Released in 2006, the original Dawn of War is probably one of the best RTS games in existence. It’s certainly the best Warhammer 40K game, although as far as ‘old school’ Relic goes Company of Heroes is considered the better game, in many respects.
In the years that followed it would get several expansions, the most recent of which being the 2008 stand-alone release called Soulstorm, which built on Dark Crusades’ campaign layer but made it across an entire star system. We’d also get full sequels in the shape of Dawn of War II and Dawn of War III, but the original holds strong above them all.
12 years later, this aged strategy game is being kept alive thanks to its modding community. Mods are the life-blood of any strategy fanbase and are what allow these games to remain popular over long periods of time, like we’ve seen with Star Wars: Empire at War. It can even inspire developers to renew support for an older game, like what creative assembly did for Total War: Rome 2. Coming back to Dawn of War, we’ve done some digging to find the most popular mods helping keep the game live after all this time.
These are the best Dawn of War Mods:
Dawn of War may be freely available on Steam, but SEGA and Relic never saw fit to add in Steam Workshop support, it seems. That means you have to go old school. Both Nexus and ModDB have libraries for Dawn of War, but the latter has the better and most active mod scene it seems.
The only Nexus contribution to this guide, 3rd Generation is a mod for Dark Crusade that adds four new races (including Tyranids), new units for existing races, and a bunch of other stuff like new maps, new map modes, even Titans!
This is the most popular, and quite frankly, the most ridiculous mod on ModDB. Ultimate Apocalypse is all about scale, and getting the most bang for your bang-bucks. It adds new units, new races, new buildings, new abilities, Titans, and then generally enables you to have ‘more’ of everything. Make sure you follow the instructions carefully as there are some additional standalone race mods you’ll need (and that some other mods on this list also need) to source.
As the title suggests, this mod is about unifying a bunch of disparate individual mods into a cohesive whole. There are more than a few new race mods, as well as mods that look at the vanilla races, the campaign and a whole bunch of other aspects of the game. Unification seeks to unify them all in a way that allows them to work together. And yes, there are also Titans. There are always Titans.
This is a multiplayer focused mod that aims to offer a balanced, meaningful experience while also promoting unit diversity and longevity. It includes new units and graphics for every race, enabling wargear for units in multiplayer and skirmishes, and it also sports great documentation.
This is a more simple mod with a simple purpose – in the meta-campaigns introduced in both Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, each race/faction was designed a special ‘stronghold’ map that represented their last line of defence. Defeat a faction on this map, and they were knocked out of the game for good.
Despite its promisingly generic title, this mod is actually just for the Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard at the moment. It also doesn’t look like it’s been worked on much for 2017, but we include it anyway because it does make those two factions look really pretty. Plus it introduces a female Imperial Guard model, if that interests you at all.
This is a bonus entry covering Dawn of War II: Retribution, because for some reason people still like playing that game. At least it’s not as bad as Dawn of War III, I guess. This is another competitive/multiplayer focused mod for the Dawn of War sequel that adds in a new faction – the Grey Knights – as well as offering lots of new abilities, units and balance tweaks.
