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Braidedheadman · 03-11-2008, 01:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golden Salmon

I played dawn of war up into dark crusade. i stopped when it became apparent that they weren't going to continue working on game balance. Has balance between the armies changed significantly in soulstorm? namely in the area of necrons

In short: Yes, the 'Crons were nerfed. I haven't played vs. them online yet, but the bots definitely feel much easier to defeat than they did before. Balance on the whole has received a great deal of attention, specifically to T1 and T2 stages of the game where all the factions are more or less back on par with each other (from what I can tell), and the costs of teching have been increased to discourage the "fast tech" strats that people sometimes liked to employ (especially for chaos factions). The net effect that I've found is that early game (T1 through T2) duration is prolonged, making efficient unit deployment and map control more important than spamming and/or fast teching, as the resources to do either have been severely limited.

Regarding the Necrons, using the Space Marines and played on "Hard" difficulty settings, on the campaign missions where it's been 2 vs 1 against me, I haven't had too many problems whacking the first base early whilst establishing a strong foothold before taking out the second base's remnant forces. The campaign's "Necron Stronghold" mission has so far been the easiest one yet, and I only have the Dark Eldar and Chaos territories left to eliminate (the Necron's Stronghold strength was rated at "16" when I attacked it).

Crons were definitely toned down. The incremental power requirements for building additional generators has gone up significantly while T2/T3 power upgrade researches are both more expensive and provide reduced returns. All told, they've slowed down the "necronomy" by at least an order of magnitude. While I have not played online against them yet, vs. the bots I find that they are now highly vulnerable to base rushes in early game, which is where you want to take them out in the first place - whack their early power gens and builder scarabs, and they are good as done. If one is going to sit back and let the 'Crons build infrastructure and climb the tech ladder, well, one prolly deserves to get skunked by them in late game anyhow because by then the necronomy will be well on a roll

. But then again, a turtler's game DoW is most decidedly not for any faction excepting perhaps IG to a limited extent.

On that note, the IG stronghold mission was, in a word, "Insane." As in, "Insanely difficult." I haven't played any skirmish matches using the IG, and I'm not done the SM campaign yet, but of the 8 other factions, the only one I haven't squared off against yet has been the Dark Eldar, and the IG have been so far - and by far - the most troublesome. Garrisoned IG units (when you stick them inside a building, like an Infantry Command bunker or whatever) seem to do A LOT more damage than they did before, and the bot likes to pull that trick as soon as you get near enough to their base structures - it never used to do that much before, indeed if ever, that I can recall.

[Edit]

Tactical Tip: On the Webway Gate territories where you have to capture Critical Locations and you're almost certainly up against 2 vs 1 bots against, go for the "Take and Hold" victory by securing half the CPs for the win. It's far easier to defend what you've got than it is to leave them unattended and attempt to take out two T2+ bot bases. Most of those maps are resource-rich and the bases are usually separated by long distances (they are huge maps), making an "Annihilation" victory more difficult to achieve, especially when the bot flips the TnH countdown on you in their favor. 6 minutes is not a lot of time when your army gets wiped (and it will) and you have to rebuild while one or both bots storm what's left of your main base (you did build a secondary base location, right?

).