In Defence of Dawn of War...

[Jason]

<strong>[ Review ]</strong>

<p><span class="postbody">A bloke called ImperialCreed got in touch with us over our <a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=26">Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War vs Starcraft</a> article and decided to write a counter-point. Here's a bit:</span></p><blockquote><p><span class="postbody"> DoW isn&rsquo;t balanced...</span></p></blockquote><p>There's a lot more but if you want to find out what that is, you're just going to have to read it.
</p><br/><br/><strong>Read: </strong><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=28">In Defence of Dawn of War...</a>

 

[DarkUnderlord]

in hindsight it was probably not the best idea to start your review by confessing to being a Starcraft fanboy.

... because being deceitful about that would've been a much better approach?

I think the first mistake you made was to compare the first version (vanilla flavour, sans expansion packs and patches) of DoW to what I assume was the complete version of Starcraft, which would include Brood Wars and the myriad patches the game has had since release.

Yes, I did make that mistake. Especially given the number of "Chaos Marines don't have heavy weapons!" replies I saw about the place (when Chaos Marines do have all the heavy weapons available to them in vanilla DoW but had them removed in Winter Assault before having Plasma Rifles added back in with Dark Crusade). One thing I'd like to point out though, is that vanilla Starcraft still would've won. You even point that out yourself. Dawn of War has had about the same number of patches as Starcraft. Hell, it's even had more expansions and it still isn't balanced. In fat, even if I'd compared expanded Dawn of War with expanded Starcraft, Starcraft still would've won because the latest Dawn of War simply adds in another unbalanced race to the mix.

Cue standard "but Dawn of War has more races and balancing a game is teh hard" response. Also keep in mind Starcraft is 8 years old and had most of the balance issues (like Goliath's firing the same range as Guardians and unit cost adjustments) addressed very early on. The latest Starcraft patch has more to do with making Starcraft work on Mac's and addressing other issues with an 8 year old game then it does on doing anything about balancing the game. I'd really be interested to see if anyone is even bothering with Dawn of War in 8 years time.

There's also a huge difference between a patch that adjusts the cost of a unit (like most Starcraft patches) versus patches that take weapons out (aforementioned Chaos Space Marines heavy weapons), only to add them back in later and then changes whether units take up population or not. Hell, I could tell the minute I player vanilla DoW that unit caps for servitors were a problem given the advantage Chaos had. Oh wait, I pointed that out. It took Relic another expansion pack to finally address that. So while Blizzard gets glaringly obvious shit like that correct right out of the gate, it takes Relic two expansions and about the same number of patches and they're still trying.

You admit you dislike it [capture the flag resource harvesting], as is your want, but do not attempt to explore why it is supposedly inferior to the build harvester/gather resource model used in Starcraft.

I don't explore why in my opinion it's inferior? That's funny. I'm pretty sure I had three paragraphs about that issue. Hell the "more realistic" is a single comment I make at the beginning of a sentence which finishes with "plus it opens up a wonderful strategy". I go on to talk about surgical strikes against gathering units (aka the Reaver Drop) which if pulled off successfully can cause a lot serious long-term damage before delving into the whole issue of what happens when you let your enemy capture your strategic points. You did read all that didn't you or did you stop one sentence in and skip the rest?

It works, yes, but it’s been around so long and been used so much that it has lost whatever novelty or sense of fun it had in the first place. It’s simply an old way of doing things (relatively speaking).

Ahhh the "it's old" factor. We get a lot of that when talking about turn-based games around here. "They're old, real-time is the future!". God forbid. Some of today's kids really could do with playing a game of chess every once in a while. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's not any fun. There's a reason the rules haven't changed.

Plus, it’s a serious contributing factor in the much maligned ‘turtle’ and ‘tank rush’ type of play that a majority of RTS players I know hate.

"Majority"? Can I see that survey please or is this part of the 90% of statistics that are made up? I think you'll find that most of the RTS players who hate turtling hate it because shock, horror, they actually need to employ proper strategy in order to get around them. There's a very good reason World War I got bogged down in trench warfare while World War II didn't. They didn't have tanks or airplanes for WWI, so devising strategies to get around enemy lines was a bitch. A few guys behind some sandbags with a machine-gun on top was quite capable of holding off a much larger force. You didn't just send your men in mindlessly, you had to think about how you were going to get around it. If you were fighting on a beach, it meant co-ordinating your attack with artillery bombardment coming from ships off the coast. If you were inland, it meant either holding the position and finding another way around or again, co-ordinating your attack with artillery units.

An army is not built upon arrival at a warzone. It is reinforced and organised, or re-equipped, but the physical tanks that comprise an armour brigade are not built by materials pulled from the hotzone only to roll out seconds later into that hotzone.

Tanks were still rolling out of the factories in Berlin while the Russians were invading towards the end of World War II. Think about that for a minute. There's a difference between what's supposed to be a representation of a city or town with manufacturing capability and any single "hot zone". Though that's mostly irrelevant as my (single and quite brief) mention of "realism" had more to do with "Who put these magic flags here and why does capturing them allow me to get more units?" than it did in how those units actually arrive on the battlefield. Crystals and Vespene Gas are representative of mining operations carried out (and protected) in order to build the units needed to win. Capturing flags and having that acquire you more units is representative of...? I mean, if these units exist and Space Marine Command needs me to hold this position to win, why aren't they giving me everything they've got?

"I'm sorry Commander, the Generals aren't going to give you those tanks you wanted until you capture that hill."
"But I need those tanks in order to capture the hill!"
"Uhh... Think of it as a test. Yes, that's it. A test. We couldn't give you everything you needed now, could we? That just wouldn't be right!"

I’m not sure I understand why it is you have a problem with the actual combat in DoW. For a start, it looks spectacular, both graphically and in terms of the various unit animations.

Maybe because I like a little bit more depth to my combat as opposed to just "OMG EXPLOSHUNS!" (which I'm pretty sure I mentioned anyway)?

It feels like proper combat too, when you pan and zoom the camera in to ground level to watch a Dreadnought pulp an unsuspecting Ork, you delight at the spray of blood and the satisfying squelching/cracking sound.

While I'm here, for some reason or another, vanilla Dawn of War + patches doesn't let you zoom the camera around like it did pre-patch. I can only assume that once again, that's something Relic fudged up and then had to undo with one of the expansions.

As for your issue with superior numbers always winning – why did you even mention it if you believe that should always be the case (“and don’t get me wrong, so they should”). You seem to dislike the fact that you win too well, and try and criticize the game for doing something you think is actually a good thing.

Try this in Starcraft. Get 12 Marines of yours to attack 24 Marines of your opponent's. He outnumbers you 2 to 1, so he wins and rightly so. However, take a look at what he has left. Sure, he's still got a fair few Marines left (over half) but your guys have done some damage as they've gone down fighting. Enough that if he were to attack your base afterwards, your remaining bunker and Siege Tank would be enough to stop him and make him think twice. Now try that in Dawn of War. Whomever has the lesser units doesn't just lose, they get slaughtered. Oh sure, they fight back and maybe take out one or two of their opponent's units but your opponent is re-inforcing that squad as your Space Marines stand and shoot each other for 5 minutes. By the time your guys are all dead, he's popped out a replacement for every unit he lost. More to the point, by the time your guys have managed to kill a second unit of his, he's replaced the first unit you killed while two more of your men have died.

a Space Marine squad is not a mobile Marine factory.

Just because you say something doesn't make it true.

All squads can reinforce in the field, but only up to their set size limit

... and all squads (of Space Marines at least, we'll stick to the one race to keep it simple) are built with only 4 men, meaning you have to re-inforce them up to that maximum of 8. Meaning that if you have 2 squads, you can get twice as many Marines out as I can with just one squad. It's a process that slows you down and re-inforces the point that "lose one battle and you've lost the war" because while he's re-inforcing his units, you have to completely re-build them and then increase their numbers and then upgrade them with special weapons. All he has to do is (thanks to the "lesser units get slaughtered" implementation) "re-inforce" one or two guys.

It’s easier to command your forces too, as you no longer have to worry about including every last unit in the click n’ drag box. Clicking on any squad member selects the whole squad. At the very least, it’s a timesaver.

People are still clicking and dragging? How cute. I thought everyone used the hotkey numbering now? Certainly didn't have any problems managing my men in Starcraft using that, or in Dawn of War for that matter.

The point you make about turrets is bit unfair too.

Yes. How unfair of me to want turrets that are, I dunno, actually useful?

DoW’s central focus is combat

As opposed to all those other real-time strategy games where the focus is on... er... arts and crafts?

[It's] about getting your units face to face with the enemy and keeping them there

Actually, it's not. Dawn of War is about getting your units face to face with the enemy and then running away into cover and hoping he'll follow you in a desperate bid to gain some sort of advantage because beyond just duking it out, you don't really have any other alternatives. As for keeping them there, well, I wouldn't. You either have more units than him in which case you're going to win without taking very many losses or you have less units than him, in which case you're going to lose. Sure, you could "retreat" but the thing about retreating is that you need somewhere to retreat to. Useless turrets that will be taken down in about 2 seconds are not really an effective withdrawal point.

Having implacable defences that you can simply sit behind and watch as your enemies bounce ineffectually off of them is not a good way to encourage proper battles.

I'd really like to play the real-time strategy game that has this. So far all I can find out is that it seems to be some mystical non-existant game which serves as a useful example on why all defensive buildings should be nerfed for people who don't actually know what strategy or tactics should be about. For me, I think about games like Starcraft where I can build a wall of Photon Canons and then watch in horror as a Terran quite happily sits back in siege mode blasting them away without taking any damage because the range he's firing from is too far away for my canons to do jack... or even the Zerg who just gets a bunch of Guardians together and casually starts making their way through my wall of canons which once again, have been rendered useless because the Guardians out-range them. I certainly can't think of any game where I sat behind my turrets and laughed...

Oh wait, actually I can. And it was mostly because my opponent didn't know what "strategy" was. They seemed to suffer from some form of dementia which resulted in them thinking that all they had to do was build the biggest most expensive units they could and then send them at my base. Thank God these people aren't joining the army and becomming military commanders, otherwise we're screwed.

At the end of the review you even say you were looking for a better Starcraft, and I think you might have carried your style of play over from that title. ‘ Not being like in Starcraft’ is not a basis to criticize any of the elements of DoW.

Actually, it's a perfectly valid reason. Starcraft is balanced (which you yourself seem to acknowledge). It's a "Game of the Year" real-time strategy game. In fact, it seems to be the best damn strategy game there is. When someone makes a product in the same market, I like to compare it to what else is out there. I don't like to buy inferior crap when there's already a better and far superior product available.

vehicles are as useful as a wet paper bag in serious close combat

When in close combat with what? Predator tanks seem to do just fine. Mind you that's another thing. Watching supposedly awesome close combat units getting cut-down before they even reach your men sure is fun.

Even if you managed to fit three or four squads of Terminators into your forces the resulting army would inevitably be smaller than your opponents (read: have fewer guns, fists, knives, teeth and above all, options).

Which is why I pointed out that Terminators suck. Why build less men when more men is what's going to make you win? This has probably changed too but in vanilla DoW, Terminators take up 4 personnel each meaning "three or four" is the most you can build and once you have that many, you can't build anything else. Send those guys into battle and watch as they lose morale so quickly it's not funny. Compare that with sending in two squads of Space Marines instead, having only one group lose morale and rallying it right back up to full strength again.

[Artillery are] fantastic barrage weapons against massed infantry and have excellent range.

... because if his men aren't massed, artillery units can't actually hit anything and if they don't hit anything, then by the time they're ready to fire again, his men are on top of you.

DoW isn’t balanced though (play Tau against Necrons in the Dark Crusade expansion)

I'd really like to see just one person who says "Dawn of War isn't balanced" and then goes on to love it to explain WHY it isn't balanced. To actually put their brain to it and *think* "What is it that really makes this game unbalanced?". Now I could tell you... Oh wait, I did. In fact, I think I wrote a whole article about it.

but I suspect [Dawn of War] was never meant to be [balanced]

It's nice to see that your reply basically boils down that because the game has really nice explosions, we should excuse all its other faults and who cares if it's not balanced? Boy, I sure do look forward to the future of real-time strategy games. Why, I can't wait until someone updates the rules of chess and makes the black pieces completely useless. At least the explosions will be AWSUM though!

You know what I like most about my review though? I pointed that all out. I even said several times "you either like that or you don't". All you care about is AWSUM EXPLOSHUNS? Excellent. Go right ahead. Want some strategy though? Want to have to think about what you're doing? Actually want a chance to beat your opponent rather than being slaughtered because the race you chose is unbalanced? Well then, you better think again.

And Starcraft is still the better game.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Starcraft was a good game like 5 or more years ago. Pretty much all RTS suck now, they are just the same old shit. Hey we are on bluesnews now.

 

[DoWpro]

DoW may not be balanced but DoWpro is.

@Darkunderlord

You primary complaints from your last post seem to include:

- DoW isn't balanced
- Resource model
- Gameplay Depth
- Wanting seige warfare
- Starcraft is simply better


I agree DoW isn't balanced - that's blatantly obvious to anyone who's played higher ranked online play. I don't even like DoW's/WA's/DC's gameplay - it's oversimplistic for my tastes and lacks sufficient gameplay depth and balance to keep me interested for long.

That being said to dismiss DoW is a sad mistake because there is something that makes use of the wonderful potential of the DoW game and engine enough to even make Starcraft get wary, and that's DoWpro.

Early in the piece some of the top DoW gamers realised that DoW was unlikely to match up against SC/WC3 in terms of being a tourney level competitive game. It was simply not intended for that audience - it's aimed at casual gamers such as the writer of reply article. That being said DoW's engine permits many different gameplay elements that simply don't exist in either SC or WC3 and said pro gamers realised this and set about realising this potential. DoWpro was born - a gameplay mod that's intended to make DoW a true competitor for SC/WC3. I the name was inspired by ETpro - a gameplay tournament mod for Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.

18 months on and DoWpro is a fairly inspired piece of work with a sizeable following - check it's webpage www.dowpro.net

You criticise DoW's balance and gameplay design on many fronts but I truly believe that DoWpro has addressed all of your points regarding game balance - eg. terminators, predators, turrets etc are all balanced and defined. DoWpro is a much harder game than regular DoW was and that's due to the increased complexity of the gameplay which the modders have added and reworked. It still plays like DoW at its core (there's still squads, you still cap points etc) - it just feels tigher and more polished with all the tech trees/units/abilities/researches/economic models completely redone for competitive play.

When I compare SC and DoWpro the balance argument is much less strongly weighted in SC's favour - DoWpro has 5 balanced races (soon to be 7 once the newly released Dark Crusade expansion is rebalanced). I'm quite happy to demonstrate any of this online - join the irc.quakenet.org #dowpro irc channel. I'm sure that with exhaustive play you'd be able to find small quibbles - in much the same way you could with SC in the same timeframe. The great thing is that the team patches out issues frighteningly fast :D.

When I compare resource models I tend to disagree with your point about lacking strategy. You make a point about the SC "Reaver drop" being a great way to counter the enemy's economy. The same style of harassment is possible - the difference is that instead of attacking resource gatherering units you attack resource structures. I'd argue that it's only a real difference in symatics. Moreover, DoWpro strongly emphasises map control with regards to controlling critical points (the points you cannot build listening posts/resource structures on) to encourage very aggressive and fluid play with both players seeking to contest the entire breadth and width of the map rather than the key resource sites. I'm not saying this is superior to SC, more that this revised system is entirely valid and I'd argue it supports the gameplay just as effectively as SC's own resource model supports it's own gameplay, which is the salient point.

With regards to seige warfare I think you're probably going to find that SupCom will offer the best seige experience. DoWpro offers a tweaked version of the DoW implementation of turrets - make no mistake you can be taken to school by a great player using turrets well, just don't expect turret camping to be the pivotal feature of gameplay. DoWpro is about fluid and aggressive gameplay and overly powerful turrets is contradictory to that mantra.

Starcraft's strongest points have been it's beautifully polished gameplay, overwhelmingly strong following and a great competition scene. When it's engine is compared to DoW's engine however, it's really very simple - it's just that SC's actual implementation of the engine's potential is far superior. DoWpro makes use of a far superior engine and has a clearly superior implementation of said engine thano DoW. Is it better than Starcraft? who knows, it's certainly different and excellent in its own right. Moreover, it continues to be actively revised with 2 new races and engine features of the latest expansion pack (released late october).

I'm clearly a DoWpro fanboi - and there's nothing wrong with being a fanboi as long as you can keep things objective and point out when you're being subjective. I'd suggest to anyone who's dismissed DoW/WA/DC as a simple game to try DoWpro - it's a different experience. And to anyone eager to point out "pfffftt mod" I'd challenge you to say the same about Counter-Strike or Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, they weren't always officially supported.

 

[kris]

Fxing balance in DoW is all well and wellneeded, but i doubt you can mod in actual strategies into DoW...

 

[DoWpro]

Doubt away. I can prove otherwise. Like I said - www.dowpro.net. Jump on the IRC and find some peeps to show you better.

 

[kris]

Doubt away. I can prove otherwise. Like I said - www.dowpro.net. Jump on the IRC and find some peeps to show you better.

Mr Advertising monkey. have you by any instance put in any new abilities for troops? Flying units? (as in can't be hit by melee troops) Make the game not end up being a duke out over a choke point or in the extreme two choke points? where a battle is not decided by who is 10%+ stronger?

I don't think DoW sucks, just that it isn't very engaging or varied in its gameplay.

oh and I am waiting for you to prove it?

 

[DoWpro]

I can't prove DoWpro is great anymore than you can prove SC is the best RTS ever on a forum - words mean very little when it comes to justifying gameplay. That's why I said to move yourself over to the site - DL it and contact the community so you can play it with ppl who know how to play the mod. Alternatively grab some replays.

As I said the dowpro gameplay is more expansive, less about chokepoints - more about split army tactics to contest the map. Yes there's new abilities/researches/weaponry and 10% doesn't really come into play - it's more about unit positioning than raw numbers.

Finally, no there's no flying units - neither is there in DoW. Besides what you're talking about is essentially hard counters which DoWpro represents quite well - just not the Inf vs Veh vs Air and armour class model SC uses. Different but not necessarily inferior.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Re: DoW may not be balanced but DoWpro is.

- Resource model

Yes and no. I mean, I can accept that DoW has the resource gathering it does purely as a gameplay mechanism. As I've said, it's not my preferred mechanism but I can accept it. My main issue though, is that with the lack of decent defenses, all that mechanism does is bite you hard in the arse. As I said in my initial review, capturing strategic points = resources. Capture more than your opponent and you win. Because they're hard to defend, when your opponent attacks one of yours you have to defend it. Given your opponent is going to attack with everything he has, if you lose that battle your game is over. All your units are dead and you've got nothing left with which to defend yourself. Alternatively, you let your opponent capture it in which case you're doing nothing more than giving up.

Now if the game had decent defenses, you could turn that around. Instead of that first loss being "game over", you'd actually be able to hold him off with some defensive structures and maybe survive long enough to put up a fight. Maybe it'd give your ally time to mount a counter-attack or maybe your opponent would attack your base with full force and get cut-down, giving you some breathing space and time to re-capture some of those points you've lost. It'd open up options beyond "Oh well, guess I'm dead then".

You primary complaints from your last post seem to include:
- DoW isn't balanced
- Gameplay Depth
- Wanting seige warfare
- Starcraft is simply better

The other thing turrets do is balance the game. Take a look at the Terrans in Starcraft. Now remove their bunkers. Think they'd have a hope against the Protoss or Zerg then? They wouldn't. Believe it or not, the offensive units in Starcraft are unbalanced. What balances them is the defensive units. Siege Tanks. Utterly useless in normal mode. Put them in siege mode however and that Zerg Hydralisk attack isn't so much of a worry. Goliath's. Completely useless as a ground attack weapon as they spend most of their time running around in circles tripping up over themselves but watch how good they are with their missiles when fighting off a swarm of Guardians.

Now take Protoss Photon Canons. Remove them from the game. Do you seriously believe Zealots have a chance against a horde of Hydralisks? The Hydralisks, given enough numbers, can destroy the Zealots quite easily. Even Dragoons are in for a bit of trouble as they cost twice as much and take up twice as many personnel as Hydralisks. A good Zerg can outnumber you 2 to 1 quite easily. Hell, even with Photon Canons, Hydralisks can cut through a 2 deep wall of them without too much difficulty. But watch what happens when we include the Protoss High Templar and its Psionic Storm ability. The High Templar is an utterly useless unit. If you try to attack with it, it gets cut-down before it gets a chance to fire and most players move their units out of the way of the lightning. But in a defensive role, safely tucked away behind that wall of Photon Canons, it becomes a deadly unit capable of decimating an entire Zerg army single-handedly.

Starcraft is balanced precisely because each race has the ability to fend off an attack from any other race. They can defend themselves. Sure, you might outnumber your opponent but all of a sudden that wall of Canons or Siege Tanks is a force to be reckoned with. The game is then less about sending in more units and more about deciding how to attack. Looking for weak-spots in his defenses and building Shuttles to ferry a strike force in behind enemy lines. Even waiting for him to attack, holding him off and counter-attacking a weak-spot (because counter-attacking his strong defenses is just going to get you killed).

If I compare that to my experiences in Dawn of War, DoW fails to compare. For most of my battles in Dawn of War, I can tell when I'm going to win and when I'm going to lose long before the game is officially over. Enemy has captured more strategic points than me? I'm dead. Enemy has more units than me? I'm dead. I lose any battle in the game? I'm dead. There's no "Damn, I lost that attack. Quick, I better re-build. I still have a chance". If I lose an attack, I'm a dead man. My base is wide open to counter-attack and there's no way I can build enough units in time to hold of my enemy's remaining horde (which, given the way squads work, is even more over-whelming by the time it reaches my base).

I agree DoW isn't balanced - that's blatantly obvious to anyone who's played higher ranked online play. I don't even like DoW's/WA's/DC's gameplay - it's oversimplistic for my tastes and lacks sufficient gameplay depth and balance to keep me interested for long.

I'll certainly give your mod a shot. Just as soon as I get around to installing Winter Assault. I'm still struggling to care enough to finish off the single-player game in vanilla DoW and I'd like to do that before I move on.

Flying units? (as in can't be hit by melee troops)

Yeah, that's another thing I'd like to see in DoW. It's nice they've got a great engine and all but no flying units?

 

[DoWpro]

I think that your point about being able to defend adequately is addressed reasonably well in DoWpro - eg mines work wonders, turrets + lp2 + mines = very solid defence against your typical harassment force (eg. raptors/asm).

I'm not sure that you'll see the same degree of rigid defences in DoW as you will in starcraft because it's countering model is different eg. no flying units. TBH I don't see this as a failing - more as a difference. A well set up point in DoWpro requires a specialist harassment strategy to counter it eg. if a player places a turret + lp2 + mines you'll need long range AV troops + cloaked detector to sight and kill the mines, then pick off the turret/lp2. However, the defender buys significant time to return to protect their point with their defense's strong HP despite the fact the attacker is currently outranging them with their specialist solution.

Turrets in DoW a) don't scale up in teirs b) are crap upgraded vs vehs --> DoWpro's missile turrets etc DO counter vehs well c) don't work well in combo with mines and lp2/3's since neither of the other two structures are optimised.

 

[kris]

I can't prove DoWpro is great anymore than you can prove SC is the best RTS ever on a forum - words mean very little when it comes to justifying gameplay.

Finally, no there's no flying units - neither is there in DoW.

but I can. DAU said quite a few things himself. While DoW have some distinguishing abilities between the troops that is not even close to what Starcraft have. I mentioned the flying units because that opens up new venues here. DoW have one thing, difference between hard and soft targets. Although the nature of the game diminish that, company of heroes get that more right.

ps. Unless you really really want I won't go into detail for all the different gameplay you can have in Stracraft and DAU said quite a bit on that account.

 

[DoWpro]

I guess the point I was trying to make is that it's fairly hard to convince someone that your argument is valid if they haven't played the game.

DoWpro is significantly improved on DoW - it's completely overhauled to be more like WC3/SC in regards to game balance. How I can convince you short of showing you in game is somewhat beyond me since I find it easy to relate to SC analogies....simply because I've played it. You've never played DoWpro and it differs significantly from basic DoW or WA and I'm finding it hard to phrase an argument that you identify with. As evidenced by your points which you just raise about abilities etc - that's something DoWpro addresses so continuing to make comparisons to SC really isn't factoring DoWpro into the equation. That is ofc something I urge you to do because it does address much of the criticism you level at DoW.