WarHammer 40K's Dawn of War is 50% Off at Steam

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

You do know the pause button works?

[Nefaro]

You do know the pause button works?

Yes but it drives me nuts when I have to constantly jockey the thing.  I naturally tend to try getting by without constantly using it, having some innate aversion to hitting the damn thing all the time in real-time games.  It begins to feel like I'm playing "pause the game" more than anything else if it gets to that point.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

 :'(

In other words you know everything has gone to shit and the pause wont help. Time to try different strategies.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Try these settings

The game should end something like this. I used pause 3 or 4 times.

[Nefaro]

Slow speed and Annihilate victory conditions?  Will do.

I'm sure that my build strategies are terrible, especially since I'm not all that familiar with the progression on most buildings.  The same thing that makes the game interesting to me (the nice variety of units, upgrades, and abilities to be bought) has also been tough to learn.  Not because I don't understand them but because I don't know how to progress to the stuff I want at any one moment.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

If you can take a command point, put a turret on their side then put 2 packs of marines there. You start to get resources at a much faster rate. Try to keep them to the points close to their base.
Later in the game pull them off to a battle somewhere then drop terminators into their base.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

In this game it started out handing me my ass. The big mech rushed me almost beating my defenses. Meanwhile he was getting extra resources. It flips quickly in my favor at about 7 minutes when I get a forward turret and a mine field setup outside his base. Once I am getting the extra resources it is all over.

[JasonPratt]

Unless you're playing with special AI mods (which are nice and generally part of DoWPro DC/SS, though the AI mod can be installed separately), you can expect the game to rush your base at the start with its strongest units including the commander while it sends out a smaller group or two to capture points. This is especially obvious during the non-base missions of the DC/SS campaigns (the missions in DoW and WH are far more scripted), and can often lead to an early AI win if it has been buffing up the commander and support squads of the other factions on the strategic map.

Knowing that, I've found the best thing to be not to expand much at first on a new map (and to quickly eliminate whichever faction allows me to keep persistent bases on the map so I can garrison a killzone for future battles before going on to win the map), and let the rush come to me, losing as few of my units as possible for his expensive ones. (Also gaining some xp for my units.) Then start to expand.

A little power (at least one maybe two generators) is important early in a mission in order to buff up troop quality asap, so that and the first tech hut are typically the first things I build plus the strongest early shooty squad possible. (Orks are often my exception to this, but not always.) Ideally two strongest early shooty squads. The idea here is that shooting squads can be put in defensive positions to take less damage while they hit incoming enemies charging from at a distance. Even if the first shooty squad is tied up subsequently in melee, I may have the advantage for a win even without a second squad firesupporting off to the side (meaning I've tied them up in melee!) -- if I can't afford two early strong shooties, that always means the squad is decent at melee, too. Meanwhile I'm picking up early buffs, and then boom I've won the early skirmishes. Sure maybe the AI has taken a few more points already, but he probably doesn't even have them capped yet, and I'm WAY ahead relatively on effective-power-out-on-the-board. (I've still got 500 points of units out on the board, and he has 200 now, or something like that.)

After that, push forward to contact and keep up the pressure; stay away from his turrets until those can be nixed, but hamper his further expansion. (Hard to do on large maps of course, but generally bases are put behind natural choke points so I find it's important to make those work in my favor.) Take a cheap squad around capping my own points, and meanwhile spend the cash on teching up my units, getting some anti-armor up front asap, adding more good shooter squads to shut down the running dogs of my opponents when I get a chance.  I might not even need to build armor, depending on the map size; and if it's that large I may wait until I'm building forward bases.

This changes a little in cases where I'm having to fight two AI teams on a map, but usually the AI of the farther base will send troops to help his ally rather than threatening my base. (Not always. I've had nasty surprises.) In those cases, the farther base will tend to tech up and possibly outnumber me first, so then it becomes a question of making sure I'm pouring as much of the proper firepower on single units of the proper kind of enemy as possible at any moment. Kill vehicles asap, because they don't get weaker as they take damage (unlike squads). Let broken squads run away if I can't finish them off and focus on non-broken squads, one at a time if possible; the AI can waste money on replacing the broken squads instead of something more dangerous. Spam magic (or the equivalent thereof) appropriately.

If maneuvered properly, the AI will do a lot of the fighting work for me, leaving me to micromanage more important things -- my main purpose as commander is to supply my troops with what they need to win (replace lost troops and special weapons asap), and point them in the right directions occasionally.

[JasonPratt]

Notice by the way that the above strategy is helped immeasureably during Dark Crusade and Soulstorm campaigns by concentrating first on territories with good starting shooters (and buff units for them where applicable, like commisars to attach to Guard troops), and by concentrating first on eliminating the faction that provides advance base drops as rewards.

Then I can buy the tech upgrade hut and a power grid or two right off the bat for my forward base, even if they're scattered in a screwy fashion upon landing. That's less time and effort needed to get my starting troops ready to receive visitors and to kick ass in a counterattack. I can put my builders to work on a turret or two to help defend the rush while waiting for my troops to take the first resource spots and cap those.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Lets talk general RTS strategy. I approach it as a project using the Critical path method. There are critical things I have to do by a certain time to stay in the game. In DOW 1 I have to get to 3 full packs of marines with the commander at about 6-7 minutes. Then the focus shift to getting 4 heavy machine guns in each squad. That lets me stay competitive until its time to go armor. If he has teched up I have 1 squad with 4 rocket upgrades. I get 1-2 packs of jetpack guys with the armor granade. Should be done by 10 minutes. At 15 minutes you should be pushing walkers with gun upgrade. If he is still in the fight at 20 minutes you should have tanks, terminators, walkers. Armor is much easier if you have an advanced power site. Hoard those on the maps they are available.

In general the AI is weak even on hard in most games. A prime example in Supreme commander where you can wipe the floor with the hard AI, then get beat on the easy scripted missions. They are all difficult first time through. Once you know how the script is going to hit you it's ok. One game where I find the AI challenging is CoH. It can send the optimum counter at you in various parts of the map while they continue to grab points.

Speaking of resource locations, they are what makes RTS somewhat realistic. You have to be able to kill the rate of units the enemy throws at you. The easiest way to win is strip it's resource gathering rate, or it's manufacturing rate. That means the post French Revolution Grand Army, total war method puts civilians square in the sights as they build what feeds the army. That means proxy wars achieve nothing. A future conflict like countering a Russian advance has to result in the invasion of their homeland to cut off the supply of weapons. That means of course they will use their trump card to stop it. So will we. Putin has put the world on a very dangerous course.

[JasonPratt]

Wow that went political!  >:D

Somehow the internet has not yet meme'd Putin and WH40K, e.g. something from the Imperial Guard. WHY HAS THIS NOT HAPPENED!? I guess in Russia, Putin warhammers you.  O0

Back to DoW. Yeah the jetpack guys are mostly useful for having melta-bombs, and for quickly tying up distant shooters, but I usually find it more cost-effective to go with missiles (or anyway infantry with dedicated hard-target shooting) as that's one less level of management to worry about in a fight and missile troops work well against buildings, too, while at least disrupting infantry. (And then some jumptroops, like the Eldar, have no anti-vehicle weapons worth talking about anyway.)

Also, when playing as the Marines I try not to go all out with heavy guns at the beginning precisely in order to save room for plasma rifles. They take care of all things even though they don't have suppression, so I shift my Marines over to those asap. (But one squad goes full missile.)

The AI in Company of Heroes is definitely better than in DoW (1 or 2), and will brutalize me easily on skirmish, probably because by now my 'thoughts' for that engine are too wired into taking advantage of shooters vs. melee and of course WW2 has no melee. But in either game getting the resource advantage as soon as possible is critical, moreso with CoH. But even in DoW1 the point about parrying the initial thrust is that it provides an initial major applied resource advantage over the enemy -- which might be only temporary if not exploited soon, but still.

I'm not so great about putting out armor. Sure, more things that hurt the enemy are great in principle, and they don't get weaker the more they get hurt (also they don't panic and run away), so they do have lots of advantages, but it's just too easy in DoW for a human player to take out the vehicles more quickly than their investment in resources would otherwise justify. I almost regard AI vehicles as a benefit for my team, because those were resources the enemy will quickly lose which they could have put toward chewier tech. (Once the late game arrives things tend to even out more of course.)

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

In CoH the AI may seem far more advanced when the big difference is you are greatly reduced in income. Its a struggle to buy a few units. That makes the counter unit far more critical. I wonder if it builds counters to what you have in the building pipeline.

[JasonPratt]

^^ That makes a lot of sense. I really should pull out CoH1 again and mess with it (or at least play the campaigns all the way through).