You know…  The more I play DoW2, the more I’m coming to realize that I just don’t enjoy it all that much.

I mean, it is fun.  It isn’t like I’m having to force myself to play.  But it just isn’t #1 on my list right now.  Generally speaking I’d rather be playing WoW with my wife, or reading a book, or even watching TV.

Part of the problem is that I’ve never really been a big fan of RTS multiplayer.  I never got into playing WarCraft or StarCraft or Red Alert or any of those on-line.  I had great fun playing through their single-player campaigns…  And I’d skirmish with the computer…  But I never really did the multi-player.  And right now the only thing available in the beta is the multi-player.  So, I have to assume that I’d enjoy the single-player storyline more than I’m enjoying the multi-player.

But even so, a lot of the things that made me really enjoy the first few DoW games are just plain gone.  There’s no base building at all, the entire game revolves around capturing and controlling the battlefield.  And the units aren’t quite the same…  Used to be that a squad of Space Marines pretty much stayed useful through an entire game.  You could use them against infantry, against vehicles, against buildings…  It was nice to not have to throw away all your infantry as soon as a tank rolled onto the battlefield.  And that just isn’t true anymore.  Yeah…  Space Marines stay mostly useful for a while…  But it jus isn’t the same.

I’m really starting to think that I probably won’t bother buying this game.

I enjoy the Warhammer 40k franchise…  And I’ve really liked a lot of Relic’s games…  But this one just isn’t doing it for me.

Big update to DoW2 last night…  My Internet was being weird and slow, so i never got the patch downloaded.  Never got around to trying out the changes, so I’ve got no idea what the game is actually like right now.

Hopefully I’ll have a chance to play tonight.

I mentioned that I played a fairly successful game of DoW2 last night…  And one of the keys to that success was running away – specifically with the “Fall Back” command.  I’ve been complaining about how everyone keeps running away from me…  But now I can see why they do it, and, how to counter it (to a certain degree).

The fall backcommand is great.  Pretty much all your infantry have the ability to fall back…  And it is hotkeyed to X already…  All you have to do is hit the X key and your infantry turns tail and runs back to your base.

You don’t need to click on the map to tell them where to go…  You don’t need to path them around obstacles…  You just hit X and they take off running.

The fall back command takes the units out of your control until they get back to your base, so you can’t change your mind midway-back.  But it gives them a minor speed boost, which is very nice for getting them out of trouble fast.  And once they get back to the base you can reinforce them, which is nice.

I was able to conduct some very successful hit-and-run attacks through judicious use of the fall backcommand.  I had a small group composed of my Farseer, a squad of Guardians, and a squad of Banshees.  I’d run them into combat using Fleet of Foot, kill some badguys, and then fall back as soon as I started taking casualties.  It worked great.

Of course…  Everyone gets the fall back ability…  Which means that it can be fairly difficult to actually kill someone.  All your opponent has to do is hit X and his units run for the hills.  And once they’re moving it can be fairly hard to keep up.

That’s where suppression comes in…

A number of units, weapons, and attacks have a suppression component.  Suppression slows down the units affected, makes them sluggish.  They move slower and they attack slower.  Suppression, generally, won’t keep a unit from acting…  It doesn’t actually immobilize them…  They can still fight or run or whatever…  But they do it all much slower.

So if you’ve got your troops in position, and manage to suppress the enemy, it doesn’t matter if they fall back or not – they won’t get out of danger quick enough, and they’ll die.

Howling Banshees have an upgrade that let’s them suppress the squad they’re currently fighting.  And the heavy weapon platforms, like the Shuriken Cannon, suppress whoever they’re firing on.

So the trick, really, is to keep your troops from getting suppressed – so they can run away…  While keeping your enemy suppressed – so they can’t run away.

Just had a great game of DoW2.

I was playing as the Eldar, with the Farseer hero.  Managed to keep most of my units alive through the whole game.  Lots of dashing around, retreating, running back into the fray.  Managed to hold on to one of the control points for almost the entire game.  Mowed down lots of bad guys.  Dropped an Eldritch Storm right on a pile of nasties.

It was a really fun game.

And, amazingly enough, my team won.

But then my connection to Steam fell over and I got kicked out of DoW2.  I don’t know if it was a hickup on my computer…  Or something wrong with my Internet connection…  Or something weird with Steam itself…

But the end result is that there’s no way that game is going to be counted for anything.  Which is really too bad, because I had a blast.  I would have even been happy to lose that game.

That was the first game where I felt like I might actually know what I was doing.

I posted some of my recent concerns regarding the Eldar on the official Dawn of War 2 forums the other day…

I was told, basically, to stop complaining and learn to play the game.

I was assured that the Eldar are still the most mobile army in the game, and that Webway Gates are still very useful.

It seems that I’m just playing them wrong.

There were some very helpful suggestions on the forums, which I tried to apply to my games last night, but I still got slaughtered.

However, at this point, I’m not certain it is really a matter of my skill level…  The matchmaking system seems to be having a very hard time matching me with folks of a comparable skill level.  Last night I was grouped up with a rank 18 and a rank 23 – and I’m just rank 1.  We won that game, but not because of my actions.  I basically just tried to stay out of their way.

Unfortunately, that win is not showing up on my profile.  The tracking system through Games for Windows Live seems to be having issues.  I’ve played at least 20 games so far, but my profile only shows 7 of them.  I’ve played some games as the Tyranids, but they aren’t showing up at all.  And I’ve won a couple games, but my profile is only showing losses.

Hopefully these issues with the matchmaking system will be resolved soon…  I certainly don’t want to be dealing with this after I’ve purchased the game.

You know, I really want to like Dawn of War II.  I really do.  I loved the first three Dawn of War games…  And even Soulstorm was pretty decent.  But I’m having a hard time getting used to all the changes in DoW2.

One of the things that I thoroughly enjoyed in the first few DoW games was how uniquely each faction played.  How they had some very different playstyles, strengths, weaknesses, and strategies.  It wasn’t just that your soldier was green instead of grey…  You could do things that the other guy couldn’t.  And he could do things that you couldn’t.  And you really had to exploit his weaknesses while playing up your strengths.

And one place I had a hell of a lot of fun with this was playing the Eldar.  In the first DoW games the Eldar were like ghosts – incredibly mobile and stealthy.  It was terrific fun to harass your opponents ceaselessly.  Keep them on their toes.  Keep them guessing where you were and where you’d next attack from.

Used to be that I could grab a Bonesinger or two and teleport them around the map, dropping Webway Gates all over the place.  And once those Webway Gates were built I could cloak them.  And then I could pop my troops around the map.  Wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

It was great to sneak in a pack of Rangers and assassinate a key unit, then vanish.

Or drop a pile of Banshees into the middle of an enemy camp.

No, I was never a good player…  And I lost more often than not…  But it was great fun to see my opponent suddenly scrambling to figure out where the hell I was attacking from.

In DoW2 the Eldar just don’t have that same feeling.

There are no Bonesingers at all.  And about the only units that can teleport are the Warp Spiders.  Webway Gates require Psychic Might to build, so they’re useless for initial expansion…  And they eat into your population cap…  And they can’t cloak…  Worse still, is that the Webway Gates don’t do anything that the other factions can’t do.

The Tyranids can build a tunnel network that works identically to the Eldar webway.  And the Space Marines can build teleporter relays.

Sure, you can still harass the enemy with Warp Spiders…  And I greatly enjoy playing with the Warp Spider Exarch – he can teleport whole groups of people…  But the Eldar are no longer the ghosts they used to be.  You can’t be anywhere and everywhere.  You can’t flit from one place to the next.  You can’t vanish when cornered, only to appear from another direction.

All of which means that you’re using pretty much the same tactics as everyone else.  Sure, there’s still some variation…  Orks, for example, still like to wade into melee.  And the Tyranids are swarmy.  But the key feature of the Eldar – their ghost-like, ethereal mobility – is just plain gone.

So the Eldar, now, are having to stand and fight just like the Space Marines.  You have to find cover, or garrison a building…  Or, like everyone else does now, just run away over and over again.

The Eldar still have some nice units…  I still enjoy harassing folks with my Rangers.  And the Falcon is a very decent vehicle.  And Wraithlords are just plain cool.  But it just seems wrong to be playing them like, basically, re-skinned Space Marines.

It turns out that Eldar Webway Gates aren’t the magic bullet I thought they were.  I guess I’m not surprised…  It’d be pretty lousy design to build a game with an obviously unbalanced race like that…  But I’m still a bit disappointed.

The first problem is that Webway Gates need Psychic Might to be built.

Psychic Might only charges up when you kill things.  Capturing points isn’t enough.  Shooting at enemies isn’t enough.  You have to actually kill things.  Which can be difficult if everyone keeps running away from you.  Which means it can be difficult to come up with the 80 Psychic Might necessary to build a Webway Gate.

And if you’re using your Psychic Might to build Webway Gates, you aren’t using it to unleash an Eldritch Storm, or call down reinforcements, or whatever else.

The second problem with Webway Gates is that they use up part of your population cap.  They take up 5 points of population, just like a turret does.  So if you’re rolling out tons of Webway Gates you aren’t going to have a whole lot of units to fight with.