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Dawn of War: Dark Crusade pages!

Warhammer 40,000 is wild space opera, but it feels more like Tolkien in space with a gothic horror feel. References include pop culture, Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, the Alien films, Anime (Japanese animation and manga [i.e. comics]) and classic science fiction, bolstered with strong historical references. Set in the 41st Century, the entire galaxy has been waging total war on itself for tens of thousands of years. There's a huge library of game lore (known as fluff to Warhammer fans) accumulated over the years, and a bewildering menagerie of military figures, monstrous creatures, arcane Gods, demons, strange aliens and killer robots fighting for survival. All the armies are essentially your classic fantasy races transplanted into the future: heroic space knights, the Space Marines, the armies of Man called the Imperial Guard, the turncoat Chaos in league with the devils, brutish hordes of Space Orks, and the refined but fading Elvish Eldar. This is a bleak future, with little or no hope. The forces of Order and Chaos have replaced Good and Evil. "Order" is nothing more than a corrupt totalitarian theocracy, and "Chaos" is wanton and self destructive nihilism.

The original Dawn of War in one of its quieter moments. I'm serious.

Dawn of War itself is a translation of the original tabletop rules (or TT). Its a simplified version of Warhammer 40,000, opened up to mainstream players, and adapted to fit a fast moving, real time engine. Relic apparently had free reign to interpret and adapt the game as they saw fit. They seem to have largely succeeded: Dawn of War brings W40K battles startlingly to life. All the units have a surprising amount of charisma and appeal (in the animator's sense of the word). Relic's enthusiasm for the subject was almost palpable during its release - a rare thing, indeed, these days - and it shows. There's a real sense of vigour with this one.

While DoW is ostensibly a WarCraft clone when you look at its structure as a game and its internal logic, there are three things that make it stand head and shoulders above its rivals and push the genre forward. The first big thing you notice is the use of the Capture the Flag game to build your economy. Your front line troops must set aside their weapons occasionally to capture Strategic Points around the map to generate Requisition Resource, your primary building resource. The more flags you control, the more Req you get to play with. Literally, map control is synonymous with a major economy. Its a welcome change.

Up close and personal: you really do see the whites of their eyes. Dawn of War finally gets us inside the big fights. Units are amazingly detailed, charismatic and fully animated. You can freeze the action, move around just about anywhere and save out game recordings in all their glory. Incidentally, eye colour is customisable in the game's Army Painter menu.

And thirdly, this title sports some of the most startlingly detailed and richly animated RTS units in any game. It has an amazing sense of solidity, although the game engine cuts corners everywhere to be able to draw all those characters and effects in action. Its a selling point in its own right, and presentation is just as important - and affects gameplay - as much as your tactics on the field. While you can't pause in a network game and you'll almost certainly spend most of your time in the default view, you do have the luxury of wallowing in the action replays of game recordings. Like Relic's previous effort, Homeworld 2, the camera can move around most angles and give you some amazing close ups. You can follow a single unit fighting its way through a big scrum, or freeze the action and see an instant Warhammer diorama from all angles. Dawn of War simulates the intensity of the Warhammer 40,000 battlefield like no other.

Its the multiplayer Skirmishes and the networked gaming that you're really buying this thing for. Be warned: it requires some of the most aggressive play for an RTS out there; many seasoned RTS veterans have crashed and burned trying to play it. Relic designed it to be easy to pick up, but hard to master - and they've succeeded. Its well worth the time and effort to invest your time in, but you really do need a good circle of trustworthy players to really get the most out of it. Dawn of War is an excellent translation from what I imagined the tabletop game to be. And finally - a title that gives those stupid Orks what they've desperately needed: a vintage 2000AD comic book flavour. Grud on a greenie! Its all good.

	Notes: Dark Crusade
	Without the first two games, you can only play the Necrons and Tau. You can still play against the other five races in the single player campaign or in Skirmishes against AI's or other people Online. Keen beginners can pick up the entire series at once with the Dawn of War Anthology package. If you already bought Dark Crusade and want to catch up with the first two packages, you should be able to find them bundled together. If you have the original game installed, then the first four races unlock. If Winter Assault is installed, the Imperial Guard also unlock. These requirements are purely for copy protection purposes, since all seven races appear within the DC package. Dark Crusade will ask for those game's disk registration numbers if you have them, and also double checks to see if the main executables (i.e. the actual program files you run) for the old games are present. If you have no intention of playing the first two games anymore, then there's no point in cluttering up your hard drive with what effectively amounts to a 5Gb CD key. Follow this excellent tutorial to on how to remove them and still access all the goodies in DC.

	Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War OVERVIEW
	Version & Install		DC 1.2. Simply install Dark Crusade, then install the two patches for the game. The original Dawn of War (DoW) presented gamers with four distinct races: the Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar and the Orks. It covered versions 1.0 to 1.3. The first expansion, Winter Assault (WA), updated the game to version 1.4, rearranging it considerably. It added the Imperial Guard and gave the first four races an extra unit each. DoW and WA were two concurrent packages that updated in parallel progressively to version 1.51. Dark Crusade (DC) is the second expansion. It installs independently of the first two, resetting back to version 1.0. It adds two new races: the Necrons and the Tau, rearranges the rules a bit more, and adds an extra unit or two to the existing five races.
	Demo		Yes! The 319(!) Mb demo from THQ or from Relic itself. Also: DoWFiles link to DoW and WA demos.
	FAQ's		Relic Entertainment's Dawn of War FAQ THQ's version of the same RelicNews's excellent Technical Assistance Forums. DoW uses UDP port 6112 in network games. Check your port forwarding via RelicNews technical thread with test applet. The test applet can also be found at dow.lerp.com. Game Workshop's downloadable Warhammer FAQ's. Excellent descriptions of Dawn of War and Warhammer 40,000 from the Wikipedia, the Open Source Encyclopedia of the Internet. This is an good start for any paranoid teachers, rattled parents or other normal human beings.
	Networks		Up to 8 human (or AI's) on LAN TCP/IP, Direct TCP/IP or via Gamespy's online gaming service. If you go to www.gamespyid.com and log in then you can edit your profile there as well as your nickname. DoW multiplayer games use very little network bandwidth - 56K modems can play with full broadband connections. Lag in DoW is usually caused by computers with their graphic settings set too high. The game syncs to every frame, so if someone's machine renders at only 10fps, then everyone will slow down to match it - regardless of how powerful their T1 connections might be.
	Maps		Maps can't be uploaded in a game lobby. You'll need to download them separately and then rejoin. You can play foreign language versions of the standard maps, even though they might appear black in the game lobby screen. All maps are faux-3D environments, making use of cover (in craters or under trees) or exposed "anti-cover" in open shallow water.
	Armies		Space Marines: powerful starting race for the beginners. The Space Marines are like the Special Forces of the Human Imperium; a flexible, hard hitting army of all rounders, enjoying many perks and overlapping advantages. Chaos: Space Marines gone bad, working in league with the Gods of Chaos and Demons from the mysterious Warp. Chaos is a hard hitting assault force with a soft underbelly. Short on vehicles, long on demons. Orks: soccer hooligans from outer space. The Green Horde is a melee orientated swarm of cheap cannon fodder and scrap yard salvage. Their economy takes some getting used to, but they can deliver a serious whumpin' to their enemies. Eldar: ancient and failing alien empire with some serious tricks and psycho-powers up its sleeve. Elves in space, basically. Light, fast infantry - difficult to master. Imperial Guard: the regular footpads of the Human Imperium. They are expendable light infantry, and rely on tanks and fortifications to obliterate their enemies with. Tau Empire: a young, Anime flavoured coalition of high tech shooters and vehicles, and feral close combat troops. The Tau have a primitive companion race called the Kroot, who deal with all their close combat work, and the Vespids, an insectile race of flying assault troops. Necrons: a millions of years old race of cadaverous robots driven by lost souls within them. They use no Requisition, start off very slowly and then building up into an implacable juggernaut.
	Units		Ground units only. Vehicles play a support role only, generally trumping infantry, and have their own Vehicle Cap.
	Resources		Requisition Resource is the primary fuel of your economy, obtained by capturing and fortifying strategic points around the map. Power is the secondary resource used to gain heavier weapons, vehicles, upgrades and is generated by Plasma Generators. Ork Resource is a unique resource that only affects the Space Orks. Necrons have a time and Power based economy, with no Requisiton.
	Research		Base building follows the usual conventions of the WarCraft clone's build tree, but with many variations: each side has the equivalent of a Headquarters, Barracks, Research Buildings, Vehicle plants, lone workers, etc. DoW build trees work roughly in Tiers, where higher tier units and builds will trump lower ones, even if they wield superior numbers. Units can become obsolete in DoW, unlike many other RTS games. More details.

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