Operation Condor

[Pete]

I beat this Scenario, but only with one of five Stars...What is your strategy to win it?

[Urist]

Transport aircraft are your friend

I focus on researching them and then just airlift my forces from the USA

This gives enough of a headstart in comparrision to shipping them that you should be able to use the extra time for bonus objectives

For the black sites I use SBML vehicles to shoot the ones far away from me and attack any without Anti-Air with jets

In general airpower is very strong in conventional combat

[Rin Palora]

tips:
- don't rush it, you have plenty of time.
- build an extra army base on Puerto Rico for more transport planes (the radar is in the way and will need to be removed).
- destroy the soviet Pacific fleet and the Kalinigrad reinforcing fleet before they can land reinforcements.
- MRBM, either from silo or tel vehices, are very useful in taking out enemy airbases and army bases (with gas) without needing to send out army divisions, you'll need about 6 of them to be time efficient with them.
- practice and get map knowledge.
- minimize casualties by pulling back almost dead units to be repaired, several FOBs in the same place will speed up the repairs. Time wasted on building new units to replace casualties (except planes, those can't be helped) is time that could have been used on more units or research.
- don't fire nukes first.

detailed strategy:
The way I do it is to not rush the invasion, destroy the radar on Puerto Rico so I have room for another military base (which will give me the ability to land 6 units at the same time) and slowly move all of my mainland Army Divisions to Puerto Rico.

While that's happening I focus on microing my Spec Ops team to take out the black sites. You can take out most of them with your starting Spec Ops with a bit of luck and care.

I research air launched ballistic missiles and better army divisions if I haven't done so already.

Start sending out the mainland strategic bombers to take out what installations they can in the north, with a focus on air bases using cruise missiles (that way they don't get too close to enemy fighters and don't get shoot down as much).

Meanwhile build up a couple of engineers and fill them up with support buildings (FOBs, Makeshift Airbases, SAMs, Radars), keep in mind engineers can carry 3 of those, military bases can deploy 3 engineers so you can end up with 9 installations in South America in one wave of airdrops from one base.

Send out the 3 pacific subs to intercept the incoming pacific fleet, group up the Atlantic subs and have them find and shadow the soviets submarine around Puerto Rico.

I ignore the Soviet Atlantic Fleet, it has too much of a head start for now to catch easily and it'll usually focus the Condor alliance not me.

Soon enough, once I'm confident of the position of those soviet subs in the Atlantic and I have sizeable force ready to go in Puerto Rico (at least 12 Army Divisions, 2 engineers, 2 FOBs, 2 SAM sites) I start air dropping in the north. Either 5 Army Divisions and 1 Engineer with SAMs in the same place to take out the biggest enemy force or 3 Army Divisions on the 2 most Northern cities if the there's no enemy troop concentration near them, and later reinforce them with engineers and support installations.

After that I focus on capturing 1 region asap while having 1 military base in production and researching mobile ballistic vehicles.

At about this time both the soviets and their allies will declare war. With good micro the Pacific Fleet has no chance against the subs, kiting them at max range works relatively well and once they are gone I send those subs to the Atlantic in the path of the soviet reinforcements. The soviet Atlantic submarines are a bit more dicey but as long as they are destroyed (except the one in the far south east of South America) it doesn't matter that much if I lose my subs as well in the exchange, if they remain alive they'll go after the US Atlantic fleet and may even nuke it.

By this time the US Pacific Fleet should be in range of Chile and I land my ground forces scattered about aiming to capture the 4 cities asap while the carrier and the warship engage the Condor and Soviet airbases close by.

All this time every other ground unit is being airlifted to South America via Puerto Rico.

Once the north Condor region is captured I can finally be more aggressive and push out, usually to capture the soviet allied territory next door, which shouldn't be much of a problem. my carrier planes can be resupplied in that territory and support the attack, the army bases can be deployed there which will give me local air lift capabilities, any new units can also be deployed there, most important MRBM tel vehicles, which can't be airlifted and are needed to give you the long reach needed to target air bases, army bases and army divisions before your own army divisions have to fight them. They will need protection from enemy Spec Ops which I usually do with Checkpoints.

After that it's all just an issue of time and slowly, or not so slowly making your way to capture every region.

The only 2 real threats left at this point should be the Soviet Atlantic Fleet, usually stopped next to Rio de Janeiro which will totally nuke anything that gets within missile range of the escorts and is probably gonna be one of the last threats to deal with and the imminent arrival of the Soviet landing force from Kalinigrad, the initial one is the toughest as most of your assets won't be quite in position and they have submarines.

Hopefully I have some subs in their way and / or the JFK carrier has it's squadrons replenished. It gets considerably easier to deal with if at least 1 of your Atlantic subs around Puerto Rico survived the exchanged with their soviet counter parts, that way you can send it up north very early to spot the incoming soviets and you can harass them with cruise missiles from your strategic bombers. As long as the sub can keep the ships spotted your missiles will lock on the soviet ships otherwise they will mostly miss. Ofc the 3 soviet destroyers will shoot down most of the missiles but not all. With a bit of luck or some micro to better coordinate your missile launch (you want more missiles fired at the same time) you can sink that fleet just with your strategic bombers.

I also don't go for the time bonus objective. The extra points you get on the next mission are not worth the 100 minutes of research you could do in that time, assuming you focus everything on research.

I capture every region except Uruguay and it's 1 city (Montevideo) until the very last minutes (you need 2 min and 40ish seconds to capture it) and then just focus all my gdp on research while micro-ing the occasional fight against the soviet reinforcement fleet.

If the fight in South America went exceptionally well I'll also built new spec ops and send them into the USSR proper with a FOB in Alaska to destroy some of their installations for extra points in the next mission.

Do NOT touch the soviet silos, they use the rest to nuke your cities if you do that. :D