Best and most played Warhammer 40k game?

[Lelygax]

Which game is the most played on the 40k franchise right now? I mean for online multiplayer, including any type of game (RTS/FPS/TPS). I'm low on money and want to know the best options here to purge heresy.

[Imnuktam]

get dow dark crusade / soulstorm and the others leading up to it for all the armies. Its the most functional and supported. Dow II is prettier but you build nothing, so if you enjoy building the bases as part of the game that one isnt for you.

Games like this and the new space hulk are broken for most and if you manage to get 2hrs of gametime in before it breaks steam just turns a blind eye to the problem since they already got paid.

[Lelygax]

That seems cheap, community have found a fix for these crashes? If I get only soulstorm I can play with people from dark crusade?

Let the hints and opinions flow!

[Machine Spirit]

I wouldnt go with DoW Dark Crusade or Soulstorm. They are both great games, dont get me wrong but they are very old school RTS. More like Star Craft 1 (but better imo) and if you can afford them as well as my recommendation then go for it. Both lack good single player campaigns. The single player campaigns are okay but they feel too much like skirmish map after skirmish map.

My recommendation would be DoW2, DoW2 Chaos Rising (expansion to DoW2) and DoW Retribution. All these games take the Company of Heroes approach to RTS, which is less about base building and more about hero units, hero upgrades and squad combat/tactics where cover and flanking is everything. It is truly a streamlined, and top experience imo. Each of your units feels like a power house and are hard to kill, which imo is what Space Marines should be like.

DoW2 and Chaos Rising offer pretty good single player experiences. DoW2 is centred around a tyranid invasion of the "Caldaris" system, which are the recruiting worlds of the "Blood Ravens" chapter of space Marines. Chaos Rising is about Chaos obviously but you get to import your characters from DoW2 into that campaign so it feels connected, again it is based around the Blood Ravens.

DoW 2 Retribution is a stand alone expansion, you dont need DoW2 or Chaos Rising in order to play it. The big difference with Retribution is you get to do a single player campaign for all races, not just the Space Marines. So you get Chaos, Orks, Eldar, Tyranid, Imperial Guard and Space Marine. Most of the missions are the same but like DoW2 no matter what race you select you get unique hero units and wargear throughout the campaigns along with their specific narratives.

In DoW2, Chaos Rising and Retribution the storytelling is the best I have seen in an RTS, some good twists to the plot and excellent voice acting, highly recommended you check out these campaigns.

As well as that, Retribution offers of co-op game called "Last Stand" where you select 1 hero unit (each race is represented from above but this time you also get Tau hero) and team up with 2 other players in arena style combat (co-op) where you fight waves of foes and unlock persistent wargear inbetween attempts. This mode is actually in Chaos rising but dont bother with it there, Retribution has a better version of it.

Retirbution has multiplayer pvp ranked and unranked and the online community as just as populated as Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. There is also an unofficial mod expansion that changed the balance of the races, adds units etc, which has loads of support in the community but be warned it is a cut throat community when it comes to PVP you will get owned a lot before you start winning games.

[Imnuktam]

Originally posted by Lelygax:

That seems cheap, community have found a fix for these crashes? If I get only soulstorm I can play with people from dark crusade?

Let the hints and opinions flow!

I think you have to get all of the games in the series to play with all of the armies. The campaign mode in soulstorm and dark crusade are risk style ongoing campaigns which is pretty cool. The main difference is, in dark crusade what you built on a planet stays and on soulstorm you have to rebuild it every time you get invaded which was meant as a balance to make it not trivialy easy to defend, but played out as tedious imo. Soulstorm adds aircraft as well.

They are by far the most fun for me and everyone I play with. I am the only one that played DOW II for a long period of time (had 300 or so hours) since everyone else felt the game was really dumbed down when it took the building of bases away from the player. It also has a very restrictive cap which will leave you not even wanting to build a turret or make a unit commander at times since it will take up 5 of your 100 cap. You will find you can have maybe half the unit types available to you and only usually make one of each of those before being capped out.

Your games will be all but over by the time you get to the top tier III units and you will usually not have enough cap for both of them anyways unless you plan ahead, by the time you get the hang of game. Also the ai is pretty lame in cheating the fog of war and falling back. If you set up a unit with supression fire in an area the AI will instantly stop going there allowing you to easily funnel them, if you watch a replay of those games you will see the ai instantly go somewhere else the second you set up the supression team, and all troops subject to suppresion will avoid that area forever.

Also, the fall back ability allows squads to instantly fall back running for base and become highly resistant to range damage, while giving them a speed boost to outrun most every other unit. In the end you will kill far less units per game, see their commander barely avoid death half the times you should have had him, and build almost nothing. I kill 100's per game in soulstorm/dark crusade and usually less than 100 per game in DOW II. I have to play vs orcs or tyranids usually to kill over 100 before winning in DOW II.

The graphics are much better, and the campaign mode was cool to play with buddies is about the only thing i can say for DOW II. Last stand was cool but now is dead looking for games.

[Machine Spirit]

You make it sound as if Dow2 is dumbed down. I think DoW2 is more like an esport style game, very streamlined and comes down to how fast you can act, each unit is precious and overreaching can spell the end of your game if you are not careful. You are right in that a game rarely gets to tier 3, until very late but by that point, imo, it is a nail biting, edge of your seat moment. In Dow Dark Crusade most of my mp games would get to T3 but sometimes to stalemate or it went on for a long time to the point where it got boring.

It is a tough call for sure. I would say out of Dark Crusade and Soul Storm, Dark Crusade felt much more polished and had a better story and the flying units in Soul Storm were pretty dreadful.

[Imnuktam]

DOW II was dumbed in my opinion. There were so much more in the way of tactics before removing building. From the building of your base and gaining advantages over the enemy based on what you built and when, to where and how you actually built it. Choosing between bigger armies or base advancement. Setting up secondary bases in hidden remote areas and coming back from destruction and a loss, to running over to where your teammate is and building things there like turrets to save him or maybe a secondary super base alongside him. Game felt like it lost half of the depth removing the building aspect to me and my friends.

Agree with flying units, they werent balanced properly and if you get good at game you will find many empires like the tau can use 3-5 of them and wipe out ai pretty easily, just falling back to a safe repair spot when one gets under 50% life and rejoining battle after repair. I chose not to use them when playing tbh because of that.

I would get both games if you can, they were both fun in their own way. I did like the extra focus on leader units and upgrading them in DOW II, but in the end i enjoyed DOW II far less as a result of losing the ability to build things.

[Lelygax]

Wow, so insightful. Let me see if I understood it right: DoW1 is more like a classic RTS focused in bases and armies, while DoW2 is more focused in a hero-like army?

Also, these expansions act stand-alone only, or if I get all they will work together mixing all things? The base game (GoTY) is useless then for multiplayer? If I get for example only one of the 4 versions from DoW1, I can play with players using another ones? What about these 3 versions from DoW2?

[Imnuktam]

Originally posted by Lelygax:

Wow, so insightful. Let me see if I understood it right: DoW1 is more like a classic RTS focused in bases and armies, while DoW2 is more focused in a hero-like army?

That about sums it up. I would re-post this on the forums for those specific games, this one probably gets a lot less traffic and most that are using it are just here to voice how the game is broken and they cant play it. Worked fine for me so far, but that seems the running theme from the posts i have read. While its not a bad game, its really not very polished and has VERY few unique units to fight against. I have fought a total of 5 so far in all my campaign games and campaign is the only game mode.

Both DOW game collections are on sale til jan 4th, so if you can get both, that would be my suggestion, but if you like building like the standard rts you will be bummed out with DOW II.

[Lelygax]

Yeah, I've posted in all Warhammer steam's forums to gather info from all the fans, I think that is my best bet. Since I've never played a RTS where you don't build houses (the closest to it was some Warcraft 3 mods and watching some MOBA videos), I think that I will try downloading and playing a demo or something like that, to make my decision.

[dreadfulpennyarcade]

I can't speak to most played, but best imo would be; DOW1 Dark Crusade with the Dawn Of Skirmish mod ([edit] SP backup) + possibly Titanium Wars (or similar expansion mod). Whilst DOW2 has far better graphics, I find it very limited in gameplay. I dream of DOW1 with DOW2 graphics. Hopefully DOW3, if it ever comes about, will be closer to DOW1.