soul-Storm. Put Warriors in one group to deal with infantry and light vehicles, Immortals in another to Micro against vehicles and turrets, melee infantry (Pariahs and Flayed Ones) + Commander in another to tank and you should be able to roll over everything short of an enemy HQ province. Swap in a wraith or two against Eldar since they love to infiltrate.

The Necron Lord is the most ridiculous tank in the game with the Phylactery, patched Lightning Field and Resurrection Orb. Add the HP regen Wargear and he should never ever die.

The Destroyer and Heavy Destroyer are actually very specialized. Heavy is only for vehicles and buildings, regular is for infantry only. Destroyer Lord is pretty meh.

And Krogan is exactly right about the Monolith. It has tons of HP, the main gun is a dream is you want to disrupt enemy infantry, it can teleport to get around it's horribly slow speed, and can still make units in the middle of a fight.

 

I didn't see that.

 

I did the same thing, getting DoW 1 and it's expansions after playing DoW 2. Personally, I find the more epic (bigger armies) of DoW 1's more classic real time strategy more to my liking as well.

As for the Necrons, there is another fun little trick involving the Flayed Ones, which I believe you can summon on to the field as long as you have a unit near. In the beginning, just send a wraith into the enemy base while massing up Flayed Ones, then summoning them all in the enemy base. It works better in Dark Crusade, because Flayed damage apparently got nerfed for structures because of the tactic. It's good as a disruption tactic, though.

 

I used to play a shitload of Dark Crusade back in the day - two friends and I were undefeated online in 3v3 matches

Basically heres my rundown of the races, circa Soulstorm (which I disliked)

Marines - Good, solid race. Cap points off the bat, start the game by building a force commander and just cap 1-2 points with listening posts before cranking out marine squads. I found that a squad with soley flamers, squad with soley missile launchers and a squad with soley HBs worked very well. Never mix special weapons.

Guard - From what I recall they had easily the hardest time at the beginning of every game, as they were just so weak. Later on? Basilisk/Russ + Baneblade + Grenade launchers = GGplayedmate

Sisters - Played a lot of them. Loved their flamers! Relic unit was a bit weak though.

Dark Eldar - Meh. Gimmicky.

Chaos - Solid. Lolol invisible marines. My friend used to exclusively target his opponents anti infiltrators with his heaviest guns, so as to make the battle bloody impossible for him late on as all the CSM just infilltrate

Eldar - Lethal in the right hands. Rush with rangers at the beginning, cripple the chap, and you're laughing the whole game.

Necrons - Used to be the undisputed GODS of DoW back in the Dark Crusade days, what with ressurection orb, nightbringer and Flayed one spam. IMO nowadays just make sure you have 1-2 flayed one squads in base on tap at all times, use the monolith asap and drop the nightbringer into big hunks of opponents, seeing as he can't be hurt.

Tau - Broadsides <3 - once you get a fuckload of kroot to tie up your opponent, you're laughing.

Orks - WAAAAAGH. Mega Armoured Nobs were TERRIFYING. And mad doks... jesus. They could do the invincibility thing, and then plant some uber bomb which could wipe an army. Had it happen to me when I was dominating a 2v2 game, my side barely recovered (it was destroy HQ so we just suicidaly pushed for their HQ buildings).

VS the comps? The difficulty levels basicaly = faster build times and reactions times and more resources. So basically just go at the beginning with your force commander and kill his builders, while dancing his force commander. Go on from there. Never just sit there. If you have any requisition above about 400, you're "floating" and should just spend it.

Oh... and with Marines, just build a machine cult, orbital relay, and put Dreadnoughts on overwatch. Build no other vehicles. GG played nearly 100% of the time as you deep strike constant dreadnoughts in.