Dark Crusade: Tau Campaign Mode Guide 1

First of all, welcome to this guide. As the title states, this is a guide for the single-player campaign of Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and it focuses on the Tau.

The Tutorial

Don't underestimate Dark Crusade's tutorial because each race gets its own custom tutorial. Aside from showing you gameplay mechanics, it also provides you with excellent information about each race: their strengths, weaknesses and distinct characteristics that differentiate them from the other races. If you're going to use an unfamiliar race, I highly recommend that you go through the tutorial first, even if you know the basics already.

The Campaign

Dark Crusade's campaign mode involves conquering the planet of Kronus. Each race has a stronghold or home province and a commander unit, represented by a banner and a commander "token" respectively. The commander tokens symbolize the movement of each race's army as they move across the planet. The colors of the borders dividing each province signify which race controls it.

Regardless of what race you use, I advise you to start small. Look at your potential target provinces and click on Attack to get a report about what you'll be facing. What you're looking for is the number of bases the enemy has. If it's only one base, go after that first. Normally, the smaller provinces have only one enemy base but that's not always the case. You can also consider the honor guard unit and planetary requisition you'll gain if you win the province. Planetary requisition are resources that you can use to fortify your controlled provinces and to buy honor guard units, which are special units that become members of your commander's army. They will accompany your commander as long as you can keep them alive after each mission. If they die, you can use planetary requisition to buy them again.

There are also special provinces that grant different kinds of bonuses.

Pavonis - Space Port - lets you ignore the adjacency rule and move to/attack any region on the map except for enemy strongholds.

The Eres Badlands - Fury - you can move/attack twice in one turn.

The Aceria Forests - Manpower - increases the squad and vehicle caps for your army, allowing you to produce more units.

The Hyperion Peaks - Forward Base - allows you to use planetary requisition to purchase buildings prior to a battle.

The Ariel Highlands - Bulwark - reduces the cost of reinforcing provinces.

The Vandean Coast - Industrial Production - gives you an additional 1000 requisition resource at the start of each mission.

Part 2
Part 3