Dogs of War includes three unique races for players to command, each with their own unique units and advantages meaning that each has its own particular play balance. The Imperial Order are the highly trained and equipped elite soldiers from Earth who are charged with securing Primus IV, while the Mantai are the indigenous insect race who hope to drive the humans from their home. These giant insectoids are without advanced technology but are more adapted to Primus IV and will use this to their advantage. Finally the Warmonkeys are the human mercenaries who have been charged with driving off the Imperial forces and gaining independence for Primus IV. With the final version of Dogs of War, players will be able to take part in individual battles, full campaigns from any of the three sides or even join in multiplayer battles online or over a LAN.
While there is no resource management, the game is similar to titles like Command & Conquer or even more closely to a tactical simulation like Mech Commander or the Close Combat series. The settings are what make Dogs of War stand out from other real-time and tactical action games, and as stated previously players can expect those huge pitched battles to occur in dense urban locales with the fighting occurring in tight city streets. Additionally there are diverse rural settings with a wide variety of terrain types, making Primus IV more like an Earth-like play with varied climates rather than the stock sci-fi worlds like “frozen planet,” or “desert world.” Players can expect to fight through canyon ridges, across icy wastelands and through open plains.
The units in Dogs of War are realistically modeled to re-create an advanced mobile strike force, and players can load infantry in armored personnel carriers to move them to the front more quickly with armored protection - but by facing the risk of losing a whole group of troops should the APC be taken out. Players have no resources to manage but instead carry troops over from mission to mission, with veteran soldiers being more experienced and therefore more skilled and valuable - so they shouldn’t be quickly used as cannon fodder unless things get really drastic.
