Playing to win: Dawn of War II, part 1

I am probably the worst RTS player ever.  At least out of the people that still devote time to the genre.  The original Command and Conquer: Red Alert was the game that pulled me into the entire real-time strategy scene.  I remember blabbering on and on about it with a friend in high school – about strats, exploits, and “what if”’s.  The guy even came over to my place and LAN’ed a couple of times.  Working at Westwood Studios was my dream job back in those days.  Since then, I’ve played a disgusting number of RTS titles just to relive the wonder from my youth.

The problem is that I’ve never truly played them competitively.  Aside from playing the single-player campaigns, I’m generally a care-bear comp-stomper that’s afraid of losing.  I’ve played a few competitive multiplayer games of Starcraft way back in the day with a friend, and more recently, a few competitive games of Rise of Legends and Tiberium Wars.  I never once played Red Alert 3 against another human, even though I enjoyed the heck out of the single-player game and AI skirmishes.

Well, by now, I’ve had just about enough of turtling.  I know I’m missing out on an entire dimension of the genre by shielding myself from the outside world.  That is why I’ve decided to start playing Dawn of War II online.  I have a great amount of respect for Relic’s decision to buck genre conventions with their most recent titles.  So with Dawn of War II’s removal of base building, the game seems to me like an ideal candidate for a title on which I can make my online debut.  I can focus more on the micro, the tactics, and the matchups than on the economic repercussions of every one of my actions.  The game’s design makes player disadvantage a lot less of a slippery slope than it is in traditional RTS gameplay, since smart moment-to-moment decisions can turn the tide of an entire battle.

To prepare, I comp-stomped a lot during the “multiplayer” beta to learn my way around the mechanics and the units, so I had a basic understanding of what to do.  My excuse for not going online during the beta was because there were still a lot of bugs and blatant imbalances/exploits, and I didn’t want to teach myself behaviors that wouldn’t carry over to the retail patch.

“Losing is part of the game. If you never lose, you are never truly tested, and never forced to grow. A loss is an opportunity to learn.”

-David Sirlin, Playing to Win

For the past couple of nights, I’ve been alternating between the single-player campaign (which, by the way, is much more compelling than any other RTS I’ve played – probably because it plays more like an RPG than anything else) and some multiplayer ranked matches.  How have I done?  Let’s see… my head-to-head record is, as of this writing, 0-5.  Yeah, that bad.  Last I checked, my TrueSkill rating was 2.  2!!!

It didn’t help that the first night (only a few hours after the game was unlocked on Steam), I played the same person three times in row.  (I always hated Xbox-/Windows-Live’s matchmaking).  I decided to stick with my favorite race from the first Dawn of War – the Orks.  The Warboss seemed like a good, vanilla commander to use, so I stuck with him for my first five games.  My very first opponent (or rather, first three opponents) was an Ork player as well.  There isn’t much to tell about those first three games except that I clearly didn’t actually know my way around anything.  The guy ran circles around me.  I ticked down some of his VP’s in the first game, but by the second and third time, he was shutting me out without even blinking.

Being the fresh n00b that I was, I asked my opponent for some tips.  The guy was nice enough to help – he wasn’t really all that condescending.  He showed me just how amazing Stikkbommaz are at shutting down infantry and how Shoota Boyz aren’t as good as I used to think they were in the first Dawn of War.  His T1 strategy generally consisted of getting to Stikkbommaz quickly and microing them carefully to gain an early military advantage.

I kept this new info in mind for my next multiplayer outing.  Last night, I played two more games – one against a Hive Tyrant commander and another against a Techmarine.  I was able to get some early victories in both games.  The Tyranid player, however, came back with huge swarms of units, and I neglected to make the Stikkbommaz until later in the game, when it was too late.  I threw some Deff Dredds carelessly into awaiting Warriors, which tore my new toys to shreds.  It took a bit of time, but he eventually established map control and won the game.

My second game last night was just baffling.  The problem?  I was winning.  It was the first time I got to play Caldaris Dunes (the map I played the most during my dabbling in the beta), so I was fairly familiar with my surroundings.  I went with early Sluggaz and Stikkbommaz, and I was able to establish a tight hold on two of the three VP towers.  Unfortunately, that feisty Techmarine setup a little stronghold in the northern part of the map, garrisoning some troops in the northernmost building and putting a turret in front of it.  He held the northern points – VP, requisition, and power.  I felt comfortable with my lead and didn’t think to use the Stikkbommaz to coordinate an attack on the garrison.  At that point, I was dumbstruck – I was so used to losing, I had absolutely no idea what to do in an advantageous position.  I launched a few half-baked attacks on his generators, to no avail.  I brought him down to about 200 VP’s with little opposition.  It was too quiet.  I was teching my platform, but I knew he was teching too, and I knew I needed to prepare, but I wasn’t thinking straight.  Eventually, as I expected, two Dreadnoughts appeared and began wreaking havoc with my mostly-T1 forces.  If I only had the thought to build some Tankbustas to counter vehicles (what I naturally expected the opponent to build in that situation), I could’ve probably held back his forces.  I also didn’t realize that vanilla Deff Dredds were really bad against the Dreadnoughts.  Anyway, with my sloppy micro and his unstoppable vehicles, he took the map back from me and locked down the northern and southern routes.  He also had some weird plasma gun thing that kept knocking down my T3 Nob squad.  (I tried all the races in beta, but I’d never seen that weapon before.  I guess it’d help to study the other races a little better.)  Anyway, before I knew it, the game was over.  The game summary was unbelievable.  I had a hearty economic lead and even a couple of commander kills.  There was no reason I should’ve lost that game.  But I did.  Looks like I still have a lot to learn.

I’m thinking of switching to the Mekboy commander, as I think it suits my playstyle a little better.  I also didn’t take kindly to having my lumbering Warboss swarmed by smaller, runtier melee squads that prevented him from retreating.  I’ll probably take the Mekboy for a spin and see how things go from there.  At least my last two games netted me about 400-500 rank points each – much more than the 100 or so I got playing against the Ork player.  I guess I’m getting a little better.

Does the casual player still have hope in today’s hardcore, competitive RTS scene?  Can he still find some measure of enjoyment in such an unforgiving environment?  Stay tuned, follow my progress, and find out!