I have a love-hate relationship with real time strategy games. I adored Myth, but I’m kind of stupid with economy-based RTS’ like Starcraft or Warcraft because I really just want to focus on units. But in classic RTS’, unit control tends to not matter that much if you suck at economy management and build orders because you’re outpaced already.

Dawn of War II (as seen above) is pretty much a perfect storm of awesome. It mostly dispenses with buildings, although it does keep a headquarters building that can be upgraded twice. HQ upgrades unlock new tiers of units. Resources are still collected, but they come not from workers near your base, but from buildings spread around the map. Control of those buildings grants you requisition points and energy, which you can spend on new units, reinforcements of existing units, and upgrades for those units. Losing a squad is a very big problem; it’s always cheaper to reinforce an older squad than buying a whole new one. Plus, squads gain experience, so it’s well worth your time to be careful with them. One of the major new mechanics for DoW2 is effective retreating. If a battle isn’t going your way, you can activate “flee” which boosts unit speed substantially, makes them highly resistant to damage, and removes your ability to control them until they get back home.

All this is an elaborate way to say that DoW2 feels really right. Battles flow really nicely. Armies tend to smash into each other and when one side is obviously winning, the other falls back to regroup and try again. There are costs to losing, but winning doesn’t feed forward too much. Angles of attack matter hugely; flanking around defensive positions is key. In team games, supporting your teammate’s attacks can be devastating, though concentrating so much power in one place leaves the rest of the field open for the other team to capture resource points. Overall, I feel like I’m making important tactical and strategic decisions all the time and it’s immensely satisfying when they work out. There’s tons of great moments to remember, too. Epic coordinated assaults of heavily entrenched enemy positions; razor thin victories where I’m throwing everything I have into buying 30 seconds for a team-mate to capture a critical point; having scouted out an enemy to prepare the perfect counter for their next attack.

I’m also a sucker for community dialog. Although you wouldn’t know it glancing through these notes, the forums united to threaten to not buy the final game because of that document. On Thursday, Relic released the so-called “Zero Day” patch notes, rolling back the most offensive of the mistakes from the previous patch. Of course, the forums have just re-aligned on different battle lines. Even though Relic answered their biggest complaint, there are a million new things to complain about and the cycle starts over.

Anyone want to play? The multiplayer beta is still available for another few days. I’m “heresiarchic” on XBL. And I’ll be picking up the full version when it drops next Wednesday.