Get Ready for WAAAGH !
As with all RTS games you have to build a powerful army, and in some cases do this as quickly as possible as the enemy may not let up and could be attacking you within the first few minutes. Building the stronghold is a must as well as fortifying it as soon as possible with whatever technology is available to you from the start point of the level. You will also find on some of the newer RTS games you go solo with a few men without having to build up a base first, working your way around the map towards an eventual goal. On levels like this you usually get reinforced with additional troops as you work through the level, gradually building up the strength of the battalion before having a final battle.
On the missions where you have to build the base up first you will always start with a main command centre (which may not be called a command centre but essentially that’s what it is). Once this is built you get access to the basic foot soldiers and engineers so you can start building the stronghold. Its always good to start with at least 3 engineers to build up the extras like gun turrets or minefields to fortify the surrounding area, power generators so you have enough juice to run everything you build, garages to build the heavy artillery and tanks and finally not forgetting the barracks so you can acquire more powerful foot soldiers and specialist units.
Click for larger imageThankfully on Winter Assault you don’t have to think too much when it comes to the tech tree. As your army builds up in strength, you start to capture strategic and critical points. When you build more buildings, in the case of playing as the Orcs you have to build WAAAGH banners, more powerful tanks and units become available and building those gives you even more upgrades to play with. To get these upgrades you thankfully don’t have to create a science research centre and scientists, then set the boffins away doing research before new technology becomes available. You simply select a building and if an upgrade is available you just click on it letting you get back to whatever task or objective is at hand. Once an upgrade is complete a gold star will briefly flash on the map in the bottom left corner of the screen letting you know the upgrade is ready or a new unit has finished building up so you always know what is going on.
Also on the upgrade side of things you can select a unit and in the case of say the Chaos / Space Marines you can upgrade weapons and promote one of the men to a sergeant. Promoting makes the rest of the unit work better alongside one another, if you also add a high level leader to the squad you can end up being quite deadly. The higher level troops have special abilities which make them something to watch out for on the battlefield, as well as giving combat bonuses to the surrounding troops. For example the Orc Warboss Gorgutz will shout a battle cry and the units will fight harder till the effect wears off, then you have to wait till the special ability recharges before it can be used again. This method of upgrading also applies to the machinery, so select the garage and upgrade to new types of heavy artillery to add to the arsenal. Once you have a tank ready to do battle, select it and if there’s an upgrade available set it away for a more powerful tank.
Click for larger imageOn a final note on the upgrade side of things (kind of an upgrade anyhow!), whilst units are battling it out with the enemy you will inevitably lose men on the field of combat. Usually when this happens you either make a hasty retreat or keep fighting till everyone is dead on either side. This used to happen to me quite often when I played C&C 2, so it was back to my base to rebuild my army. Thankfully with Winter Assault (Dawn of War also) if men start dying in combat you simply select a unit and you can reinforce using the gold plus symbol and once the reinforcements are ready they teleport into the squad and keep fighting, you can also do this with the weapon upgrades if one of the men carrying say a heavy bolter dies. This allows you to keep things running smoothly without having to keep jumping back to the main base. Only downside to this is that you can’t do it with the heavy artillery as they are individual units.
