There are two main modes, which players from Company of Heroes will know all too well.  There's Annihilate mode, which means you'll go into the opposing teams base and destroy their main structures.  While this mode seemed a little fun in Company of Heroes, there's just one problem with Dawn of War II having this mode:  there's no base building...AT ALL!!!  You'll only be upgrading the base structure you started with.  ALL building is simply building units and fighting.  While the base building does help to keep you from focusing on what to build where and at what time...it does mean that the Annihilate mode is all about building up as big of an artillery and anti-armor force as possible, which means the games can last about 20 minutes on average.

You also have the Victory Point Control mode that Company of Heroes mainstreamed.  Now, while this mode was fun in Company of Heroes, there were still issues with the lengths of the games.  Eventually, you could turtle hard enough at the points in CoH that you just couldn't get past the defenses no matter what you do.  In Dawn of War II, this happens far less frequently.  You'll usually see an average match last about 15 minutes, and comeback victory games can take up to 30 minutes...but it will rarely exceed that limit.  In one game that I played with my team against a very experienced group of RTS gamers, they wore my team down from 500 resources to 81 resources in about 7 minutes or so, but my team (thanks to the Carnifax units) was able to halt them there and come back to win the game with only 81 resources left on our side.  Therefore, it's absolutely critical that you know the types of units you are facing in Dawn of War II, as well as how to counter against them.

Resource management is a bit more simple in DoW II than it is in CoH, which is a thankful addition.  The only two types of points you'll be picking up as Requisition (what would be Manpower in CoH) and Power (what would be Ammo + Fuel in CoH) points.  Capturing a Req point will start you with a base of +5 points (whether that's per minute or on a lower timer is something that I still need to research).  Down the line, it will work it's way up to higher numbers based on how long you hold onto it.  Power nodes can be set up with a defense structure around them, as well as adding up to 3 extra power generators to bring them from +2 to +19, which is a GIANT boost.  Fighting for resource points seems to be less of a hassle, since Req points can't have defensive structures...so you don't get these crazy turtling setups like you had in CoH.  There is always a battle going on for one of them somewhere, so it keeps the game action-paced.

In most RTS games, you'll find that a focus is generally taken away from lower ends tier 1 and tier 2 units later in the game, but Dawn of War II really makes good use of ALL units in the game, and even keeps them necessary over the course of action.  This is crucial, as it means you can always be burning resources in order to keep the battlefield full.  However, there's a very stern Command Point limit for the number of units you can have on the ground.  With only 100 CP available to players, and most of the major units costing about 20-30 CP...it means you have to really think about "well, do I really want to have 3 Carnifax units out, because then my Hero can't get out there".

A lot of places where I've seen reviews are complaining about how short the matches are, but with the lack of base building in the game, OF COURSE the times are going to be shorter.  A good 15 minute round of Victory Point Control in Dawn of War II is just as satisfying as a 40 minute match of Age of Empires III or a 25 minute match of Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends!!!

There is also a newfound ease of upgrading units and your stronghold over the course of the round.  All units that you have on-map and alive will show up as icons on the right hand side.  Right under that, you'll find that hitting F1 will bring up your stronghold menu, allowing you to build units without having to go all the way back up to the stronghold and take your eye off the action.  If you want to focus on any of the units, simply double click their picture.  The same goes with the Stronghold.  You can also use the handy mini-menu in the bottom right hand of your map to upgrade any units (the same way you would upgrade Engineers with Flamethrowers and such in CoH).

However, there is one relatively MAJOR gripe:  this is not like the first Dawn of War.  It's actually pretty far off from it.  This feels more like Dawn of War II: Company of Heroes Edition.  If you look at everything I JUST finished typing, you can see how many times I referenced Company of Heroes in it.  Here's the only problem with that gripe though:  it's not like Dawn of War II is a bad game in any way!  It's pretty fucking amazing, actually.  It does everything that it needs to do absolutely right in order to be standing on a higher pedigree than almost all other RTS games.  It trumps Company of Heroes pretty hard as far as gameplay is concerned.  The first Dawn of War is still one of the best RTS games I've ever played, but even then...after you've played DoW II, it's really hard to get into DoW 1 because of just how much work you have to put into what ends up being pretty worthless battles!!!

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I'm going to spend a little more time with the Eldars and the Orks over the next couple of days, as my focus so far has been on the Space Marines and the Tyranids.  I've also gotta get much further in the campaign, as well as get into some online games and check out the matchmaking features and such.  After all that, I'll probably pop a review up for y'all to check out.  Right now, though...Dawn of War II is keeping me from WoW, and that's always a good sign that a game has a ton of strength.