I’ve been playing quite a lot of the Beta of Dawn of War II, but there are a lot of people struggling with the bare basics of the game. This game is not Dawn of War. It’s just an entirely new game. To help everybody out, here are some tips to be more successful in DoW2.

Tip 1: Keep your units alive

Running away would be a good idea

The most vital part of DoW2 is to keep your units alive. All squads are small and cost a lot, so you better make sure they’re worth it. If your squad even survives with only one member alive, it’s still cheaper to reinforce it back to full health than to buy a new one. Luckily, Dawn of War 2 has a way to keep your dying squads alive, and use it well! If you press the ‘Fall back’ command (default on X), your squad will automatically run back to base (or the nearest resupply point). While falling back, you cannot control your units but they take less damage, cannot be suppressed by enemy fire and run faster. Very useful!
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THQ should feel bad. Really bad. They had their act together with Dark Crusade– but Soulstorm just started bad. This coming from a huge fan of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000– I even made excuses for why Shadow of the Horned Rat is a really good game, and anyone familiar with that intolerable dog turd of a game should know that basically seals my fan boy status.

I’ll preface (can you be a paragraph in and still count it as a preface?) this by saying I am not an RTS guru. Hell, I’m not even much of a fan. I played Starcraft religiously in 1998 along with half the world, but I don’t think that counts. Soulstorm, though not technically an expansion as it is a stand alone game, when combined with the other parts of the Dawn of War franchise do not, as I first suspected, form the giant fighting robot Warhammeron. Instead, it forms an ungainly abomination with eight playable races.

Anyone familiar with the fine tuning of Starcraft should see where I’m going with this.
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Companies like Relic, Stardock and Gas Powered Games are all massive contributors to making the RTS genre sexy again. The new generation of give-it-to-me-now gamers had all but left it to die. Of course, it remains a staple in tournament play, but for the genre to thrive, it needed a much deserved series of changes.

Supreme Commander is the balls to the wall spiritual sequel to Total Annihilation. Hundreds of units on screen combined with simplistically clever gameplay has deviated the least from the genre, while still managing to bring even the best of gaming PCs to their knees when the massive battles heat up. SupCom has brought the classic RTS formula into the future and with a sequel on the horizon, the future looks bright for the massive-scale RTS.

Company of Heroes is the sign of the times; Emergent tactical gameplay allows for slower, more skill based gameplay. Micromanagement is less of a chore and is a lot more rewarding when it works in your favour. Squads will seek cover, and tanks will often reverse rather than turn all the way around and expose their weak easily-penetrated rear armour. Small but clever additions like these are what truly makes Company of Heroes such an enthralling and replayable experience. Graphically, the individual attention to detail is immediately obvious. Lowering the camera to the ground allows you to truly see the effort that has been put into realizing the characters.  Online multiplayer is essentially flawless with games beginning in minutes, and the clever automatch system imported from the Dawn of War series, Company of Heroes has crafted a nice niche in the genre which will last until the sequel is released.

World in Conflict is is an action game trapped in the body of an RTS, creating consistent warfare and allowing tactics to be key in securing a victory. As a result, the story mode feels a lot more like story. Key characters are developed, and during loading the situation is well narrated by Alec Baldwin in a concise manner, preventing boredom but setting the scene. The multiplayer is a very different animal indeed from your typical RTS fare, mainly being that it’s server based, and players can drop in and out at any time. Each player has a role to play with a choice of Armour, Air, Infantry and Support. Co-operation is essential to victory and winning itself is extremely satisfying when pulled off well. Well, that and there’s nukes.