Need some strategy tips for single player Options

[thefran]

I've never played multiplayer, only completed all campaigns and several challenges on medium or hard in vanilla Generals and ZH.

Due to a combination of me being very rusty and the AI being (subjectively) improved, I get absolutely pummeled on Challenge mode. As China Nuke, I try to turtle a bit till I can get some nukes and overlords going, get a defense line of 3-4 Gattling tanks and a propaganda tower as I go north with a Desolator, 2 Gattlings and a Dozer to establish a second supply center, and then get rolled by a bunch of laser paladins and that damnable laser artillery. (Rocket soldiers don't help much obviously). Build order is reactor-racks (capture, 4 Red Guards, capture oil derricks and whatnot, then camp in a building)-prop tower-supply-war factory-2 supply trucks-gattlings and rad tanks-nuclear center-strategy center-dead.

As US Laser, I kinda expected to get an easy win against Granger before realising that I don't actually have good ground air defense. Sure, he doesn't get countermeasures against my lasers, but I build a half-circle of laser partriots as I desperately try to build a good tank wave, but avengers turn out to be very expensive and very cost inefficient, his raptors kill them easy.

[Lobo Solitario]

I've never played multiplayer, only completed all campaigns and several challenges on medium or hard in vanilla Generals and ZH.

Due to a combination of me being very rusty and the AI being (subjectively) improved, I get absolutely pummeled on Challenge mode. As China Nuke, I try to turtle a bit till I can get some nukes and overlords going, get a defense line of 3-4 Gattling tanks and a propaganda tower as I go north with a Desolator, 2 Gattlings and a Dozer to establish a second supply center, and then get rolled by a bunch of laser paladins and that damnable laser artillery. (Rocket soldiers don't help much obviously). Build order is reactor-racks (capture, 4 Red Guards, capture oil derricks and whatnot, then camp in a building)-prop tower-supply-war factory-2 supply trucks-gattlings and rad tanks-nuclear center-strategy center-dead.

As US Laser, I kinda expected to get an easy win against Granger before realising that I don't actually have good ground air defense. Sure, he doesn't get countermeasures against my lasers, but I build a half-circle of laser partriots as I desperately try to build a good tank wave, but avengers turn out to be very expensive and very cost inefficient, his raptors kill them easy.

Note that the challenge mode is not very balanced at present - some generals are pushovers while others are pretty insane in all difficulty modes. Laser general is probably the current hardest challenge in the game, with a constant onslaught of well-balanced attack forces that can trade effectively with pretty much anything you throw at them. Second hardest is Demolition, just because you have to deal with traps and attacks from the moment the game starts, and it's easy to lose in the first five minutes. I'd recommend avoiding these challenges until you've put in some practice and feel up to it.

Granger on the other hand is one of the easier generals - like Demolition he opens strong, but if you can get past the first ten minutes, he's a pushover. The strategy to defeat him is pretty simple - spam and spam some more!

You want to fortify the whole island you start on as quickly as possible - I generally go for a three-layer defense, with AA turrets on the inner line, AA vehicles in the middle, and AA infantry on the beach. Make sure to quickly garrison all the buildings with one or two AA infantry (no more, they'll likely die when the building is destroyed) and man the two AA guns - this will buy you some time to build up.

The main thing to keep in mind when fighting him is that his planes have certain targeting priorities - his Auroras and Stealth Fighters will prefer your AA turrets over any other target, so as long as you keep replacing them, he won't be hitting your economy too hard. Having your turrets at the back of your forces also means that his Auroras and Stealth Fighters won't get out alive after bombing them. Your AA vehicles should be the bulk of your defense, with the infantry acting mainly as a screen to soak some damage and to throw extra projectiles at his planes' point-defense systems, and your turrets mainly acting as bait. Try to screen the turrets with vehicles, and the vehicles with infantry, so that his planes waste some shots on lower value targets (just make sure to spread them far enough apart to avoid splash damage).

In parallel, you should be teching up as you go, aiming for secondary economy, superweapons and upgrades - get everything that makes your units harder to kill, gives them extra range or makes them do more damage, and invest all the General's Points you're racking up into artillery-type powers. As soon as you can, start unloading general's powers and superweapon attacks on his base, aiming at the strategy center. This will keep his nastier planes, like the Auroras, out of the sky, and leave his base unpowered for a while after each attack - once you're at this stage you've pretty much won, as his attacks will get weaker and weaker, while you get stronger and stronger.

Once the island is more or less secure, prepare some forces to occupy the village in front of the entrance to his base - infantry to garrison the buildings (just one or two in each) and AA vehicles. He'll start sending his resource collectors here once he exhausts the supplies in his base, and you can shoot them all out of the sky, further weakening his economy. You'll get bombed pretty heavily at the start, and may lose the first couple of groups, but keep pushing forward and establish a permanent foothold. After that, it's just a case of finishing him off - either blast him into submission with superweapons and hero units, or take out his power and rush his base (don't try to rush the base before his power is out, your units will get massacred in the narrow passes leading to the base).

That's the main strategy for every general against Granger. The only other things to look out for are a couple of scripted events:
-In the opening minutes he will parachute-drop rangers on the ground to the north of your command center. Make sure you have some units that can deal with them. He'll only do this once.
-A while after the air attacks have started, he'll send his ground units to attack you - they're pretty weedy, just some infantry and a couple of tanks, but make sure you have something to stop them at the bridge to the island. He doesn't build any ground units, so he'll only send the ones he already has at the start of the game.
-When you blow up a few of his airfields, he'll get a wave of air reinforcements and he'll throw all his remaining ground and air units at you. By this stage in the game, they shouldn't make a difference.
-He'll occasionally launch a carpet bombing attack on you. It shouldn't do too much damage - just have dozers prepared to repair and rebuild.

Tips:
-Try to capture or blow up the oil derricks - there are a couple before the village and three more in the top left of the map. Don't get pulled into a war of attrition over them, just make sure Granger can't use them to his benefit. Capture them if you can for the initial cash bounty, and use general's powers, aircraft or heroes to destroy any Granger captures. If he attacks them instead, let him destroy them - it's not worth wasting money to defend them.
-Some stealth detection on the beach will help with his Stealth Bombers and spy drones.
-You mainly want to trade units cost-effectively with him. Spread-out infantry make for great damage soakers, as a Raptor can waste all of its missiles on a single infantry unit. Putting them inside buildings can make him waste two or three salvoes.
-Watch your dozers, as you're bound to lose a couple. Try to keep repairing and rebuilding constantly so as to stay ahead in the battle of attrition.
-Obviously you'll want a strong secondary economy - make sure to tech up as fast as you can while getting your defense up, and make plenty of economy buildings/units as soon as you can. This battle is all about economy.
-Just to highlight - make sure you keep hitting his strategy center. While hitting his economy does seem to slow him down, he has a parallel cheat economy - he'll get a constant supply of free planes and can rebuild his base indefinitely as far as I can tell. As long as his strategy center is down, he won't get any units that require it to be built, meaning less planes in the sky, and much less dangerous ones. This goes for pretty much all the general's challenges - destroying the strategy center/equivalent will always make your life much easier.

This post has been edited by Lobo Solitario: 20 Jan 2017, 11:09