Tau BO, any way to make it better?

[Deemer125]

Hi
I have been playing Dark Crusade for a couple of months now, and I figured that I'm a Tau player.
Have a couple questions to ask:

1) I can get an army of FW's, 4 squads, 2 stealthsuits (neither of them are not upgraded/ reinforced) and a Tau commander with a flammer upgraded in 4 min. As I start moving my army out to attack, I start building my PtE, and put all my squads' reinforcing on overwatch, and when I reach the enemy base, all my squads are fully reinforced, and PtE's pulse rifles researched. Is that good or any tips on making it better?

2)What's the best way to improve? 1v1 or 4v4 skirmishes with CPU?
I can player Insane now on 4v4, but not sure about 1v1, and I've got no-one to play with at home.

3) I can't seem to play online. Every time I try, it says a new patch, http: //thq.vo.llnwd. net/o10/DoW/patches/DXP2-111.120.EXE, shows up, I press download, and it stays at 100% forever. Any way to fix?
This is a clean DoW DC, with only the first DoW installed with it. No patches/mods downloaded. Never played online with DoW 1.

Thanks in advance

[ERISS]

You could get SoulStorm, where Tau is the best (but not so OP like the Necrons in DC).

[Deemer125]

Could you explain how Tau is better in Soulstorm?
And I heard that Soulstorm is quite bad compared to Dark Crusade

[OhJohnNo]

I'd say just hand out a few bottles of deodorant. They might be a bit miffed, but it's for their own good.

[Deemer125]

I don't really understand what you mean by miffed?

[Pseudonymn]

I never really got around to playing Tau online, but I do OK with them vs the Skirmish AI mod, which by the way is WAAAAY better than the stock AI you're skirmishing against; it's so much more fun and rewarding; anyway, here's the BO that I've settled down with and seems to work well under most match-ups:

Queued in order of the following (this is literally all the buttons that I push in their exact order with in the first 2 minutes):

1. CH: 2x SS
2. First EC-builder: TB, PG
3. CH: 1x EC-builder, Jump-Jets upgrade, set rally point for the first SS on nearest cluster of SPs, wait until built, set rally point for the second SS on a SP at a heading on opposite of the direction taken by the first suit (or best fit). Set rally point for the second EC-builder on the TB still under construction.
4. TB: Not complete yet, still under construction, but set a rally point on the SECOND SP that your FIRST SS will start capturing.
5. Queue both SS's to jump to and capture their nearest set of Strategic points without crossing paths (fan out and cap).
6. Second TC-Builder unit should come out by now, group them both together and make sure they are both synchronized and queued to complete the TB, PG, and finally move together to the nearest SP to be in position to build your first LP1.
7. Tau Barracks should almost be complete (90% or more if you're timing is good), the instant it does: 1x FW, TC, overwatch both KC and FW buttons (only let it build 2x KC and only 1x more FW. Be ready to turn off overwatch for both once you have, in total, 2x FW and 2x KC. This production queue will obviously take some time to complete, so you've got to keep your eye on things. If you're in the middle of combat, don't forget your macro game while you're busy with your micro, or you'll do damage to your economy.
8. PG should complete about the same time your first FW squad comes out; set a rally point for the TB on top of the FW when they come out and start moving toward their original rally point.
9. Quickly, set your EC-builders to start your first LP1 and queue their next move to the next nearest SP.
10. FW squad should be very close to your first SS, whose SP should be about 50% complete. This can be tricky, but very quickly have the SS jump to his next nearest SP (or as close as his range will take him) and queue his next move to capture. QUICKLY go back to the FW squad and have them finish capturing the SP for their little stealth suit buddies. Queue next move to attack-move in the direction of your nearest enemy base and harass their capers and builders.
11. TC should be built now or very soon. Have him jump in to close the distance between him and the FW to join up with them, group up, and harass.
12. Upgrade your first LP1 to LP2 for economic leverage.
13. Don't forget your builders, queue LP1 projects for them as soon as you have resources available, balancing tactical needs on the battlefield with economic growth (as in don't queue up so many LP1's that your barracks never produces your Kroot and FW support forces).
14. Don't forget your SS capers, have them jump around and capture or decapture whatever they can get their hands on. Give preference to capturing SPs in the early moments of the game rather than CLs or Relics since they take longer and provide minimal economic benefits for the time they take to capture and secure.
15. Don't forget to have your Kroot consume gibs after each skirmish to build up their maximum health pool.
16. CH: Build one more EC-Builder and have it start production on a a second PG as soon as it's built and resources become available.
17. Don't reinforce anyone until you have 2x Kroot, a second FW squad built, and at least 3x LP1 built, possibly with a 4th under way. Use up any and all spare resources to do this, whether by building another LP1 or upgrading existing ones with preference for new construction because of the +50 requisition bonus you get for completing the LP1. Or manually replace battlefield losses (to original squad strength only) if needed. Then and only then set your Kroot to overwatch reinforcement. Kroot are cheaper and faster to replace so use them as shock troops, keeping your FW and TC away from front line combat and let them provide fire support for the Kroot on the fronts.
18. In addition, set the CH to overwatch production of your last EC-Builder, who with his buddy will complete up to a total of 4 PG's. These will be dedicated base infrastructure builders. Your first two should be out in the field building LP1s. They should come out once most of your army has been rounded out and fully reinforced.
19. Queue base builder team to produce P2E as soon as resources become available, the last 2 PG, VB, and a KSC as resources allow.

This is where my BO starts to get a little grey, depending on my matchup. But generally, the rest of my BO consists of, in order of greatest need:

• [] TB: 1x Pathfinder (highest priority if facing Dark Eldar), overwatch production of up to two XV88.
• VB: 1x Skyray, 1x Devilfish for transporting those two slow and path-disrupting XV88s.
• Research Feral Leap, Advanced Pulse Rifles, and Missile Barrage, in that order (usually) as resources allow.
• Build a third FW squard as resources allow. They don't shoot as far as Shas'Ui Body Guards, but with 2x Shas'Ui squad leaders their combined firepower has a greater output for the squad cap that they occupy (up to 180.6 DPS vs. 89.6 DPS against Heavy Infantry like chaos and space marines) and they reinforce slightly faster.

This pretty much rounds out my infantry army. It's a fairly capable generalist army, being neither melee nor ranged focused, and is able to deal with just about any threat on the battlefield. My decision to specialize comes later in the game with my decision to either go Kauyon or Mont'Ka. I prefer Mont'Ka most times because I like the tanks. That is all. lol. At any rate, my Kroot usually don't get replaced anyway unless they get killed and I want more ranged firepower, but they're still good to keep around for tying up melee jumpers and allow my infantry to keep shooting when kept in reserve behind the firing line late in the game (they do get eaten on the front line after about T3 stages of the game).

There's a weak point in this BO in that when fighting against Dark Eldar, whose cloaked Mandrake Squads can be a real pest, I don't have detector units on the field until after T2 when the P2E has been built and I have Pathfinders on the field. I hate those little bastards as they often force me to build Vespids for their detection ability, which doesn't really fit my agenda on the maps that I play (large 8-way FFA maps).

[Edit]

1. Having said that, however, I decided to fire up my game and test this out again. In just a hair under 12 minutes (11:57) while playing 8-way FFA on Burial Grounds, I accomplished the following against the Skirmish AI mod:
2. Harassed, captured, and built LP1/2's on everything up to and including all of my Imperial Guard enemy's strategic points, the Relic in our corner, part of the assets at center (1 SP and moving to capture both critical locations).
3. Thwarted an Ork scouting party at center and sent them packing for home.
4. Thwarted a Tau invasion attempt also routed through center (casualties included at least 1 TC, 2 Kroot Carnivore teams, and possibly a SS team.).
5. Repulsed a Sisters of Battle invasion against the IG enemy's base (those Guardsmen are MINE to kill, bitches! :P), annihilating at least 2 Battle Sisters squads, possibly a Seraphim squad (the slippery bitches might have gotten away, but I doubt it), and their Canoness might have escaped with 60 health left to her name.
6. All of that after crushing all Imperial Guard resistance efforts; destroyed what was left of their base at the 11:57 mark.
7. Minimal tactical losses. Maybe one or two FWs and half a dozen kroot, if that many. Spending float on all remaining tech and LP2 upgrades.

My units on the field at the 12 minute mark were 2 fully reinforced Kroot Squads, 2 Full FW teams with 2 Shas'Ui each, 2 full SS teams with upgrades, 1 full path finder team, 1 XV88 and one more at 100% in the production queue waiting for pop cap, Commander with all T2 upgrades, and 2 vehicle beacons under production, one ready to queue my first Skyray missile gunship.

[ERISS]

Could you explain how Tau is better in Soulstorm?

I can't, I don't play them. I just reported the commonly admited truth.

And I heard that Soulstorm is quite bad compared to Dark Crusade

I don't think so, I prefer SS; already for what I had said: SS is better balanced (the Tau are less OP in SS than the Necrons are in DC). I'd say 60% prefer Soulstorm, what is far from being enough as it has devided the DoW1 community.

[Pseudonymn]

Hmmmm, I don't know about that. They do have by far the best troops through Tiers 1 to 2.5 or so and their Stealth Suit teams are a real pain in the ass when harassing. But other than the Kroot, all tau units are expensive glass cannons that suffer greatly in melee. You don't even have to win in melee because the Tau never will for cost. Just tie them up in melee with something cheap and they stop shooting and impotently try to fight back. LoL'd hard the first time I saw someone tie up a whole FW team with a teleported Bonesinger and noticed that it was actually doing pretty good. They can't be kited either as FW teams have a brief set up time and they aren't particularly fast on foot (no fire on the move and dancing effectively around melee specialists is harder than for other races - that's what the snare traps are for). Also, their T3 and T4 falls on its ass compared to just about every other race out there save perhaps for the Dark Eldar, especially once you learn how to deal with massed FW blobs. Still, they can shoot down any standing army in a real hurry for the unwary. Even so, if the Tau are going to win, they are most likely going to do it long before T3 on smaller maps.

I honestly think you might be confusing the Tau for the Eldar, who have always been someone's favorite little pet over there on Relic's balancing team.

Also, I just realized that the OP's talking about Dark Crusade. It's been ages since I played that flavor but I don't recall the Tau getting hit particularly hard by the nerf stick over the years. And yeah, SS was much better balanced in the end than any previous iteration. If it sucked anywhere, it was in the cookie-cutter campaign that was more or less exactly the same as DC's except that territory defenses were a massive pain in the ass because a.) You have to rebuild everything every time (no prepared defenses) and b.) the AI cheats and is able to collect honor guard units (again) without holding the prerequisite territories.

[Deemer125]

Thanks for the replies
@Pseudonymn, that is basically my BO, but I'm playing DC, so I can't build any Kroot in the TB, and I think that I do have the AI mod which makes the AI better. As I said before, I can get 4 FW squads, 2 SS (neither of them are not upgraded/ reinforced) and a Tau commander with a flammer upgraded in 4 min, and when I reach the enemy base, they're fully reinforced, so I can destroy a insane AI enemy base in about 10 min if the AI doesn't have a ton of turrets(1/2 I can handle) or vehicles out. When my PtE has finished building which is about the 7min mark, I research Advanced Pulse Rifles, then Missle Barrage, then start building the Vehicle Beacon, and I can get my first Skyray in about 9min to help my FW destroy the base.

Another quick question: build pathfinders or vespids?
I know pathfinders have the Mark and their amazing sight, but when you've got Devilfish, so you don't really need that, and the Mark is amazing, but the battle istoo intense and you forget to use it, and they die too easily and it takes ages to get another squad out. Vespids die quite easily as well, but you can get another squad out in 3 sec, then get them to the battlefield much quicker as well.

[Pseudonymn]

I heard that you upgraded to the most recent patch. You should be able to build your Kroot from the TB now.

As for Pathfinders dying too quickly, this is a symptom of "Attack Moving" your army into combat. The problem is that PFs have a shorter attack range than everyone else so they try to move in closer than the FW blob they are supposed to be covering. This means that, barring pathing issues, they are always the first ones to come under fire and therefore the first to die. They need to be micromanaged to stay behind their FW buddies and provide sight radius and detection support. And do not underestimate Mark Target. With it, even ubers can be brought down in mere seconds, demon or vehicle, it doesn't matter.

The other part of the problem probably has something to do with the "stance" that you've set your army to. By default, all units are produced in the "Hold Ground" stance. This stance means they will move to engage and/or pursue any enemy units crossing their sight radius for a short distance either from along their current path to wherever their last movement order was issued or from wherever they are currently standing idle to a maximum distance provided they arent' give any new "attack move" commands, which resets their pursuit radius. At the end of that distance, they'll stand their ground and continue to fire until their quarry are either killed or retreat out of range, at which point they will return to their original path (or idle position) via the shortest route. I made a visual aid, if that helps.

At any rate, ranged units often get ganked because of this behavior, but it's especially noticeable with Pathfinders because they break off from the main body of the infantry army they're attached to due to their shorter firing range. The solution to having to manage this behavior less is to put your ranged units, all of them, on "Stand Ground" stance, which turns off the pursuit behavior and they will only fire at targets within their immediate range and will not leave the spot on which they stand. But you must still manage where you want your PFs to stand in relation to their FW brothers if all you do is issue "attack move" commands since they will continue to move in that direction and stop to shoot at targets that come within their attack range, which is still much shorter than FWs. If you don't, you'll always see them first to die in any engagement.

They are probably the best detector in the game, however, with a HUGE sight radius, especially after upgrades, which when coupled with their mark target ability makes them indispensable. You should always have one squad in your army. A cloaked Devilfish sounds like a great idea, but they are relatively expensive, brittle units with a short sight and combat range and there are factions that can cloak their entire armies who are expert at detecting other cloaked units (Chaos, and Necron). The DF just won't get the job done. Like the SS are fond of saying, "You can't shoot what you can't see."

Visual Aid

In this visual aid, the grey dot represents one of your units, the red dot is an enemy unit. The innermost yellow ring is your unit's targeting range while the outermost blue ring is the maximum distance that your unit will pursue a target. The relative paths these units will take are shown as indicated. It's a crude MS Paint drawing not set to scale of any kind

Vesspid are different beast altogether. They are really only useful as emergency detectors and building bashers in the first 5 minutes and, consequently, are generally only employed as part of an early economic harassment strategy. Other than that, they are unremarkable melee units, expensive and undermanned for what they do, and come with a short detection radius that is rendered obsolete the moment you're able to build PFs. The most mileage I've seen them get in games I've played and in replays I've seen is to couple them with an early TC + Vespid build, jump jet them ASAP to the enemy generator farm and start bashing his energy production and maybe their barracks, which usually means sacrificing both units and a significant portion of your Req income rate in reinforcement costs to get the job done. You can win games without anyone ever making it to Tier2 with this tactic if you can pull it off but it's a one-shot deal that will cost you the game if you fail and doesn't work on all races. Totally suicidal to attempt on maps larger than the smallest 2v2 maps.

[Deemer125]

wow thanks for that

[Pseudonymn]

No problem. If you haven't been introduced to it already, have a look at the Dawn of War Player's Guide, a community developed wiki chalk full of all kinds of DoW info and strategy goodness. As it relates to this conversation, the article on unit stances can be found here and is an excellent tactical primer.

[LloydsGamble]

Bit offtopic here, but does anyone know where I could find the changelist from DC 1.2 > SS 1.0? I can find patch notes for DC 1.2 and for SS 1.1 onwards but not the list of changes between DC 1.2 and Vanilla SS.

Just kinda curious as it seems a few units underwent some serious changes, the Vespid for one. I find them very useful in DC and they seem fairly durable too, apparently thats not the case in SS according to Psuedonymn's post above and indeed the wiki.

[Kalimac]

I don't think there was an official changelog released, but here is one made by Maktaka:
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...torm-changelog

[Maktaka]

I think this is what you're looking for. Necrons and Tau got the biggest changes (and boy did they need them). We never did get an official changelog as there wasn't available manpower at Relic, and Iron Lore dissolved just before the game's release. Bah, ninjad.

If you haven't spotted it already, keep an eye out for Dark Crusade versions of units on the wiki for when the unit was too dramatically changed from DC to SS to properly note the differences with inline notes. You can then compare the units across versions between the two pages. They'll have a special header at the top of the page, like on the Tomb Spyder.

[LloydsGamble]

Thanks guys, very helpful!

[Pseudonymn]

Ohhhh, I totally forgot about the TS goodness in back in DC before it got turned into a corpse barge, lol!

I do miss those cute little scarab swarms.