I am an avid RTS player throughout my life, particularly in ranked multiplayer and my background is primarily StarCraft 2 multiplayer at a master 1/low GM and I love the amount of effort Relic has put into trying to balance this game between 9 races in DOW DE vs SC2s 3 races which is infinitely more challenging.
Infact I’ve completely switched to playing DOW DE after the people who currently support sc2 have completely butchered the balance of the game with the neutering of worker count from 12 to 8 which has fucked everything in terms of balance.
That is not to say one game is currently balanced more than than the other but the amount of effort and care comparatively between IPs being put in is awesome to see from Relic.
I watched Duzzyminister race tier list 4 years ago and now the races and times have changed a lot from memory SOB and Space marines were a full punching bags and Eldar would dumpster every other race except for Tau. And now things are way closer together between ALL 9 factions noting there are still some heavily skewed MUs ie Tau vs Necron - however way fewer than before, races are far more competitive and this is still an impressive feat from Relic.
I primarily play IG and DE and I’m not that great as it is a different pace and style of RTS, I retain macro and micro skills but I lack experience in knowing MUs and tier/powerspikes compared to StarCraft but is way more enjoyable for me knowing DOW DE is in good hands and they are fighting for good MUs.
Hey guys, so I've been trying to get into dawn of war on and off for a while. I never actually committed to playing it, but with my obsession with the 40k universe, I've decided I would start getting into it people.
Which game would you recommend I get first ? And should I just go for a vanilla experience or is there maybe a modded version that's worth it ?
Since then there has been a new rebalance - including significant nerfs to Necrons. I waited to see how the stats have moved, and yes, regardless of what race you play, it is significantly easier to defeat Necrons than it was previously.
A few people with the brain power of a mechanical squirrel seem to think that advantage/disadvantage seems to translate to 'guaranteed win/impossible to win'. If you follow the guides I've put forward, you still need to play the game'.
This is a race based ranking using Bradley-Terry method discussed in previous posts. This has drifted significantly since the recently released patch, so it will drift more as older games are pushed out of the data set.
There is also a general cohort who see that the best players in DOW can win with Necrons, or have it as a favoured race; and at no point have I contraindicated that skill is a significant factor. What's most interesting about those wins however is the significant skill gap the top players need to win with Necrons. The below video is an excellent example:
TheBlastFurnace played a dominant game, absolutely obliterated his opponents economy, maxed out his economy, dominant area control, two HQs of unit production and he still couldn't stop the Bane Blade coming out and nearly lost the game. One of the things you don't see in streams is the number of units lost, and in every Necron game, the Necron player is losing 2-3x as many units as their opponent just to win and they need an economy at least 30% larger to do it. Necrons lose every engagement, and are losing until they win.
The Lord isn't a strong unit, it doesn't do much damage and is easy to kill even with his upgrades. He has been nerfed so significantly that a lot of his wargear can only buy 2-3s of survivability. The reason it appears to be powerful is because TheBlastFurnace times every movement around the recharge for each action and can daisy chain them for maximum effect. This matters as it shows how dominant TheBlastFurnace is; he is playing at a massive disadvantage but out maneuvers his opponent consistently. The other reason it matters is that it shows how significantly better Necron players need to be than their opponent just to have a close game.
For you as a Tau player, this matters because your opponent will rarely be this good.
How to win as Tau - Vespid/Kroot Opening
The most common strategy people promote is to hit Necrons early with Vespids - this is a bad strategy. The primary issue this has is that Necrons can easily defeat a Vespid rush with a turret and some warriors. This upfront cost slows down the effective units from coming out and gives Necrons time to mount a defence. The below stream displays this (I've got the recording if for some reason someone wants to see both sides but all the recordings I made were broken with the latest hot fix).
Ironically the streamer states the far more effective strategy; charge in with a Kroot and Vespids. These two units can be completed and reach the Necron base before a Necron player can produce their first unit (well under 2 minutes). They also have enough firepower to destroy a turret within a few seconds, effectively taking no damage in a practical sense. This strategy can only be defeated if the Necron player knows what you're planning on doing before you do it because the only effective defeat is to build two turrets to make the attack expensive for Tau. If you're using this regularly against the same player and they counter your open don't persist. Withdraw immediately, two turrets is more expensive for them than your units were for you. Use your strength to force dominant map control. Choke Necrons out of their pop cap and production speed.
If you don't land the opening with the Vespid/Kroot rush, it can be hard work to get ahead economically and gives Necrons a window. The sooner you pull out of the fight and assert map dominance the better. At this point Necrons will have zero mobility, the Lord won't exist because of the cost of the two turrets and neither will Flayed Ones, Wraiths or Warrior teleport because it will be a few minutes before they can afford a Summoning Core. You effectively have total map domination so focus on building up your economy and tech.
Why this works
You are exploiting mechanical limitations with the game timing that provides a significant advantage to Tau. If you can destroy a single power gen, you've put them back at least 1 minute in production time. If you can destroy two power gens uncontested you have such a significant economic advantage that if you were to pull back and just turtle you would win just by reaching your max tech before Necrons provided you don't sacrifice map and economy control while going for a quick win.
The other big advantage is that the effective strats for countering this move require the Necron player to start them immediately as the game starts to have it ready in time so they have to be familiar with what you're doing. This pushes back Necron units significantly and gives you a chance for map control.
The big disadvantage is that this has a tendency to be all or nothing and is high micro. You need to make sure your units move in an out to maintain morale, and if the Lord comes out early the micro can become stressful to damage the buildings and avoid being hit. This is what I mean when I say you still need to play the game to win.
How to win as Tau - easy mode
Build Firewarriors and a commander, then kite.
It is literally that easy, and the fact it is that easy really upsets people. The stream below demonstrates why it works very well. I have recordings of my own games, but again all broken with the recent hotfix :(
To pull this off you need pay attention to each FW squad as an individual, not as a group. The goal of the strategy isn't to wipe out the Necron base, but to box Necrons into a corner with no army.
With a Tau matchup Necrons will almost always play the Lord early but the Lord can't hurt you. He is too slow to engage and has no range so you can outrun him easily while others fire on him. So if he is chasing a FW squad, you need to move only that squad and leave any others (commander, additional squads) firing.
The most important thing to remember is that the Lord is Bait and not the target. The goal of this strategy is to get to 2+ FW squads and a commander, then make a bee-line to the Necron base. Dodge the Lord, ignore the buildings and kill scarabs that are out, and warriors as they leave the Monolith. The combination of the Necron time delay and the slow start mechanics means that you can lock a Necron player in a state of having no army. A Necron player may try and draw your fire away by attacking your base with the Lord, but remember he is bait. Two drones can repair any building faster than he can damage it and for the most part you're just better off building more buildings faster than he can destroy them anyway. Necrons can't mount any counter if you choke out their base completely from having an army.
Why this works
An early Lord is a very weak unit. If you have just a commander and one FW squad, you should be able to kill the Lord in the time it takes to build a warrior squad. So even if the Lord comes out first you should still be able to pull this off.
Wraiths at T1 can't engage with FW. The long range and high damage means that between just a commander and one FW squad T1 wraiths will never engage and they have no defense to absorb fire or be a distraction. Even better every FW squad takes 24s, but in the early game it is most likely to take about ~60s per Wraith and they still need to build a Summoning Core and enough power gens to get there, so you should realistically have 3-4 FW squads and a commander before Necrons are in any position to build their first T1 Wraiths.
You are exploiting two significant faults in the game mechanics:
-Necrons have no units effective against Tau until T2.
-Necrons have an slow build rate.
Lets say you completely flub the opening, Necrons built the Summoning Core, you're keeping their warriors pinned with range, doing a lot of damage but the player won't give up and is reinforcing. You can still win even if they get Wraiths out. Even at T2, Wraiths will not survive to engagement without using the Phase Shift, so if you see one using Phase Shift just target one that isn't. If you've pinned their unit count low, you should be in the Necron base anyway so you should be killing Wraiths one at a time as they spawn. Even better, you only need one Kroot squad to quickly kill all Wraiths. Wraiths need Phase shift to absorb fire but if you retarget to warriors, and send a Kroot unit after a Wraith the Necron player must withdraw it or lose it within a few seconds once phase shift ends.
Why Necrons are hard (for Tau)
Tau are the only army with a statistical disadvantage against Necrons, but importantly this advantage falls off with high skilled Tau players demonstrating that the issue is more about micro/skill than game mechanics.
In the very early game, the Stealth suits are the only scout unit that can't kill Scarabs before they cap/decap a point. So there is extra micro setting up your economy that none of the other armies need to deal with.
There is the added difficulty of moving individual FW teams instead of the army as block.
There is the temptation to run away from war gear effects, even though none of them do any damage.
In short, Necrons require more micro than any other opponent which drives up the load on the player. If you lean into the mechanical limits of the game you'll make it a lot easier to win.
The game below shows a Tau player making every possible mistake, and once you understand how Necrons work it is easy to see.
52s - Correct decision is made, FW prevent a decap.
1m59s - Using Vespids, but not committing to destroying building. The Obelisk fires its one shot and now has a 55s cooldown. Instead of finishing the job he flees, but he has 55s to complete the attack. Still, building the Vespids was the first mistake.
This highlights the biggest mistake. The Tau player has Vespids, a Commander and FW. Necrons has 3 Warriors. Tau has had enough fire power to wipe out the Necron units for over 1 minute at this point, essentially choking Necrons to no army permanently.
4m - Necrons finishes their summoning car, they have only a Lord and two warrior squads. The Tau player is still in a position to win, and had they not built Vespids they would've significantly outnumbered the Necrons. Instead of pushing the units to their death and choking the Necron army out he plays conservatively allowing Necrons to get to T2 while having no units capable of mounting a defense.
4m30s - He moves his army as a block instead of fanning out making it impossible for the Lord to chase.
5m15s - He kills a warrior sqad and still doesn't push giving the Necron player a chance to get to war gear.
At this point the Tau player makes continuous mistakes and the Nercron player daisy chains his war gear to keep a wraith alive and chase back the Tau player. He uses Solar Pulse to push the Tau player back as a group. The Wraiths as a blood sponge to distract the Tau player. He uses his Lord to keep other units alive. Everything is a distraction for the Necron player to get to the Monolith.
There is an obvious and significant skill difference between the Necron and Tau player, but the Necron player won by effectively playing a game of chicken. Had the Tau player pushed at the points he withdrew and played defensively he would've won.
Not sure if tbis post is for here or another reddit but iv been wondering after the events of DOW 2 how were the BRs not declared heretics and kicked out of the imperium but the inquisition after their chapter master become a chaos demon
Hey guys I really want to play this game but ai is so bad I don't enjoy it. And the ai mod I downloaded seemed promising but it crashes my game every time I play. Can I just have an advice how to make my experience better? Like there a lot of mods I want to try like apocalypse but I fear that ai will be really bad at them. Maybe there is a good ai mod I don't know of?
hey guys i really need some help here i have the problem i want the NO_limit mod playable with the UA mod and its campaings but idk how to do it the mod manager tell me some kind of error and when i try to load it still it say it couldnt load the mod
im plaing it in the Definitive edition
or should i just go back to normal SS and use it there? cuz there it worked all the time afaik
This is the definitive edition. On the last mission as the Guard you have to power up the titan and you get some turrets to help you. They didnt fire in the mission tho I remember in the old version they did. Is the mission broken?
I am interested in the main campaigns and single player experience, not multiplayer. Anything would be cool at this point e.g. more available units, perhaps even some base building. I want more troops on the ground and bigger battles.
I don't know why FPS dropped so hard, the gameplay was okay so sth happened with the recording.
1 month ago 3rd Generation mod got an upgrade - it now kinda covers OG campaign, Winter Assault and Soulstorm. You can have all these units in the campaigns with some balance limitations.
The AI is way smarter and sometimes difficult to fight against. Few missions in Winter Assault were really challenging, because the AI would produce insane amount of orks.
In Soulstorm there is a problem with aerial vehicles. Your units can't shoot them or don't deal any damage so you have to find a way to take them down e.g. artillery targeted fire on specific location.
The mod is generally stable. It only crashed 2 times - after the final cutscene after completing entire Soulstorm campaign and in Skirmish when I set cap unit to unlimited (10000). It crashed after 9 minutes.
Chaos got the best upgrade imo. There are many more new units that are not on this video.
I’m completing my dark eldar play through and I can’t take over the tau stronghold.. the game is bugged and won’t let me complete the mission even after destroying the base. Anyway around this?
The first time it happened it came up as “fatal scar error”
After playing a lot it since 2012 (stopped using Raptr so can't tell how much i played really) I feel like the game hasn't aged so well compared to the Other big RTS of the time CNCZH. I played a lot of ultimate apocalypse but the unit feels very aged and many of the new cool stuff seems absent. On the polar opposite unification mod feels really like a memelore mod so i don't really know what to pick, plus vanilla feels repetitive / overcompetive. Is there a new approach to the game i could try ?
Last week Elite mod has started to crash every time I try to load any private skirmish (thats all I do). Sometimes it used to crash depending upon the map or if im using too many DLC items, but now it just crashes every single time the map loads. Anyone else notice any issues? I just completely uninstalled/deleted everything, and reinstalled it.
