Dawn of War II Expansion pack

[Zor]

Chaos Rising

Grumbles at lack of Necrons...

Zor

[Lonestar]

Chaos Rising

Grumbles at lack of Necrons...

Zor

Yes, we've known for a while that the DoW2 expansion was going to have the Chaos Armies. No big surprise here. Point?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I am beginning to wonder how much of a fast one Relic is trying to pull on us. One expansion, one army? The heck?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Presumably they are fleshing out Chaos to support multiple gods.

[White Haven]

As they mentioned when they launched DoW2, that's the case; four armies for Chaos, one per god.

[SAMAS]

I am beginning to wonder how much of a fast one Relic is trying to pull on us. One expansion, one army? The heck?

Winter Assault.

[Hawkwings]

I am beginning to wonder how much of a fast one Relic is trying to pull on us. One expansion, one army? The heck?

Winter Assault.

...had Necrons(sorta). And oh god they were scary, well the monoliths were anyways. The warriors I kept knocking on their asses with artillery and laughing. Oh god the monoliths...

[Vendetta]

...had Necrons(sorta). And oh god they were scary, well the monoliths were anyways. The warriors I kept knocking on their asses with artillery and laughing. Oh god the monoliths...

Yeah, but a few Leman Russes and a Baneblade sorted them right out.

[Serafina]

Unplayable campaign models don't count. By that logic, DoWII had Imperial Guard.

Damn, i want my guardsmen...

[Wing Commander MAD]

I'll second the call for IG. That said, I do look forward to seeing the other Chaos Gods. Emperor knows, we've seen plenty of Khorne flavored Chaos in Dow I. So who's willing to bet they screw balance up completely, in typical Relic adding an army manner? I do wander if THQ will turn DoW II into the milkfest that original was, ie DoW: Soul Storm and to a lesser extent DoW:Dark Crusade?

P.S. May the shitty blandness of DC and SS single player campaigns (ie endless skirmish), where the Strongholds were the only reall interesting maps never return.

[Vendetta]

P.S. May the shitty blandness of DC and SS single player campaigns (ie endless skirmish), where the Strongholds were the only reall interesting maps never return.

As long as it's not replaced with the old style RTS campaign where new units become available so slowly that you only get to use the most interesting and fun units on one map in the entire campaign.

That was the strength of the DC/SS campaign system, you got to play with all of your toys on pretty much every map, but thanks to the wargear, honour guard (though these could have been more meaningful, they basically existed to rush one of the enemy bases at the start of the map to stop them getting too much resource momentum thanks to having two bases with two unit caps against one), and territory bonuses you still felt like you were increasing in power as the campaign went on.

Soulstorm implemented it slightly less well, I felt, due to the way they conflated the bonus powers with the strongholds and the webway gates didn't do anything other than let you move around.

[Invictus ChiKen]

Damnit all I want my Tau! FOR THE GREATER GOOD!

[Axis Kast]

There was something about Dawn of War that didn't appeal to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I can still sit down and play Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. I return to Dawn of War far less often.

I like the resource-gathering aspects of games like Warcraft and the old Command & Conquer series. I am much less a fan of Relic-style gameplay.

The Orcs were my least favorite race in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, and I was never a fan of the Tyranids at all. Thus, I avoided playing two of the four races with which Dawn of War was packaged.

I disliked the fact that bases in Dawn of War were so heavily defended as to make frontal attacks nearly suicidal from the very outset: it meant that I could best an opponent with good squad placement and excellent micromanagement, but that the game would drag on, giving them a second chance, for reasons that had nothing to do with skill.

[Shinova]

Librarian has all but been confirmed as the new SM commander in the DoW2 expansion, which means every race will get an extra commander, plus maybe one new unit, which means Chaos will also have four commanders. Four commanders one to represent each chaos god, perhaps.

[Anarchist Bunny]

Drat, I was secretly hoping that the next expansion would be IG/Chaos. IG to play through the campaign mode with rather than continuing the SM(which where to go? Only one unit is lacking Terminator armor at the end of the game). Also, doubting it would happen since it would be almost adding 7 new factions, it would of been cool to see the inquisition being added in a similiar way to Chaos with the three Ordos(though I am not as familiar with them, I'm not sure how easy it would be making Deathwatch alluringly different from the Grey Knights).

[Hawkwings]

Well the obvious difference would be their endgame kick-ass unit: Grey Knights for the Malleus, Deathwatch for the Xenos, and Sororitas for the witchunters. But other than that, I don't see that many differences.

[Serafina]

As an completly offtopic note:

Making Death Watch different from Grey Knights is really not that difficult.
Generally, Death Watch prefer ranged combat. while Grey Knights excell at close combat.


@Axis:
DOW-II is not at all like DOW-I, gameplay wise. Except for some similarities in resource gathering - albeit it is not impossible to fortify resource points.
Generally, you have no real bases anymore. You have your starting building, which produces ALL units, one or two defense towers and energy generators in the field(which can be taken over).
Then you have webway portals and towers buildable by a single SM-hero - but thats about it.

Personally, i hope that the IG will get some more buildings, because i am a turtler (ok, i prefer porcupines, but meh).

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah, Deathwatch and Grey Knights are pretty different.

Deathwatch are kitted-out with all kinds of fun toys, a lot like a Space Marine version of Delta Force. They run around in their little kill-teams shooting biological/chemical agent bolter rounds at xenos to make them explode even more than a simple explosive would.

Grey Knights are a warrior-monk cult with powerful psychic discipline, halberds, and a shitload of Daemon-Fuckoff! brand killing power.

[Vehrec]

P.S. May the shitty blandness of DC and SS single player campaigns (ie endless skirmish), where the Strongholds were the only reall interesting maps never return.

As long as it's not replaced with the old style RTS campaign where new units become available so slowly that you only get to use the most interesting and fun units on one map in the entire campaign.

That was the strength of the DC/SS campaign system, you got to play with all of your toys on pretty much every map, but thanks to the wargear, honour guard (though these could have been more meaningful, they basically existed to rush one of the enemy bases at the start of the map to stop them getting too much resource momentum thanks to having two bases with two unit caps against one), and territory bonuses you still felt like you were increasing in power as the campaign went on.

Soulstorm implemented it slightly less well, I felt, due to the way they conflated the bonus powers with the strongholds and the webway gates didn't do anything other than let you move around.

Maybe a better option for those who hated the skirmish maps would be to implement a teachable auto-calc system for battles. Basically, it tracks your performance, assigns a rating to that and if you wish, will auto-resolve the multiplicity of skirmish missions without you needing to do a thing once a solid performance rating is established. On the other hand, in order to show it how good you are, we would probably have to require several skirmish matches to establish a baseline, and a damn fine classification system to judge performance.

[Vendetta]

Maybe a better option for those who hated the skirmish maps would be to implement a teachable auto-calc system for battles. Basically, it tracks your performance, assigns a rating to that and if you wish, will auto-resolve the multiplicity of skirmish missions without you needing to do a thing once a solid performance rating is established. On the other hand, in order to show it how good you are, we would probably have to require several skirmish matches to establish a baseline, and a damn fine classification system to judge performance.

Why would you have an RTS game where you don't actually play the RTS component? The point of the campaign map isn't to provide a strategic challenge along the lines of Total War, but to provide a sense of progression through a singleplayer RTS campaign which is playable with any of the game's seven races. If you don't actually play the maps, you might as well take the game back, because you're not even playing it.

Also, DC and SS can autoresolve defenses IIRC, but tends to lose more garrison troops than you would if you fought it yourself and you don't earn wargear so no-one ever does.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Total War started as a real-time battle game with a "campaign" tacked on as little more than a hugely-abstracted and shameless device for getting into battles. Now, I don't think Dawn of War lends itself very well to a strategic game, but just because it was an RTS first does not preclude it from focusing on a strategic metagame.

[Samuel]

There was something about Dawn of War that didn't appeal to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I can still sit down and play Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. I return to Dawn of War far less often.

If it is skirmish than the problem is that the battles just get to feel repetative. I think the amount of different options in the game is simply too few. It starts to blend together and get boring.

[Stark]

The idea of an RTS using a system like that 'driving DNA' thing that tracks your performance on various elements to affect auto-resolve is interesting, actually. People would whinge that it made the game harder if people's APM was higher though.

[dworkin]

Why would you have an RTS game where you don't actually play the RTS component? The point of the campaign map isn't to provide a strategic challenge along the lines of Total War, but to provide a sense of progression through a singleplayer RTS campaign which is playable with any of the game's seven races. If you don't actually play the maps, you might as well take the game back, because you're not even playing it.

I use auto-calc a lot because I want to spend my gaming time fighting some epic battles and not kicking the orcs out of the Foothills for the nth bloody time. If 100 planet resources saves 10 mins replaying the same damn skirmish each game turn, i'll do it.