Question about Warhammer: DoW II

Try out the demo. It's still being given out through Steam. That's the best way to find out.

Sounds like you need a complete system overhaul. It's reached the point where you can upgrade with the ultra low end Atom based machines! Save your gaming money, and put it towards a new computer.

I'm running a P4 3.0 gigahertz dual core, 2 gig ram, 125 mb video card and my comp runs it but graphics have to be turned really low. After there gets to be a lot of units onscreen it almost becomes unplayable for me. Hope this helps.

Ugh I hated DOW II Beta, I think they totally ruined it.  They changed from 11 races to 4, added GFWL, and lowered the ammount of soldiers.  They have a total of 7 maps, not 2v2 maps as well.  Graphics are nice, I'll give them that. 

I'm not getting the game.  Starcraft II, Demigod, and Empire: Total War are on my list however.

-Phalnax

Couldn't find it on steam.  Are you sure?

To be fair, it took the main game plus several expansions to get to 11 races offered.

I'm playing DoW2 now and enjoying it.  It's different from 1, but with the smaller number of squads, I'm actually enjoyijng more what they can do, and the kill animations, much more than the first.  To each their own, I can understand that there will be those that don't like this change.  Interestingly, and I haven't played the beta, so I may be wrong, the gameplay seems a bit like what Demigod has on offer, ie. one powerful unit, with limited other units.

Oh, and I'm really mostly single player with this game.

Yeah, seriously.   Especially since some of the races in DoW sucked.   (I mean after necrons, they really did not do their best.  Sisters of battle for example made me feel so freakishly ripped off with reused models and animations.  It wouldn't be so bad if soulstorm added plenty of new content unrelated to races, but it really didn't)

Soul Storm wasn't made by Relic

Why does people keep telling lies* about it? 11 races in vanillia DoW? Are you sure? Because I tought it took them like 3 expansion packs to get that number. Because how could be fair to compare a new released game with a previous game with its 3 expansion packs?

Number of units? Well, Relic tried something different from DoW so from that point of view, they did the correct thing for what they wanted to create. That people agree or disagree with that decision is up to each player. I like it because, between other things, it doesn't overlap with DoW and offers me a new experience. But that just me. The Steam/GFWL combo seems silly to me but money is money, I suppose. I wish they had talked with Stardock first...

To the OP, don't bother buying it if your computer doesn't meet the minimum. Really. Wait until you get a better computer and/or the game lowers price.

* as in making a wrong comparison on purpose.

Having just bought the game last Friday, I can tell you that the minimum requirements are WAY too pessimistic. I'm running a 3 year old machine with only a 1.3 gig processor (single core, no less) and it runs fine. Low graphics? Sure. But I've got it at top resolution and it's not chugging - not even with a lot of enemies on screen. If you can live without every single shadow/raindrop/footprint, you'll be able to play and enjoy the game.

I know I have been.

I know it took them 3 expansion packs to get 11 races.  Who cares about SoB and Dark Eldar, they were a waste, but the others were good.  And they shouldve been in it.  Maybe down the line I may get it, but for now I won't...

I believe the demo is offline now. It was just a multiplayer demo anyway, which is really what Relic is about anymore, but if you aren't interested in mp . . . .

Any time you're that far under the minimum system requirements, you can't expect a game to run well at all, even on minimum settings.   I'd say save your money towards a new PC.  You're going to run into more and more games you can't play on your current PC.

I actually think the SP in DoW2 is extremely fun. I played a few MP matches over the weekend, but I always wanted to go back to SP. It's just such a different take on a typical RTS campaign (or RTT, if you're nit-picky!)

I got the game, my quick review is: The solo campain is 50/50, there is little strategy, but, I love the level-up stuff in between missions.  There's so much diversity and possibilites when you level up your squads.  But the solo campain is more like a FPS and RPG combined.

The scirmishes are where it's at, but NO base building; zero; nada. But it only comes with 7 maps total and NO 2v2 maps, only 1v1 or 3v3     You start with one "base", and units are built/reinforced there.  It's micro intensive, and since they totally ripped the game speed adjustments out of the game (game speed adjustment was in the first game, and something that made the game playable for my other friends, who now won't go near DoW2) you'll really have to be able to click fast.  You can pay to upgrade your one base up to two times, allowing more powerful sets of units.  All units you produce can be upgraded too, with a variety of weapons/armor/equipment.

There is a Squad cap (just like the ship cap in Sins), so you won't be spamming units, and since units level up, keeping your units alive is an importnat strategy (you can loose all but one guy from your squad, and still "reinforce" them to full again, keeping all your upgrades and level-up abilites).  You will REALLY get attached to your small army, and feel the loss when one dies.

As for the GFWL, it's awful, and the game SAYS you can play via lan, but, since I can't install it on my other two computers here (due to steam) I say that was almost an outright lie on the games behalf.  I would not have purchesed DowII had I know about Steams "big brother"ish restrictions.

To be honest I loved the original DoW, I took the second incarnation for a test drive and yep, it's very pretty and it's exceptionally nice to see a hive tyrant smash things... I dunno as far as single player went (which is what I'm most interested in)... no.  For some reason I just didn't like it.

Maybe it was me but whilst I get the whole 'small force, use cover' approach the controls just didn't seem to lend themselves to it... kind of "Hide behind this wall in ambush"... troops trot off an I start moving a squad up as bait only to find one of the ambushers couldn't be arsed to hide and is stood in the middle of an open area like an utter muppet (granted a genetically enginered heavily armed muppet).

That and the one capture per play on map (in SP campaign) irked me, I want both, I've cleared both out... what? The mothership's out of spare parts or something???

I'm pretty confident a lot of people will love it, which is cool as hopefully it'll mean DoW3 appears sooner or later and I might like that one

Space Marines are tough, but I still picture thousands of people in the battles depicted in the lore (the Heresy involved thousands of Space Marines, I'm talking about thousands of IG and heretics and stuff).

Fluff wise, both DoW and DoW II FAIL TEH EMPRA

DoW - SPESS MEHRNES die too fast (and chaos marines are squishier than regular marines, wtf)

DoW II - too few of any race....

DoW II is almost the opposite of Sins; a game can last 15-30 minutes.  The squirmishes really have grown on me, but it's stiall a bit hecktic for me.  And, 15-20 minutes is really too fast; I'd prefer 30-45.  It just seems it's over just when the fun is starting.

DOWII caters to a different crowd. To me it works since the 15-20 min games fit nicely into the space between times where i want to play grand strategy (total war games or SOASE) or do my work.

A good 2 thumbs up for me.

The craziest thing about DoW2 is there is NO 2 player stuff.  It's really insane from a game standpoint.  WHAT in the "heck" could they have possibly been thinking???  I mean, think about it, Blair and his co-developers in a meeting 2 years ago: "Hey, here's an idea for our upcomming Sins game, lets make it totally impossble for teams of 2 to play the game in ANY way"; Blair: "That's perfect, we'll take out all 2v2 maps, and make it impossible to play any game with an incriment of 2 in it, now, we're out of Goldshloger again, bring another bottle!"!

In response to the OP, if you do not meet the minimum requirements, you will not be able to run the game effectively.  Both my friend and I have computers that are well above the stated requirements, and even then it still slows down noticeably.  It's quite rediculous really.  There's barely anything going on in the SP game at any one time to warrent it hogging the system resources.

If you don't meet the minimum reqs, I wouldn't buy it.

On top of this, DoW II is a game you shouldn't buy regardless.  They have left a game breaking multiplayer bug in the game for two weeks now and stonewalled the community for much of that time.  Units a permanently eating up pop-cap in every single multiplayer game.  Save your money for a better PC or a game from a company that properly supports their game.

Relic has that bug fixed for a time now as stated in their forums... just waiting for those GFWL guys to certificate it. Why cannot they try to do it in less than their standard 2 weeks for a case so serious as this? Ask GFWL. 

I played last night, and my pop cap went down as the game progressed (and that was a vs an AI).  I finished the game (and lost) because there was only space for only 3 squads when I finally gave up and surrendered; game-breaking is an understatement. 

Also, the DRM is worse than you can imagine, they won't even let you into the "unit painter" (where you can change the looks of your army units) without first having to be online and hooked into steam' same goes for even a scirmish vs the AI solo, got'a be online and nose-ringed to steam. . .

I'm enjoying the wargear collecting and assigning it to squads far more than the actual combat in the campaign.  Fortunately, I didn't buy it for the SP, but because I found the MP beta pretty enjoyable.  Yes, the pop-cap bug is still present, but Relic has been vocal that they have a fix hurrying through QA.  Pretty embarrassing launch bug, but I'm hopeful they'll have it cleared up soon.

As for the shortness of the matches, that was what actually drew me to it.  In 3v3 when your team has been holding the map for a long time, why would you want to hold it even longer?  The game's dynamic is indicating which team is winning and the other side has a good chance to come back from a loss with skilled play.  I'm very impressed by the handful of units strategy Relic took where you have to be very careful how you deploy your troops or even hardened infantry like Space Marines will get vaporized.  While I liked Dawn of War a lot, it often felt from mid-game on all you were doing was right-clicking reinforce and smashing two seas of models against one another.  Repeat ad nauseam.  That wasn't the case for skilled players in 1v1 I know, but it's what the majority of team games turned into.