About Strategy in C&C and Red Alert

[ブリッジス テウタ]

Hello again everyone :-)

I'm not a good RTS player... Yes I've put my hand on many well-known titles such as Age of Empire II, Warcraft (1-3), Cossacks, Starcraft (1&2), C&C (all titles), Red Alert (all titles), Supreme Commander forged Alliance, etc.

But i'm not really great... With time I become better, but i'm nowhere near the top of any ladder.

So here I'd like to ask three questions :

1) how do C&C and Red Alert do compare to other RTS ? What makes them unique ?

2) Do C&C and Red Alert differ from each other ? What is particular to each one and what do they have in common in term of gameplay ?

3) What are your best strategies/tactics with those games ?

Thanks :-)

[Nyerguds]

I dunno about #1, but on #2... RA is much more of a tank game; infantry plays a lot less of a role in it. In C&C1, a group of ten minigunners can totally wreck some tanks. In RA, the fact tanks are much faster and easily crush them makes infantry barely useful at all. The soldiers can't even keep up with them.

[HE1NZ]

C&C is simpler than most other RTS games. Perfect for newbies. Red Alert 1 was the first RTS game I've played.

[ブリッジス テウタ]

And what about towers, are they more a key defence element in these games than in others ? For example, I remember building towers in Cossaks was pretty expansive and not very effective. But in W3, towers can be devastative. My last C&C experiences is C&C3 and towers can be pretty lethal.

I'm currently watching a video on Youtube of a guy playing Dune 2000 on Hard difficuty and their towers are pretty useful. I remember towers being of little use and somehow weak in Red Alert 3, but I'm talking about the campaign, never played many skirmishes tbh

[Nyerguds]

Defense buildings are really vital, yes, and because of that, the advanced ones are also vulnerable to power blackouts. But, when powered and working, a couple of Advanced Guard Towers, or a single Obelisk of Light or Tesla Coil, are a force to be reckoned with.

In C&C, Nod has very little anti-infantry capability in its defense structures, because they have flame weapons on their units for that purpose. GDI has defenses that are very good against light vehicles and infantry, but should supplement it with tanks to take out enemy armor.

Though even there there's nuances. The Obelisk will take out any infantry in one shot, but its slow charge makes it vulnerable to infantry rushes. And in groups of three or four, and with some walls put in front of them, Advanced Guard Towers are actually also really effective against tanks. Also note that the Advanced Guard Tower also serves as GDI's air defense, and is scarily good at it.

Red Alert is a bit more generalised in that, with the low-tier defense structure generally being anti infantry and light armour, the high tier being anti-armour, and the anti-air being a separate structure.

[ブリッジス テウタ]

C&C and Red Alert until now have kept the possibility to build wall. A functionality Warcraft abandonned as soon as Warcraft II was released. So, how are walls an important part of C&C and Red Alertgameplay ?

[John]

You can put walls around important buildings to stop engineer rushes.

[John]

Also helps to stop random Nod flame tanks from roasting your whole base when you're not looking.

[ブリッジス テウタ]

Oh yeah

Originally posted by Skanderborg:

You can put walls around important buildings to stop engineer rushes.

Oh right I had thought about that one...

[^7ja^1co]

spam tanks, you will be fine

[John]

I also think walls can block some tank shells, protecting whatever is behind it, but im not sure on this one

[Nyerguds]

Walls are generally used to block tank shells from damaging your defense structures. I find them useful since they soak up some damage before they crumble, which can give your defenses a bit of an edge, or at least make the enemy lose time while getting damaged by forcing them to move around the walls.

The other fence types are pretty useless though, except to build stuff a bit farther apart in C&C1.

Surrounding structures in C&C1/RA1 is pretty impractical since such full fences take ages to build, and use up time you should spend building up your actual base.

[Jack_Burton]

I'll try to answer your questions:

1) These games are from the very early days of RTS. So they will be very different in that they won't have the depth of units most RTS games have. They also probably don't have the hotkeys and faster game speed of recent RTS games. There are very little in the way of air and navy units.

Maybe the most unique feature is that units only produce out of a designated primary building. So you build a barracks to produce infantry. If you build another barracks, infantry will produce faster out of whichever one you designate as primary. They won't produce out of both barracks. With each extra barracks you build, the units produce even faster out of the primary barracks. This is the same for vehicles out of factories.

2) The two are quite different. Red Alert is more tank warfare. Tiberium Dawn has the Nod faction that relies on stealth and less brute force units from the GDI.

3) As for strategies, Red Alert it's tank spam. Basically take advantage of what I detailed above about the buildings. Keep building factories so that you are making tanks out of the primary factory as fast as possible. Allied light tanks can be producing so fast you will completely overwhelm any attempted defense. Defenses in Red Alert are not good enough to stand up to tank spam.

I never played Tiberium Dawn as much, but I imagine there's some spam strategies there too lol. Really C&C as a series has always seemed to fall back on some kind of unit spam. I think Tiberium Dawn might have more variety though given Nod has to rely on stealth and GDI isn't quite as equipped as the Red Alert factions.

[ブリッジス テウタ]

Originally posted by Jack_Burton:

I'll try to answer your questions:

1) These games are from the very early days of RTS. So they will be very different in that they won't have the depth of units most RTS games have. They also probably don't have the hotkeys and faster game speed of recent RTS games. There are very little in the way of air and navy units.

Maybe the most unique feature is that units only produce out of a designated primary building. So you build a barracks to produce infantry. If you build another barracks, infantry will produce faster out of whichever one you designate as primary. They won't produce out of both barracks. With each extra barracks you build, the units produce even faster out of the primary barracks. This is the same for vehicles out of factories.

2) The two are quite different. Red Alert is more tank warfare. Tiberium Dawn has the Nod faction that relies on stealth and less brute force units from the GDI.

3) As for strategies, Red Alert it's tank spam. Basically take advantage of what I detailed above about the buildings. Keep building factories so that you are making tanks out of the primary factory as fast as possible. Allied light tanks can be producing so fast you will completely overwhelm any attempted defense. Defenses in Red Alert are not good enough to stand up to tank spam.

I never played Tiberium Dawn as much, but I imagine there's some spam strategies there too lol. Really C&C as a series has always seemed to fall back on some kind of unit spam. I think Tiberium Dawn might have more variety though given Nod has to rely on stealth and GDI isn't quite as equipped as the Red Alert factions.

Thank you for your detailed answer. I hadn't noticed those differences tbh. Thanks again as well as everyone else who answered :-)

[Kommandantwolf]

go pay $30 for standard edition if your too much of a stinge hole.

[DarkSim]

Tanks and armored personnel carriers filled with engineers are the bread & butter of C&C.