Buying Warhammer (pc game)

[Aqo]

I got drawn into this due to the fact that there are players for this game from my country, something that sadly is not true about Starcraft (*sniff*); I read some a bit about the game, but due to it having 2 xpacs I feel quite lost. So could someone here who plays it please give me some information?

1. What are the least/most played races?
2. What are the hardest/easiest races to play?
3. What are the weakest/most powerful races?
4. Does micro come down to more than selecting groups of units and giving them generic orders that sometimes involve clicking on an enemy group?
5. Is the game just about macro&micro or does it have an actual depth?
6. How bad is inner-race imbalance? Are there useless units?
7. What do you find fun about the game (warning: hard question, think before you answer this; I want something specific but with an explenation)

Make me love Warhammer, gogo!

[edit] Referring to Dawn of War

[Jedi_Templar]

Which game? The Warhammer 40k Dawn of War or the Warhammer Fantasy Mark of Chaos?

[kongurous]

This post assumes you're referring to Dawn of War.

1. What are the least/most played races?

Dunno.

2. What are the hardest/easiest races to play?

The Space Marines are your typical noob race, while the Eldar are what I find hardest.

3. What are the weakest/most powerful races?

The Necrons are probably the strongest race because they're imbalanced, but none of the races are "strongest" or "weakest", it all depends on how you play them.

4. Does micro come down to more than selecting groups of units and giving them generic orders that sometimes involve clicking on an enemy group?

Dawn of War is a very micro-oriented game, due to all the stances your units can take, their wargear, and reinforcing your squads. I probably missed a few things, too.

5. Is the game just about macro&micro or does it have an actual depth?

The game is action-oriented. You need to coordinate your defense well, but you also need to make sure your relics, critical points, and strategic points are well-defended because without these, you lose a valuable resource and building space.

6. How bad is inner-race imbalance? Are there useless units?

Aside from the Necrons, the game is fairly well-balanced. As far as useless units, I would say no, I find a use for everything.
7. What do you find fun about the game (warning: hard question, think before you answer this; I want something specific but with an explenation)

Blowing my enemy to pieces from a long range.

[Jedi_Templar]

I was wondering, why the hell are Necron Warriors free? Sure, you gotta pay 35 power for each additional warrior, but why are they initially free?

Makes me think of that shitty LOTR strategy game they made. Fucking Mordor, who not only had the most units, and the most powerful units, got free Orcs from the git-go. I went back to Best Buy and "traded" that game for Dawn of War. Have not regretted it at all.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

I was wondering, why the hell are Necron Warriors free? Sure, you gotta pay 35 power for each additional warrior, but why are they initially free?

They're initially free because the Necrons only use energy as a resource, so if they cost energy per squad you would have to choose between building your base, or builder\capture units, or building defenses. With them being free, you only have to balance builders and your base.

And to answer some of your questions (assuming you have DoW);

1. The most played race would be Space Marines, the least played would probably be Orks

2. The Space Marines are easily the easiest, their troops and vehicles are all good and are very versatile. Like Kong said, the Eldar would be the hardest. All their units are very specialized for countering one other unit, so you would have to put in a little more thought while playing them.

3. Right now, there aren't really any "weak" races, but the Necrons are noticeably stronger.

4. The Micromanagment in this is about on the same level as Starcraft, except for a couple more factors i.e. some units are only effective against tanks and do nearly no damage to infantry, while some are the other way around. Another would be "kiting" your units with leaders and special weapons so they are more effective against different kinds of units. Besides this, there's the Moral factor. When Morale is broken, your unit's effectiveness drops sharply. And after this there's still cover and reinforcing.

5. See above.

6. Most of the game is well balanced, but each army has at least one useless unit.

7. The thing I find fun about the game is (by playing Eldar) teleporting my builder units inside the enemy's defenses, building a Webway gate, and then cloaking it. The effect is that he'll never know how all my units wound up in his base.

[Jedi_Templar]

They're initially free because the Necrons only use energy as a resource, so if they cost energy per squad you would have to choose between building your base, or builder\capture units, or building defenses. With them being free, you only have to balance builders and your base.

Couldn't you say that about any of the races?

[Giggilyomeromicon]

Couldn't you say that about any of the races?

But with the other races, they have more then one unit that can cap points. With the Necrons its only their builders.

[Aqo]

Which game? The Warhammer 40k Dawn of War or the Warhammer Fantasy Mark of Chaos?
DoW.

Now, thanks yous kong & giggly for all that information. Everyone I talked to so far said that it would be best playing Eldar, and your statements definately support that, so I'll try that out.

The only thing that worries me right now is the lack of micro. Macro-only games are pretty boring; watching explosions just doesn't do it for me, unless I'm the reason they happened. You said that reinforcing squads and getting them weapons is micro, but as far as I call tell it's just another aspect of macro. From what I can tell, the line is drawn between "desicion making" and "desicion applying". When I enchant a squad, it's merely desicion making. An example to applying would be telling an Assault Marine squad to jump, throw Melta Bombs, and jump away. However I feel that game is lacking those. Units being effective against only infantry or only machinery also exists in Starcraft and plays a huge role there; kiting in DoW basically came down to using unit combo's from what I played so far (space marines, I'm probably better off with another race :|) and Moral felt like an over-attention to a regular micro system that is more based on specific abilities rather than the moral itself in most cases.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

Did you get DoW, Winter Assault, or Dark Crusade? Or all of them? Or only two?

[Aqo]

I intend to buy all of them as soon as I can (the computer stores I checked said they don't have it / all sold out, so I'll be checking again later). So far I only got to try out the DoW demo.

[Jedi_Templar]

I intend to buy all of them as soon as I can (the computer stored I checked said they don't have it / all sold out, so I'll be checking again later). So far I only got to try out the DoW demo.

Play the other demos while you're at it.

[Ktan]

Yes, you will find that Dark Crusade is quite a leap from DoW in terms of the changes to gameplay, for better or worse.

[Aqo]

Well, I just played Tau on the Dark Crusade demo; as far as I can tell the gameplay is very similar to the space marines - listening posts for money, units that are either good for this or that for this and that, units that can jump around, a commander that is imba against some units and useless against others... the only real difference was being able to capture strategic points with scouts bought from the main structure :\

[Dezzick]

With SM you can capture stuff with scouts.

Necrons are really the only race that the BASIC gameplay is any different.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

Yeah, you'll soon find that "all the races are totally unique" stuff is bull crap. However, they all play differently because of their units and strategies.

[Ktan]

They are totally unique in so far as units, in a similar way that all the StarCraft races are unique. The only similarity between DoW races is the resource system, like in StarCraft where all races share two resources also. Even the Necrons deviate there in DoW too, however :P

[Aqo]

Ohh SM scouts can capture SPs!? heh my macro just got twice better.

I hope I'll be able to get DoW by the end of the week; I can already see myself pwning noobs on it xD

As a side note, SC and Dow aren't all compareble in the micro or macro part as far as I can tell;
No two units in SC are even remotely the same on all races, while Space Marines and Fire Warrior, for example, are just about clones. Same so for any unit that can Jump; the mining in Starcraft is entirely different than DoW in every possible strategic way I can think of. Also, it seems like many units in DoW are just the same ones with different graphics and better or worst stats. No biggie, I didn't expect all that much from when there are 7 races anyway. Point is, the games are inherently different, don't compare them unless you play both to an extent. This is a bit of a hypocrisy from me since I only got to play 1.5 races against the computer myself, but all comments and analyses I read about DoW including your own support the view I got so far.
Please don't let this entire paragraph confuse you and make you think there was anything there saying "good" or "bad", this is all neutral.

[Ktan]

Huh? I said all StarCraft units are unique within the races and so are the units for the races in Dawn of War. I've played both extensively, I know what I'm talking about. No races share any common units in SC (even the builders are different) even more so with DoW, where even the builders are vastly different for races. When I say similarity, I mean the similarity between the races, not the games.

Hope that clears up an ambiguity.

I never even mentioned mining, apart from saying that Necrons deviate from the model whereas in Sc, none deviate. Probably more down to my wording than content.

I merely mentioned SC since I am aware that you played it regardless, it's a game with totally unique races, in the same way I could have picked WarCraft III which (in my opinion) doesn't compare as directly with DoW (maybe the hero system goes better but for some reason the main game gameplay doesn't seem to match up as much. Bear in mind, I only dabble in WC III), or C&C Generals (though I've not played that enough to be sure the races are 100% unique.)

For the record (while we are here), I don't see either game as better. While I prefer the way the macro works and the resource system from DoW, Sc will always mean a lot to me as an RTS player. Especially since DoW's story doesn't match StarCraft's, IMO.