Command And Conquer series

"Deja Vu" was a fun mission, in the sense that I skipped the base-building in favor of taking my starting forces, circling around the edge of the map around the central Allied base, and bum-rushing Einstein's lab, battering through some Prisim and Mirage Tanks to launch a rocket volley at the objectives. "Brain Wash" started as a baseless mission, micromanaging Boris and a few starting tanks to free an Allied base, then it was a rush to take out Yuri's base before the Psychic Dominator fired. Lots of micro, lots of traffic jams as I carefully dismantled only what defenses I couldn't avoid while Tanya-ing the power plants, but satisfying despite some frustrations from units going the exact opposite direct as they were ordered. It's just neat when you get to use two factions' heroes at once.

"Romanov on the Run" is... not looking fun. It's a base-building mission with a shortage of resources, lots of entrenched Yuri forces, and no natural cover around the base. The gimmick is using Demo Trucks with the Iron Curtain to avoid mind control, which is going to involve repeatedly waiting for a superweapon cooldown, while hoping my rolling nukes aren't intercepted by lone Yuri Clones wandering through the desert.

And their inability to handle anything but perfectly flat terrain. I was reminded during the Alaska mission that a Prism Tank is useless against a target atop a cliff, yet another factor in me cheesing the mission with superweapons.

The best basic infantry in the game, the worst basic tank in the game, and then nothing but gimmick units. Brutes that fight in melee but are just as vulnerable to anti-infantry as cheaper troops. Virus-spreading snipers that can defend against the rare infantry rush but are useless against anything else. "Gattling" Tanks that need a prolonged fight to start dealing good damage, except their armor is made of tissue paper. Chaos Drones that might cause a mass teamkilling event unless they get blasted on approach. Magnetrons that can bring scary enemy vehicles even closer to your fragile forces, while you hope those Gatling Tanks can destroy them in mid-air. Mind-control units whose usefulness depends wholly on what enemy unit they can nab, and require constant micromanagement, and the vehicle variant will give itself an aneurysm if there are too many targets. And then two blatantly overpowered super-units, which is probably what you're building up in lieu of all those lesser forces.

It's just not a great faction, since Yuri's basically doubling down on the Allies' "tricksy specialist" playstyle.

That's what I believed for a long time too. Then I found out that the Lasher is actually identical to the Grizzly in every stat.

Can confirm. Lasher tanks and Grizzly tanks have the exact same stats in the rulesmd.ini file.

Same cost, same hit points, same speed, the only difference in weapons is the audio.

My thoughts exactly. The Allied vehicles in Red Alert 1 were nothing but fragile tanks at best whose types are redundant to completely gimmicky useless units at worst, to actually being useful. Talk about being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.

I always was under the impression that they were practically the same, starting with their production costs.

To be fair, the unit that would eventually become the Lasher started its life as a cut Light Tank.

^^ Not only did the Allies have a major evolution of how they do combat away from being a simple spam faction but unlike RA 1 where the Soviets basically held all the advantages that mattered, RA 2 split the difference with the Allies not the Soviets having the superior air forces and superior (usually) navy and infantry.

Too bad they were basically beaten into near uselessness in RA 3 outside of their planes.

I'd still take Red Alert 3's Allied arsenal over that of their Red Alert 1's iteration; the Mirage tanks were still decent, the Athena Cannons did their job (but not in an overpowered sense like the Prism Tanks), Destroyers weren't neutered by simple anti-air, and Hydrofoils are much more useful than the Aegis Cruisers.

Destroyers in RA 2 would easily defeat sea based anti air ships though. And the deck gun can be force fired onto water to scatter or destroy submarines. (Aim for adjacent tiles)

I’d venture as an anti air ship, the Aegis cruiser was superior as it would completely neuter aerial attacks and things like Dreadnought/V3/Boomer submarine missiles.

So it couldn’t attack ground or sea. Neither could the Hydrofoil and the jammer ability ain’t worth it. Especially since the Aegis cruiser had an element of durability to it, the Hydrofoil is wet tissue paper in a hurricane.

The Destroyer's turret isn't much to speak of in my experience. It's more because the Sea Scorpions tend to be more lightly-armored that it ends up being effective. As for the Hydrofoil, they're much cheaper and faster, and the weapon jammer actually can stop larger threats in their tracks. Sure, the Aegis Cruiser's missiles really did its job of stopping air units and ballistic missile attacks, but that's all it can do, plus its speed isn't much to speak of. For a general fleet, you'd only need one Aegis Cruiser, if that, but a bunch of Hydrofoils are much more worthwhile in my opinion.

Pretty sure the Hydrofoil was named for the aluminum foil they armored it with, yeah.

^^ Sea Scorpions tend to do abysmal damage at best to anything not aircraft. A single Allied Destroyer can kill like three Sea Scorpions and only suffer moderate damage at worst.

It’s only when mixed with submarines that the little Soviet boats can stand a real chance because they destroy the Destroyer’s helicopter while the submarines do real damage in return.

Despite there being two Soviet-on-Soviet missions in the campaign, neither of them feature much naval warfare. It kind of makes the Sea Scorpion a bit less useful without a VTOL to shoot down to protect the subs. This certainly shows in Escape Velocity where the only naval threat in Yuri's arsenal is the Boomer Submarine, and the AI seldom uses them for bombardment purposes.

Managed to beat "Romanov on the Run" in one Iron Curtain use. After sending in one Demo Truck to begin clearing out the garrisoned town in front of the bridge to Yuri's base, and using hit-and-run Rhino micro to deal with the remaining Gatling Turrets, I was able to cover six Demo Trucks with invulnerability and use them to all but flatten Yuri's base, enough that my veteran Rhinos could clean up the rest. Which certainly worked better than my initial experiment, shielding a Flak Track with Romanov in it and speeding towards the airport. Poor premier got bisected by gatling guns.

For "Escape Velocity," I opted to work through a few Boomers to land in the southeast corner, next to those Oil Derricks. Some Bunkers and deployed Siege Copters are dealing with land attacks while my navy works its way towards the harbor. Just a lot of micro having the lead sub or squid dodge torpedoes while the rest of the armada targets the Boomer(s). My poor Sea Scorpions are mainly there to find where the coastal Yuri moai turrets are hiding in the fog of war.

The Lasher is the worst tank in the game, because it came after a unit it's functionally identical to, and the devs couldn't think of anything to do to make the Lasher different beyond designing a questionable base defense structure around it. If the stupid thing has a spiked roller on its front, at least give it something like a wider hitbox for infantry squishing.

Tell that to RA 3's competitive scene - the Allies are generally considered to be top tier, with the Soviets being the faction at a notable overall disadvantage in the meta. Rising Sun comes in second place due to the versatility of their units, which are also easily spammable, and very powerful T3 artillery units both in the form of the Wave Force cannons and Shogun Battleships.

In addition to the Allied air force being a menace, They've still got the highly versatile IFV (just slightly weaker than RA 2's version), the best T1 starting infantry with the Peacekeepers, Mirage Tanks, (which are now basically a hybrid of the Prism Tank and original Mirage, only now with an optional stealth field effect!), and the Guardian tanks, which if managed properly can do respectable damage and focus fire thanks to the target designator ability. And their Cryocopters are arguably the nastiest support unit in the game thanks to them being able to freeze and kill even the heaviest of units, or help crippled units increase their speed and escape with the shrink ray.

Edited by SgtRicko on Mar 20th 2024 at 3:14:14 AM

What I remember most of the S.H.R.I.N.K ray was "hope you've got good micro or your long-range units die one by one to base defenses they normally outrange"^note due to units being Too Dumb to Live and walking up to the enemy to compensate for their halved range instead of simply waiting for the effect to wear off in Rising Sun missions against allies.

Soviet Yuri's Revenge campaign complete. "Escape Velocity" went as planned, though I added some Siege Choppers to my naval group for additional support against the Boomers. The results were underwhelming, those chainguns just don't do much to armored super-subs.

"To the Moon" is just fun. The limited roster makes things interesting since it affects both sides, and the Cosmonauts more than make up for the lack of your normal infantry. The tank group advances and takes out the outer Gatling Cannons, then the Cosmonauts move in and clear the Psychic Towers so the tanks can advance to the next layer of Gatling Cannons, rinse and repeat. Though what the game considers the victory condition makes me unhappy, because even after you kill every Yuri unit and structure on the map, the battle isn't over until you destroy the Apollo 11 lander and American flag.

I imagine "Head Games" is very different on the Normal and Hard difficulties, akin to the final General's Challenge mission in C&C Generals Zero Hour. It was actually more interesting at the start, when I was attacked on both sides by mixes of all the factions' infantry, but eventually it settled into a routine of six IFVs driving to the center of the map, some Tesla Troopers slowly waddling into some of them, and then the group heading towards my base to get killed by my tanks. Without the threat of a three-faction superweapon spanking, it was easy to hole up in my base, gather resources until I could build a Nuke Silo, and then one-shot the psychic majibble controlling the other Soviet base. That gave me a staging ground and a mass of units able to push in and take out Yuri's castle.

All said, the Soviets don't seem to benefit much from Yuri's Revenge, since their new non-hero unit is fairly situational, and the Allies get a lot more toys to play with. But the Battle Bunker, Industrial Plant and Spy Plane are such quality-of-life improvements that they make the standard arsenal Soviet even better.

On to the Allies, where I must resist the urge to solve my problems with Prism Tanks so their other new units have their chance to shine.

I usually have a Battle Fortress with a Navy SEAL and four Guardian GIs and treat it as my pseudo-hero unit for each mission.

Those aren’t actually in the victory conditions. I made them immune to damage in the rules file and it still was winnable same as before.

The concession speech you get from Yuri simply takes a while after clearing the enemies.

EDIT:

^ The British Sniper unit works even better. Less risk of being seized by Yuri Clones.

Too bad you can only use that combo in Operation Tomb Raided. (The pyramid level.)

Edited by MajorTom on Mar 20th 2024 at 6:56:01 AM

Yep, that's a really good combo. The only things that has to worry about are building defenses and mind control units.

It sucks to have a fully loaded Battle Fortress mind-controlled.

It's even sadder when the Snipers really could have been useful in the following level against the Initiates who insist on garrisoning the entire city when you level each of their fortifications. All the while money is so hard to come by in that mission.

I was gonna say something like "the Soviet Yuri's Revenge Campaign really went nuts with giving you access to subfaction special units during missions to make up for how few new units the Soviets get in the expansion," except the Allied campaign is throwing Grand Cannons, Snipers and Tank And Nothing Else Destroyers Unless They Shoot First at me.

"Time Lapse" was nothing special, then "Hollywood and Vain" gives you the full vs. Yuri experience, but plenty of tools to use to deal with his forces - which is good, because they come at you from all directions, and you need to stay alert because for some stupid reason the Gatling Tanks outrange infantry garrisoned in buildings. Navy SEALs in IFVs or Mirage Tanks can pulp his infantry and put down Yuri Clones before they can do too much damage with snagged units, while a Battle Fortress with Defender GIs can kill Gatling Turrets from behind buildings or walls. Alternatively, Prism Tanks.

I only built six, though, to deal with all the turrets on the upper half of the map. LA was freed entirely with non-prism weapons, I'll have you know.

"Power Play" was annoying, since it wants you to get nuked, and that feels like failing the mission even if it doesn't. So I set the game speed to the slowest setting, used my storm on the three power plants around the nuclear silo, and then rushed my starting units and an Engineer to the nearest neutral power plant to stop the countdown. From there it was using Sniper IFVs to take out infantry and pull enemy tanks into a group of Grizzlies and Mirage Tanks supported by Engie IFVs, and also keeping Snipers around the power plants I'd captured to deal with enemy infantry drops.

"Tomb Raided" was simple, used some Snipers and Tank Destroyers to defend the homefront, sent Tanya and some Engies to the corner to nab the Oil Derricks and destroy the bridges to them, then it was a matter of freeing Einstein and building up a bunch of Drone Tanks and a Weather Control Machine to support Tanya as she demoed the main base. The annoyance came from trying to determine why I hadn't won after flattening it, which led to panning over the whole map to find the last Slave Miner.

Sydney is already gearing up to be annoying - Chaos Drones, lots of buildings for Initiates to garrison, and Boomer attacks. How will I possibly get through it's going to be Prism Tanks. A careful advance with Prism Tanks. Hell, put some on the shore and see if they can tag some subs.

Oh. Now I'm sad.

I still have bad memories of the Parliament mission. I don't know why I had so much trouble with that mission, but it's always the hardest one in the campaign for me.

It's not too bad building up a defensive line across the river. The key is to wall off the southernmost entrance to bottle in the enemy's advances towards the north, in which you can establish a perimeter with an Aegis Cruiser and a bunch of tanks. Smashing up Yuri's base is the harder part, because it's so overcrowded and heavily defended.

Heavily defended via multiple mind control towers yes but almost nothing left in terms of units after the initial attack sequences. Once you have the Soviet reinforcements, Yuri’s forces just kinda roll over and die in terms of being able to attack at all.

A half dozen Prism Tanks makes short work of the entire thing. Especially if you cause catastrophic devastation via blowing up the barrels next to the Oil Derrick in the center of the base. Takes out at least the war factory.

You don't even really need Prism Tanks. Freeing the Allies and spamming Grand Cannons from both directions can suppress the base very well.