Dawn of War II Singleplayer Guide

With Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, Relic Entertainment has done away with the two things that deter most people from trying out strategy games - Base building and Resource Gathering. This exclusion has cleared the way for the legions of gamers eager to try their hand at RTS games. That said, even without the complexities of setting up a base, strategy games can be quite daunting for new players, since there are more equations that go in the mix than your standard action games. To help ease you into the game, we’ve come up with this Singleplayer strategy guide that shows you the ropes.

To start off, it’s important to understand that unlike most strategy games you’ve come across, Dawn of War II doesn’t give you control of swarms of disposable units. Instead, you only have four squads to control, each of whom form an integral part of your army. This makes it really important to keep track of all your units and ensure that you keep them up and alive. It also means that your understanding of their strengths and weaknesses is directly proportional to your chance at success. Also, the fact that there’s an RPG-like leveling up system and skill tree in place, means that you have to make the right choices while upgrading your units, else they’ll end up sub-par and too weak to perform their role effectively. To help you understand your squads better, here’s a gist for each of them:
**
Force Commander**

This guy’s your main character in the game, and is built like a tank when it comes to both dishing out and absorbing damage. He is however, just one unit, so if you charge blindly into the enemy he won’t survive. To make things worse, his forte is melee combat, so you can be certain that he’ll go berserk amongst enemy units and might just end up deeper into the enemy lines than you’d like. Keep him close to the rest of your units at all time, and ensure that you get him out when his health starts to dip too much. He can however, perform the role of your tank, where he absorbs huge amounts of damage by himself. If you wish to fit him into this role, max out his combat stamina before you spend your skill points on strength. This might gimp his damage output quite a bit, but gives him heaps of abilities and hit points to deal with incoming damage. Personally though, I prefer playing him as a support unit since he can really dish out loads of damage and use his knockback ability to clear the way for the rest of your units to rip open the enemy lines.

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**Tarkus
**
Tarkus has a battle-hardened squad of space marines that are the most versatile tactical squad of the lot. They can absorb more damage than most of your units combined, and can deal loads in return. They really outshine others in mid-ranged combat, and while played as tanks. This four man squad (other are three man squads) is best equipped with Pulse weapons when available, and should always be equipped with the best weapons you can find. In missions against Orks that have loads of garrisoned buildings, they’re best kitted out with grenades and flamethrowers. If you wish to play them as tanks, ensure that you max out stamina before strength or ranged damage.

Avitus

Avitus is the heavy gunner of your army, and hones a massive gun to accompany his quick temper. While his gun takes a few seconds to set up, it can carve through the enemy’s frontlines like a hot knife through Orkish butter. His range is extremely long, making him the best person to initiate combat with. Ensure to always place him behind cover, since that not only increases his life span, it gives him quite a damage increase too. He is however, really weak against melee attacks, so ensure that you always have your tank units handy when you see melee units go for him. Do not spend your skill points on strength, since it’s quite useless for this guy. Increasing his ranged damage makes him a glass tank, but that’s essentially the role he fits into best. Keep him alive and he’s sure to suppress the living doo-doo out of the enemy.

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Thaddeus

Your melee damage squad, Thaddeus, is fast and dishes out a ton of hurt. Unfortunately though, he cannot take the same amount of abuse as Tarkus, so you’d do best to use his squad for either hit and run, or for his jetpack ability. This ability lets him dive in the middle of the enemy lines, dispersing them, causing damage, and giving you a few seconds to retreat. If you plan on using him quite a bit, ensure that you upgrade his stamina first, since he’s a front line character. You can even opt to balance out strength and stamina if you think you have him equipped to absorb a good amount of hurt.

**
Cyrus**

While Cyrus is the only stealth squad in the game, his use is arguably limited. His infiltrate or cloak ability makes him invisible to the enemy as long as he doesn’t attack, and the fact that his detonation charges deal with buildings easily, makes him a valuable addition when you’re up against loads of garrisoned units. If however, you’re in a defense mission, you might want to swap him out for another, more damaging squad. Cyrus is really good with both shotguns and sniper rifles. Quite frankly, he’s better off being used as a sniper than an infiltration expert. If you upgrade his ranged damage to the max, he can pick off enemies at obscene distances with ease. However, he cannot take too many hits, so ensure that just like Avitus, you keep him out of harm’s way at all times.

Dreadnaught

The Dreadnaught is a powerful melee and ranged unit, that can both - dish out and take loads of hurt. His drawback’s that he’s really slow, so ensure that you pace your game with him in mind. Also, he doesn’t get healed by normal medpacks, so in order to repair him you might need to equip one of your squads with repair kits. While upgrading his skills, make sure you focus on either strength or ranged damage and not both. I preferred using him for his range damage, since his melee damage had limited use because he’s not mobile enough to get up close and personal with most enemies. Also, if you upgrade his Stamina enough, he gains the ability to switch off for a few seconds and auto-heal rapidly. With this unit, he can become pretty much indestructible.

Movement and Positioning

The most important thing in Dawn of War II is positioning your army. If your units aren’t behind cover, you’ll become mince meat within seconds. At the same time, attacking units behind cover can be a real pain, since they take far lesser damage than normal. The best way to go about positioning yourself, is to move your ranged units i.e. Avitus and Dreadnaught first, and start the engagement with them. This gives you the chance to suppress the enemy and buys you enough time for your melee units to move in and crush the enemy. Suppression is key, since suppressing the enemy decreases the enemy’s damage as well as mobility. Use everything in your arsenal to suppress the enemy or move them out of cover - which includes using grenades to blow up cover, or using Thaddeus’ jetpack ability to do so.

This forms the basis of all combat in Dawn of War II. We’ll have a guide with more detailed strategies up next week, so stay tuned.