I remember the day I first played this. I had the demo from PC gamer magazine but I had a stupid English assignment to finish. You better believe I half assed that essay in favor of playing some sweet C&C. I played the hell out of that demo and soon had the full game and covert ops expansion. I beat all the levels, including the secret dinosaur ones. I may have also downloaded maps from online but I did not play any multiplayer.
I prefer GDI with mammoths and orcas. Grenadiers and medium tanks are good too. My strategy was to use airstrike or choppers to expose SAM sites so I could one shot them with the ion cannon. Slowly dismantling defenses and picking off vulnerable units with choppers while my towers and tanks defended the base. If I had to go all out assault I used tanks mostly, and infantry or rocket artillery to take out defenses. NOD is a bit more difficult to play; stealth tanks are fun and tower defenses are better but their units are more difficult to use and weaker. Flamethrower infantry are particularly difficult because they have to split off from other infantry and be micromanaged. I knew the sand bag trick and used it to beat campaigns (not the first time though). It was fun using towers to destroy the enemy base.
The most fun of all was modding the stats of the units. I had all the units for multiplayer available in the campaign as well as normally unbuildable stuff like technicians and hospitals. GDI had the SSM launcher while I gave NOD the visceroid with double chemical spray and dinosaur bite. I severely lowered the health of everything so that the minigunner can one shot another minigunner, a single rocket to a medium tank would take it almost to half health, and any infantry, including the commando, would be killed by a direct hit from any tank shell or rocket; splash damage hits would bring them to red health. This completely changed the game and made it incredibly intense. Still very playable except for the commando missions which could have minigunners come out after C4, and the Commando does not have enough health to survive that.
Epic Masterpiece of a game that never gets old. Up there with Diablo, A Link to the Past and Baldur's Gate as one of the best games of all time from that era.
Update Dec 2023
Played the playstation version and beat the campaigns special missions and most of the covert ops missions. I could not find how to play the dinosaur missions. I skipped the mission about rescuing the scientist from the nuke and could not beat the final GDI mission where the commando started off under attack from a flame thrower and rockets. I literally could not select the commando fast enough to attack the flamethrower before he got hurt. Out of over 20 attempts only once was I able to get the commando to destroy the sam sites without getting killed by the gunners that came out after buildings explode. With mouse and keyboard, and saving, this level would certainly be doable. It was frustrating that the playstation version had no saving whatsoever. The controls were far inferior to the pc version. I could only make three control groups but I often fumbled the buttons, deselecting units or going into the build menu. It was L2 plus a face button then L1 plus face button to select a control group. R2 and R1 should have been used to make 3 more groups, and combining the buttons should have been used to make the game almost on par with the pc version. Instead R1 was about toggling the ui and the map which should have been in the pause menu. Select did nothing, but it should have selected every unit on the screen. Force attack, force move and scatter were bound to combinations of buttons but should havd been bound to select + other buttons.
I decided to challenge myself with these awkward controls by not allowing myself to use engineers, unless I was in position to destroy the building or it was a gimmick of the mission. I was not allowed to do sandbag shenanigans nor to attack the enemy harvester unless it was near my base or I was attacking their base. Some of the missions were extremely difficult to beat first try, especially the no base missions largely because units did not have enough sight range to scout properly. For GDI the 3 control groups were tanks, anti infantry, and helicopters. I liked building 2 helipads early on as 2 helicopters could destroy a gun turret over the course of a couple sorties, and destroy vehicles. Later I added a third to destroy laser towers. I remember using much larger fleets of helicopters on pc but three was adequate. My overall strategy was to minimize losses and use the minimum possible to achieve victory. I liked having my mammoth tanks defending the base and only on offense when it was time for a full assault. I mostly had the tank control group assigned to a squad of medium tanks that were better able to do strike and run attacks. Both tanks had trouble with infantry and absolutely needed escort. For the anti infantry I mainly used rocket artillery but they were very fragile and could be killed by a single flamethrower. They cloud out range gun turrets by one space but this wasn’t very useful as they did low armour damage and it was very unlikely to get more than 1 in range. Before I had those I mainly relied on APCs and Humvees. The APC actually made the best scout as it could see farther than the humvee and could withstand a laser shot. Since the hummer was cheaper I only built 1 APC at a time. Infantry were difficult to use because of how deadly flame throwers and flame tanks were. I found it better it use them individually or in small squads to help minimize casualties and that gunners did better against flamethrowers than grenadiers. Grenadiers were very versatile but difficult to avoid taking friendly fire. Rocket infantry were not of much use to GDI since NOD vehicles were weaker and their Apache was only in a couple missions. Since the base towers were good against infantry it was important to get tanks and helicopters up for vehicle defence. Rocket towers were great against infantry but had trouble hitting adjacent tiles, so it was good to put down a 1 or 2 guard towers and put concrete walls or tanks in front. I liked having a single tile wide entrance with guard tower adjacent so stealth tanks could not get in. The ion cannon was best used on laser towers or sam sites while air strike was best used on barracks or airstrip to kill weak units. In the past I would combine them to take out critical buildings like construction yard or refinery but I did not let myself do that this time.
The NOD missions were more difficult as they had more non base commando missions. My three control groups were light tanks, flame tanks and stealth tank. Stealth tank was the best scout in the game and I tried to cheese as much damage as I could by sneaking into the enemy base and hiding when noticed. One had enough offence to take out rocket artillery or any building with enough time. I rarely used more than one. Flame tanks were the best anti infantry unit and did extremely well against rocket and guard towers. They had to stay away from tanks and were not as durable as GDI tanks. Light tanks were my standard unit as they were just weaker faster versions of medium tanks. It took more of them to be viable and they suffered more losses but much more easily crushed infantry. Recon bikes were much faster rocket infantry that took damage like a vehicle instead of infantry while still being crushable. They were great for anti air but very weak against infantry so I just used 1 at a time to lure helicopters back to my base. Buggies were not really useful especially after flame and stealth tanks were available. Artillery was very good against infantry especially when stationed behind a base defence. They were a little unhandy to take out on attack and offered no real advantage since tanks and rockets could already out range guard towers. On pc I could make artillery out range rocket towers by force attacking the ground in front of them but this did not work on playstation. Flamethrower infantry were very good against infantry but they had to be micro managed individually to avoid excessive friendly fire. Sometimes it was better to rush next to enemies to kill them with the death explosion rather than fight. Again they were more useful on pc due to force attacking ground to get more range. Rocket infantry were better for NOD but still a bit questionable given their cost. Gunners were less useful than GDI. I preferred only using gun turrets to defend the base, usually in a line of 3 or 4, or square block. They easily countered all vehicles, only needing help with infantry and helicopters, which was easily provided by infantry. There was less incentive to get the airstrip built quick, unlike GDI . Laser towers were incredibly powerful and could kill infantry better but were destroyed by the ion cannon. Losing $1500 every blast was much worse than the $100 it took to repair a sam, and really the laser did not do anything a group of turrets and flamethrowers could not do. I liked putting a sam in front of the gun turrets to fool enemies into attacking it, but this was best used at north south directions where the sam was only 1 tile wide. I did not try this set up going east west. The nuke was the most powerful thing in the game, but could only be used once. Overall the repeatable ion cannon and air strikes were better. I used the nuke to destroy the main defences of the enemy base just before a massive attack or to cripple their important structures if they were close enough together. I did not have as much trouble with nukes playing as GDI but for one mission I got nuked three times. Damn cheating AI. It was important to make duplicates of construction yards and refineries to be nuke proof. Dealing with GDI’s air strikes and ion cannon was dealt with by putting a gunner far away to the north and having a sam site with no laser tower. One sam site was enough for the whole base as I could easily lure helicopters 1 at a time. The AI not only always bombed the northern most thing but also focused ground attacks there. I had to keep replacing that decoy, keep an eye on harvesters, and be very careful which building of the base was the most northern, even while playing as GDI. Capturing the other faction construction yard was great to get access to the best units and defense structures; turrets + rocket towers, mammoths + flame tanks + stealth tanks + helicopters.
Still one of the best games of all time. The biggest flaw was infantry coming out of buildings destroyed by the commando. I wonder what basic modding could improve that; maybe giving him more health or armor, or chemical spray for a secondary weapon. Another major flaw was the complete lack of mini map without a comm center, which felt like being blind. It would have been better to have fog of war with a mini map and have the comm center remove the fog. I had a lot of fun modding this game and here are some of my ideas to make the game more fun. Engineers being able to capture full health buildings was way overpowered, so to help counter that I would give them 1 hp so even a technician would 1 hit kill them. Maybe even give some important buildings the pistol. Increased sight range for most units. Commandos, Humvees and buggies should see further than the laser tower at least. Other units and buildings should at least see as far as they can shoot, except artillery, rocket artillery and SSM. I even gave technicians, helicopters, transport planes and A10s more than 0 sight. Rocket artillery require the comm centre to make it buildable earlier and mammoths require a new technology centre building, forcing a high investment of money, space and power to get such a powerful unit. Even though GDI does not get the SSM launcher in any mission I would give it to them with requirement being the advanced communication centre, because the technology better suits GDI and they have more tactical need to out range laser towers while NOD can already easily destroy GDI defences. I would love to give medium and light tanks high velocity machine gun as secondary weapon but it would only ever be used when they turn turrets. The APC gets high velocity machine gun. The commando and transport helicopter would be available for both factions, requiring the comms centre and helipad respectively. NOD would be able to build their helicopters in single player they would also get chem warriors and visceroid as double chemical tank; both of which would require the bio lab. The stealth tank and visceroid would require the temple of NOD. It would be cool if the hospital could repair infantry, or allow a medic unit. The best I can come up with is having technicians and commandos require it. Some cool entirely new unit ideas. A slightly more expensive gunner with grenades as a secondary so he could throw a grenade before closing in to shoot; probably would be very bad with friendly fire in groups. Anti infantry rocket version of rocket infantry and helicopter, possibly cheaper recon bikes with mini guns but they can keep rockets as a secondary weapon. Stealth tank with laser but super expensive and slow.
