Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

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Key points

Expansions are highly modifiable and several high quality mods are available.

Dawn of War and its expansion, Winter Assault, share game files.

Dawn of War previously used GameSpy, support for which was discontinued at the end of 2012 due to their takeover.

Multiplayer is still possible using LAN VPN services such as GameRanger or Hamachi.

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Steam Users' Forums for Dawn of War series

Availability

Version Differences

File:Dawn Of War Complete.png

Box art of "The Complete Collection", preferred version.

Some copies of the Original Dawn of War may not be "Game of the Year" edition.

"Game of the Year" editions of Dawn of War are patched to the latest version, and contain a few additional maps. This is now the only version sold.

Without a doubt, the best version to purchase is the "Dawn of War: The Complete Collection". This will give you all the content and expansions, at the best possible price, in terms of both single player and multiplayer.

Steam's "Dawn of War Collection" also includes the excellent sequel, Dawn of War 2, and much of its downloadable content, making it the most cost-efficient purchase (should all the games be desired).

Single Player

• Dawn of War has a base game and multiple expansions. Much debate is had over which is the "superior" version, but it comes down to player preference, such as desired race (Space Marines) or campaign format (Scripted missions or multiple skirmish battles).
• Each game has its own, unique campaign, with varying lengths and complexity.
• Dawn of War has a story driven campaign, focused on the Space Marine race.
• Winter Assault has a two sided narrative, with one "Order" (Imperial Guard, Eldar) and one "Disorder" (Chaos, Orks). Missions switch between races, with the final mission being determined by your choice of race in the pen-ultimate mission.
• Dark Crusade and Soulstorm have a "Meta-map" style campaign (like the Total War series) where you pick your race then battle across either a planet or system respectively. Ultimately, a majority of these battles are skirmish games with interesting quirks (such as your customised commander and his honour guard being present, or pre-built structures) but there are several unique and scripted "Stronghold" missions where you attempt to crush another race and remove them from the fight.
• For the ultimate Single-player fan, it's strongly recommended to purchase Dawn of War: The Complete Collection. This gives you access to all the campaigns.

Multiplayer

• Multiplayer is typically played on the Soulstorm Expansion, the latest and "most balanced" version of the game. Most game modifications are also made for this Expansion.
• Multiplayer can now be considered "Defunct" due to the ceasing of GameSpy support.
• Dawn of War uses a complicated "Race Unlocking" mechanic for Multiplayer; purchasing and playing Soulstorm will only grant access to the Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar races. As such, for access to all races in Multiplayer, one must purchase and install all the Dawn of War games. If you want to play Space Marines/Chaos/Orks/Eldar online, you only need the base game Dawn Of War. Because Winter Assault is dependent on Dawn of War, if you want to play Imperial Guard online, you need both Dawn of War and Winter Assault, and finally if you wish to play the Tau/Necrons online, you need Dark Crusade.

Improvements

Higher resolution models

These enhancements are significantly more performance intensive. Ensure your PC is significantly more powerful than the recommended system specifications to ensure there is no loss of performance.

Instructions

Instructions

Instructions

Game data

Save game location

Game uses Steam Cloud.

Video settings

Widescreen resolution

This fix works only for versions 1.2 and 1.3. This will NOT work for Steam version because it is patched to 1.51. You can still use this fix and get game run in your native resolution, but game will be in 4:3 with black bars on sides.

Instructions

Field of view (FOV)

This fix will greatly enhance zoom capabilities.

Instructions

Vertical sync (Vsync)

Instructions

Anti-aliasing (AA)

Forcing AA will render fonts blurry and harder to read.

Forcing AA via graphics driver will result in greater AA. INI fix is probably only 2x AA.

Instructions