WH40K: Dark Crusade Game Experience Discussion

Calico_Jack73 · Oct 24, 2006

The moderators over at Relic's forum can be a bit draconian when it comes to discussing balance issues with their new game so I thought I'd start one up here.

What are your experiences so far with the various races in Dark Crusade?

I find that either the Imperial Guard are too weak or the Necrons are too powerful because no matter what it seems almost impossible to beat them even on the standard difficulty setting.

Case 1) Each starting squad of IG infantry has a requisition cost attached to it. Basic Necron infantry costs nothing per squad of 4. You only have to pay when you reinforce each squad. In early game this really matters because the IG player is having to spend requisition on listening posts defenses and units where the Necron player only needs to spend his energy (Necrons don't use requisition at all) on buying reactors (the first one doesn't cost anything and if I remember correctly the cost for each one after that goes up by 20 energy).

Case 2) Sure the Necrons don't have what you'd call "Heavy Armor" but then again neither does the IG until late in the game when they get Leman Russ tanks and finally the Baneblade. Their other vehicles are almost worthless against the Necron Infantry with the exception of the Basilisk artillery. So far the only way I've won is to build all three Basilisks and use them to keep the Necron infantry off their feet. Still, in most games the Necrons have overrun the base by the time the Basilisks can be built.

Anyone else have anything?

Mad Mac · Oct 25, 2006

IG basically need to play defensive in tier 1 and quick tech to tier 2 to get their goodies. While IG doesn't have much heavy armor, you do benefit from not having to worry too much about Anti-vehicle weapons when fighting the Necrons.

As far as vehicles go, I would reccomend mixing Basilisks with Hellhounds. Both weapons do aoe damage, good morale damage, and combine nicely. (Expensive yes, but you don't need 3 basilisks right away. They're much more accurate in DC)

For infantry, it's all about numbers+leaders with IG. DC lets you train 3 more guys per squad in tier 2, and they buffed execute dramatically. It now allows units to do something along the lines of double or triple damage for a short time. Heavy Weapon teams are a little too pricey, and the build time is atrocious, but they are still essential for fire support in your rear lines. Their effective firing range is huge.

Still, Necrons are darned tough. I need to play with them some more soon, since I'm not overly familiar with their tech tree yet.

LrdApoc · Oct 26, 2006

I'm going to second what Mac said and add that the Imps are not supposed to be directly balanced agains the Necrons - its not a great idea for them to do face to face unit to unit conflict with an ancient and advanced souless enemy...

That said you can win as the Imps but you have to change your tactics quite a lot. The Necrons are cheap individually but you can overcome this provided you have the time with the Imp forces to build Basalisks and hounds.. its worked well for me so far. Though I generally build more Hounds and a single Bas per squad and then work at keeping the Necron forces contained while using more maneuverable units to go in and take resource points quickly and keep the Necron player from reinforcing easily with better Necros.

Flexor the Mighty! · Oct 26, 2006

So how does this one compare to the original game? I just reinstalled that yesterday to try and give it another go.

TwistedBishop · Oct 26, 2006

Dark Crusade is much harder than the original DoW. Almost to the point where I feel like quitting in disgust at times.

LrdApoc · Oct 26, 2006

It is a more difficult game I agree. Luckily I've just been playing through the original again and I had just finished Company of Heroes so I found the transition and difficulty manageable.

TwistedBishop · Oct 26, 2006

I've been playing as the Space Marines and quickly hit a stone wall in conquering areas. Any spot with two bases just overwhelmed me. Then I caught someone's advice of running the hero and his honor guards to one of the bases and getting it out of the way fast. That's the only way I've been able to win so far.

I don't think it's a bad game, but sometimes I suspect that the difficulty levels are actually one harder than they appear. In DoW there was Normal, Hard, and Insane. In DC there's Easy, Normal and Hard. I have a suspicion that the "Normal" in DoW is the "Easy" in DC.

ShadowX · Oct 26, 2006

Wow, and here I was thinking I needed to up the difficulty to hard, the campaign was so easy. The Honor guard units make this a sinch and are overall far better than the special abilities that some territories grant. Once you get a sizable force of honor guard units, you can beat every map, except strongholds (obviously) and special objectives, with an early rush. In my space marine campaign, you can pick up two dreadnaughts that will absolutely massacre tier 1 units and buildings. Of course, you might want to destroy everything barring their HQ to build up your base and capture points if the territory is highly contested.

However, I haven't had the pleasure of going IG versus Necron, but I hear this is the least balanced matchup in the game. I guess with 7 races at least one matchup had to have some problems.

TwistedBishop · Oct 27, 2006

Well, as an example of the kind of problems I've been having: I just attacked a rating 6 Chaos territory with a good number of honor guards (dreadnaught, librarian, two space marine veterans and an assault marine). Before I can even reach their base I'm fighting one of the large walker tanks, a normal tank, a group of Obliterators, a bunch of infantry and the hero Chaos guy.

Totally wasted me. Do you think that arming Space Marine squads with flamers would help any? I usually go for missle upgrades.

Mad Mac · Oct 27, 2006

Hmm...All missles? Not a good idea. You should dedicate a few (like 2) Tac Squads to using missles,and have them target buildings and vehicles. The Rest of your marine squads should be using plasma or heavy bolters. I know Missle Launchers were a sort of kill-all weapon in the original DoW, but for killing infantry, plasma is where it's at. (Especially vs tough guys like Obliterators.)

As for Flamers, they're mostly a rushing weapon. They can help you finish the enemy in tier 1, but aren't usually worth using over the other heavy weapons.