Dawn Of War

Okay, now this is ridiculous.

As Tau, I'm trying to take a level 6 Necron territory. I have minimal honor guard (so does the AI, for that matter) and if I try to rush, I get chewed up by the Necron turrets if I don't micro. If I do micro then by the time I actually get to starting to shoot at their Monolith, the other Necron AI is already walking into my base and I've completely used up my starting resources.

So the only chance I have is to turtle down and build up, abusing the fact that my base is on a plateau and there's a natural chokepoint in the form of the ramp the AI has to come up on to attack - except if I do that, I have around five minutes before both AIs decide to attack. What I can get out in that time is about four squads of Fire Warriors, one squad of Kroots and maybe one Listening Post with the first upgrade, against six fully upgraded squads of Necron Warriors plus two Necron Lords with Resurrection Orbs, plus at least two squads of Flayed Ones deepstriking in, with the Kroots' morale breaking before the Flayed Ones even finished climbing out of the ground. I simply can't hold them back.

I tried cheating by reducing the enemy's health, giving myself 10x resources, removing the enemy's starting structures to slow down their buildup, everything, but even making the Kroot invulnerable fails to stop them because the moment I try pulling my Fire Warriors back a little, the Lords instantly teleport to them and away from the Kroot - or worse, teleport out of the skirmish entirely and start hammering at my base instead. Reduce the Lords' health, you might think? Nope, they immediately start spamming phaseshift invulnerability. Hell, I even tried reducing the enemy's difficulty level. Didn't do squat.

And in the meantime, I have to use what little honor guard I have to keep the Necron builders from capping the Relics on the map (one of which is on my plateau and in close proximity to the enemy's base, so the AI is super-aggressively pushing for it) because the AI having Relics means the AI having Monoliths. And if I cap the Relics and put a Listening Post on them, the Scarabs still arrive, mill around for a few minutes trying to capture it anyway, then a Necron Warrior squad shows up to scrape it off.

The most success I had was, interestingly enough, not building any troops and using the resulting excess of Requisition to rush Broadsides, which rolled out just in time for the AI to start sending Tomb Spyders at me, but even then the Lords keep teleporting inside their minimum range.

Eventually I lost my temper, invulnerabled the Kroots and threw them at the bottom of the ramp to keep the Necrons busy while I built up my forces. About an hour of pitched battles and around 600 kills later, I won. One of the A.I.s didn't activate their Monolith, for some reason, so I snuck up a Drone Harbinger and spammed it to death. The other AI was harder to tackle because they activated their Monolith alright and due to its massive knockback, it managed to knock the invulnerable Kroots (which by this point were down to negative 9000 health due to Pariahs) out of its way so far that it no longer aggroed on them and beelined straight to my base, in which my entire army was cooped up camping the Necron Lord and two Tomb Spyders to keep them from rezzing and wrecking the base. That, and the Necron Lord kept Nightbringering, can't forget that. I managed to wipe the Monolith by, once again, throwing a shitload of drones at it to soften it up before siccing a Knarloc at it, which finished it off.

Then I pushed forward to the ramp and took the Relic on my plateau (albeit not before the AI reactivated the Monolith), then built a secondary base before finishing off the Necron base (which by this point was no longer making anything, as the crazy unit spamming made it completely run out of resources).

If I'm ever attacked (and I will, as I'm bordering on the Necron stronghold), having 12 generators means I've got the Power income to unleash the absolute A.I. Breaker tactic known as "build Drone Harbinger, set rallypoint into enemy base, rightclick on drone spawn, forget about enemy base for the next half an hour".

Also, discovered yet another bug during the mission. I sent O'Kais and his shield drones off to attack an Obelisk. He got killed but one of his drones survived. Result: since the drone has zero sight range and displays no hero icon on the UI, it's invisible and unselectable while under the fog of war and it also does not show up in the "idle military units" selection, yet it still blocks O'Kais from being retrained at the barracks, leaving me unable to get him back until I go find the surviving drone.

That, and the drone gives him a Fire Warrior voice. Apparently they copypasted it off of the Fire Warrior squad's shield drone.

Edited by amitakartok on Oct 15th 2018 at 12:28:43 PM

Observation of the day: either the Necrons are stupidly OP to have given me such trouble earlier or the Tau are stupidly OP in the late game. Because I just took out a level 10 Space Marine territory Thule's entire honor guard having been camping for the last six turns or so.

I was really afraid to attack this territory due to the honor guard containing a Predator. But I decided what the hell, I can just reload if this goes awry and besides, I've got those spiffy EMP Grenades on my Shas'vre Stealth Suit squads, might as well try them out. That Predator only got a few shots off before it got EMP'd and hit like a hammer from concentrated firepower from two Shas'vre squads, a Skyray and O'Kais with a Plasma Rifle and shiny new Missile Pods I literally just equipped on the turn before. It must've realized that it bit off more than it could chew because as soon as the EMP wore off, it immediately made a run for it (with me imagining the normally unshakable Techmarine crew screaming like little girls along the lines of "DRIVE!!! BY THE EMPEROR, DRIIIIVE!!!" like a certain other game using this engine)... and got as far as the edge of my troops' sight range before the second EMP hit it. Gotta love 'em Shas'vre squads.

Oh, well. One more territory left (level 10, with Orkz and Gorgutz next door), then Hyperion Peaks, then I fortify everything, then I save and I'm done with the Tau. Next are everyone's favorite flashlight brigade, with early-game engagements I'm not looking forward to. But hey, I get lots and lots of Tank Goodness, so that's something.

Edited by amitakartok on Oct 18th 2018 at 7:10:39 PM

Nope, the problem is definitely with the Necrons. I had serious trouble attacking a level 3 territory as Imperial Guard today: I got out four full squads with full upgrades plus a honor guard squad, ready to rush... cue the Necron Lord pulling its teleporting bullshit within the grenade launchers' minimum range under Phylactery and Solar Pulse, followed by a Flayed Ones deepstrike breaking everyone's morale in seconds, followed by Wraiths tearing everyone apart in seconds. The match didn't even last five seconds. No matter how quickly I built up, they counter-rushed me and no matter how much I kept pulling back and away from melee, they refused to change targets.

So I tried staying home and building up there instead, only to have them systematically go after my point capping team and deny me resources before rolling over my base with minimal trouble. The Lord himself tanked frankly ridiculous amounts of damage with that goddamn Phylactery.

In the end, I was forced to cheat again to avoid being rushed to death inside of five minutes, by way of sending an invulnerable Alexander by himself into the Necron base to keep them occupied with him while I got ready. I really don't want to do this (takes the satisfaction out of the game), but I have no other choice because the Necrons are that bullshit OP in the early game. That is, compared to how strong their units are early-game, they are given far too many starting assets. I mean, they get 1000 Power to start with but their starting units don't even cost Power, yet you still give them free Generators that instantly give them a +30 income while the player has to struggle with +10, and also give them the one building that boosts their basic unit to Tier 2 level and gives them access to deepstriking melee units that completely shut down entire shooty armies?

They most definitely did not playtest this properly (or rather, didn't bother playtesting against anything other than Eldar). I've been playing this game for years and had beaten vanilla and Winter Assault on Insane difficulty without cheating, as well has having beaten all of Dark Crusade on Hard before, so I'm not a whiny little noob crying OH NOEZ OP PLZ NERF, I'm merely observing that something's not right here.

Edited by amitakartok on Oct 19th 2018 at 12:44:58 PM

Question, and this time isn't griping about the game being hard.

According to its description, the Will of the Emperor research increases Guardsman morale. How come it also gives honor guard Guardsman such a massive health boost that the full squad has over 17,000 HP? Specifically, in addition to a morale increase, honor guard Guardsmen get a 2.5x multiplier to their maximum health and can take on the fucking Necron Lord in melee.

Edited by amitakartok on Oct 20th 2018 at 12:03:09 PM

...and here I am again.

Raging like a madman because of Hyperion Peaks.

This time, leading the Orks against Tau, with the following highlights:

• Gorgutz getting killed because he was low on health, I tried pulling him back, he stepped in the way of a Killa Kan, immediately aborted his retreat to step out of the Kan's way and got gunned down before the pathfinding timeout expired.
• Devilfishes and Stealth Suits doing ridiculous DPS against Squiggoths.
• Squiggoths generally being useless due to slow turning speed and refusal to pathfind through cloaked units, of which one Tau base on this mission produced aplenty. Like, they literally made nothing but Stealth Suits and Devilfishes.
• Huge pathfinding freezups from Looted Tanks' "see enemy, move one meter forwards, enemy dies, move back to original position", both while idle and while attack-moving.
• Shoota Boy firing lines completely blocking off melee units from entering the fray.
• By the time I take out two bases and hit the third, the only entrance is camped by six Broadsides and four Skyrays. You know how Broadsides are only countered by melee? Good luck getting any melee units through a quadruple Missile Barrage plus an Ethereal's orbital strike that kill three quarters of your army inside five seconds.

Yet again, it's painfully obvious that they haven't playtested this mission against anything other than Orks whatsoever. That, and the fact that every single other faction's artillery units are hardcapped... but the Tau's isn't.

In general, I felt throughout the entire playthrough that Orks suffer far more (and far more obviously) from rubbish pathfinding than any other faction in this game. I mean, having a full Slugga squad queued up to capture multiple strategic points is pretty much futile because it more often than not ends with the entire squad ready to go for the next point but one guy momentarily getting stuck from being surrounded by the others and either aborting the order entirely or waiting for the others to move out of the way so that he can finish moving but the other guys are waiting for him to finish moving first, creating a deadlock. I've also seen this occasionally with Imperial Guard but the Orks are far worse because their infantry units have much bigger pathfinding collision boxes.

Edited by amitakartok on Nov 6th 2018 at 8:54:31 PM

...and after all those years I've been playing this, the game still manages to surprise me. Just saw Daemon Prince Eliphas sync-killing a Greater Knarloc for the first time (after getting killed by it three times in a row) by bitchslapping it, then impaling it right through the frakking skull and into the ground. Didn't even know there was a sync kill for this particular matchup, yet he went and racked up four more Knarloc kills in the mission.

For that matter, cloaked Chaos Marines absolutely rock for base defense while assaulting the Tau stronghold. Once they mow down the single Pathfinder squad blindly rushing ahead, they can mulch up the Fire Warrior shooting gallery with complete impunity.

Also, weird how big of a deal killing the Bloodthirster in the Chaos stronghold mission is in the sense that it's an actual objective, when I left them last as Necrons and faced no less than four Bloodthirsters throughout the mission. Still one of the easiest strongholds, if you ask me.

Edited by amitakartok on Feb 17th 2020 at 12:49:25 PM

Could they possibly be any less obvious about how heavily scripted stronghold missions are...?◊

I don't get it.

Greater Knarlocs are hardcapped to 1 at a time. The AI has two here, both of which where script-spawned (one spawned offscreen and walked into this outpost to defend it but before I could kill it, a second one joined the fight as part of one of the AI's scripted attack waves headed for my base).

I still won the fight, though. Lost Taldeer, three Harlequins and two full squads of Fire Dragons, the Fire Prism got hurt down to red health and the honor guard Seer Council was down to its last member, but I still narrowly managed to kill both Knarlocs by the skin of my teeth and subsequently cut the remaining Tau to shreds in melee.

Am currently playing this match right at this moment, in fact. Just discovered that Harlequins can two-shot a Krootox with their special ability, which is fucking awesome because those guys are fucking impossible to kill without a Vindicare Assassin otherwise (which was another joyous discovery I made last week).

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 18th 2020 at 10:15:23 AM

Ah, I see.

Eh, just a little in-joke I made due to having recently looked into the script of the IG stronghold mission for debugging purposes and noticed a comment in the code about randomizing the targeting locations of the superlong-range artillery in that mission "to make it look less scripted".

That being said, I soooooo~ fucking love it when I'm trying to push an armored offensive and all my repairers get picked off by Fire Warriors before I can pull them back. I know why it's happening (FWs are set to prioritize infantry over vehicles), but it's still annoying.

Found an interesting bug today when assaulting the IG stronghold as the Blood Ravens. I ordered a Rhino loaded with troops to get into the trench then back out to trigger the Hellstorm cannon activation cutscene without casualties. Except the cutscene triggered while the Rhino was still turning around and when the cutscene finished, both the Rhino and the troops in it were gone.

But that's not the bug part. The bug part is that although the three squads in the Rhino were properly removed from my population, the attached Apothecaries were not removed from the hardcap, so from that point on, I could only have 1 Apothecary at a time for the entire rest of the mission before the button greyed out claiming that I already have 4. Saving and reloading did not fix this either.

I'm surprised someone is still playing dark crusade,have you tried Soul Storm,dawn of war 2,3 ect?

I have Soulstorm bought, but never played it. And probably won't without the Bugfix mod (which I'm also using for DC).

2, I bought and played before but never completed.

Soul Storm was hit and miss, if only for METAL BAWKSES.

Fun ish campaign but was messy.

2 Was great fun, loved it to pieces. Played Co-op with it a fair bit too. Never tried 3 and heard it basically turned into DOTA, or some really basic version of the game.

What's putting me off from Soulstorm, based on what I heard, are:

• Massive number of bugs and optimization problems.
• Territories are not persistent, so I have to start over each defensive battle from scratch, which is a waste of time I'd rather avoid.
• There's a way to buy pre-placed structures for defensive battles, but due to a bug they only last for one battle and must be re-bought every time.

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 28th 2020 at 6:32:08 PM

Have they patched anything at all after release?

Edited by theLibrarian on Mar 28th 2020 at 12:34:25 PM

Yup,I remember they fixed a lot of issues with much needed hotfix

Okay good, I was wondering because I'd played Soulstorm a few years ago and thought it was perfectly fine.

Okay, game managed to surprise me again. Attacking the Ork stronghold, I was running around with Thule dropping orbital bombardment on the banners when my base got attacked by THREE Looted Tanks at once. Destroyed half my static defenses before I even noticed them. Joke was on them, though, because I took out one with Davian, another with Mikelus and his Assault Terminator posse teleporting right on top of the fucker and a third with a Macross Missile Massacre from a First Company Veteran, one Tactical Marine squad, one Whirlwind and the honor guard Hellfire Dreadnought. Aside from one Land Speeder and one Servitor, I took no casualties whatsoever.

Guys, I know this might be a bit unnecessary, but are you all amenable to moving all Blood Ravens profiles from the DoW Character page to the Chapter's own?

Maybe, but then we'd need a link and notification on the old page.

So I was playing Dark Crusade last night, and the Necrons actually overrun the Tau entirely, including their Stronghold. I've never seen the AI actually take a Stronghold before.

Not that I'm complaining, that Stronghold is one of the more annoying ones to handle, and I'm about to knock the Necrons out of the game anyway.

I remember when I played a game once the Orks actually took the Tau out.

First time I tried the missions the Necrons ended up dominating the entire board