Where is the Strategy in this RPG game?

[cyborgZero]

I have played all night in order to get a feeling for this game, but compared to company of hero's, this game lacks some serious strategy.

Too much RPG, and all the units seem to deal some sort of damage, we don't how much, many questions due to the lack of unit info.

All I found myself doing is attack attack attack, while never working on flanking or specific tactic, and I won all my games.

Another point, you can tech extremely fast, killing the usefulness of any Tier. Use weak Tier 1 units to just keep capping with your hero, then tech and take over the map.

:crash:

[SilentAlfa]

Were you playing MP against people or against computers?

[kommodore]

I just ran around the map with a Space Marine blob and Apothecary group heal power, never used cover once against people. Teching is pretty non-existent, and combat vehicles arent worth it (all 2 of them). And the powers take so long to get you will already be at pop cap and have money to throw away at teching anyways.

[Mazinkaiser]

I will admit out of all the games I've played I've never used cover... I don't know how. :Skull:

The one thing I saw was my Predator ran over some walls and smashed em to bits. Apparently you can destroy cover, but how you do it is beyond me. :(

Will need to beta test this game some more. ;)

[DeafMute]

There isnt strats assuch.

Just build an HWT (heavy weapon team)-mainly anti infantry.
Set up in a vital spot and watch a squad or 2 of the enemies infantry get gibbed.

Whoever sets up first. wins.

Whoever loses a squad or units first. most likly loses. since getting a counter out to said HWt. is nigh impossible due to cost and req speed.

Hoping this day 0 patch solves these glaring issues.
but oh wait. this is how its supposed to be.

DoW2 --> The Toddlers CoH

[SteinerNein]

DeafMute, so would it be fair then to say CoH -> Toddlers of SC which is an infinitely better game and much more older? Regardless, let's leave the comparisons out for now until we're through the beta and just work on trying to improve the game since some of us invested in that god forsaken expansion called Soul Storm.

CyborgZero - wait a few days and continue testing, once you get a good number of games and try the various solutions then come back and see if the scenario still remains the same. While you may not need to flank in many of your games I wonder how many of those games are played by extremely skilled players. In other words, you have no idea what you're testing and how you're going about it yet you're making conclusions already? Even you admit that we don't have enough info , so why not ask for more and keep testing instead of knee-jerking around?

As for strategy, I'll tell you this: CoH is pretty damn shallow, it's however tactically rich and same goes for DoW2. If you want strategy, wait for Starcraft 2 or go play 1ccup. =/

[DeafMute]

Next person to mention SC or SC2 will be shot on sight.~~

I understand its extremly early times for this beta.
And I truly hope to god that this Day 0 patch will fix yet more issues to come.

Afterall. You want the game to be enjoyed, right?
thus people will buy it.

Right now. Its way too shallow.

And just to close this CoH--->SC thing.
~
Huge difference between 'microing' hordes of terran marines against hordes of zerg hydralisks, back and forth bullshit.

CoH, obviously offers alot more then SC and hell. even SC2.

SC2 bullshit ends from this post.

[FooF]

I'm not finding strategy hard to find. Counters are everywhere. Suppression is somewhat tough to get around at the moment but it's nothing that anything that can jump terrain can't handle.

Teching is a little fast, though. Walkers can show up in the first 5 minutes if teammates can float a player and those are impossible to wipe with T1 units.

And cover: my initial Scout squad can outshoot an enemy Techmarine in green cover. Had a one-on-one against an AI earlier and I was shocked.

[SteinerNein]

ESRFoof ,

Shotguns are a hilarious response to anything by the way. Especially entire squads.

Right now I am having a little difficulty in comprehending the mechanisms behind the plasma devastator squad - I am not sure of its hit ratio =/

[Illiandri2]

I found that a single unit of assault marines is the worst nightmare of heavy teams. An enemy had placed 3 shuriken platforms that minced my tac squad but I immediatelly pulled out my A.M. and pawned 2 of the platforms while my scouts creamed the other one. Inf + Jump > heavy emplacements.

[Promythyus]

Teching? WTF? You cap a power node, wait abit and you're ready for "T2". You wait a little while longer and you're in "T3". DoW2 teching at it's most complex.

Strategy wise, I don't find it lacking immensely. Granted it's not a tactically deep, but it's not tactically shallow either.

[SteinerNein]

You know, with all this whining about 'depth' this 'strategy' that, no one has yet really defined each. We're all operating on different definitions and the objective way of addressing it is fairly unpleasant (hint: it requires calculations) .

However, let me note this: teching in general has always been a time/resource issue. They could just increase the cost and tech time and then it'll be as if you had never departed from DoW1 - now whether or not that is a good thing is the real question.. and guess what? We're here to test that out!!111

[FooF]

Steiner, that was without Shotguns. :p

[SteinerNein]

I know , EsrFoof. I was merely saying increase hilarity by upgrading shot guns and then you can take down commanders without cover though granted you'll be doing a lot of dancing.

And then infiltrate with said shot guns? Pop out and knock people down for even more hilarity ... it makes escaping a tad difficult.

[Noble]

The first person to set up does not automatically win. Like in CoH heavy weapons are stationary and have a limited firing arch. This means you have several options open to you for dealing with such a unit.

1) You can simply try to out shoot it, which will probably be difficult. Unless you are already in heavy cover and vastly outnumber the heavy bolter (or whatever heavy weapon) you will probably get cut down.

2) You can flank it. I found myself doing this quite a bit as eldar the other night. Their fleet of foot can make for some nasty flanking maneuvers with guardians.

3) You can jump on it. I was playing exclusively as the spider exarch, and I found it pretty easy to simply jump behind a gun emplacement and at the very least get them to pack their gun up and try to re-deploy. This in turn gave me the opportunity to move my other less durable troops into the fight.

4) Grenades. At least with the eldar, grenades fucking rape stationary units. I killed quite a few dev squads with my guardian plasma grenades the other night.

Further, all of these strategies require you to know the gun emplacement is there. This means you've got to have scouting units. I found my infiltrating rangers to be an invaluable asset last night. I knew exactly what was coming at me well ahead of time.

Regarding the usefulness of cover, this may be because I was playing as the puny Eldar all night, but I found that my units got ripped to shreds if they weren't in cover. All of my units were very fragile and they just didn't survive long on the field without some kind of cover.

[Thoragoros]

I have to say I agree with OP and some of the other people here. The teching method is a little silly, the scale of the battles simply too small give what we've come to expect not only from DoW and CoH but other prominent strategy games.

The units themselves are much too small, removing any true enjoyment of the graphics, and there quite simply isn't enough destruction, there just are enough explosions, buildings coming down, and craters. I know, I know, dreadnaughts can walk through the little knee-high walls, but come on guys, that's not where talking about here.

Sorry, I'm being honest, I was disappointed on many, many levels with this game.

[cyborgZero]

^ This

Disappointing, I thought I was going to be blown away by carnage and strategy. They made the game so fast (tech wise), that many units do not get time to shine. Sometimes i totally skip Tier 2.

All the Hero upgrades, it would be nice to get detailed information about the weapons, rather than two melee weapons that indicate increase in melee, ok, but by how much? The hero leveled up, what does he gain other than Hp increase?

Almost all the units have a break suppression power, almost that is seems useless to even use suppression weapons.

[SteinerNein]

They can just increase the cost in teching be it time or resources or both. So , this is one that can be addressed =p

Same goes for surpression.

[archaon376]

Cover is occasionally used on my side, however I've not yet once used any of those doctrine abilities.

I'm still having a great time with DoW2, though I admit that it's heavily lacking in unit info and such.

edit:
I think the actual teching upgrade goes a little too fast, but I find that getting to the point where I decide to up the tech level doesn't come as soon as people are getting at. Though I'm an SM player, so usually I focus on getting out a couple squads first (and they're expensive).

[FooF]

I would be interested to see what the actual stats on the upgrades were. Right now the tooltips do little to tell you how much an improvement the upgrade really is (or over another upgrade).

As for teching, I think that cost is fine, it just needs to be slowed down as it pertains to the research time of the upgrade. Right now it takes something like 30 seconds.

[D-coy]

This game already seems to be dead. They won't change much stuff, even if it's obvious that that'd mandantory.

Yes, I'm moody and am playing the negative and OTT, since I couldn't get a decent game going on. And no one from my friendlist was 'free'. :p (altough you guys probably don't care about this). :p

[Pocktio]

Getting to tier 3 may be fast but can you honestly say you will be buying tier 3 units till quite late on? No, you can't. You can spend the res on getting up there but there's little point if you have no res left to spend on the unlocked units. Plus teching like that is quicker than DoW1, it's something thats changed and I think for the better. Tech rushes were the most annoying thing in DoW now they're pretty impossible due to the uber units being so expensive, hard counters and map control.

[Koozer]

My god people are pessimistic. This sub-forum depresses me.

Units too small? Zoom in.
Too RPG? Have you ever heard of Warcraft III? It's nowhere near as RPG-like as that. I just see abilities being researched on each unit instead of at the research building.
Not enough terrain destruction? Are you even using the explosive weapons or vehicles?

It also seems to me that there are more soft counters in DoW2; everything can stand a chance against anything else. Well, more so than in CoH and DoW.

[Ap0k]

If you think 18 hours since beta release is enough time to familiarise yourself intimately with a new game, and is also enough time for a metagame to develop, then I'd call that a bit niaive.

I'm not attempting to counter the opinions on the strategy aspect, since I haven't played a game yet, but until we know what the advantages and disadvantages of each unit are, how the mechanics interact with eachother, how races interact with eachother, and a whole host of variables, it's pretty obvious that the game is going to be a case of 'ok, I'll just toss this unit over here I guess, and that one can go there'.

Assuming there is enough depth to the game for a metagame to develop, there'll be all the strategy in the world to choose from when you realise you're getting your ass handed to you consistently by someone who's figured out a method of playing his chosen army against your chosen army.

[steve-1945]

But apok. Anyone famiilier with tabletop would know what the units do so that really doesnt hold up.

"braces for inevitable beat down"

[LTSearchEngine]

The first to set up = win thing is bull. The suppressing weapon doesn't do heavy damage - the supporting troops do. I think they need to be toned down somewhat.

Here's my example:

Infantry get suppressed by a heavy bolter, and start to get chewed up at a steady but slow rate. Fair. They can crawl out and take some damage or flee and take less. If there is a scout or tac squad standing in range - even max range - they will shoot and do serious damage to the suppressed infantry. This is the case where the suppressed infantry will die fast.

What needs to happen is that infantry shooting at suppressed infantry need to have their accuracy reduced significantly at long and medium range, and have it bumped up at short range. This promotes suppress and flank tactics, and prevents this problem -- which is a real problem.

To defeat suppression as marines, use assault marines. As nids, ripper swarms. As the other races, I don't know yet.

[Deionarra]

Cover makes a big difference. It sounds like most of the complaints here are coming from two groups of people.

- Those who are still learning the game and just throwing their units against other people still learning the game.
- Those who understand how to play the game but are just playing people who don't understand and so aren't having to do anything more than mass units and attack move to win.

It's also not that hard to counter higher tier units with lower tier ones and new players who all try to fast tech are the easiest to beat.

[Ap0k]

But apok. Anyone famiilier with tabletop would know what the units do so that really doesnt hold up.
Being familiar with the tabletop game doesn't mean a damn in a game that trickles units onto the field over time, and (possibly) requires you to prioritize resource acquisition (and in what order) over unit deployment over harassment.

I mean, sure, it's pretty obvious to anyone who's played tabletop that if you are using space marines and want to kill a tank, that you probably need a lascannon or missile launcher. The strategy lies in whether you can get to your lascannon or missile launcher before your opponent gets to his tank, or whether he's even going for tanks, or whether you can hold that tank off with something else until you catch up in the tech race, or whether it's even possible to ignore his vehicles and instead concentrate on killing his infantry and removing his map control.

Like I said, I have no idea how deep the game is yet, but it's far too soon for a metagame to be fully developed, and teching/map strategies will only trickle into play over the next while. When those strategies do come into play, the game will suddenly become more strategic, since you're going to have to know how to counter them, or break them, or use them effectively.

A bunch of dudes shooting a bunch of dudes is all well and good until some guy realises he can take half as much of a different bunch of dudes and obliterate you 8 minutes into the game if you walk straight into his plans.

[Smikis]

i disliked game for first few games.. well im sure most of us hates new game for first hour or two.. , i after a while i found race i enjoy to play.. and i can play, after few more games.. i found how to overcome xx situation

teching exist.. can be fast.. teching doesnt exist.. and can be slow.. it all depends on game.. sometimes i just mass t1 units overpowering enemy, and control 80% of the map, sometimes ill go fast t3, while having some luck with my units.. and outplaying my oponents... it all depends on map.. and on 1v1, oponent..

you can get to t3 soon, yes. how soon can you buy those t3 units for 600/100.. and another 150/100 upgrades.. right

[sandzibar]

Teching seems too fast and easy compared to CoH.

Theyve taken away the strategy of COH with the removal of the connected cap sectors.. this is just a benny hill-esqe romp around the map seeing who can cap as many points the fastest. You cant reduce income massively by taking key points.

Its very pretty though. Ill give it that.

[steve-1945]

You know apok I would discuss thsi more but your avatar scares me.

Theyve taken away the strategy of COH with the removal of the connected cap sectors.. this is just a benny hill-esqe romp around the map seeing who can cap as many points the fastest. You cant reduce income massively by taking key points.

^THIS I frankly hate this more then no basebuild, retarded popcap restrictions, and the super small maps. There is no battleing in this game. Its just cap point, cap point, cap point. If you dont do it you run out of resources if you go to attack his base he attacks yours.

[Ryouichi]

I personally find myself teching only to buff my FC. I usually win my games with my FC and 2 ASMs, and maybe a Scout squad if it managed to survive till endgame. That's it. I don't use cover, I jump into the fray on jetpacks and wreak havoc with damage boosting abilities and then rinse and repeat. :S. As for vehicles, I upgrade melta nades and give my FC the power claw and interchange with the hammer when necessary. 1 Commander and 2 tier 1 units to the end.

[Enosh]

you people do realise that most games need some weeks to develop some form of metagame right? The first week players are just fucking around trying every posible and imposible thing, after that some valuble tactics start to surface, good players start to stand out from the rest... it's basicly like this in every game I don't see a reason why DoW2 should be difrent

that's why also all balance sugestions untill somewhere next week are more or less useless since units aren't used to their full potential.

[LordZon]

Lets see how well that works in a few more days of beta. If you are trying to play Starcraft 2 you'll just have to wait until it comes out.

For now Down of War II is here and it is great. It's a combination of CoH and DoW. As Apok said, some get it some don't.

[Ryouichi]

On a balance note:

Is it just me or do ASM kick freaking ass? Maybe way too much ass... One game I got over 40 tyranid kills with one ASM squad in a battle (Though that may be attributed to the fact that there were two other ASM squads soaking up damage.).

And Terminators are good and all, but are absolutely no match for Assault Terminators because the ATerms are much faster than normal Terminators and can force enemies strong in range combat into melee combat, and even against enemy melee specialists... Well, these guys are Terminators, after all.

[Busby]

I see three problems with this subfourm:

People see the beta as an early demo.
People who love to hate DoW II have the beta.
People are making judgments on a game when they haven't even played it for more then a day, against people who haven't played it more then a day.

I don't have the beta, and chances are I will never get the beta. Its not an early demo, and I don't feel like testing something against Mr. Whine and the Crying crew.

[TimW]

It is an early demo. The game has gone gold. This is what is being burned onto disks right now.

[Inst]

War 3 has strategy; you can tech to powerful Tier 2 casters, powerful T3 heavy melee / air units, or you can tower rush or expand.

The entire RPG element is also an element of strategy; you work on killing NPC forces in order to level up your hero, so you can use abusive hero skills to WTFPWN the other guys' army. If you opt to tech or expand instead of "creeping", you can try to stop your opponent from creeping by having a fast hero run around his creeping forces and use long-range attack spells to killsteal.

[Gorb]

I should point out anyone who thinks combat vehicles are useless (kommodore, I'm looking at you), is an idiot.

That is all.

[Noble]

It is absolutely not a demo. They are collecting balance data and technical data for future patches. It is a beta. By every definition of the word it is a beta. It is an incomplete version of the game designed specifically to test the software on a wider range of systems and to test the balance on a wider range of players. Period.

Whether or not they made a mistake going gold so early is another matter entirely.

[Busby]

TimW: While it may be true that what is in the beta is going to be what the "gold" copy gets, there is going to be a launch day patch that puts in any changes. So no, its not an early demo. Unless you find a way to play multiplayer without connecting to the Internet or having a unpatched version.

[TimW]

Realistically, there's only so many changes that can be made between now and the game hitting the shelves. If someone makes a complain like "I don't like the lack of base building" or "the unit selection is too small" (complaints I don't share) or anything else fundemental to the very structure of the game, then it is not valid to counter those criticisms by saying "it's just a beta" as if new units or base building are going to be in the day zero patch.

Patching a very unwieldly process for developers, there's all kinds of beaucratic hoops for them to jump through. The time available for implementing changes based on feedback from the beta is going to be extremely limited. Thus, aside from bug fixes and balance tweeks, what we have now is what we'll be playing the release version.

[Busby]

People who are demanding sweeping gameplay changes fall under the second category. Its not like Relic put out the beta and we found out today that base building is minimalistic. However a lot can change in terms of feel just by modifying suppression values, espacilly if CoH is to go by. Oh StuG and Sherman duals, how I miss thee.

[Boomstar]

Teching is too fast on team games, and difficult to justify in one vs one.

One vs one is not much fun at all, you lose the first engagement even by the smallest margin and usually you are done for. If you have the breathing room to reach tier 2 it usually means you have won anyway and you are just rubbing there nose in it. Units need more upkeep cost or comebacks aren't really going to be possible.

Retreating is usually futile when faced with melee as well.

[Ace651]

my issue is that a tac squad with a missile launcher will rape a deff dread... not just beat it, but rape it. seems some counters are too strong

[archaon376]

@Boomstar

Are you kidding me? I was beating the hell out of an Eldar player last night. I was at 500 VPs and brought him down to 75. I had been kicking his ass pretty much the whole game until my mouse suddenly decided to crap up, as well as a couple of stupid mistakes.

He won the game.

I find 1v1 more enjoyable than team matches, but that's just me. And I find that it IS possible to turn it around if you really learn to exploit your enemy's mistakes and weaknesses.

[PacketOverflow]

The tiers are cheap and fast because of the way prices have changed and the number of different things you can spend resources on. it gives you the option to tech and then wait to get good t2 units or tech and get upgrades for your standing army.

the system is different from the old spend-a-boat-load-of-resources-and-wait-a-while system

that said I think the tech prices could use a slight increase

[Taiko]

Edit: NVM, question was answered further on.

[Mokino]

I'm seeing too much dancing online. I've always found the concept as lame as bunny-hopping in CS.

[rb2610]

It's the first day of the beta, people are just getting used to the game, you can't expect everyone to be playing particularly tactically or strategically yet.

[4Servant]

Its hard to play strategically in a game wich doenst have the strategic background in the first place :P

Tactics might come, strategically this game as CoH has the depth of a creek.

[Zurv]

don't be silly. If you tell me your aren't sure if you like a game after playing for a few hours something is wrong.
Also, don't be silly if you think this isn't very very (the same) close as the final version.

This game clearly doesn't have what a lot of us liked in CoH/DoW. For me, at the most basic level, it doesn't feel epic.
I can deal with not building (tho i like it a lot. WiC)
I can deal with smaller battles/armies (wc3 would fix the "smaller" in my book)... this game comes up very short.

i'm just running around the map with my VERY small army.. win/lose.. *yawn*
I'll still get it.. but for the hopefully better single player game. I still play DoW/Coh and love them. I wished this was DoW with the CoH engine.. but it isn't.. and i can live with that.. but - after playing DoW2 beta for a few hours i noticed some new screen shots for Tales of Valor.. the still screens shots seem to have more life/depth than the game i was playing :P

[Bowkers]

I play with a tactical mind, more than can be said I did for DoW. I make sure my heavy bolter squads are in cover, with my Tarantula Turrets covering the vital points. Perfect for my defensive tactics.

[Pocktio]

With such a smaller scale, it's all tactical. There isn't much room for strategy. That's how the game is now.

[Laspistol]

Well to be honest there are those who do not think any RTS is really strategic
They say typical RTS is all about pre-set build orders, micro and "twitch factor"
They say real strategic thinking is in turn-based games... i.e. chess
There is truth to what they say

I do not disagree that DoW 2 feels all tactical run around
But it is not like DoW 1 was deeply strategic to begin with

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Teching is only fast if people sit back. I sweat every req point and every power point. If you tech too fast you will lose the VPs and you will lose your power generators. I keep seeing it happen. Our team brushes asides the enemy team's questionably weak initial forces to find they built 6 power generators built in the first 3 minutes.

I usually get one or two powercost units like Stikkbommaz or Banshees, plus one hero upgrade, plus one or two unit upgrades before I hit tier 2 because early map control pays huge dividends later on.

And seriously guys, everyone who says its a cap fest, its quite apparent you have been playing the AI. You are right. The AI is suicidally cap happy. Players arn't! Join up in MP and you will see.

***

There is dancing in DOW2, but it is not the silly eternal dancing of DOW1 or most RTSes. Only particularly slow units like Deff Dreads and Hive Tyrants are truely danceable. And most slow units have guns - effective guns, not slapped-on-for-decoration guns like most melee units in DOW1. For the most part, ranged units can at best conduct an orderly withdraw to prevent their faces being eaten by gaunts or choppas or what have you. That's because most melee units get charge moves and speed bonuses.

One time I saw Hormagaunts under melee synapse execute 3 consecutive leaps to catch up to warp spiders who had teleported out of melee..!

[konfeta]

Well to be honest there are those who do not think any RTS is really strategic
They say typical RTS is all about pre-set build orders, micro and "twitch factor"
They say real strategic thinking is in turn-based games... i.e. chess
There is truth to what they say

They who say so also possess the uncanny ability to define "strategy" as something nebulous and non-existent in the game they are discussing. Typically to bash it. (see those who bash SC as "nothing more than a clickfest")

Strategy is choice - while build orders attempt to maximize the efficiency with which you carry out that strategy, any choices you make outside of combat are still strategy. I don't think people are questioning presence of strategy in this game - it exists even the most spammy games like CnC 3 or WoC; the question here is about how much depth there is to strategy and how meaningful/numerous are the decisions you can make.

Micro, macro, build orders, and twitch factors all refer to execution. Strategy/tactics are pretty much deciding which plans you execute on what level (out of battle/in battle).

We have to wait for DoW 2's metagame to develop to see how many meaningful strategic choices you can actually make in this game and how they interact with each other.

[Thinking42Man]

Seriously guys, everyone who says its a cap fest, its quite apparent you have been playing the AI. You are right. The AI is suicidally cap happy. Players arn't! Join up in MP and you will see.

I think some people don't understand that capping units take more damage and/or are easier to hit.

[Mazuo]

And most slow units have guns - effective guns, not slapped-on-for-decoration guns like most melee units in DOW1.

Could you elaborate on this in regards to one issue that always annoyed me? FOTM penalties seemed to be at ridiculous levels in DoW. Is shooting while moving more lethal now? Vehicles as well?

[PacketOverflow]

"Could you elaborate on this in regards to one issue that always annoyed me? FOTM penalties seemed to be at ridiculous levels in DoW. Is shooting while moving more lethal now? Vehicles as well?"

yes i think vehicles and flamers don't seem to suffer much from fotm so kiting any walker with a gun won't do you much good for very long

[streak]

FOTM seems to be reduced across the board

[TimW]

Strategy is choice - while build orders attempt to maximize the efficiency with which you carry out that strategy, any choices you make outside of combat are still strategy. I don't think people are questioning presence of strategy in this game - it exists even the most spammy games like CnC 3 or WoC; the question here is about how much depth there is to strategy and how meaningful/numerous are the decisions you can make.

Micro, macro, build orders, and twitch factors all refer to execution. Strategy/tactics are pretty much deciding which plans you execute on what level (out of battle/in battle).

We have to wait for DoW 2's metagame to develop to see how many meaningful strategic choices you can actually make in this game and how they interact with each other.

This. The distinction between strategy and tactics is extremely blurred and also relative.

Strategy is present in every game from Master of Orion down to World in Conflict. Even if you're just thinking "I will spam tac marines and cap everything in sight" or "zerg rush kekekekekekekekek" then that's a strategy, though it might not be an especially rewarding or deep one. Even if FPS games if you're, for example, using a sniper rifle and cover to attack form a distance or using a shotgun to get in close then you've selected and executed a strategy.

Good strategy games encorage a range of rewarding and complicated strategies, poor ones encorage a limited range of repetetive or superficial ones.

Which is Dawn of War 2? Opinions differ. Which is to be expected. I think it's really too soon to tell.


Seriously guys, everyone who says its a cap fest, its quite apparent you have been playing the AI. You are right. The AI is suicidally cap happy. Players arn't! Join up in MP and you will see.

It's a fair cop. I don't really like online play, because of the high percentage of cunts (which is as high as 94%), but I did try once. Apprantly, it couldn't "find a game". I was, like "well, did you look?" but it was inscrutable. What happened to the big list of games you can join? I remember that from my C&C days.

[SteinerNein]

I love how people give praise to CoH as a strategy game when there are very few strategic elements even present in it - it's a tactical game that has a slightly larger atmosphere and DoW 2 is a tactical game with a smaller scope.

If you want strategy you'll take a look at games like SupCom/SC etc. where you deal with an active economy and other concerns that fall under the macro category.

this is all about tactics, same goes for CoH and to a lesser extent DoW1.

[HotAvatar101]

I find the game disappointing as many others on many levels. Maybe thats b/c i've become used to the large battles that used to take place on DoW and we dont really have that here, but honestly there are two other things taht really bother me.

1) After playing about 20 MP games (which is clearly not enuf), it became obvious that the aggressive way of DoW is kinda lost. No, i dont mean here that one can turtle, i dont think thats possible in a game like this. but what i found was that u basically set up ur army on a few 'good' locations close to the VP points and defend it. honestly thats all i did, get as close as i could to the enemy's points and defend them there. As long as i followed that, i usually won. i dont know how much req the points give you, but i got enough just from the hq, which is not good IMO.

2) The one building builds everything idea lacks appeal for me. In the original, u had to seriously assess the situation, pay attention to the units ur opponent was bringing out and the map overlay and control, and taking all these factors in, you'd be faced with the decision of what buiding to build so u gain access to a subset of units. IMO, this was one of the most important things in the game, b/c you had to change ur builds and strategy according to what was happening. here, everything is just made from this one building, and this takes away from the game, at least for me.

Oh well tahts what i think. On a final note, i dont think u can dance units like u were able to do in DoW, just cause units die so fast now. Relic aimed at making things flufflike perhaps (dont hold me to this, i know NOTHING of the fluff, except everything is superpowerful and can crush almost everything else), so maybe thats why units die so fast.

[SteinerNein]

Strategy is the end, tactics is a means to accomplish that end.

[Aerundel]

I love how people give praise to CoH as a strategy game when there are very few strategic elements even present in it - it's a tactical game that has a slightly larger atmosphere and DoW 2 is a tactical game with a smaller scope.

If you want strategy you'll take a look at games like SupCom/SC etc. where you deal with an active economy and other concerns that fall under the macro category.

this is all about tactics, same goes for CoH and to a lesser extent DoW1.

I really don't see why the economies of all these games are different enough to call some of them "active" and the others..."not active". Constantly fighting over resources all over the map is a lot more active then having a big cache of stuff inside your base (or extension), when nothing but a direct assault will interrupt that supply. So you need to build and allocate gatherers to resources, and construct building to support the population. How is that so different, as to be classified as "active", than allocating troops to defend specific points or a supply chain?

People praise CoH as a strategy game because not all people worry about semantics, or choose to divide strategy and tactics into sub-genres. I rarely see "real time tactics" ever used beyond an argument where one game's proponents are being defended or attacked by another's. Case in point. The term will only gain ground when people find more valid points and introduce more elements to differentiate the games. Maybe then we'll see the next SC and CoH/DoW go up for different GotY awards, etc.

[Ryouichi]

Some people hole up near VPs. I personally go out valor hunting, which means going up to the enemy base and killing anything that leaves it. I prefer to use a small but extremely deadly force to make mobile strikes against the enemy. (ASM hunting down players who think they can sneak a commander into our territory and cap a VP).

I'll be the first to admit I'm hardly tactical. In CoH my strategy was to rush and overwhelm my enemy with tanks before they could get dedicated antitank. In DoW2, my strategy involves spamming the asses off Assault Marines and raining down the destruction upon my enemies in order to afford Assault Terminators. So far in 16 games, my Assault Marines have only failed me twice.

(By spamming the asses off ASM, I mean two squads, three max).

[Schmapdi]

It's a fair cop. I don't really like online play, because of the high percentage of cunts (which is as high as 94%), but I did try once. Apprantly, it couldn't "find a game". I was, like "well, did you look?" but it was inscrutable. What happened to the big list of games you can join? I remember that from my C&C days.

I sir just wish to applaud you on this lovely sentence. It's very rare that **** and inscrutable run in the same circles anymore. Kudos!

[Gerfervonbob]

I'm not sure about you, but I use cover all the time and I'm consistently flanking guns and units with my Orks. I love this game, at first I was upset they got rid of base building but I'm really happy they did.

[@li3n]

Gah... you can't have tactics without strategy or vice versa, and neither micro or macro have anything to do with strategy or tactics in anything beyond being the ability to execute any strategy or tactic faster.

From my experience what ppl are mostly complaining about is the fact that in most games a few select strategies are just plain better, which is a balance issue, not a lack of choices.

Still, the game could use a better skill tree then 1->2->3, with or without just one building (one easily accessed with one button/shortcut), commanders and individual upgrades or not.

[TyrannusLupus]

My apologies for the rather large quotation, but seeing that there seems to be some confusion as to what constitutes tactics and strategy, I thought that the following might help to clear things up:


Military strategy and tactics are essential to the conduct of warfare. Broadly stated, strategy is the planning, coordination, and general direction of military operations to meet overall political and military objectives. Tactics implement strategy by short-term decisions on the movement of troops and employment of weapons on the field of battle. The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it another way: "Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war." (...) Strategy is limited by what tactics are possible; given the size, training, and morale of forces, type and number of weapons available, terrain, weather, and quality and location of enemy forces, the tactics to be used are dependent on strategic considerations.

From http://www.molossia.org/milacademy/strategy.html. The rest of the article also makes for quite interesting reading...

[Zepheris]

nice read, and it sums it up nicely too

so it's quite simple really...

are there factors in DoW2 that can influence what tactical decision a player may choose? if yes then whatever that factor is qualify as consideration for strategic element.

it may not be the kind of "strategic" element one would expect from a regular RTS, but it is indeed a "strategic" element.