Use this mod to have a better camera. Extract the zip file into the Engine/DATA folder in the game folder of whatever Dawn of War you have installed.

Funnily, I had an almost complementary experience than yours. I played on normal dificulty and found the game to be relatively easy (for example, sometimes I felt like the enemy AI refrained to strike a heavy blow when it could have), save for the last few maps. Indeed, if I rememeber correctly I switched to hard for the next-to-last mission, just to have a more intense challenge, and... hard it was. I turned back to normal for the last one.
Now I'd like to replay the whole campaign on hard, and see if i get the same impression. Perhaps one day...
I found Winter Assault to be harder on the whole, perhaps intended for more experienced players.
I'm playing Dark Crusade at the moment (on normal), and I'd say the difficulty is somewhat uneven. The stronghold missions are long, but not that hard actually (again that "restrained AI" feeling), the other maps can be hellish (I had to retreat a few times, and yield territory) or easy (even walk-in-the-park sometimes).

I don't remember having any particular issue with pathfinding, while I agree that sometimes a higher, wider point of view might have been useful. Conversely, you can zoom in but I don't think I ever felt the need to.
Overall my experience has been great. DoW immediately became one of my favourite RTS games ever and the rest of the series is proving to be just as good.

Thank you.

I actually found the default with that mod to be a little too zoomed out, but they're just text files and easy to modify. In camera_high.lua, I changed DistMax = 70.0 to 40.0, and in camera_me.lua I changed DistMax = 2000 to 1500.

I guess the main reason behind the difficulty I faced during the campaign even on normal difficulty was the zoomed in camera, especially since I got so used to rts games that allow for extremely zoomed out camera mode like Homeworld games (although I find the originals to be harder and the Deserts of Kharak less so, mainly due to the fact that the originals (the ones in outer space) require you to play on different elevations while there's no such thing in Deserts of Kharak apart from the dunes of sand that can affect the ability of your units to aim at the enemy units). As for the pathfinding, I find the later missions to be more tolerable because the game finally takes you to more open space maps as compared to the earlier missions where you need to navigate through the narrow pathways of the forest maps. So I guess it's the maps rather than the pathfinding lol. But there are still baffling moments like in mission 10 where I had to take down I****r (spoiler for those who haven't played the game and wish to do so in the future), where my units would go around a crater instead of just walking over it and enter into a cover state. Like wth, even the cursor pointed out that I would be able to move there.

As for the overall difficulty, I guess the most challenge I've faced are in missions 6 and 9 (what a coincidence LOL). In mission 6, I remember I had a hard time dealing with the Eldar heavy tanks as I made my units travel up the top of the hill. Again, referring to my previous post, I think apart from the difficulty to navigate through the map, I can also attribute the difficulty I faced to the conservative playstyle that I approached the missions going in. It was also there where I was experimenting with the vehicles I deployed, which made me conclude that Hellfire Dreadnoughts are better than just simple Dreadnoughts lol. I had to learn it the hard way.

As for the pathfinding, I'd be arrogant if I said that the blame goes 100% to the map level design, as a part of it also goes to my base planning. By that, I mean in my attempt to prevent the Eldars from retaking the Strategic Points I've captured, I would try to have my Servitors build some Heavy Bolter Turrets near my Strategic Points that already have Listening Posts planted on them. Much to my embarrassment, these turrents (in addition to the other base buildings I made my Servitors build near my Strategic Points in order to cut the time taken to reach the final objective) blocked the only safe path to the final objective LOL *facepalms and cries*. Sure, my Space Marines were able to move through the small spaces between those base buildings, however my vehicles were not. Therefore, I don't remember how many times I called my vehicle units stupid (or maybe I called them with other names, but definitely nothing of positive connotations) for taking a detour through a path that was swarming with Eldars. So by the time those vehicles had reached the bottom of the stairs leading up to the top of the hill, they were already of less than full health. And honestly, I wish the Servitor units don't take up the squad cap. But I guess the devs were afraid that this might have a bad implication on the multiplayer since players can just bring many Servitors to help with repairs. So yeah, just a nitpick that I'm honestly fine with the feature not being implemented.

As for the final assault against the units at the top of the hill, I had to go back and forth between attacking them and retreating back to the Strategic Point just below the second half of the set of stairs leading up to the top of the hill (please correct me if I'm wrong about the layout of the map, but I'm definitely sure that there was a Strategic Point there). The annoying part is, those Eldars would chase you off till that Strategic Point I mentioned just now. I think I remember I even had my Servitors build some Heavy Bolter Turrets around there as well. That said, the Eldar forces were just overwhelming that at some point I had to retreat my forces down the set of stairs' first half (after which that would be the new rally point before I could retake that Strategic Point back) and yield that Strategic Point.

Finally, for mission 9, I guess the challenge comes from the fact that the Chaos would just teleport new units at the place where the combat is currently taking place. I guess another reason as to why I struggled quite a bit is also because I wasn't aggressive enough (which I soon learned, that apparently in Dawn of War you just can't always be too slow and wait to advance right after you've fortified every single Strategic Points you've captured), since I feel like I would've fared better had I pushed my units a bit deeper and destroyed the Chaos base buildings responsible for their teleporting units.

All things considered, it was a fun and a really rewarding campaign as I got to learn from my experience and improve from the mistakes I made so that I could perform better when I play the game's skirmish mode hehe. ^.^"

And thanks for your opinions on the Winter Assault and Dark Crusade. If indeed Winter Assault is harder as you said, then I guess I'd need to train and acquaint myself more with the game through its skirmish mode. As for the Dark Crusade, I guess I'm just one of those people who are fine with a game's difficulty not being consistent throughout the whole campaign, especially when the game focuses more on its story (but I don't know about the Dark Crusade). It's like HALO 3, where the most difficult mission was High Charity mission, and the difficulty starts to slowly drop from there. But I find it to be fine because at that point, it feels like the climax has already passed, and the game is slowly putting you through the closing of the story. Even the mood had already changed when you're playing through the last mission of the game. But then again, I haven't played the Dark Crusade so I definitely have no idea which missions you considered to be hellish, not that hard, or easy. It just so happens that I find the approach to a game difficulty in games like Halo 3 to somewhat fit.

Thanks for the help! Might try that mod in the future. :)

This discussion is very engaging, but I wouldn't want to derail the thread too much... it is about "What made you happy today?", after all.
Well, let's say I'm happy to have this discussion today :)))

Hey it can happen when fighting in confined spaces. Some Tau units for example have quite a large footprint, and navigating around them with vehicles can be a problem, especially after they have installed themselves on the ground (think about Starcraft's siege tank). I learned it the same way.

In Dark Crusade, Tau workers don't count as troops, but you can have only 4 max. I haven't tried other races so I can't say if they changed this mechanic.

Honestly I can't remember in such detail, as it was quite some time ago.

Those pesky pink demons... yeah they can be annoying. I used them a lot, too, when playing Chaos.
But you can do the same with terminators. I always try to keep a squad ready at all times when playing the Space Marines.

And that's whence my impression of a "merciful" AI comes from: at times, I felt like I could defend a position indefinitely, even when I was being too cautious, just because the enemy wasn't throwing all its best units at me, or attacking with its full force. Other times, on the contrary, you WILL be overthrown if you do not adopt a more proactive stance.
The "strategic point" mechanic is great, because it prompts you to advance and gain ground (and guides you in the process), rather than just "turtle". It makes the game very dynamic and succesful for me, and different from others in the genre (I don't have such an extensive knowledge of RTS to know if it's exclusive to DoW).

That's just my impression, at any rate.

In DC there isn't a linear campaign as in previous instalments, nor an actual, proper story, but rather a planetary map where seven races compete for supremacy in a Risk-like fashion. This is excellent for replayability, since you really want to try and beat the game with each race.
I failed to mention that the different provinces have indeed a different difficulty level each, so a stronger or weaker degree of resistance is to be expected; that said, the strongholds, which have the higher numbers (let's say a 15), were consistently easier for me than other, lesser territories, with some "8" ones, for example, giving me headaches, sometimes even forcing me to retreat after an exhausting tug-of-war (the Imperial Guard in particular being an absolute nightmare).
It also depends on your Honor Guard (the personal army you can grow between battles) and various bonuses and abilities you can gain on the battlefield.

My feeling toward this discussion has also been the same. :)

I see. So I guess at the end of the day the reason (or I guess one of the possible reasons) for this is to prevent the player from having too many workers at once, although based on your reply, I do prefer that max number of units mechanic rather than including the workers as part of the total squad cap. I mean even Apothecary units don't contribute to the squad cap (but I guess the reason for that is because they're mainly useful as part of a squad).
Me: *deploys a Terminator Squad in the middle of the combat zone* "Aha! Taste that!"
Chaos: *deploys an Obliterator Squad near my Terminator Squad*
Me: o.o
That's true, and often when you notice that the enemy units seem to be more aggressive at attacking your Strategic Points, that's when I think the game is hinting at you that you need to send some of your units right past the enemies and go straight to where those enemy units came from. This would often make a cool immersive moment (like in the movies I guess) where some of your units are holding their ground around a Strategic Point against a mob of enemies while some others are sneaking past them and going straight for the enemy base buildings.

As for the Strategic Point mechanic, I agree with you that it pushes you to advance in the game. That said, I do like it when those points are placed sensibly in the map. For example, in mission 10 (the vanilla Dawn of War 1's campaign since I haven't played any other), apart from taking down I****r, another primary objective that you need to accomplish in order to finish the mission is to completely wipe out all the Chaos forces in the map, which also includes their base buildings. Apparently, since these base buildings are often found near Strategic Points (although not always I think, but I may be wrong since I don't really remember the layout of all the maps), it gets pretty annoying when you have three Strategic Points (I think it was three in mission 10) isolated from the rest of the Strategic Points at the upper left corner of the map. So yeah, the funny thing that happened in that mission was that I managed to take down I****r pretty quickly after reaching the top of the temple in that mission, but was forced to stay in the mission because I need to completely sweep the map clean of any Chaos base buildings in the map. And having some Strategic Points located literally at the corners of a map just doesn't help, made me feel like the mission was dragging on for longer than it needed to be.
I see, that's interesting tbh. By Risk-like fashion, I guess it's kinda similar to Civ games (I've only ever gotten really into Civ 4)? All things considered, I'm always up for replayability! So I'm definitely looking forward to this.

As for the difficulty, then I guess it'd be weird for a level/mission to be easy when it feels like it shouldn't be in real life and vice versa. So I guess the Halo 3 example I gave just doesn't apply in the case of the Dark Crusade's campaign (meaning I can understand why people would think the difficulty in the campaign is uneven, as I would too).

And since it's already too late in my place, then I guess this is where I sign out. Thanks for the discussion. :)

Lastly, I'm sorry everyone to have derailed this thread lol! *bows*

Happy that my left knee is feeling better because it is gorgeous sunny outside and I love going for long strolls, even if most of the time I walk about the neighbourhood aimlessly. :)

Happy to be off work and gave myself the goal of accomplishing absolutely nothing today. Except for walking under the sunny sky. :P

Adopted a cat.

Brought the cat in after finding it injured and scared. Spent a few days in the neighborhood seriously looking for the owner... to no avail. Now...

... we have a cat... even though I am allergic... and my wife is allergic.

So we sneeze and wheeze and buy more cat toys and kitty litter as we take allergy meds and prattle on about what great new accomplishment kitty made today (he's around 4 - 6 mos)... and how adorable he is.

The value of a society is determined by how it treats its weakest members. :-)
Anyone who can enjoy the little things in life is rich. I wish you a speedy recovery!

You (and your wife!) are very kind for opening your home to a creature in need, despite both your allergies. :) Heart-warming story... Kitty is going to reward you both with lots of love and laughter, just you wait! ;)


I try my best to enjoy the little things in life. I've always been that way. And, on rare occassions, I feel like enjoying the bigger things in life too. xD

That's true. Enjoying only the bigger things in life might make oneself less appreciative of the little things that happen to you in life.

Just finished Dawn of War: Winter Assault's Order campaign as the Imperial Guards. And no, I don't think I'll be playing as the Eldars anytime soon. Whether it's harder than the vanilla Dawn of War 1's campaign or not, I'm still undecided. I mean I struggled in both campaigns, but the difficulty I faced in the vanilla game's campaign was resulted from me not getting yet acquainted with the way everything works in that game yet. In Winter Assault however, I was better equipped with my experience from the vanilla game, but I was still again faced with the new challenge of getting used to the additional new features that I need to familiarize myself with. And I did learn some new stuff in both campaigns. So yeah, they're more or less the same in that regard, hence why I'm still pretty undecided.

Someone after reading the paragraphs below: "But you admitted your failed some of the missions a few times! How is that not harder?"

Me: "Eeehhhhh... That's true. You know what, the Dawn of War: Winter Assault's Order campaign (minus the final mission for the Eldars) is harder for me. I guess the reason for that is because Winter Assault introduced some new objectives to the campaign, like protecting the Webway Assembly at all cost as the Eldars, and protecting the Titan crew for the Imperial Guards. None of this was present in the vanilla game's campaign."

One thing that I find annoying is that unlike in the vanilla game, now you need to research a lot using your base buildings before you can build the units you want. This wasn't the case in the vanilla game, as you simply need to either build a certain building as a requirement, or simply upgrade your HQ building. I feel like the devs here are just making this complicated for the sake of making things complicated. Like, "Since we already have some of the models for the units from the vanilla Dawn of War 1, let's fill some of that saved work capacity to implement some other things. Oh, how about the building mechanics? Let's add more research!" Bruh...

That said, I like the new cover feature where you can hide your infantry units inside your base buildings for extra protection as well as using the underground tunnels connected between each building to allow for your units to travel from one part of the map to the other. This is useful as you can put some of your important units like your Techpriest Enginseers (worker units) safe in any of your base buildings to allow them to travel quickly to a Strategic Point you've captured somewhere on the map, as long as there's a base building already constructed there. And I also like the introduction of the Baneblade. This massive fully armed for every situations tank can really turn the tide of battle, as it did for me in my last mission playing as the Imperial Guards against the Necrons. Just make sure to have your Techpriest Enginseers nearby to help with its repairs.

One thing that I have to nitpick about the campaign however (the Order campaign at least, since this is the only one I've played so far, minus the final mission for the Eldars), is that not all the things required of you to perform during the missions were taught during the tutorial, so there are times where you need to learn the ropes as you go, which is fine by me, but it can be quite challenging when you're under pressure. For example, in one mission playing as the Eldars, you're tasked to teleport your Bonesinger to a location somewhere in the map to construct a Webway Gate there in order for your base buildings to be able to relocate to that area, while your units as well as your base buildings are being attacked by the Orks. The problem is, I didn't know how, until I realized quite late that there's a teleport function that a Bonesinger has at the bottom right corner of the screen. So I teleported to that new location, built a Webway Gate there, and I was left confused again as I didn't know how to relocate my base buildings lol. So yeah, after some time, I also found out that each of your Eldar base buildings have a relocate function at the bottom right corner of the screen. However, it was already too late and so I used all this knowledge in my second playthrough of the mission and managed to win it.

I also hate mission 4 of the Order campaign. The enemy just wouldn't stop spamming their Orks and Chaos units at you, which I initially thought they came from their base buildings, but to my dismay, they didn't. So they would just keep coming even if you had destroyed their base buildings. From there, I realized you just needed to keep pushing forward and fight off any enemy units that try to stop you. This was also the time when I realized that your hero units are more effective in melee combat that attacking from a distance (Yes, melee combat was set as the default attacking go-to strategy for your hero units, it's just that I already got into the habit of changing this setting and making them attack from a distance). So yeah, my hero units literally became a tank in that mission, assisted by my other lower rank units attacking from afar with their ranged weapons. And yes, I also failed more than once in this mission before finally realizing the, as Chaplain Varnus said it himself, "Superior path", that allowed me to minimize the number of enemy units that could attack me.

Therefore, I'd say mission 4 has been the hardest mission to play through so far. I say this one instead of the final mission for the Imperial Guards because that final mission became pretty easy once you've got the Baneblade by your side to help destroy the Necron Monoliths. That said, I have a feeling that the final mission for the Eldars might actually be the hardest, as I'm not yet sure how the Eldars are going to fight off the Necrons. Sure there's the Soul Stone, but I have yet to know how it's going to play out in game, like how that will be integrated as part of the gameplay. Would it be harder? Would it be easier? I don't know yet. Anyway, time to try out the Disorder campaign!

Overall, this has been a really challenging campaign. I've never failed a single mission playing the vanilla Dawn of War 1's campaign on normal difficulty, but I've failed a few times in Dawn of War: Winter Assault's campaign (Order campaign minus the final mission for the Eldars) on normal difficulty.

---SPOILER---
EDIT: I just finished the last Dawn of War: Winter Assault's Order campaign, which is the final mission for the Eldars. I have to say, my opinion about mission 4 of the Order campaign remains the same, which is that it remains as the hardest mission in the campaign. The fact that we as the Eldars get to summon the Avatar of Khaine as well as the ability to control the Titan's weapons, this made the mission a little easier just like how it went with the final mission for the Imperial Guards. Moreover, the assistance of the Imperial Guards in the final mission for the Eldars will never go unappreciated as they were the MVPs in buying the Eldars the time to complete the necessary research to summon the Avatar of Khaine as well as the time to be in control of the Titan's weapons. Overall, I have to say the Dawn of War: Winter Assault's Order campaign has been both fun and frustrating at the same time lol, but the missions have also allowed me to learn more about the mechanics and features of the game.
---SPOILER---

Got a totally free copy of Ghostwire Tokyo on EGS and a free GOG copy of Ozymandias (was interested in it for some time but just hadn't pulled the trigger *shrug*) via Amazon's Prime gaming.

Been long enough since I dealt with Amazon they just gave me my fifth/sixth(?) Prime trial, so I grabbed these free games and I'll be able to catch up on some of their shows... all for no money down and I'll be cancelling before the trial ends. The sucker be you, Amazon! ;)

Thanksgiving dessert is already planned.

I'm going to make no-churn pumpkin ice cream:
https://www.thekitchn.com/pumpkin-ice-cream-recipe-23432356

Then make ice cream pumpkin pie:
https://food52.com/recipes/39361-scoops-ice-cream-pumpkin-pie

It can be made tomorrow then hidden away in the freezer until Thanksgiving.

RAILGRADE!