The RTSC Guide to Dawn of War
Part 1: Resourcing
One of Dawn of War's best attributes is its blend of front line tactics
and resourcing. It uses Capture the Flag to generate
cash for your war machine. Infantry squads must set aside their weapons
to capture Strategic Points (known as capping)
or steal opponent's (known as decapping). Whilst
capping, the squad is completely at the mercy of your enemies. Once secured,
you fortify points to increase your Requisition Resource,
the main fuel used for building, reinforcing and well, everything. Strategic
Points expand your starting base's building area, and form the nucleus for
new expansions and outposts.
Your income is measured at the rate in which you gather a resource
over a ten second period. Requisition income is
shown in blue. Each and every flag you capture
and hold earns you +6 Req, or 6 Requisition Resource
points every 10 seconds. Your Requisition income
can never exceed +400, even though you can still
capture more points and improve them.
You build special structures known as Listening Posts
(or LP) on capped points. These fortifications
make it harder for your opponent to take them back and when you upgrade
them, and when upgraded they can help repel attacks alongside your regular
forces. Building an LP double your income on
that point, (increasing it by an additional +6 Req,
- before point decay sets in) plus you win 50%
of its building cost back when its finished. Only an idiot forgets to
build their LP's. There are two upgrades for Listening Posts (known on
DoW forums as LP2 and LP3
respectively) that each buff the point's health, firepower, and income.
Power, shown in green,
is your secondary resource. It funds techs, upgrades, and bigger and more
powerful units. Unlike Requisition, Power is generated by standalone Plasma
Generators, which can be built anywhere within your base. Like
an LP, you score 50% of its build cost back (and
a small power bonus) when you complete one. You can have up to 6
Generators for every heacdquarters you build, but your Power
income can never exceed +350. While its
fairly easy to belt out a lot of Requisition, Power will slow you down.
Choosing to tech up, or spend on a basic force is one of the big decisions
you have to make in the early game. You can run your early game without
Power, but by the mid game you must have it to stay viable and
to support vehicles. Generators are the Achilles Heel of your tech tree;
they're very easy to take out. If you want to knobble another player's
teching ability, and you feel your forces aren't that strong, take out
their Power production. Like Listening Posts, cost of a Power Generator
varies from army to army.
In most games, the rate of requisition decays over
time. I'm not sure by how much or when (or why!), but in long games,
you will notice income slowly deteriorating unless you're capturing fresh
points off your opponent.
The Orks, unlike the other races, get a third
resource: Ork Resource, but you can read that
up in the Orks page.
The Necrons, unlike the other races, don't use
any Requisition, nor Listening Posts. They capture
Points and fortify them with Obelisks to increase
the slow rate at which they build and reinforce, and to increase their Squad
and Vehicle Caps. More on that when the Necron
pages are done.
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Requisition Resourcing
Points come in three flavours, which all tend to do the same things,
look similar and tend to confuse beginners because they all earn the
same amount of req. |
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Strategic
Point |
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Your basic point is known as a Strategic Point.
Its a small, circular plate mounted in a small cross. X marks the
spot. Quite simply, its an easily captured (and easily lost) point
used almost exclusively for Requisition production and little else.
When you build a Listening Post and upgrade it to an LP2
you can start using it as a new expansion point and a defensive position
to dance around or retreat to. They are the fastest points to capture
- and lose.
If you manage to capture over 66% of them
and hold them for more than 7 minutes, you
score a Control Area Victory. They appear
as purple dots on the minimap. In many 1v1
games, players will capture all Strategic Points first, then work
their way through Relics and Critical Locations. |
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Relic |
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The next type is the golden, square shaped Relic.
These take more time to capture, but are essentially the same as a
Strategic Point except for one important respect: holding
a Relic unlocks your special units at the end of your build.
You can build Listening Posts on them just
like a regular Strategic Point. Usually Relics are limited in number;
in many 1v1 games it probably won't matter if you own one or not.
But in major team games that frequently make it to the big end games,
not having a Relic can mean you or your team won't have access to
a Squiggoth, Baneblade, Land Raider,
Blood Thirster or Avatar.
There are no special victory conditions associated with Relics.
They appear as yellow dots on the minimap.
They are slower to capture than normal Strategic Points. |
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Critical
Location |
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The last type of point is the hexagonal Critical
Location. These are special points expressly designed to be
haggled over; if you can hold more than half of them you claim the
Take and Hold Victory. There is usually
an odd number of them on a map to ensure that everyone is getting
out of their hidey holes and into the thick of things. Even when Take
and Hold is disabled, they're still worthwhile capturing: like
any point, they each give you +6 Req, but
more importantly their field of view lights up a large radius of the
map. They take forever to cap, and a 15 seconds to decap.
If you manage to capture more than 50% of
them and hold them for more than 7 minutes,
you win a Take and Hold Victory. They appear
as orange dots on the minimap. You can't
build on them. |
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Listening
Posts |
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Listening Posts (LP's) (left) are the fortifications
you build on a Strategic Point or a Relic
in order to make it harder for your opponent to retake them. Adding
an LP increases your Requisition income by +6 Req
and lets you build around the point, establishing a new expansion
or simply a defensive position you can use in conjunction with your
units to push forward into the map. You don't need any power to build
a basic LP, and best of all, you get half
the cost of building it back when you finish it! Only a complete mug
forgets to build LP's on their points.
Upgrading a Listening Post to an LP2
(right) increases its hit points, adds another +6
Req to your income (to +18), and arms
it with an anti-infantry weapon. It costs you 100/75,
so timing the upgrade is very important. LP2's don't have overwhelming
firepower by any means, but they will seriously harm early capping
units and help tip the balance in any early engagements. In other
words, an LP2 all by itself is probably doomed: you must use
your regular forces with it in order to get any value out of its defensive
capabilities.
Upgrading an LP2 to an LP3
(left) costs an arm and a leg, and you only get a further +6
Req to your income, (to +24). As you
might expect, there's also an increase in health points and firepower,
although with Orks and Eldar the weapon changes role to become a specialised
anti-vehicle defence with a low rate of fire. You only upgrade to
LP3's if you have a surplus of resources - they're expensive to reach,
costing approximately 250/150
(its different for every side) and take a while to recoup their costs. |
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Requisition
upgrades |
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There two upgrades available in your Listening Posts that globally
improve your Requisition income. At Tier
2, Escalate Engagement Research improves
Req production by a modest 15%; and at Tier
3 Full Scale War Research increases it again
by 20%. |
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Power Generation |
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Power
Generator |
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Quite simply, you can build one of these anywhere within your base
and they generate Power Resource for you.
The cost of a Power Generator varies from
army to army, but all of them generate about +10
Power. Generators are extremely brittle, and susceptible to
hit and run raids. Knocking out Plasma is a great way to crimp an
opponent's vehicle or upper tier unit production. Often, if you have
a force in an enemy base that's faltering or weak, their most effective
tactic is to destroy as much power as possible.
You are limited to 6 Power Generators
per Headquarters. If you want to build more, you'll need to construct
another HQ. |
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Slag
Deposit |
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Occasionally some maps will have a Slag Deposit
(left), a neat little box fused into the ground that you can build
a Large Plasma Generator (right) on. These
large structures generate +40 Power for you,
but they are very brittle and most maps have very few Slag Deposits
on them. In many respects, they're a little bit like the Geothermal
in Total Annihilation
or a Vespene Gas deposit in StarCraft.
You can build as many Large Plasma Generators as you like, provided
you can find the Slag Deposits for them.
Building a single Large Power Generator
is more cost effective than building four small Power
Generators. Like any Strategic Point, a Large Plasma Generator
produces its own Zone of Control which can let you fortify it with
turrets or act as a new expansion. |
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Power
upgrades |
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There are also two upgrades available in your Plasma Generators that
globally improve your Power income. At Tier
2, Strengthen Power Grid Research improves
Req production by 33%; and at Tier 3 Plasma
Battery Storage Research increases it again by 20%. |
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