Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Important Note: Dawn of War II uses Games for Windows Live as part of its DRM solution. This is known to cause several problems.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II was released in February 2009 and was developed by Relic Enterainment. The game uses an updated version of the Essence Engine which Company of Heroes uses. It is the sequel to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and it's standalone expansions Winter Assault, Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. The game has two expansions of its own; the standalone expansions Chaos Rising and Retribution.

Availability

Version Differences

All copies of regular Dawn of War II and the expansion, Chaos Rising, use Microsoft's "Games for Windows Live" as it's form of DRM and online play, in addition to registering on Steam. Dawn of War II: Retribution uses Steamworks for DRM and online play. All retail copies of Dawn of War II and its expansions must be registered to your Steam account.

Both expansions to Dawn of War II are stand alone titles and as such do not require you own the original Dawn of War II to play. Unlike the previous Dawn of War game and its expansions Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, you are not penalized for not owning the previous expansions with restriction to what races to play; as such you can simply purchase Retribution and gain the Retribution campaign and all 6 races available for play in multiplayer.

Which version you go for depends on what you want from the game. If you want the multiplayer aspect of Dawn of War II, buy the Retribution as it is the only one of the three which has a multiplayer community (the past games have been abandoned in favour of Retribution). However you will miss out on arguably the two better single player campaigns; those of the base game and Chaos Rising, so if you want to play the game solely for the single player and/or offline play, buy the Gold Edition which contains the base game and Chaos Rising. If you want both the multiplayer and the single player, buy the Dawn of War II Complete Edition which includes the base game, Chaos Rising and Retribution.

Chaos Rising Expansion

See Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising.

Retribution Expansion

See Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Retribution.

Steam

Game is purchased and downloaded through Steam's client and is registered under your Steam account.

Retail

You must use the CD key to register the game under your Steam account for Dawn of War II, Chaos Rising and Retribution when installing.

Improvements

Skip Intro Videos

Company logo videos or the game's intro can be skipped used a launch command in the game's shortcut or through Steam's "Launch Options".

Steam

1. Right-click on "Dawn of War II" in the Steam Library.
2. Select "Properties".
3. Click on the "General" tab if needed.
4. Click on "Set Launch Options".
5. Add "-nomovies" to the command line.
6. Click "OK" and then "Close".

NOTE: This will prevent single-player movies from running. Intro movies can alternatively be skipped using escape (except on first time running).

Issues

Pagefile

Dawn of War II will not run unless you have a pagefile of at least 1.5GB in size.

See Also

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine