Nod 8A and 8B on Hard (New Construction Options)

[CatMeowMeow]

I managed to capture the base but enemy attack with god grenadiers who one shot infantry and medium tanks.

It's very hard to build a weapons factory and you will get wreck if you try to rush weapons factory.

Guard Tower gets wrecked by 2 rocket soldier and few grenadiers

On 8B there's a swarm of light scouts (Hum-Vee)

A group of 1 grenadier and 2 minigunners will wreck my harvester

Airstrike will always one shot my harvester or already damaged conyard. And There's no defense against them!!!!!!

This mission is even harder than Last mission!!!

Anyone who knows how to finish this mission? I spent like 3 hours on this mission alone

[CatMeowMeow]

It seems this mission is absurdly hard noone has yet ever beat it on hard
I think I may have to use mod/cheat to beat

[DeadScreenSky]

I'm finding the new airstrike AI to be really cruel in general. At this point I'm hoping it's a bug/oversight and for now just finished that mission on a lower difficulty.

[Leluminaï]

I started with the Nod campaign first since i did the same back in 1996. but this time i wanted a challenge, so i started out on the new implemented hard difficulty in Tiberian Dawn, which was not a thing back then. It was actually enjoyable, but when i reached this Mission (8B), it felt like running against a wall. After some time i even switched to the GDI campaign on hard, which i actually finished entirely by now.

I could not find any videos on youtube of people beating this in the remaster on hard. so i assume that this mission is way overtuned and requires A LOT of "luck" and plenty usage of the quicksave feature. I will give it another shot later today.

[Vanessaira]

Originally posted by Mike:

I started with the Nod campaign first since i did the same back in 1996. but this time i wanted a challenge, so i started out on the new implemented hard difficulty in Tiberian Dawn, which was not a thing back then. It was actually enjoyable, but when i reached this Mission (8B), it felt like running against a wall. After some time i even switched to the GDI campaign on hard, which i actually finished entirely by now.

I could not find any videos on youtube of people beating this in the remaster on hard. so i assume that this mission is way overtuned and requires A LOT of "luck" and plenty usage of the quicksave feature. I will give it another shot later today.

I did not beat it on hard but I have been beating it over and over again on the console, original, and remastered for comparison purposes.

I have ideas and part of it is luck and part of it is a ton of save scamming and knowing the map inside and out. Also playing it on the slowest or slow game speed helps.

I was recording earlier but now I have some ideas.

V

[Otsdarva]

Can't beat this mission either, best run i had i captured the Con yard and the harvester, built a guard tower and rushed units with a barracks. Lost tons of units to grenadiers but after multiple reloads i managed to survive the initial attack with acceptable losses- killed a few surrounding soldiers only to be rewarded with a 1 hit kill Airstrike on the harvester and not enough funds to replace it. Few reloads and it managed to survive with red hp but in that particular save state it was easily killed by the infantry attacking the base

building a weapons factory seems out of the question with so many grenadiers around and not to mention 2 humvees and a medium tank aren't that far behind the first attack wave. Couldn't build sandbags fast enough to block myself in either, even after restarting to do it as fast as possible. Beat GDI's storyline on hard but this is beyond me. I imagine some of the covert ops missions will be equally broken on hard

Tried to use mods to cheat it but nothing i add to the game works, even on a fresh mission select. Curious to see if anyone's managed it properly on Hard and what strategy it took
edit: this was for 8b, i haven't tried 8a yet

[CatMeowMeow]

Anyone know playtesters of this game, I want to ask about this C&C souls mission. Harder than Any mission I've play on RTS game. There's no hope.

[Scary Barry]

Yeah, I've just spent my entire sunday on Mission 8A (Hard) and the AI buff is just so rediculously ramped up I don't even think it's possible beating it without cheating.

[Leluminaï]

Alright, i finally beat it! it took me over 2 hours of raw playtime according to the mission ending screen (probably 3-4 or more hours real time due to loading quicksaves over and over) and 46!!! quicksaves. also, there is NO way to beat this without the sandbag cheese method. the problem is: to come to the point where you can use the sandbag method feels outright impossible to reach. there are dozens of situations during the first 30 minutes or so, where you solely have to rely on rng on which unit the AI sends his airstrikes and how much damage they do to whatever just got striked. and all that while fending off countless humvee's, a lot of medium tanks and infantry of all sorts. i had to put the game on the slowest speed many times as well, to give me time to react to all of that.

In the end it came down to me squeezing a few engineers into their base with my transport helicopter, where countless humvee's and infantry where blocking each other at the entrances, allowing me to kinda savely take over their construction yard, weapons factory and barracks to stop the endless flow of units.

Like i already mentioned: i had very few issues in some of the GDI missions on hard difficulty and already beaten the whole campaign. but the NOD 8 B mission on hard is the most ridiculous thing i ever experienced in an rts game. and this comes from an 37 year old "veteran" who played this game and all the other C&C's starting back in 1996 and many other rts games of course.

While i would not recommend to anyone to play this specific mission on the hardest difficulty, i actually got my fix out of it. i am happy that i overcame this "challenge" and i look forward to beat the rest of the Nod main-campaign. to anyone that wants to keep their sanity: revert to normal or casual and wait for an eventual fix or use mods/cheats (if that is possible). then even i believe that this is WAY overtuned.


Mission ending:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124668862

here a screenshot of my mission select to confirm that i actually beat it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124673074

and yeah, you do not want to mess with that: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124668843

[Vanessaira]

Originally posted by Mike:

Alright, i finally beat it! it took me over 2 hours of raw playtime according to the mission ending screen (probably 3-4 or more hours real time due to loading quicksaves over and over) and 46!!! quicksaves. also, there is NO way to beat this without the sandbag cheese method. the problem is: to come to the point where you can use the sandbag method feels outright impossible to reach. there are dozens of situations during the first 30 minutes or so, where you solely have to rely on rng on which unit the AI sends his airstrikes and how much damage they do to whatever just got striked. and all that while fending off countless humvee's, a lot of medium tanks and infantry of all sorts. i had to put the game on the slowest speed many times as well, to give me time to react to all of that.

Like i already mentioned: i had very few issues in some of the GDI missions on hard difficulty and already beaten the whole campaign. but the NOD 8 B mission on hard is the most ridiculous thing i ever experienced in an rts game. and this comes from an 37 year old "veteran" who played this game and all the other C&C's starting back in 1996 and many other rts games of course.

While i would not recommend to anyone to play this specific mission on the hardest difficulty, i actually got my fix out of it. i am happy that i overcame this "challenge" and i look forward to beat the rest of the Nod main-campaign. to anyone that wants to keep their sanity: revert to normal or casual and wait for an eventual fix or use mods/cheats (if that is possible). then even i believe that this is WAY overtuned.

here a screenshot of my mission select to confirm that i actually beat it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124673074

and yeah, you do not want to mess with that: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124668843

Yeah, you have to abuse pathing for sure, and I have used the sandbag method in all my play throughs save the console, because you cannot sandbag trick the A.I. there and an attempt on C&C95 with out it. Its doable but while experimenting and observing with all this I noticed patterns and can recommend these actions to help.

Playing the game on slow gives you 20 minutes between each airstrike. This allows you to setup in advanced and plan out as well as really micro manage your troops and units. On normal speed is 6 minutes between each strike. Further moor spread your forces out. I noticed if the value count in an area is really high, it will become a target but for the most part. The A-10s will strike out at your harvester over and over again. I did note an oddity on one NOD 8A attempt where I sent one flame thrower to the north west corner of the map to explore and they choose to airstrike it. I do not know why, since the A.I. no longer strikes the northern most western units in the Remastered.

Save scumming is a must and managing your Tiberium fields is another once you have locked the enemy out.

Superb work by the way Mike.

V

[Leluminaï]

@Vanessaira: Yes, i did all possible shenanigans you could think of. but like i mentioned, to apply most of them is impossible at the very start. the enemy would simply have overan you by the time you close up the side i showed in my screenshot.

Back in 1996 i did not even know that the AI ignores sandbags and i beat every single mission the "normal" way, because i thought sandbags and concrete walls are pointless expenses that i could put into units. but now when the remaster got released and i started to smash my head against that wall called "Nod 8 B" on the hardest difficulty, i started to read stuff and people made me aware of that silly method.

But i have to admit that a "good" difficulty looks different than what we have here. it all just comes down to endurance by reloading your saves and hoping for good rng and cheesing the crap out of the old AI if possible. and that is the problem of the new implemented hard difficulty in Tiberian Dawn, the game was never ment to be played on another difficulty and was hard enough on its own. and i think the new difficulty settings were never tested before release.

[Vanessaira]

Originally posted by Mike:

@Vanessaira: Yes, i did all possible shenanigans you could think of. but like i mentioned, to apply most of them is impossible at the very start. the enemy would simply have overan you by the time you close up the side i showed in my screenshot.

Back in 1996 i did not even know that the AI ignores sandbags and i beat every single mission the "normal" way, because i thought sandbags and concrete walls are pointless expenses that i could put into units. but now when the remaster got released and i started to smash my head against that wall called "Nod 8 B" on the hardest difficulty, i started to read stuff and people made me aware of that silly method.

But i have to admit that a "good" difficulty looks different than what we have here. it all just comes down to endurance by reloading your saves and hoping for good rng and cheesing the crap out of the old AI if possible. and that is the problem of the new implemented hard difficulty in Tiberian Dawn, the game was never ment to be played on another difficulty and was hard enough on its own. and i think the new difficulty settings were never tested before release.

Yeah, you really have to save a ton and minimize losses at the start with those troops as well as getting an engineer and 4 minigunners from the construction yard sale. As well as hoping that the A.I. target glitches out and focuses on units across the river and not your new base buying you time.

I think you may be on to something about testing before release, though I also feel that someone did play through and thought, yeah this will be fun to watch people bang their head against.

V

[Kilopede]

you have to do well with your troops and get lucky with con yard sell. once you take the base I suggest a guard tower where the mass of infantry comes form and 2 or 3 flamethrowers to take them all out once they focus the guard tower, otherwise you need to aggro the grenadiers with minigunners so you can get the flamers splash

oh and hope the airstrike doesn't take out your harvester in one hit

[Raymond Reddington]

I beat this mission (Nod 8B) on hard mode today without the sandbag method. I had multiple retries in order to make it happen though. I built multiple refineries before getting the war factory, and then focused on building medium tanks and apcs. To actually win I ended up using the old apc engineer rush against the AI's construction yard and refinery. Then I just held out until the AI was finally starved of money before I could finish it off. The whole map except for the regenerating sources of tiberium were mined out.

This mission is truly brutal with the airstrikes targeting the harvester early on, ultimately doable, but very, very challenging.

[Leluminaï]

Originally posted by Raymond Reddington:

I beat this mission (Nod 8B) on hard mode today without the sandbag method. I had multiple retries in order to make it happen though. I built multiple refineries before getting the war factory, and then focused on building medium tanks and apcs. To actually win I ended up using the old apc engineer rush against the AI's construction yard and refinery. Then I just held out until the AI was finally starved of money before I could finish it off. The whole map except for the regenerating sources of tiberium were mined out.

This mission is truly brutal with the airstrikes targeting the harvester early on, ultimately doable, but very, very challenging.

Nice one, even i almost would call BS right there after barely beating it with the sandbag method myself. but like i mentioned it takes a while until you are able to make it work and i had to survive for a long time without the cheese. when i started to push, the AI had 20+ humvee's and 5+ medium-tanks in his base blocking each other from flooding out and about the same amount at my sandbag wall. so i decided to find my way around all of that and managed to squeeze in a few engineers with the transport-helicopter to stop the mass production. But like you mentioned, the main issue is the constant random bombardment.

Tiberian Dawn was an relatively difficulty game on its own back then, especially when you did not know anything about the map layout and where your objective is located. i am pretty sure that they did not test the new implemented hard difficulty enough. and it shows the most at NOD Mission 8 A+B.

[CatMeowMeow]

You did it!!! You guys are the best!