Hey hey folks, and welcome to my critique of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Just a friendly reminder that if you haven’t completed the game, there will be spoilers in this video. If you wish to avoid them, please press pause, and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.
Earlier in the year I made an impressions video on Dawn of War 3. In it I lamented the shift away from cover and how the focus of combat now revolved around hero units instead of squads. This was based on my memories of Dawn of War, which I hadn’t played for years. I thought that it might be a good idea to return to the 2004 real time strategy game to see whether my memories were tinted by nostalgia, and if not, what about Dawn of War’s design makes it such a memorable and fun to play real time strategy experience? That’s what this video is here to find out.
I’m going to start with some of my early thoughts while playing and how they may have changed by the final mission. In the first couple of missions I questioned whether or not I should build to the player cap. Dawn of War has a limit on how many units and vehicles you can create at one time, resulting in choices that have to be made as stronger units will take up more unit slots. In the final mission, I was cursing my unit cap as I could only afford one terminator squad. I thought about sending my scouts into the enemy base to sacrifice themselves and free up some slots, but without them hidden on the outskirts of the base, how was I going to use the Orbital Relay to launch them in? I’ll bring this up later, but it’s funny how I thought my solution to many levels was to just brute force my way through with unit numbers, while the unit and vehicle cap actually makes Dawn of War different than many of its contemporaries. In those games, as long as you have the resources, you can create as many units as you like.
There’s a lot of waiting in most real time strategy games. In the early levels I thought that perhaps waiting was tied to the core of the genre, and maybe that’s one reason it’s fallen out of favour. While you can’t fully remove the waiting around for things to happen (such as crafting units and buildings), in the last few missions, I made the choice to be more proactive. If I have to wait around, I might as well be doing something, right? I used my scouts to scope out the map, including all the strategic points, which I would send marine squads to capture. Hey, I might as well gain more resources and establish a presence over as much of the map as I possibly can. There’s a quote attributed to one of the designers of Civilization 4. “Fun is meaningful choices divided by time”. I wondered if an RTS is truly meant to be about consistent meaningful choices. Is any game? Without downtime, a consistent barrage of meaningful decisions would become exhausting. It would be like playing a Michael Bay movie. Plus the concept seems to go against how an RTS is played, or perhaps at least how I play one.
I think there are two main RTS playstyles, and it’s not a case of one or the other. Both are needed. It’s just that some players lean more heavily towards one in particular. I call them “Prepare & Execute”, and “Keep Pushing Forward”. Prepare & Execute is building up a base, building up an army, and then sending the army towards the enemy. Maybe you’ll scout ahead and find the best entry point. Maybe you’ll break up your army into separate pieces and attack different areas all at the same time. However you approach it, it’s essentially playing defensively until you’re ready to go on the offensive. Keep Pushing Forward is the opposite. Don’t just scout ahead, send the squads you would be defending with out into the world. Capture every strategic point you come across, keep testing the enemy’s defenses when you find their base, and build as many new bases as you need to, so your new units don’t have far to travel. I am definitely in the Prepare & Execute camp. So much so, that to me, the joy of the game has always been to craft the right combination of units, vehicles, and weapon upgrades before clicking attack-move on the enemy and seeing what happens. A “set it and forget it” mentality. As I became more confident, playing mission after mission, I found myself edging towards Keep Pushing Forward. It’s at least something to do while waiting.
With this talk of squads and weapon loadouts, let’s examine some of what I feel are the core attributes of Dawn of War. Squads, reinforcements, and cover. I’ve mentioned the right combination of weapon loadout. Each space marine squad can enhance itself with up to 4 advanced weapons. A flamer, a heavy bolter, a plasma gun, and a missile launcher. Do you create different squads with different loadouts, placing them where you think they’ll have the greatest effect? Will you make one of everything, or will you find the right balance for all situations. About halfway through the game I found that a heavy bolter, a plasma gun, and two missile launchers worked wonders. The missile launchers are a must for dealing with buildings and vehicles, the heavy bolter is great for suppressive fire and long range attack, and the plasma gun packs a greater punch and can be used on the move. Terminator squads, Scout units and most vehicles have advanced weapon choices as well. These choices along with the selection of units can favour the personality of an individual playstyle, but we’ll discuss that later.
Another element of the squad is that of morale. If a squad is on the front lines getting wailed on, it’s not going to take long for their morale to break. If there’s a sergeant in the squad, or one of the leader units is attached, the squad will gain morale boosts and if they’re near their breaking point, the rally ability can be used to raise morale and keep them fighting. This runs alongside reinforcement. If a squad is in a situation where their morale is being tested, chances are that squad is losing units. By clicking the reinforcement button, new units can be added back to the squad so they can keep fighting until they win, until their morale breaks and they scatter, or until they’re decimated. This plays into the honour of the Space Marines, and how retreat is a dirty word. Although to tell a secret, I would sometimes pull a squad back and let others take punishment while the original squad bolstered its numbers again. Shh.
We now come to the importance of cover. This is an area where my memory deceived me. Cover is important. A defending squad in heavy cover can hold out against great odds, but my memories of advancing troops hopping from crater to crater and ruin to ruin couldn’t be further from the truth. The majority of my fights were out in the open. If cover aided me on my way, great, but once again, army composition and weapon loadout were the deciding factors. Perhaps it’s best to say it’s not that cover didn’t play a great part in my victories and defeats, but that I didn’t notice it as I was playing. I think I understand why in Dawn of War 3, cover is a zone you capture and hold. It’s trying to treat the mechanic as something more important instead of incidental, but even though cover didn’t play as great a role in Dawn of War as I remember it, I prefer the idea of the map itself providing benefit and detriment to the player depending on where they are and where they choose to fight.
Each mission in Dawn of War follows the same formula. I always started on the back foot. Whether it was a lack of resources, the base not being in a great location, or an Eldar farseer harassing my growth, the most exciting and turbulent part of the game was always in these opening moments before the base had been completed. Since I played in a prepare and execute manner, once the base was up, and I was well fortified, I would start building the army that would crush the opposition. Then I would crush the opposition, ending the level in a place of gleeful power. The campaign only had me playing as the Space Marines, while in skirmish and multiplayer there are 3 other races to pick from. There are definitely pros and cons to this. The con is that I would have loved to have played as one of the other races, specifically the Eldar, as their use of warp gates to hop around the level intrigued me. The pro is that you become very familiar with the Space Marines build order, and which upgrades are necessary. Learning what is crucial and what can wait until you’re solvent is very important in those early stages when resources are low.
When discussing weapon loadout, I talked about the ability for a player to express their individual personality. How perhaps based on the player, weapon loadouts and army composition can be radically different. I don’t think this will effect build order too much, as certain buildings do need to be built to upgrade and access the next tier, but it could have an effect on what upgrades a player prioritises. For example, aside from the missions that they were necessary in, I never built an Assault Marine Squad, a Whirlwind, or a Land Raider. Perhaps if I had played longer, I might have found uses for these units, but while I grew to love late game units like Terminators and Predators, working them into my army composition, I saw no need to understand how those other units would benefit me. How different might the approach of another player be? Would these units feature prominently in their army? Is this only a campaign question? My thoughts are that the best players have found optimal army composition and weapon loadout strategies for situations they might face, so this aspect of player personality doesn’t matter at all for multiplayer. Instead I think multiplayer might rely on the best plan, with the match going to the player who can most easily adapt and counter their opponents’ plan. This is why I was wondering if I was brute forcing single player, despite the unit and vehicle caps.
I set out to discover what made Dawn of War fun and memorable to play. We covered caps that limit the ability to swarm the field with units, different playstyles revolving around defense and offense, and what I felt are the core attributes of the game: squads, reinforcements, and cover. While cover didn’t play as great a role as I remember, the squad, its weapon loadout and managing morale while reinforcing lost units made me think about using squads to express oneself while playing. While outside of class choice in skirmish or multiplayer I don’t think that’s entirely true (but am happy to be proven wrong). Only the single class approach of the campaign seems to allow for experimentation. Dawn of War distinguishes itself in the RTS genre with the creation of strategic resource nodes, and squad based gameplay, and while Relic would refine a lot of these ideas to greater effect in Company of Heroes, it’s fitting that these concepts should begin in a universe based on perpetual warfare.
Thanks for watching. What are some of your thoughts and experiences with Dawn of War? Do you have any response to anything I said in the video? I’d love to hear from you all in the comments. If you’d like to help the channel and show me some love, please like the video, share with your friends, and subscribe if you haven’t already. Until next time, I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.
