I take interest in Real Time Strategy earlier than RPG because young me think RPG heavily rely on luck what's with attack being hit or miss. Turns out, not many RPG does that except for Tactical kind ones. Anyway, one of RTS that i like is: Electronic Arts Pacific's Command & Conquer Generals (2003).
Woah! Slow down, lads! I haven't started the game yet and you just start blasting against each other without any of my involvement, except running the game. This could be the game with the busiest title screen besides Vectorman. This is the first C&C RTS game that i play. I feel like every C&C game has high level of entry what's with every combat unit have ranged attack and no "melee" combat unit, given that it takes place in era with modern weaponry and melee is considered useless which is realistic. Also there's no detail status about the unit as far as i know. Unlike the first RTS that i played Warcraft II that takes place in fantasy medieval setting where melee units are very much exist and there's detail status on unit that i command. I first saw my senior classman in college play this game. I commented that "Everyone ranged weapon there, so what determine which unit wins?". He replies that the units are strong or weak against certain others and that probably what makes me interested in this game.
My plan is to go through just a bit of every campaign mission for this article. So let's start with tutorial first. There's 3 faction USA, China, and GLA (Global Liberation Army) which is basically middle east ethnic terrorists. Luckily, there's no hint of them bringing Islam religion for terrorism which i obviously against that foolish radical idea. While the voice acting for the USA units don't say F-word or S-word. So Electronic Arts Pacific deserves some credit for being family-friendly, i guess.
Because the Tutorial mission is USA mini campaign, i skip the USA main campaign for my own convenience.
Note: you may want to activate "Alternate Mouse Control" toggle on menu. That way you can make units do quick action by clicking Right Mouse Button which is standard in other RTS such as Warcraft 3, Age of Empires 2.
Tutorial. Operation: Silent Dawn
The tutorial makes me command some ranger squadron of American troop. The cutscene spotlight helicopter convoys. They got our Chinook first and it falls in that road junction full of people. The scene reminds me of Black Hawk Down somehow.
Then they get 2 of our Comanche choppers but the convoy keeps moving further. After some distance, the convoy meet enemy's patrol but this time they retaliate and clear the area. Once it's cleared, a plane drops rangers on it and i get to control the troopers now! The tutorial instructs me to dispatch the enemy squad down there. So i select them and tell them to engage. You see in their portrait on bottom that they carry light machine gun. But when they're not prepare their weapon, they carry it over their shoulder like rocket launcher as you can see on those 2 rangers which are the most left of the formation. This is kind of confusing.
Once my rangers move on to enemy's car, suddenly 4 Humvees come in and destroy the enemy. Rangers can get inside of them for extra protection plus providing extra firepower for the transport vehicle. Obviously, it's much easier to mobilize soldiers on transport vehicle than on their own feet. Well, the Humvees was 4 and now 3 because of my clumsiness.
We manage to rescue a part of our military base including a Supply Center which is building that serves as drop-off point for supplies. You see those dozens of crate? Those are supplies. There's only one kind of resource in this game and that's money. Picking the supply crates and send them to Supply Center, will increase your money. The "harvester" of the supply crates in USA faction is: Chinook helicopter which is the most expensive supply harvester but arguably the most efficient one because it can carries the most supply per cycle and ignores terrain condition because it flies. Chinook also ideal for harvesting supply crates on reserve depot away from your supply center.
So i liberate this entire USA base. First objective completed! Next objective is destroying the terrorist GLA's base on yonder. But the game wants me to build barrack first. This dozer is the builder unit and he's up for the task of building the barrack. He can also sweep mines but there's none here. Once i choose the location for the barrack, i can hold the left mouse button to rotate the building which can be important for advanced Planology where you need to set the building in more efficient way. Note that, not all building have equal length and wide.
In this game, you're limited to build your base by the electricity supply. You can't see the number of electricity here, at least not in explicit way. You see that thin color line on command HUD? That indicates the electricity that you currently have. The tiny arrow on it, indicates electricity that your base currently use. Building generator will increases the electricity bar. If the bar is green, you have more than enough electricity for your base. If the bar is yellow, you have enough to near lacking of electricity for your base. If the bar is red, you have barely enough electricity for your base. If your base don't get enough electricity, some building will cease to function. Barrack is one building that -somehow- don't require electricity to operate.
Not far from that base, we find P.O.Ws who are happen to be veteran pilot. When they deployed to vehicle, they will raise their rank. Higher rank means the unit is better at combat or so the game told me. Maybe it implies the higher rank unit deals more damage and also takes less damage than the freshly trained unit.
There's 3 tanks block the entrance of a town that i need to get through. Then suddenly Comanche helicopters shoot down the tower that fall down to those enemy tanks. You don't need to do that, guys. I'm certain i have more tanks than theirs and i won't lose to them. Maybe those choppers are from the early cutscene and they seek revenge for their fallen comrades.
Once my group enter the town, troop reinforcement comes in. The game tells me to command those newly arrived troops to get inside the civilian building. If they station inside the civilian building, they last longer due to building's protection. I really appreciate this. I tend to look down on foot soldiers because they're fragile but in this game they can take shelter in building. Although there's some method to counter sheltered soldiers but i will talk about it later.
On the outskirt of the town, we find another deposit of supply and oil derricks which are neutral building that you can capture and they will provide you with periodic money income. Only the gun-wielding infantry that can capture building like them. But you need to research "Capture Building" tech first before the infantry can do that which i forget about it. So our troop progress delayed because the commanding general forget to research said tech. I'm still sloppy.
Eventually, we destroy the GLA base but our intelligence forget to mention something that is rather crucial. It contains dangerous chemical substance! Once it's destroyed, there's serious leak of pollution that not only poison our soldiers but also damaging our tanks. Spy_jeers04.wav
China's Campaign Mission 1. The Dragon Awakes
Now is the time for China's campaign. It was beautiful day of military parade. Everyone is happy and proud of it. One thing that bugs me is: why those tanks are shorter than the civilians. Very weird.
It was fine day until GLA ruins the parade. They start with bomb car and GLA squad rushing in. It seems the crisis can be under control.
Nope. Nevermind. There's bomb truck hit really hard on one of those tank, creating mushroom cloud and destroying building in this entire block. Soldier_jeers11.wav
But there's a hope. Near the destroyed block, there's survivors and base that remain unscathed. I can group some units by holding "control" key and a number key. It's nice touch that they gives the group a small number that indicates which group number that i assigned them. Medic_positivevocalization01.wav
USA faction has the most advanced technology with expensive cost, GLA faction has the most obsolete technology with cheap cost plus they rely on underhanded trick such as toxic and suicide bomb. While China faction's technology is somewhere in the middle between USA and GLA have. I like median stuff so China is my favorite faction. China's "harvester" of the supply crates is supply truck as you can see near the bottom of the screen. It doesn't cost as much as Chinook helicopter but can't carry supply as many as well.
Most China buildings can construct mines around them for short range protection. Because many combat unit in this game has decent range of attack, the mines is not as useful as they cost. The specialty of China's infantry is horde bonus which is buff that increases their attack and defense power when they're in homogenous group of at least 5 units. China's bazooka infantry: Tank Hunter can plant time-detonated TNT at anywhere but i'm not sure how it can be useful. Maybe to destroy building faster than their bazooka, i think.
This building is War Factory which is place to construct the ground vehicles. Chinese Tank is Battlemaster which also has the Horde Bonus. Then there's Dragon Tank which has flamethrower that excellent against infantry even if they're in building but its attack range is close. Because i'm Pyro, i definitely like this tank very much. Chinese APV (Armored Personnel Vehicle) is Troop Crawler that immediately filled with the gun infantry, which can be handy for fast occupation across the map but i need empty seat for Tank Hunters for balance reason. I notice that unlike USA's humvee, Troop Crawler doesn't attack enemy on its own. It only drops the passenger near the target. So the sub text of "Strong vs Infantry, Buildings" seems meaningless. So that means it's durable against infantry's and building's attack, then. Maybe it's reasonable to think that i can tell this Troop Crawler to run over enemy's infantry but i haven't tried that myself because i tend to get busy with conventional warfare: assigning the armored vehicles to attack from distance.
You can have General Skills that you can unlock by using skill point. Everytime your unit engage in combat, you gain experience. For every level up, you get the skill point. There's stronger General skill if your level is high enough but for this mission you can only have between these two. Skill on the left will make newly trained Red Guards (China's gun infantry) into veteran rank instead of initial. While skill on the right, is basically Area of Effect heal for the vehicles on radius. Keep in mind that active skills have cooldown after use so use them sparingly.
Okay. I have my units ready and we shall advance to GLA base post haste. One of my complaint about this game is how hard to highlight any unit to give me their name for quick check. GLA hole here is the remain of GLA building that given time it will reconstruct back to the original. So destroy it! Demoman_battlecry04.wav
There's GLA group on our way but quickly obliterated by our air force. I really like those men who man the gun on GLA's technical cars will acrobat through sky high everytime they're destroyed. God bless those funny terrorists.
Look at those foolish troopers thinking they stand a chance against flame from our dragon (tank). Pyro_laughhappy01.wav
I thought the GLA base will leak another pernicious leak so i tell our Battlemaster tanks to destroy it in safe distance. Turns out no pollution at all. Victory! Cm_heavy_gamewon_05.mp3
Because i like China faction in this game, i decide to do one more mission on the campaign.
China's Campaign Mission 2. Hong Kong Crisis
There's GLA base on Hong Kong. We're ready with big convoy to deal with it but alas, this bridge has been rigged by bomb! Most of the convoy didn't survive. Including those giant tanks. Such a pity!
There's our target. That whole gigantic building and not GLA settlements on its side. It has been tainted by GLA-ness. Therefore, it must be destroyed! Somehow my mind keep suggesting me that this Convention Center is Sydney Opera House due to its unusual-shaped white roof.
"Are we going to build on Track Field?" says one of soldier. Well, where else do you think we have to build our base, Watson? Here's the closest wide field that we can have so deal with it! The minimap should be in that square on bottom left corner but we can't have it because we don't have radar facility yet. USA's command center already has radar after successfully constructed. While China's command center doesn't initially has the radar yet! You need to build within the command center for it. It goes without saying that, it means more cost on building. It sounds dumb as it is. On the bright side China's command center is cheaper to build than USA's but that's not much of advantage in my opinion. Besides provide you with minimap, the command center provide you with access to the General Skills and it's place to construct the dozer. So if you no longer have command center, you no longer able to cast any of active General Skill.
Suddenly, there's cutscene where a train comes very swiftly. Why it's so important? Turns out, it drops fresh batch of our soldiers on train station. Scout_thanks01.wav
Then the game highlight me on the secondary objective: Toxin Tractor factory. I have no idea what's the benefit of completing the Secondary Objective but i will still do it. Toxin Tractor is basically equivalent of our Dragon Tank except -you know- much crueler. Toxin is significantly more evil than fire, right? Or is it just me?
As stupid as it sounds but you can tell your dozer to repair civilian building. I know that China's dozer can build bunker which is sturdier than the skyscraper around this part plus you can build minefield near the bunker. But i'm stingy person. I prefer utilize these (free) civilian building as defense checkpoint to the fullest extent.
While i prepare the defense on that southern part. Those toxin tractors attack our supply route. There's some soldiers (that arrive from the train station) guard this part but they're out in the open. They're as good as dead.
Not far from our base, there's this adorable automobile ferry on gorgeous and nigh realistic water. I somehow trigger mini cutscene: The owner of the ferry think that the GLA ruins his business so he offer his travel service to the island where the Convention Center lies, for free. You can store some of your unit into the ferry. When you click "travel" command while selecting it, it will automatically sail to the destination.
I feel like that my armor group is ready so i send them to the Toxin Tractor facility. I must say that the behavior of the civilian is mix between lazy, ignorance, stupid, and sedated. I mean look at them! there's group of tanks trampling next to them and they are not even glancing at those armors. Moreover, why they just walk around this parking lot? I take it if just one person circle around parking lot, he/she maybe looking for missing car key. But many of them lost their car key at the same time and they still searching to this day? Sniper_sf13_magic_reac01.wav
They don't put up much a fight. Obviously, it's because toxin is not great against our tanks. There's not much reward on completing the secondary mission. But we find small amount of supplies here, so there's that. This chemical factory is not part of the secondary mission but i have urgency to destroy it. So i order them to do so...
...catastrophe happens. Bloody brilliant, me! # o_o [Average mushroom cloud-sized sarcasm]
But let's pretend this doesn't happen as i load from my save slot.
Oh, man! Check out how huge that building! It's an entire office building! The funnier part is, it seems my infantry can response swiftly when enemies attack their shelter here regardless the humongous size of this civilian building.
In this game, the unit's pathfinding is arguably not so good. There's many time units move in less efficient route and here's the case where supply truck has some bad decision. It runs on the railroad and get pulverized by random train! The unit's pathfinding must be on perfect quality especially when the RTS game has environmental hazards like this.
Eventually, we secure the bottleneck for incoming enemies. They can come at us anytime but they always end up failed. I like that enemy's formation: a suicide bomber on the front and 3 gun soldier on the back row. Suicide bomber most be a "melee" unit so it's pretty sensible to put him in the front. If i'm not mistaken, suicide bomber is strong against vehicle but he never reaches our line of armors here. Maybe, if the suicide bomber is a dozen, they probably can get through us. Or perhaps because there's tanks equipped with Gatling Gun on our group there. They're excellent against infantry and aircraft but weak against tank with cannon.
This affinity interaction is very important in this game because you don't get the luxury of seeing unit's status in detail such as: Hitpoints, attack power, or defense power unlike in -say- Warcraft 2. You can see unit's health bar by default but that alone is not enough to determine whether your units win or lose against enemy's. Hence, you have to pay really good attention to the aforementioned affinity. The basic rule of thumb is: bullets, fire and toxin are good to slay infantry. While explosive shell is good against armored vehicle and building.
Let's take example of that case of our Gatling Tank vs. their Suicide bomber. Suicide bomber takes reduced damage from vehicle and deal great damage against vehicle but our Gatling Tank manage to kill him just fine because he's infantry. It will be more efficient if our gun infantry takes care of him but Gatling Tank doing fine work back there. While pitting dragon tanks against suicide bombers will result in high risk due to limited range of the flamethrower. This affinity system is fairly easy to understand but the application can gets more complex than you thought.
Both Gatling Tank and Dragon tank are exceptional against infantry but the flamethrower tanks lack of range and can do nothing against aircraft. However, they have special order to burn the ground in an arc. Group of them can make little hell on earth like this. Muahahaha! Wait! That one Gatling Tank takes damage because of the flames. Abort! Abort! In short time after this moment, we demolished Convention Center with no problem.
GLA's Campaign Mission 1. Operation: Black Rain
It seems GLA's campaign is the continuation of China's campaign because when i highlight GLA's campaign it said "Campaign 2". I think what happens after China's campaign is China spread their territory to middle-eastern region due to their counter attack against terrorism. This may look overkill in China's part but GLA should also be blame about doing terrorism that eventually lead to their homeland being invaded for China's "righteousness". Anyway, this time GLA wants to liberate some of their homeland here while China's defense spread thin because of USA's intervene, perhaps. As per usual GLA initiate their attack with trucks full of bomb do suicide explosion. 2 thing that i learn from this cutscene here is: 1) It seems possible to utilize the truck (or other fast but heavy vehicle) to run over infantry 2) China soldier can also do spectacular acrobat in air besides those GLA's tactical gunner.
Suddenly the game passes the control on me. There was some bomb trucks for me to command but suddenly China's troopers attack us swiftly from behind. They destroy our bomb trucks, big explosion happens and we get some more casualties because of the explosion. Although we manage to secure the area here.
Then our units move toward our base and i start some town planning. Everything is good for now. There's info that arm dealer near our base is willing to cooperate with us. He doesn't have much of improvement over our arm dealer (which is the equivalent of War Factory for GLA) except he has Scorpion tank's upgrade that installs rocket on our tanks. Soldier_thanks02.wav
USA has radar on their command center as soon as it's built. China also has radar on their command center but you must build it separately. While GLA...is peculiar. You need to construct/train radar van from arm dealer in order to get the minimap. I have one there stuck between that barrack building and the mountain range. It can't be helped. The game already gives the radar van there. On the good side, you're not depend on Command Center for minimap availability.
I have mustered the force and i decide to attack this outpost which is bad idea because of: 1) Horde bonus of those Battlemaster Tanks. 2) That speaker tower which heal nearby enemies while also boost their attack rate. But don't worry, we win anyway because of our sheer number. Cm_demo_matchwon_02.mp3
There's another speaker tower in this town square which is guarded by some infantry. They seems asked to be ambushed. So i tell our infantry to get inside those building and they do the rest swiftly. Destroying the speaker tower makes citizens around here free from China brainwash and some of them decide to join our cause as gun infantry. Soldier_battlecry03.wav
I notice something different with this technical car. Its other peers fire machine gun, but this one fires cannon and packs a serious punch. GLA vehicles cost money the least to train/construct but they're weak and fragile, at first that is. They have another leveling system besides gaining experiences by killing enemies. Everytime enemy vehicles killed, they drop spare part boxes. When GLA vehicles pick them up, they grow stronger and enhance their appearance. If they're already max level and pick another of this spare part stuff, you gain extra cash instead.
You already know that the gun infantry can capture building but it's not limited to neutral building. You can also capture enemy's building! In this case, my infantry is capturing the supply center. I thought that building with lining rail of crates is the supply center. Turns out it's War Factory that i really want to get. Excuse me. I like China faction but i can't remember all their buildings look like. At least i can sell the supply center and get some profit. The more soldiers capture a building, the faster the process.
I find another enemy's supply center. My combat units clear it and those who guard it. There's United Nation's cargo behind where the building was. Then i tell a worker to pick them up for cash although i suddenly remember that any of my unit can pick them. So i was foolish to drag this poor and slow worker to this place when i don't have to do that necessarily.
Worker is the closest to villager or peasant in Warcraft III and Age of Empire because he's both builder and supply harvester. He moves slow and can only carry supply so much as his skinny muscles allow to. He's cheap to train and if you have experience with other RTS, you will find him very familiar to deploy.
I also forget to tell you that our main objective is to destroy this dam. But that alone is not cunning enough. I tell "our" Battlemaster Tanks to do so. If Chinese Intelligence see this, they will be confused why their tank destroy the dam...
...and eventually makes flood that sweep their own force from this land. As why vehicle and building explode when they're being flooded, that's because this is Command and Conquer game. Every vehicle and building can only explode as they are destroyed in any manner. I think that's it for now.
But wait! It feels not right if i don't talk a bit about the expansion: Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour. There's a hint of warships on the title but i'm not sure whether i can build ships in this expansion or not. Thing for sure is: the expansion add more faction. but that doesn't means more nations joins in the fray this time, no. The new faction is the special expansion of the three dubbed as specific general. For example: China Infantry General can train mini-gunner instead of red guard which is stronger but the cost for tanks is more expensive than the standard or GLA Stealth General can make every building hidden but can't build Scorpion tank.
In this case, i'm playing as General Townes which replace the usual conventional tanks with laser tanks which hit harder, i think. But once your base lacks of electricity, they're ceased to function. The laser-specialty general also has access to more expensive generator but provides more electricity and replace missile turret with laser turret.
In this occasion i also like to show you my favorite plane: F-117 stealth bomber. I know that it's commonly refer as "Stealth Fighter" but it's more for bombing purpose. Anyway, F-117 is great against base defense such as this China's gatling turret and they particularly weak against fighter plane. It goes without saying, F-117 is invisible as hinted by its name and only visible when firing its weapon. F-117 is one of special unit that you need to unlock it with general's skill point.
I also want you to show the mechanism of airplanes in this game, they are constructed and standby at the airfield and you can only have 4 of them for each airfield. Once they exhaust their weapon, they need to rearm at the corresponded airfield and they will standby again unless you order them. Because of that mechanism, they're more appropriate for hit-and-run tactic and better counted as support units rather than as main force. Thus i group them as number 4 group. I tell them to take out that turret and it works but not as i imagine. They should attack it at the same time, so those 2 late stealth bombers are certainly slacking and i get flashback of those lazy bombers in Ghost Pilots.
Here's another my favorite bombing plane: A-10 Thunderbolt but they're the general's active skill and not unit directly under your control. They're good against building but they only attack under rather small target circle. They're as part as general's skill but that doesn't mean they're invincible. You can see that enemies engage them. But that mean they can be used as decoy from our main force. I think i'm really done this time.
"In modern world, great leaders resolve conflict with words: Scud Launcher, Carpet Bombing, Tomahawk Missile". The narrator forgets to say: flood, speeding train, and nuke missile. I'm upset with that because he ignores my well-planned flood.
Electronic Arts Pacific's Command & Conquer Generals (2003) is pretty well designed in term of gameplay. That's natural as Command & Conquer series is good line of RTS game. They know what they're doing and they have experience of it. Each faction is well distinguished from the other and they all functionally work. Note that GLA's building don't need electricity supply but GLA have no aircraft unit. Although there's similar "draft" on the units even that they have all different characteristic. For example the armored personnel vehicles: 1) USA's humvee and other ground vehicle can build support drone that is very useful but restricted to 1 for each vehicle with extra money cost. Infantry inside Humvee can give it some serious fire support but they will die if Humvee is destroyed. 2) China's troop crawler already has red guards built-in and has ability to detect hidden units around it but it can't attack on its own. Also, troop crawler has the most passenger's seat and the toughest for its kin. 3) GLA's Technical probably more fragile than Humvee. But like other GLA's ground vehicle, it can grow strong through scavenging enemy's remain. If technical is destroyed, infantry within it will spawn safely. If you feel some inadequateness toward units in the faction you play as, you can try capture enemy's unit-making building to compensate the drawback of your units. So destroying enemy's building is not the only solution to defeat your enemy. Although strange, treating those supply crates like gold which is the resource of your economy, works well and reasonable enough to me. Besides Oil Derricks, there's another neutral building that you can seize in wilderness such as Oil Refinery that reduces vehicle construction cost by 50% and landing zone that periodically spawn combat units via cargo plane's drop.
Placing troops in civilian building may be good idea but there's several case where they can't engage enemies that attacking them due to lack of range even though they're stationed in tall building where they supposed to have boost to their attacking range! There's some way to win against soldiers that garrison in civilian building. The common solution is to deploy long range artillery unit , destroying the building from safe distance. Using hit-and-fly tactic of aircraft also viable. There's F-117A's upgrade that will also inflict damage to garrisoned troops along with the building. You can use dragon tank and toxin tractor to kill garrisoned troops while they still inside the building but this is risky if there's bazooka troop among them. Rangers can use flashbang to smoke them out. Also they can work tandem with Chinook (yes, it's the supply harvester chopper) to eliminate the building occupants and take the building for themselves.
About the ai, i feel like there's big difference between easy and medium in Skirmish mode. Easy enemy just rush you with infantry. Medium enemy begin to use vehicle and give time they can smoke you with long range artillery unit. If you engage the artillery unit, they will ambush you with main force. Maybe i should just use airplane unit to take care of the artillery. The most frustrating is: enemy will destroy your oil derrick because you can't build neutral building. But once i attack their reserve deposit of supply with small force, enemies can barely do anything but rush with minimum force and hope they can retake their supply source. You can't just turtling and build main force to the maximum. You have to expand your territory with small but sufficient force and establish your territory by building base defense immediately.
There's super weapon such satellite laser but i recommend to limit it because it's fun breaker. There's 3 type of General's skill: 1) active one that spawn gun infantry everywhere on map, bombardment, or instant vehicle healing. 2) Passive one that make newly trained unit into veteran. 3) The one that unlock special unit such as F-117A, sniper, or marauder tank. There's hero unit 1 for each faction but i rarely use them because they're too hassle for me. In this game you can have as many as unit but there's limit to build USA/China structures by the electricity. It will be nice if the electricity supply indicator is bigger or in more visible form. The affinity system works pretty well and easy to understand. The music is pretty good. In fact, i have some of the tracks in my playlist along with Ghouls n Goblin Resurrection's, Cuphead's, and Battle Moon Wars'.
Command & Conquer Generals (2003) is my recommended RTS for RTS with modern warfare but with conventional approach of Age of Empires or Warcraft 2. Even though my mind still not accepting explosive weapon works terribly against infantry as if their flesh has some strong explosive resistance property. That just doesn't make sense.
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