C&C Generals; Zero Hour

[Park Kraken]

A bit of an old game, having been released back in 2004. But still the best C&C RTS game to play, IMO, including the newer games. Just played an awesome round of Skirmish mode, map was Death Valley, with me and three hard computers versus four hard computers. I did random, and was selected as the Chinese Nuke General.

Basically what that means is I get Chinese units, but I get special units and abilties with the idea of nuking people in mind. Nuclear missiles cost a little less, your MiGs get nuke sidewinders, and you don't have to spend general points to unlock the nuke cannon.

At first I tried to win the map by deploying nuclear missiles, but it was taking time and it was boring. So after I captured the oil derricks, I built four war factories and started turning out massive amounts of units, Tanks, Overlord Tanks, Gattling Tanks, and Dragon Tanks, plus a few other odds and ends.

I ended up having enough units to make five armies, which in keeping with the Chinese trend, labelled them as Shock Army 1-5. I then sent these armies out into the field, and used them to obliterate the enemy AI bases.

By the end of it, 2nd and 3rd Shock Armies had been obliterated, and 1st Shock Army was down to only five Overlord tanks. 4th and 5th were mostly left intact, as seen by my screenshot below.

Total tally; 297 units produced, 197 units lost, 858 units killed, 28 buildings built, 1 building lost, 147 buildings destroyed.

And the game lasted about two hours.

[Slayn Cloak]

I love this game, this and company or heroes.

[General Dan]

I still end up playing Zero Hour to this day. It's a love I can never lose.

[Park Kraken]

Heh, just because I was bored, I went and counted all of the visible units in the screenshot to see what I had there.

16 Overlord Tanks
25 BattleMaster Tanks
12 Gattling Tanks

3 Scorpion Tanks
4 Technicals

I need to make a modification to the Fulda Gap map I created, some units have problems with the AI in getting stuck in one location and lagging up the map.

BTW, I want to see a screenshot from either of you.

I'm also curious as to what tactics yall use when playing as a specific General, your choice.

[Zem-El Vymes]

Mind you, I really only play against the computer since I can't be bothered for live gameplay. I usually play as the Americans and usually as the Air Force general.

I like to fast-build with humvees and comaches, and use the latter to patrol contested ground like oil rigs and such, then use fully modified humvees in groups of four, with half having repair drones, one with a predator drone, and another with a hellfire drone. Each humvee gets a pathfinder, two rocket infantry, and two rangers. So each squadron of humvees becomes a very fast response mobile death-dealer unit, and if I need anything in a pinch where ground has to be held, they do it.

I hot-key king raptors and put them in a holding pattern at my base, and roll them in fast against any enemy air superiority. Everything else gets tasked to boring a hole into an enemy base defenses brute force style, and gives me room to run my humvees inside. I usually don't engage armor directly and keep comaches in close support for that.

I also like playing as the energy weapons general too, but for that I turtle pretty exclusively since laser defenses are completely ridiculous and awesome.

If I play as China, my strategy is to get Black Lotus to capture my enemies command center and begin pumping out their build units. I then run those back to my base under heavy armor protection. So if I play against Americans and the GLA, I can also build their units and have obscene amounts of strategic variation :)

[Park Kraken]

As far as my strategies with each individual general go, well here they are;

American Super Weapon General - I'll build up my defenses early on, then depending on whom I'm fighting against, I'll either build particle cannons like crazy (say about ten of them) and then fight defensivley until they are charged, and destroy an enemies's base all at once. Or, if I wanna blow stuff up, I'll building airfields and stock them with Aurora Alphas. Ain't nothing like about twenty mini-Fuel air explosives going off all at once.

Chinese Nuke General - Again, building up the defenses early, and playing defensivley until I can get everything up and running. I'll usually build about three or four nuke silos, and I'll get the nuke MiGs up and running early as a forward defense line. I'll use the nukes to clear out an enemy base, then send in the ground units to finish off the buildings. I'll build ground units on a order of 5 Battlemasters - 3 Gattling Tanks - 1 Overlord - 1 Troop Carrier, and will usually send about 15-9-3-3 into an enemy base to clear it after the nukes hit.

GLA Toxin General - Heh. My most favorite general to play as. As always, defensive early. I'll mainly use offensive manuevers with units to gain promotions and start the 20% cash flow from destroying enemy units and buildings. Aside from that, I'll research the toxin upgrades, and start building about eight SCUD storm launchers to clear out an enemy base at a time. I'll use the toxin bomber to contaminate the ground enemy units take to get to my base.

And those are the strategies I use with the three super weapon oriented generals for each side.