Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Template:Infobox Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (series) Key points

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

Dawn of War II and its standalone expansion, Chaos Rising, share game files.

General information

Steam Hub Discussion.

Steam Users' Steam Forums for Dawn of War series.

Availability

A Games For Windows Live (GFWL) account is required to play the game.

Version Differences

Both expansions to Dawn of War II are standalone titles and as such do not require you own the original Dawn of War II to play.

All copies of regular Dawn of War II and the expansion, Chaos Rising, use Microsoft's "Games for Windows Live" to support online play, in addition to registering on Steam.

Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising share online play, matchmaking and leaderboards. It uses a special race lockdown system:

• If you own Dawn of War II and not Chaos Rising expansion, you cannot play the "Chaos" race.
• If you own Chaos Rising and not the original Dawn of War II, you cannot play the original four races (Space Marines, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids).

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.

Improvements

Skip Intro Videos

This will prevent single-player movies from running.

Intro movies can alternatively be skipped using escape (except on first time running).

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".

Game data

Save game location

Profile and configuration data is also saved to this location.

Issues

Pagefile

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

Games For Windows Live

Games For Windows Live (GFWL) is known to have several problems.

General Troubleshooting Steps

GFWL is a typical Microsoft program, and can have several supporting runtimes which must be installed and up to date.

1. Run Windows Update to ensure you have the latest updates and fixes. This may also install some of the following runtimes.
2. Download and install the latest C++ Redist, available from the Microsoft Website.
3. Download and install the latest .NET framework, available from the Microsoft Website.
4. Download and install the latest version of the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant , available from the Microsoft Website.

Trouble installing Games For Windows Live

Download and install this Microsoft fix.

See Also

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine