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Posted by: RodentDung 10 Oct 2015, 22:36

I set the game to hard and have struggled like a raccoon making a grab for someone's ice cream cone but can't survive the dead Dr. Thrax vehicle rush that he seems to have a fetish for. He sends in a horde of annoying crap just as he gets all those missile and rocket buggies that can light up my base from long distance. I've tried as both Ironside and the blond Alexander but always got wiped at the same point.

As Ironside, I tried going both tanks in a few tries and airforce in a few tries and both tanks & aircraft. All were equal disasters. I tried watching youtube videos of people going against Thrax but the sissies always set it to medium so Thrax doesn't attack them. The problem with Ironside is his tanks are too weak to destroy Thrax's vehicles. I've had tanks driving around in circles to avoid the toxin and fire constantly at the toxin trucks but can't destroy them but Iron's tanks are killed in one shot by both missiles and rockets. I tried the Mammoth tanks in one game they were destroyed instantly without killing a single enemy so that was an epic waste of money and GP. With the regular Iron tanks, I put on either a repair drone or one of the anti-tank boomerang drones on each and reserved my tanks behind the turrets to rush out against the missile trucks. Problem is, after my tanks start their attack run out from my hard-pressed turret line, they immediately are hosed down with toxins and the missiles destroy them instantly so my tanks fail to even destroy a single enemy vehicle. At least my bombers were trading one bomber for one vehicle, though that too is lame considering I'm not flying into AA defended territory cause the SAM sites are taken out earlier by the A10 command center strikes.

As Alexander I tried using the previously almighty Aurora Alpha which helped a fair bit but it's so badly nerfed in Shockwave that they get shot down so often and use up all my money and they are far too weak to attack enemy bases in nerfed form. Alex has decent armored vehicles and infantry but they would all be massacred before getting to the Thrax missile and rocket buggies. The Aurora only barely equals Iron's turrets for defense but are only a temporary relief before Thrax puts in his main attack which I've never once stopped cause he spews toxins and missiles all over the airport once my turrets are blown up the suicide bomber trucks. Also the oil derrick gets suicide bombed early too despite have turrets placed around it for protection.

As both Iron & Alex, I reserved 3 GP for the A10s to be able to hit the Scud and to take out the SAM sites on my side of the river cause they make a turkey shoot of the Auroras. I don't see any other way to damage the deadly Scud site. Auroras are guaranteed suicidal to send anywhere over the river so a strike on the Scud site would cost 4 Auroras at a price of $10,000 and leave my base undefended for about 5 minutes. I can't use infantry to defend cause the toxin kills them all instantly even with the ineffective chem suit upgrade.

Is there any way to beat the evil Thrax with Alex or Iron I wonder?? I want to stay on Hard level because I was able to beat the tank freak and the camouflaged terrorist on that level, only the deadly Thrax is unbeatable (so far).

Posted by: Kommandant Karisse 11 Oct 2015, 14:24

Townes makes pretty much every general a breeze (or at least significantly easier). Laser turret walls OP. Also Railguns.

Also, be sure to get some forward stealth detection to keep Jarmen away from your Dozers and Railguns. But I get the feeling you knew that part already.

UAV Strikes are good against buildings and impossible to intercept. Perfect for flipping the bird to Thrax's AA nets.

Posted by: mr_Skittles 11 Oct 2015, 16:29

dont build too far forward at the start and dont go past the oil derick to the east for as long as you can.
that way you wont set his attack triggers off and it takes him longer to start to attack, giveing you more time to dig in
hardest general to beet thrax with is stealth.

your two biggest issues are gonna be the aa tanks and the scorge's, so get some aircraft to snipe them as soon as you see them especially the scorge's

on a side note if you chose to do it, you can get burton on the hill to the east of his base move along and with the grenade launcher completely deny him building 1 of his arms dealers, his supply's and palace, but it is a bit of a cheep way to do it as his units cant hit burton up there.

Posted by: Lobo Solitario 11 Oct 2015, 19:40

The start is a scramble, but it's usually a case of getting some helicopters if you have them, or bunkering up if not - GLA has it worst here. The main thing it to take out his palace as soon as you can, via general's powers, airstrke or whatever, and keep it suppressed throughout the game. That stops him from throwing too many scuds and other nasty artillery at you, and lets you focus on taking out his factories rather than being constantly tied up trying to keep your defensive line from being overwhelmed. Some well-placed artillery of your own can shred his attacks at the bridges if they aren't supported by scuds.

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 2:21

Thank you for the replies.
What are UAV strikes?

Some of your advices I've already done regularly such as I don't go past the east derrick and I've tried commanche helicopters as well as various bombers and found the choppers are shot down in less than 30 seconds every time even with a conservative guard placement right over my base to avoid them getting near SAM sites. The only air I haven't tried is the Tornado bomber because I didn't last long enough to get them airborne.

The Burton cheapshot sounds funny. I don't know how you got him so far forward to the hill without getting killed on the way. Did you chinook him in after suppressing or destroying the SAM sites on route?

The advice about suppressing his palace sounds good. I didn't know he needs that for the deadly missile trucks (called Scourges I think). I will have to scrape and struggle to pay for a Laser superweapon to do that with or maybe the tungsten satellite weapon can do it if it is up to level 3.

Did you find the other GP abilities useful like the infantry & Bradley drops for Westmoreland or the defense pods drop for Alex? After I get the vital tungsten sat strike up to 3 levels or the vital A10 thunderbirds for Westmoreland, then I think there are 3 more points that come up for another skillset. Usually I can't resist the B-52 strike and Air Fuel bomb drop. Something about those feel very right.

Posted by: KingKickAss 12 Oct 2015, 5:15

I have been playing through challenge on hard without using superweapons. Thrax IMO is probably one of the harder generals to beat. Capture and defend your oil derricks. Blowing up those toxin bunkers can bide you some time.

His Arms Dealer to the East and his oil derricks to the north are easy targets to attack. Howitzers/Commanches would be great for stopping his Scourges

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 6:20

I tried both howitzers and commanches but both were destroyed easily within seconds of deployment. My commanches only lasted a few seconds and were shot down about where my turret line was. I think Thrax uses those heavy trucks with the quad machine guns in the back to kill off choppers. The problem with the howitzers (those tracked vehicles I think Iron has) is their range is tiny so they have to drive right up to the Scourges to get within range so they were badly exposed outside my turret line and destroyed within seconds. I don't think the howitzers' range is any better than a usual tank so probably even tanks are better than them. That's just my experience anyways. The only thing that ever had any effect at slowing Thrax's attacks was the turret line before it was destroyed by bomb trucks and scourges, and the Aurora bombers up until the airfield was destroyed. But I will keep trying. I lost another 5 or 6 times last night. I will try again tonight.

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 11:19

I lost another 5 or 6 times today. I noticed the Python tank can shoot down any aircraft with one shot even the Stealth bomber and the Python is immune to air strikes so it is probably the terrorists' strongest unit cause only the Patriot defense can stop them. I tried to fly Burton around the edge of the map in a chinook but it was shot down so that was a waste. I also tried using armored units like those drone tanks and humvees but they were immediately destroyed when I sent out a group to attack the rocket and missile trucks at the bridge. I tried building a laser superweapon but my base was destroyed before it activated. And I tried the tungsten strike on his palace but it can't destroy it. Not sure if there is anything left to try. The only so-so attempt I had was using the Auroras to defend but they keep getting shot down and the $2500 each time sucks up all my income so eventually the patriots get blown up and then the airfield and command center are destroyed. I noticed the Pythons attract the air strikes which renders my airforce useless unless I manually target the missile trucks which is painful to do when I'm so busy trying to replace all the destroyed stuff over & over. Maybe I would have more success performing a resurrection ritual over Sun Tzu's grave and hopefully he can come up with a solution.

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 13:59

I won the fight. I lost my airfield early but with patriot AA and infantry I managed to hold out in the back corner of my area until my command center weapons destroyed his palace and scud. Then I made an array of armor and troops and cleared him out. The Enforcer tanks are fairly good so I put them with Humvees filled with marines and RPG guys plus repair vehicles. Now I only have to fight the deadly Tigress next and it's only fight #3 in Alex's campaign.

Posted by: Kommandant Karisse 12 Oct 2015, 14:13

Late, but the UAV Strike is one of General Townes's support powers. It calls in bombers to hit a specific target, and as I stated earlier, it's impossible to intercept. So all that anti-air is basically useless against it.

But congrats on beating him :D

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 18:08

Okay. I've never played as the laser Townes general. Probably cause I prefer the beauty and honesty of projectile weaponry. I was struggling to figure out UAV because it means Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and the only ones I knew of are the drones that build on armored vehicles. I'm not looking forward to getting beaten senseless by the Tigress next. Her beauty is not enough to compensate for the dreaded earthshake.

Posted by: (USA)Bruce 12 Oct 2015, 18:15

Hey RodentDung I can help coach you for this and any other challenge you may like.It would be better then me writing a four page step by step stratagey guide.

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 19:30

Thanks but I got it figured out now. I'm gonna try all the generals and figure out how to win with them all. I've read the Tank general is the hardest to win with. That seems odd considering he has that deadly Emperor tank with the miniguns on it.

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 19:55

Okay so the Tigress destroyed my base with the earthshake as expected. Do you build a second base on the other side of the bridge? She's got tanks and a big pillbox working that area. I was trying to reduce the enemy base on the cliff above but the sentinel turrets are almost immune to Auroras and the two in the back shot down two Auroras on one pass. Seems clear that airforce is not the answer in this battle. I bombed the Gaia building with 4 Auroras and did a little over 50% damage but the evil building repaired itself right after and all 4 Auroras were shot down. Saving up for lasers might help but the earthshake will destroy them inevitably. I guess the only answer is a 2nd base so one base becomes a sacrifice to the evil Gaia.

Posted by: (USA)Bruce 12 Oct 2015, 20:30

^Offers still there
Add me on skype
Raptor_loving_Bruce

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 23:48

I doubt I could ever beat the Tigress in a fight unless there is a way to knock out the gaia early. I tried the Nuke China general and I beat the laser Townes and almost survived the deadly Thrax but I think I can beat Thrax with nuke next time cause it is a stronger faction and has good artillery strikes.

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 23:50

Posted by: RodentDung 12 Oct 2015, 23:51

Sorry my post got really screwed up cause it didn't post properly. I set Nuke general to hard as usual for the campaign and I think it will go well because China has the wonderful hackers for making money and good command support strikes.

Posted by: Lobo Solitario 13 Oct 2015, 16:04

Sorry, afraid it's been a long time since I last beat Leang on hard difficulty. All I can offer is some general advice from what I remember -

A) The first two-thirds of the map, up to Leang's base, are pretty lightly defended, and you need to expand into them ASAP and spread your base across the whole area. The sooner you break out of your base area and start building elsewhere, the sooner the pressure lets up

B ) This first part can be looked at almost like a puzzle - learn exactly what obstacles you are going to face through repeated tries, and fine-tune a strategy to overcome them as efficiently and quickly as possible

C) Once you've got your base spread out across the map, the rest is just a case of persistence and making sure you have a bit of redundancy in your buildings and economy in case of superweapon strikes

D) Leang's base features a lot of redundancy itself, with multiple command centres and constant dozer production, so it's pretty tough to land a knockout blow on her. It's going to take a vicious brawl backed up by plenty of superweapons or general's powers to grind it down - anything you blow up which you don't secure with your own forces, you can be sure will be rebuilt within short order

On a side note, I'm pretty sure I remember that your starting area gets attacked by artillery from the cliffs to the north at some point, so be prepared for that, on top of the air attacks and earthquake cannon. It may be worth losing some aircraft to clear the artillery units out, as I'm pretty sure they won't be replaced once they're gone.

Posted by: RodentDung 13 Oct 2015, 17:40

Lobo, that's good advice. I can see what you mean with expanding. There's an area across the bridge that should be good once bombers have cleared those strong bunkers overlooking the road and knocked off the roving armor. That first area the player starts in can be completely destroyed by one Gaia strike so a second base and more are vital to survival.

On the cliff above the first base are hammer arty units which are defended by Sentinel gatlings so they need bombing like you advised. I counted 3 gatling turrets up there which is very expensive to clear with bombers because they cull 1 or 2 bombers per pass and each Sentinel requires 3 or 4 payloads to be destroyed. One Aurora payload seems to do 1/3 damage to a turret. I feel like I am throwing brand new Lamborghini Gallardos at mass-produced chinese buildings but that is all I can do to reduce the position.

Her northern base is a massive complex. At least it will feel good to drop in some super destruction on that giant collection of nastiness. I think fighting Tigress as Alexander is a better chance than using the Nuke general because I don't think his planes are strong enough to clear the cliff area and his nukes will take too long with the Gaia wiping them out so the Auroras are the (expensive) way to go from what I've experienced. I will miss having hackers though.

Posted by: RodentDung 13 Oct 2015, 19:19

Oh man this is a mess. I managed to start up a 2nd base across the river but it was constantly under fire from Grinder arty and Gatling tanks so she out-ranged my troops and Patriot defending and the gatlings were shooting down my Auroras but I managed to hold out briefly but then the earthshake smashed my first base which shut off the power and then all hope was lost as a fleet of a dozen or more gunships sprayed my surviving troops and buildings into oblivion with no active Patriots able to defend. The area across the river has a deadly weakness in that it won't allow me to build an airbase to replace the one due to be hit by the Gaia in the first base. I tried building Commanches to replace the lost Auroras but they were instantaneously shot down by the Gatling tanks so that was only a waste of money. I had my barracks making Marines and RPGs non-stop and rally pointed them across the river to entertain the badguys with a stream of fun targets to shoot at while I desperately tried to survive.

I guess the only thing to do is to make a few power plants across the river to prepare for the power outage caused by Gaia. Not sure about the Gatling tank spam by the Tigress because they shut down air support completely and the sadistic Tigress has them backed up with infantry and various armored riffraff, and the cheapshot Grinders pop away from the cliff above the road spewing those airburst canister rounds like rain over my troops giving the battlefield a gloomy London feel. As for tanks, Alex only has that spindly tripod drone thingy which belongs in a glassware display not on a battlefield and it's too early to have a GP for the one tank she can get (Enforcer I think it is) cause I need to horde GPs for the Tungsten strike to combine with a full Aurora bombing of her brutal Gaia building to have a tiny chance of destroying that very evil place. But I need an airfield with four still-living Auroras on it which is like wishing for a Gallardo while you are living on welfare support.

Posted by: RodentDung 14 Oct 2015, 2:20

And one thing that helped a bit was putting a firebase at the base of the cliff with troops in it so it fired on enemy units on top and it provided a temporary defense against the chopper horde that swarmed my base twice in conjunction with a ground attack towards the bridge area but it was destroyed by the choppers which at least took some heat off the patriots trying to defend my base from the choppers. And I think having a stream of troops heading over the bridge helps a lot to engage the enemy to cause some damage and prevent the 2nd base from being overrun in its infancy. I considered putting in an infantry attack against the cliff overtop the road to clear the Grinders from it but I reckoned it would only turn into a dismal repeat of Gallipoli and fail.

Posted by: RodentDung 14 Oct 2015, 9:33

I don't know how to survive against Leung. The earthshock shuts off the power even when I have a 2nd sorta base on the other side of fhe river and then she swarms me with armor and choppers when I have no patriots active. The few weak ground units I can make have no chance plus the Grinder Cannon on the cliff destroys all the buildings within range. I tried making more power plants but it makes no difference cause the earthshock shuts off everything everywhere and I get wiped out within a minute by the brutal swarm of armor, troops, choppers, cannon and jets. Also her choppers can shut off patriots so they don't even defend in any case. I shouldn't be making Patriots. Only make laser trucks, firebases and enforcer tanks. It is very expensive and less effective cause the laser trucks are $1800 and take quite awhile to shoot down a single chopper. So I would need at least 6 to 8 laser trucks to survive a chopper swarm assuming they aren't been destroyed by armor on the ground. She has a lot of armor. There was so much red armor in my 2nd base that I couldn't even move my few units in the few moments of life they had left cause of the enemy traffic jam. This makes Thrax seem like a kindergarten class by comparison.

Posted by: KingKickAss 14 Oct 2015, 18:22

Leang gives you a little bit of prep time before her attack wave. Build Avengers and expand east with them as the AA defense(Units are better off against Blacksharks). Her Blacksharks will always go to the east base instead. Use the east base as your area for building all your units and such. Your main base is a cramped area and could just be used to store powerplants and such. I'm pretty sure she only uses the Earthshaker once.

Capturing the tech buildings can be very handy and could hold off some of her ground forces. Enforcers are a good way of dealing with those Hammer cannons. For most of the match, just expand to the entire area before her base. Capture her abandoned command center(bring the AA up of course) and build her AA along the pathway behind it(Also get the damage upgrade for them). As far as attacking her actual base. She rebuilds constantly and doesn't seem to run out of money so after you have cleared her side of the bridge, start putting some defenses up. Search & Destroy would be very good for attacking her base. I like to take my forces east in her base, push up and then sweep right to left. If you can knock out her command centers and dozers, it will be a hell of a lot easier. You could do a suicide attack with a horde of Auroras but then you would have to hunt down her dozers.

Also watch out for this nasty glitch. If a Blackshark dies over her hedge maze, it will keep spinning on the ground and kill anything that gets very close to it.

Good luck.

If you are actually playing Laser instead of SW. Kind of the same thing without the Enforcers or Auroras. The general tactic works for any team.

Posted by: RodentDung 14 Oct 2015, 18:50

Yeah I can see what you mean about the AA. I think I will make a lot of laser trucks (Avengers I think) instead of Patriots so they can move over the bridge to protect the new area with some Enforcer tanks. I also need to scrap the barrel for a laser superweapon to help with the Gaia suppression along with the Tungsten strike. I think the battle for the new area will be an ugly grind. Maybe Tomahawks will help but I haven't used them yet except once against her bunkers but maybe Tomahawk trucks can help get rid of the insidious Grinder Cannon on top of the cliff but I dunno cause the description for Tomahawks says weak against armor and vehicles. The main thing for me is keeping the Gaia out of action so I can retain my drop zones cause the supply dump across the river is covered by enemy Gatling Tanks that rove through there non-stop so the supply choppers have no chance. I think I'll not make an airbase in the beginning cause it used up too many dollars replacing the Gallardos... I mean Auroras.

Where is the abandoned command center and tech buildings to be captured? If they are further towards the center that will be an ugly slugfest to get through to there. She's got a steady stream of combined arms moving through there.

Posted by: RodentDung 14 Oct 2015, 20:03

Okay I'm doing good now. Partways into a game and I got an absolutely impregnable first base with 2 particle beams, 4 drop zones, tons of Avengers, Patriots, firebases, elite troops, Tomahawks and Enforcer tanks with power plants everywhere. The entire cliff above me is cleared and any ground or air up there gets massacred by my Avengers and Tomahawks. This is absolutely beautiful. My particles are a few minutes inside of the Gaia rebuild so they are happy to knock it out every 5 minutes. I've got the off-board cruise missile and Tungsten working on her hackers to reduce her massive income. The bridge (thank the gods it is indestructible) is a kill zone for her armor, troops and choppers. Grinder Cannon on the cliff get erased immediately by my trusty Tomahawks and firebases. The only thing left to fear is the sky falling on my head. I think she won't start up a second Gaia which would be problematic and require my off-board assets and bombers to counter. This is gonna be a long battle to clear the area so I'm gonna load up like Montgomery and do a proper full-scale, fail-proof advance over the bridge. After what I've seen her do before, I'm not leaving anything to chance even though my odds are extremely good now.

Posted by: KingKickAss 14 Oct 2015, 21:34

Alright, I'll give you my step by step strategy that works for just about any team fighting Leang

-Capture that oil derrick and put up a defense to keep out those two Ravages that attack.

-Expand to the East at the supply dock and capture that oil derrick

-Clear the garrisons of her two bunkers

-Have AA units over to the East

-Capture the tech buildings nearby(behind her two bunkers)

-You can destroy or capture her artillery platforms

-You cannot stop her from shooting off her Earthshaker the first time. She may only use it once entirely.

-Focus your base building to the east so the Earthshaker doesn't do too bad

-Her attack forces will focus on the Eastern area

-Keep an eye out for her mines, they are all over

-Take out the small base above your starting base for more building room. If you want the artillery platform up there for yourself, make sure you do something about the garrisoned bunker across the bridge or it will be destroyed

-If you go North from for East base, she will have an abandoned command center and some tech buildings for you to capture. Push your AA up there and capture the Command center when you know her Blacksharks cant swoop in and take it out

-Build her AA along the pathway behind that command center

-Push west of that base to the bridge that leads to her base to stop her ground forces. If her Hammer Cannons are alive in her base, her attack forces wont be able to shoot because of the seismic shells

-Clear out her side of the bridge with support powers when you are ready to make your move(MOAB is great for this)

-She will try to rebuild, even if you are right there and will send many units to try and keep you out. Luckily, they aren't hordes.

-Make your push to the east side of the base and take out her airfields and buildings in that area

-Push north from that area to take out her internet center

-Begin to clean up the rest of her base

-Building in the ground you gain in her base will help you keep pressure

-Try to destroy her 3 command centers so she will stop being annoying and rebuild

Posted by: RodentDung 15 Oct 2015, 1:04

In my game she did not get off even one earthshake and never will. I just have to advance and finish her next. But my solution is very different from yours. I don't like advancing across the river due to her overwhelming combined arms attacks when I only have a small force in the early stage. Mine is mainly focused on thrifty use of early dollars while still holding off enemy ground & air attacks. My previous attempts spent monstrous amounts of money on Auroras which was my critical mistake.

Posted by: RodentDung 15 Oct 2015, 18:03

I won the fight. I wiped out Leang using particles and Auroras and off-board stuff so it didn't even require a ground operation which is unusual for me cause I like massed assaults by troops & infantry. I only moved across the river and fortified there and I used the chinooks airlifting troops to takeover the cliff area above the starting base area. She did have an earthshake ambush trigger across the bridge from the cliff area supported by hammer arty which was a surprise when I sent a scout team across the bridge but my Auroras took care of the problem. I wanted to capture that big civilian nuclear plant. Main thing that broke her was destroying her airfields, Gaia and paraphernalia of big expensive buildings so she used up all her cash trying to replace them, and then cleared her hackers at 3 seperate locations and her supply depots and then wiped out her coal plants to finish so her economy is fragile. I piled massive amounts of troops and armor across the bridge to hold it against strong counterattacks from ground & air, and then built a lot of Patriots and then power plants there and more drop zones so I had a huge support system backing me up.

Next I have to fight Granger which is probably gonna be ugly with Shockwave on hard difficulty but Alexander should have the goods to see off those nasty air assaults he has a fetish for.

Posted by: RodentDung 15 Oct 2015, 18:28

Next time I fight Leang I'm gonna do a ground operation. This time I was intending to reduce her defenses before putting in the ground attack, but I went too far with it cause I was terrified of facing the infamous Tigress in close combat. It was fun though. It would good to do a bite & hold campaign through her territory with troops, tanks and air defense support.

Posted by: RodentDung 16 Oct 2015, 3:34

Great tragedy!! My game crashes every time on the victory over Granger. I tested it 5 times (got a save just a minute before winning) and it crashes every time. What should I do? I'm playing as Alexander vs Granger so there must be some bug in the Granger victory script.

Posted by: Kommandant Karisse 16 Oct 2015, 20:28

Are you making sure there are no Supply Drop Zone planes on the map? From what I recall, if one is on the map when the round ends, it crashes.

Posted by: RodentDung 17 Oct 2015, 2:05

Yeah I found that out in a google search so I reloaded my near-end save and I sold my drop zones, and my troops were destroying his last drop zone just before destroying his supply depot to end the mission. But it still crashed.

I've been trying out various generals in the challenge on hard level (awesome fun) and I whooped Granger 2 or 3 more times with other generals and no crashes happened. Actually the game never crashes except in that one victory situation with Alexander vs Granger. I'm having a great campaign now as the Infantry General and his faction is so strong that I'm slaying enemy generals on the first try every time using that faction. It is very good with no weak points. When I fought Townes the laser general, the nukes were massacring packs of his tanks of up to 40 or 50 in one assembly area, plus the deadly combination of mines and mortars created huge cemeteries of his tanks which I could capture and add to my massed infantry tank assault that finished him. That felt really good. And the infantry, both minis & RPGs, are good at knocking down the many choppers he sends at me. I think Townes has the highest manufacturing rate of any general (up until he is nuked over & over) to be able to cover the map in massive armies of tanks while keeping up a steady flow of choppers to chip away at my forward defenses.

The only battle now that I absolutely cannot win so far is Ironside vs Thrax. That sinister Thrax is always the source of ridiculous pain with his unending swarm of very strong, very damaging long-range vehicles plus his Scud launcher requiring so much attention to suppress.

Posted by: RodentDung 17 Oct 2015, 9:53

Golly. I was cruising through the challenges and then my Infantry faction got owned terribly by the evil Nuke freak. He had like 6 or 8 nukes counting down plus a horde of nuke arty trucks that formed an ugly semi-circle around my base and lit it up like Chernobyl. That was a nasty way to be killed off. I tried twice and got owned cause first time I tried to make nukes but he was way ahead of me on the timers and the two nukes I made drained all my money and a tank/infantry assault failed due to lack of numbers. The 2nd time I went for 2 airfields and tried to bomb his nukes which was an utter failure because of his gatling turrets and they just auto-repair anyways. Next time I will try 1 airfield only for base defense, no nukes at all to save money and space, and go heavy on troops and tanks which will assault towards his evil nukes. Laying on a ground assault has the best chance cause of the nasty gatling guns that destroy planes and his many nukes utterly outclass my measly 2 nukes that come late. So I will have to go all old school with troops & tanks and fight my way to the hellish nukes while my planes keep those horrible nuke trucks away from my base along with bunkers and troops for defense. I will most probably have to suffer through a couple of nukings or more at my base while my ground forces batter their way to each nuke so I'll have to spread out my buildings so the orange puke he spews all over does less damage.

Posted by: Shockfan42 18 Oct 2015, 16:14

For Armor Challenge vs. Thrax, use Hotwizers for clear the defenses near the brigde. Keep live a group from three, the can stop the artillery from damage their defenses. Too need a pair from airfields. Use the planes for take out enemy vehicles. Use a Starlifter for transport infantry and capture the oil derricks, and Burton for destroy the Arm dealers from the East. Take the reinforcements pad can help too. Use Bombardment for help the defenses in the vehicle rushes. The key for stop to Thrax is destroy the Palace. Too can use Mammoths for shield some Hotwitzers and counterrush if clear the path in the river. (Only if capture the oils in the east, this strategy is very cost).
For Superweapons, bunker up and Particle canon the Palace, the Scud, The East Arm dealer. Not a problem, you can use your forces for destroy the rest from the base.
Leang: Stun lock the Gaia´s Temple, open a place for their troops over the airfields, use artillery vs the gattlings, clean the base, repeat. (More easy with GLA for Sneak attack after Scud the airfields.)
For Nuke, look the order from activation in the nukes. Airforce can help with the artilleries, nearly not use from AA, except nuke Migs. Too look the sites from impact in the nukes and not build near from this. Capture the oild derricks for economic advantage.

Posted by: RodentDung 18 Oct 2015, 23:15

I won all fights except Ironside (Westermoreland) vs Thrax and Infantry General vs Thrax.
I beat the nuke general on my 3rd try.

Ironside vs Thrax: I understand Burton can use grenades from the ridge to hit palace and/or arms dealer, but how do you get him there? I tried only once and my chinook was shot down. Is there a safe route or another conveyance?
I used Howitzers but they keep getting destroyed by the missiles from the trucks everytime because the missile trucks have longer range, more damage and shoot at howitzers immediately. The howitzers were very useful for hitting SAM sites and those evil tunnel entrances though. I also tried using 2 airfields with 8 black widows working the field but his Python tanks shot down my planes and they swarmed my base and wiped it out with all that toxin crap and endless missiles.

Posted by: RodentDung 23 Oct 2015, 3:30

I actually beat the evil Dr.Thrax using the Glassware General (tank general) after a few tries. But I won using his nukes, off-board stuff and helicopters rather than with his fragile glassware. I just barely won and had my base partially corroded away and he scudded the middle of my base a few times just to show off what a sore loser he is.

But after many times I am still utterly unable to survive as Ironside vs Thrax. My problems with Ironside are the lack of mines and extremely fragile tanks and bombers that can't make it past the turret line before being corroded into ooze. Infantry are useless because my base is usually flooded with ooze from midgame onwards so they die before making it out of the barracks, assuming the barracks aren't destroyed before they are even made. I thought howitzers coupled with bombers would work but the howitzers are instantly destroyed by missile trucks while bombers are instantly shot down by Python tanks and only manage to donate experience chevrons to the evil pythons.

Posted by: KingKickAss 23 Oct 2015, 17:19

I beat Thrax with Ironside.

Build defenses at your oil derricks.

Destroy the Toxin bunkers to slow down his forces

When you get the money, put down a bunch of Phalanxes to shoot down his scourge missiles. Use Burton to actually kill them or rocket buggies. Knock out his Palace with support powers whenever you can.

Mammoth Tanks are good for attacking him. Attack him from the north.

Posted by: RodentDung 24 Oct 2015, 1:06

Thank you KingKickAss.

If you have enough Phalanxs can they stop all the missiles? I only built 1 or 2 usually cause I'm barely getting other stuff done but maybe more will work. I sure do love the sound they make.
What defenses did you put in front of the eastern derrick? I put 3 turrets plus 6 infantry and a repair dozer to the east plus I send over whatever tanks & troops I can spare to replace the turrets when they are destroyed plus either 2 bombers (guard mode east) or 2 howitzers to counter missile trucks, but it's only a short time before he's smashed my derrick and is crumping missiles into my airfield from the east.

Did you fight the evil Thrax on Hard difficulty?
I'm concerned about using Burton because of the constant ocean of toxin all over my base area. I only built him twice cause he died unseen without any fanfare. I'll try him again cause you said he can help with the buggies.

As for the palace area, usually I focus on his Scud silo because it takes a lot of damage to destroy. The one good thing about Ironside are those deadly grenades you can drop from off-board which can be coupled with the off-board A10s to remove the Scud. Usually I get one Cluster Silo built and when it charges I drop it on his Scud which is about when my base is overrun and destroyed so it is too late to help cause it is $5000 which takes awhile to accumulate with continual losses plus recharge time and takes up a lot of space which makes it easy to destroy with his buggies and missiles.

Posted by: FabulousPug 25 Oct 2015, 7:57

Hi I just picked up shockwave again and I figured I could hopefuly help you in some way..
About the auroras - don't even use them except you are certain they won't get shot down. Personally, I find stealth fighters much more efficiend and bombing both defenses and artilery as they are cheaper, musc better at killing defenses and quite powerful vs artillery plus they have more chance to survive because of their stealth

I'm not sure if Leang has superweapon bunkers in shockwave (long time from my last match with her) but aftet destroying or capturing one, her superweapons will reset. This was the key to prevent her from wtfpwning your base.
Another thing is fast expansion to the eastern supply. To do that you need to effectively kill off her units in that area (try stealth fighters) .
The biggest problem with her is then the massive army shesends at you plus the choppers.

Anyway, the plan for her demise should be:
conserve expensive units, clear eastern area and establish a base therse fast, destron weapon bunkers one by one each time gaia cannnon countdown is close to completion, build massive defences plus some supply drop zones, build a few particle cannons to destroy her gaia thing (2 are enough), build more particle cannons to
wipe her off the map.

I remember I aimed also for quickly clearing the hill area above my starting base and spammed missile infantry. to garrison them - helps vs her tanks and helicopters but watch out for her artillery and destroy it with something like stealth fighters.

Btw, when defending a base with auroras, you just must micromanage them, they are too fragile to be in guard mode, although stealth fighters when in number are a good option to guard an area as they won't get killed very easily by AI

Edit:
Oh I see you have beaten Leang, seems I skipped a post or two

Honestly, I've got to try Armor vs Thrax again soon. I know I had difficultiess in the past and I'mm unsure how I won. I remember having lots of AA turrets to keep off those fat missiles as well as that nasty toxin plane.. Bombing his scud storm and palace is a priority as well as protecting oil derricks. I killed his artillery using planes guarding in the lover left corner so they would always be ready for action to minimize free reign of those scourges.
Could it be possible to sneak the commando unit by lifting it in a transport, going east then up to the upper right corner? Hmmm
Anyway , this match is a mess and one will sacrifice a lot of nerves to beat it

Posted by: RodentDung 25 Oct 2015, 17:12

FabulousPug, your description of Leung sounds like vanilla Generals where you had to destroy bunkers to stop the various superweapon countdowns. Now there is only one Gaia earthshake but it is absolutely brutal if she gets it off even once. I will fight her again using other generals but I don't look forward to being shaken like a can of paint over & over. On hard difficulty, it is actually very hard to get over the river, but yeah your ideas about the stealth fighter (bomber or whatever it is) are good. I"ve also done that when I was frustrated about losing $2500 Auroras over & over. My Stealths also got shot down though so I wasn't impressed by them.

Ironside vs Thrax yeah probably you have the right idea, but I couldn't get Burton onto that ridge cause my transport was shot down so I lost 2 or 3 thousand dollars investment for nothing so I didn't try that again. Destroying both his Scud and Palace seem to be the key to winning if you can keep destroying them fast enough that he doesn't benefit from rebuilding them over & over. I found the Nuke general trashed Thrax quite easily cause the nukes kept plowing up that base area where he keeps all that rubbish.

Posted by: FabulousPug 26 Oct 2015, 7:12

Hmm perhaps if you got an additional transport or two going a bit in front of the one carrying Burton they would soak up enough fire to get the important one trough? Would be costly as well..

Posted by: RodentDung 26 Oct 2015, 7:43

Yeah that might work. My chopper was shot down over the eastern island. I think he had Pythons or something with AA powers coming to attack me and got in a lucky burst or it could have been a SAM on the top part of the eastern island near that bridge. Also I was using the basic chopper that brings in supply.

I see there is another chopper in the airfield build list I think it's called Starlifter but I've never built it. Is it better for moving Burton or just the same?

Posted by: RodentDung 26 Oct 2015, 9:04

I tried another 3 times as Ironside vs thrax and lost just as badly. I was able to destroy his Scud but everything else failed. I made both an airport and a war factory and his python tanks shot down my planes instantly so planes are useless. I only made about 6 armor units cause money ran out and they barely made it out of the war factory before corroding to death. I made 3 or 4 drop zones to replace the supply dump which ran out so that used up all my money up until when I lost plus the cost of infantry I trickled out to feed his greedy toxic ocean in a futile hope to distract his bomb trucks with sacrifices cause those trucks destroy the turrets with one hit which leaves my base undefended. I made a few phalanxs but they didn't slow down the missiles at all. And I couldn't make burton cause I had to use all my money to to survive for the short while I did. I think I'm gonna give up on Ironside permanently. The only good thing he has are the grenades dropped from the satellite cause those are what destroyed his Scud plus a convoy of evil vehicles passing by the Scud. His 'armor' seems to have no armor (maybe paper taped onto chopsticks to make tanks), infantry die instantly in the toxin even with the chem suits upgrade, and planes don't work so there's nothing else to try. As for Burton I didn't have the money or free time to micromanage that idea. I would need to coop play and have another person do it.

Posted by: FabulousPug 26 Oct 2015, 9:04

If I remember correctly I used upgraded mammoths as ground defense plus some AA and planes vs scourges. Mammoths' shield reflec missiles though I still need to check how it reacts with big missiles. My biggest problem was the freaking Jarmen sniping amammoth or two before I could kill him thus he disabled too much of my defense to hold incoming waves of goo.

About starlifter - it's big and more durable but also slower. Haven't used it in a long time..

I hope to have some time today to try to beat this.

Posted by: RodentDung 26 Oct 2015, 17:25

OKay maybe I will try mammoths again. I only tried them once because they use up a GP which I need for grenades & arty to destroy the Scud and they died instantly without firing a shot after I made them so the money was wasted. Do mammoths have guns or anything?

For Karmen Kell, you can use detection tanks plus the turrets with the laser detectors and put in 2 soldiers like one machinegunner and one RPG cause the ooze doesn't kill them in the turret.

And don't forget to set the game to Hard so we have the same conditions to talk about. I hope you try it again so we can swap stories.

Posted by: KingKickAss 26 Oct 2015, 18:08

The Radar Dome is a large stealth detector. It will reveal Kell before he snipes your dozer(if your dozer is hidden behind the base defense) It is also good to note that when Kell's pilot snipe is on cooldown, he will stand near the next vehicle waiting to snipe it and he will be revealed(its a glitch)

Posted by: FabulousPug 26 Oct 2015, 18:59

Ok so here's what I did so far:
I was defending with AT/AI stationary defenses in a 2-1 ratio, occasionaly microing to quicky destroy a demo truck or a grenadier-battle bus. 4 Phalanxes were enough to deflect most scourge missiles and to kill off Scourges and buggies I was forced to mico some bomber planes all the time.
At the start I captured both oil derrics + oil refinery in hopes the attacking forces would be lessened when Thrax looses it; don't know if it actually works and it doesn't seem to me that enemies can be money-starved (?). The NW oil derric was just for the initial $1000 at least and I let it be destroyed - the enemy actually didn't attack from the NW passage anymore (thanks for the tip King).

I used just 2 Dozers to save money and was continuously building defenses and teching up for a supply drop zone and a cluster missile silo. After the war factory and airfield were built I pumped some Howizers and bomber planes (the $1800 ones) because they seem to be equally effective against both units and buildings. Their first job was to destroy the closest enemy defenses to my base, starting from stinger sites to secure a less hindered sniping of those pesky scourges and buggies.
My real problem are the battle busses - I don't have enough planes to kill off both them + scourges + buggies; it's always nice to catch enemy units clumped around a demo-truck but counting on that can't save anyone...

I'm starting to think Mammoths are a bad idea, as well as any other vehicle except Howizers and maybe the repair truck. After I took Howizers as my first GP I ended up taking all kinds of bombing GPs just to use on attacking forces to buy myself some time to turtle up.

Long story short: I was humiliated horribly even before his SCUD was at ready...

Oh and I noticed the stupid Jarmen behavior, taking advantage of that as well (not that it saved me from thrax's poop-spam).

As the superweapon costs alot, I'm starting to think about investing in planes earlier and bomb some stuff around, including finishing off his SCUD. ...can a general's challenge mission replay be saved?

P.S.
Grenadier Busses are OP! >_<

EDIT: dear lord are those vehicles weak; Ironside is supposed to be the armor general, not toilet paper who can tickle enemies ughhh frustrating... I must try some burton tactic.. maybe it's possible to take out easter WF with him and just bomb the palace with whatever... I wonder if those stealth drone tanks can be of use to hinder rebuilding of that WF

Posted by: RodentDung 26 Oct 2015, 20:30

Thanks KingKickass and FabulousPug for the good replies. KingKick you play the challenge on hard with no superweapons and won??? That's impressive, especially against Leung with her monstrous Gaia. Do you play online too? I'm gonna be a KingKickAss for halloween.

Fabulous, you are feeling the same pain I do. All those different vehicles are quite deadly while Westmoreland's armor is really wet toilet paper, or maybe he recycles one brewed up Toxin truck to make a dozen of his tanks. Ironically I think the way to survive as the Armor general is not to build any armor.

KingKick says all the tough stuff is summoned by the Palace so that building must be a gateway to the nine hells of the abyss. I think his advice is to turn the other cheek to the Scud but destroy the Palace at any price to weaken the vehicle spam. It makes sense if we put our buildings away from the command center to suck up the brutal scud superweapon and resulting toxic ocean. I agree also that not building the cluster superweapon may be smart to save money and not prove a very large, easy target to his missiles and bomb trucks.

KingKick, what is the radar dome? Is that Ironside's GP satellite scan or the Chinese radar? Iron doesn't seem to have a command center radar set like the other USA generals do.

I will try Ironside again tonight using KingKick's advice. Maybe do some meditation first to counter the inevitable stress and agony of the battle. FabulousPug let's compare notes again after the next attempts.

Posted by: FabulousPug 27 Oct 2015, 1:01

Ugh I was soooo close to reaching his palace!
Well, before he goes full scale palace fart spam, I think the main thing is to get Burton up there to attack the palace. For that I went to capture both derrics, then the rafinery (which got destroyed but whatever, at least I got discount on some planes).
Also to mention, I started with 3 dozers and, if it means anything, had total of 2 supply trucks. Next I just put some defenses, but not Phalanxes. This is because I planned to destroy that palace of doom before he would begin attacking me hard.
My GP were all just for bombarding along with the scout drone GP which I picked first. I postponed the radar dome as there's no need for a radar actually while the $1000 could be used elsewhere.
So, to get Burton there I used 2 bomber planes to take out the eastern stinger site, then used the Lv.1 A10 strike + [fat rocket launching plane] on his garrisoned building nearest to the eastern war factory (arms dealer). That was to prevent my starship surprise from being shot down too easily while it transported Burton + 1Ranger along the southern, then eastern border of the map. So far so good. When it arrived at the NE oil derrick, for some ridiculous reason I forgot to unload it cause base was under attack, so that a random Python killed it D:<

No need to mention, palace units started running at and over me.
I just don't have the patience to go trough it again today...
I mean what the heck 1 bomb truck destroys the cubic civilian building, grenadier buss needs like 4 seconds? to kill a defensive structure, Buggies ravage everything as well... I'm starting to think Thrax recieved a bit too much love from the shockwave devs O_o

Posted by: RodentDung 27 Oct 2015, 2:08

That garrisoned building to the east must have been what shot down my burton chopper. Maybe you can bomb that after you finish off the SAM to the east? You must be using the more expensive bombers again. When I used the weaker bombers, I needed all 4 bombers to do 2 sorties on a SAM to destroy it. The cost + time to make 4 bombers crippled my progress so probably you have a better idea using 2 of the more luxurious bombers. Maybe you should put up more base defenses in case the Burton adventure fails.

Thrax is tough but I have beaten him on hard recently using the Nuke General, Tank general and Alexander. Using Alexander I was just able to destroy his palace on time with her powerful A10s plus Tungsten satellite strike to give me the breathing space to win. With the Chinese generals, they have the minefields you can get with 2 GP and those effectively block off the passageways to your base which gives you a really good chance to win plus their planes and bombers can get rid of many enemy vehicles and buildings.

Anyways, we must win using Ironside. He lost in Vietnam so he doesn't want to lose again against an unworthy mail order terrorist. Thrax is actually quite weak once his vehicle spam is somehow thwarted. That's his only trick along with the Scud. His territory is weakly defended and you can see that once you launch a large assault with troops & tanks to finish him.

FabulousPug don't give up! I know your incredible pain cause I am suffering too. Ironside will win. Hoorah!

Posted by: FabulousPug 27 Oct 2015, 16:38

I think it should be possible without burton, using GPs to destroy the palace asap to give some room for building stuff like supply drops.
I also wondered if using GP on the eastern arms dealer and placing a stealth drone tank would be a good idea. If the eastern front is out of the equation, we could build buildings towards eastern bridge so he would not only have just 2 arms dealers pumping vehicles, but it would also be on just 1 front making it less micro intensive to defend. The next thing would probably be destroying his palace with GPs for some extra time to build more supply drops and superweapons.

I was thinking - it could be a good idea to rush an airfield with some bombers to kill off random enemy buildings, along with the defenses killing units it could be a fast way to get more GP to bomb critical buildings.

A question - I was just thinking.. I never noticed enemy radar trucks coming at me, so maybe stealth tank drones could be positioned to kill off artillery when they come near the end of the northern bridge.
Most likely just another thing that would fail..

For the next play time I'll try the Burton strategy and the one about destroying not palace but the eastern arms dealer.

Posted by: RodentDung 27 Oct 2015, 18:16

You are thinking of many tactics which is good.

Bombing his buildings may be risky because he has AA everywhere as SAMs, Python tanks and infantry in buildings with RPGs. Reducing his arms dealers will help but he rebuilds them immediately. When I played as Alexander, she has a proper radar to see the world so I could see him rebuilding his arms dealers the second after they were destroyed. Hitting the palace is different. He only rebuilt the palace maybe 3 times and it is a slow process compared to the prefabricated arms dealers. As Ironside the world is all black so I can't see what buildings are being made by Thrax.

I tried again with the new advice. I took over the western oil derrick for the first time. I always thought it was a waste because he just destroys it right away. Then I built my turret line with 5 patriots behind them. Next came disaster. Thrax attacked both from the front and from the west. All I had blocking the west were 2 radar turrets with 2 infantry in them. He overran my base using only Pythons and toxin trucks. It was the fastest I've ever lost. I think it is a cardinal error to go for the western derrick which invites Thrax to hit you from the undefended west side and the derrick was destroyed before I had even finished reprogramming it to my side.

I"ve never liked the Phalanxs at all because they cannot shoot at ground targets which is very different from real Phalanxs which can utterly shred anything on the ground or air except for tanks.

For my next attempt, I will get the A10s and grenades and smoke his palace repeatedly. I think this strategy will also require the spy radar which costs another GP because it is the only radar Ironside has and I need to know when the palace is rebuilt. If he gets slow about rebuilding it, I can put in a strike on his Scud. I'll also try those luxurious bombers for hitting his SAMS and tunnels. I wish Westmoreland had mines because those are the most guaranteed thing that defeats Thrax. And most probably I won't use Burton cause of the cost and I don't have the time for micromanaging one unit when my base is a constant hell of toxin, explosions and buildings collapsing again & again.

Posted by: FabulousPug 27 Oct 2015, 18:46

About the western oil derrick - he does attack and destroy it but all he ever sent at me from west were only those units that destroyed it. A toxin tractor and a python at most..
After that I just baited them with a dozer to my anti tank defense.
Not sure why he keeps attacking you there, perhaps you have something else too close to the derrick, or in line of sight of his bunker thing? Not sure if the latter could trigger it at all but who knows...

About the eastern arms dealer - I was thinking to place a stealth tank on guard mode near it so it would get killed off at 0%, my only concern is if he still sends units there and if not, can the drone tank even be positioned well enough to do the job without RPGs shooting it or even lure more enemies there.

I still have no idea if it is possible to lessen or drain enemy funds in challenge mode... my guess is the enemy simply starts with max money possible.

Oh and by bombing buildings I meant defenses like stinger sites and tunnels while avoiding pythons.

Posted by: RodentDung 27 Oct 2015, 19:27

I've figured out the western pass trigger, Basically any military units you have there even 1 soldier will trigger attacks from that direction.

I played again doing the anti-palace strategy. I spread out my buildings to avoid the impact of the Scud but it critically doomed to me to lose. I did destroy his palace with the A10s and grenades, but my base was overrun as per usual. Problem is caused by building too far west which is where I put my airbase and strategy center. It triggered his western attacks. My turret line was destroyed earlier so I tried to do infantry with the useless chem suits and they were killed instantaneously before getting anywhere near the enemy. The missile trucks can wipe out groups of soldiers with a single missile and they never miss. The only thing that can stand up to the enemy for a few seconds are the turrets but the bomb trucks take those out very easily. It's like a rock scissors paper of inevitable doom. I had made laser turrets to stop Kell but they were destroyed very early so Kell was sniping my dozers so I was paralyzed.

I tried the more luxurious bombers and they did slightly better I think maybe or not but my airfield was destroyed because it was too far away from my command center. Seems every solution creates a worse problem with thrax. I have no idea how to beat thrax without mines.

Posted by: RodentDung 28 Oct 2015, 8:53

I tried a couple more times. I destroy his palace about the same time his missile trucks wipe out my turrets and all hell like Pythons and toxin trucks and bomb trucks are wiping out my base. I can't find any answer to stopping the vehicle spam from wiping out my base.

Posted by: Sam 28 Oct 2015, 9:29

That's actually a good choice. If you play enough times, you wouldn't really need it. Your Defense perimeter would be small initially.

Did you try Energy Shield Mammoths (Strategy Center Upgrades, Makes the Mammoth deflect missiles) and Hold The Line Strategy (Increases Unit Armour) ?



If you capture it you might get Toxin Units, I wonder if they would help ?



Use Spy Drone (It increases Range) + Use "Search and Destroy" to further increase range of Howitzers.



It won't work because the Predator Drones attack whatever comes in their attack range and lose their stealth. They will be destroyed by Pythons before the Scourges even come in.

Posted by: FabulousPug 28 Oct 2015, 15:53

After many failed attempts I'm on the verge of giving up on Ironside's challenges for good. When I try strategy X and it fails, then I try a strategy Y which also fails cause I didn't do what I did in X which I can't do because of insufficient money to counter everything...
Capturing the eastern arms dealer is sadly not only useless but impossible to keep alive after that too - garrisons will take it out and if not, enemy units will surely redirect their path to go there. Thrax vehicles are pretty useless without a palace anyway.

The problem is also the palace units attack too soon to pull off some crazy tactics as we need planes to thwart artillery, which along with low money, makes it impossible to both fund sone kind of sabotage and keep up and micro defenses. 1 or 2 demo trucks hitting defenses or just 1 battle bus not taken care with planes or focus fire, can and will break the defensive perimeter.

I honestly have no idea what to do, my best attempt yet was when I had 2 cluster missiles which I needed to use defensively plus 3 supply drop zones for funds along with one oil derrick and a still functioning defense + 4 planes. Then came a few battle busses and trolled away my defenses. What followed is obvious.
There is absolutely no plan I can think of that would work with such minimal funds available and such hard pressure on the base...
If Ironside isn't the weakest thing in generals ever then I don't know what is.

Oh and the mammoths with shield deflect missiles similar to LPD of laser paladin, but due to their size can't be clumped enough to work together to deflect everything. They And a.battle bus or Jarmen can just screw you over - many tanks>llow or none base defenses>defeat

Posted by: Shockfan42 28 Oct 2015, 16:08

Wait or try with Stealth... is the more weak vs. Trax. The key is use Mammoths for defense...Four or five can destroy the waves, plus S&D for the range in the Howitzers that stop the Battle busses and artillery. Cut the airforce and build another Supply drop for more money. Destroy the Palace...Next, counterstrike with the Mammoths and Howitzers...Profit.

Posted by: FabulousPug 28 Oct 2015, 16:19

Just to add some stuff I failed with. Phalanxes actually helped vs scourges but the battle busses rolled over my ground defenses, without phalanxes I did manage to build a stronger ground defense but the scourges killed it anyway, 2 missiles at a time. Can't. kill scourges before they come close because of Pythons and can't deal with the fast enough so they wouldn't get a shot off.

Destroying the toxin bunker north across the bridge at an appropriate time is helpful but only prolongs the inevitable.

Units without def. buildings can't hold the line, but the only way to rebuild stationary defenses is to defend dozers with units or else they are dead in a second, samo for the 0% buildings getting destroyed instantly cause of toxin goo everywhere.

Howitzers are expensive, fragile, slow, have almost zero AoE and a weak attack - what more do we want? Ah yes, after they destroy a scourge, another one will focus the and kill the whole group in ju 1 shot, and they need 3 shots to kill a scourge.

Bombardment strategy center is bugged and doesn't fire at all so there's goes another tactic..

I'm not sure how Ironside would do online but I'm pretty sure he sucks generally, for a general focusing on armor, he has nothing but slow, fragile and overpriced vehicles, weak fighter plane + average bomber.

Sorry for double post, I'm on my phone which doesn't handle editing of text walls well.

Posted by: FabulousPug 28 Oct 2015, 16:21

Well, all my mammoth-howitzer spams failed terribly but I will give it a try perhaps I missed something...

Posted by: RodentDung 28 Oct 2015, 17:22

Yeah you can really feel the impotency of Ironside once you beatdown Thrax (on Hard difficulty of course) using any of the Chinese generals or Alexander.

Ironside needs the howitzer upgraded so it can shoot farther than other units and do about 4 times the damage it does now. Like you said, Ironside has no long-range weapons because his airforce is so weak that the Python tanks shoot them down instantly. I've seen bombers take off and immediately crash and burn because of a Python approaching. Python tanks are the strongest anti-air unit in the game which is odd for a tank.

Shockfan42 maybe has a slightly new approach by going all-out for war factory units on the ground and get rid of the the palace I presume by using the off-board GP assets. Maybe give that try once or twice.

Posted by: RodentDung 28 Oct 2015, 17:57

I Just tried going with a War Factory and all-out for Mammoths and no airfield or silly Burton using up money.
I lost 3 Mammoths to kill one buggy. I can't pay $1600 x 3 for each enemy buggy. Basically those 3 mammoths used up all my money for awhile so once they died I just quit out cause my turrets were being destroyed by Scourges as per usual.

Posted by: FabulousPug 28 Oct 2015, 20:31

This endeavour of ours was, I'm afraid, a complete waste of time. The only thing we learned was that Paperside is doomed.

Posted by: RodentDung 28 Oct 2015, 22:56

Yeah pretty much. Do you think the Glassware general (Kwai the tank dude) is stronger than Paperside?

Oddly enough I was able to beat Thrax easiest using Glassware because I built almost no glassware (tanks) and just used his good off-board stuff and glass airforce.

FabulousPUg have you ever played this game online? Is it easy to get set up?

Posted by: FabulousPug 29 Oct 2015, 0:37

Kwai certanly is better in almost everything IMO, but the thing that gives the other one a huge advantage are Howitzers. But even with them, Kwai could catch them with various units like bombers.. I'm sure Kwai is better, with probably a much better early game and the same lategame? Surely there are experienced players who know it better than me, as I've actually never played online except like 10 years ago when I got a friend on another forum and we connected using hamatchi.
No idea how to set it up, i'm afraid. Probably hamatchi or gameranger or something else like it is needed, which is easy to just download, install, make an account and just join games; but I never tried Generals, can't tell if something else is needed, like what you see in the game's network menu...

Actually, I came here right now to bring THE breaking news, which will be posted bellow, I just need to upload some screenshots and write descriptions

Posted by: FabulousPug 29 Oct 2015, 1:48

Oh happy day, Dr. Thrax pooped himself before me!

Generally, I held out with anti-ground base defenses - 1 anti infantry turret north and 1 east + 2 anti vehicle turrets east and 3(+more later) north. Using 2 dozers until about a minute before Thrax said something like "we come at you now bahaha" which usually indicates he's about to build palace units and spam everything he's got. At this point I built a 3rd dozer and started building Phalanxes north to deal with Scourge missiles and the toxic plane power he sends from time to time.
I teched as fast as money allowed while building some defenses, and built a supply drop before palace units pressured me. By the time I had almost collected all the supplies in the base, I had 2-3 supply drops (can't remember exactly).

What I did differently from the past attempts was not trying to capture the NW oil derrick or rushing to destroy the arms dealer to the east. I did however send Burton there to deal with it later, but by then I had for some unexplained reason destroyed the garrisoned structures so infantry was all around and immediately attacked him when he revealed himself. The Grenadiers were also in the garrison, so I'm not even sure if Burton can even plant a demo charge there without being in their range (probably can).
I have built an airfield to tech fast, saving another $1000 for not going for a war factory instead and for making planes. As I had a Spy Drone on both entrances (Thrax won't send radars at all so they were safe) I could see at all times what form of goo he sends at me.
So when I saw scourges, busses (not frequently as other palace units) and buggies moving, I already had one and immediately started making more $1800 bombers to kill off Stinger Sites north and East so the planes would kill those goo launchers. The priority were Battle Busses, then Buggies, then Scourges, because Scourges in low numbers couldn't penetrate the Phalanx defences.

My General Power selection was: Spy Drone -> rocket shooting plane -> lv. 1+2 A10 strike -> lv.3 A10 -> Howitzers -> Fuel Air Bomb

The rocket-shooting plane + Lv.2 A10 strike is enough to destroy the palace, but if it is to work, there must be no pythons halfways to the base as they would help bring one down and the palace would survive. While palace was still there I absolutely needed to scan the map and check for palace units almost all the time like a paranoid freak, so they could be destroyed using planes. Btw, most Buggies were stupid enough to run right into my defences' range.
I also had built a detection defense to counter that pesky Jarmen, after I saw the start of palace-spam.

This way I was holding back mostly the basic vehicles while building a War Factory to get some Howitzers just in case he rebuilds the Palace too fast, followed by building more Supply Drop Zones and finally a Cluster superweapon.

The game was pretty much won then, bombing the palace and SCUD using general's powers (Lv.3 A10 strike + rocket plane for the SCUD) and the Cluster Missile while defending attackers. Howitzers were force-firing on the ground just to be near 100% safe he can't overrun the base (paranoia got me there).

Burton is most likely a total waste of money, spent a total of $5000 on trying to destroy the E arms dealer with him and still failed... I also didn't build the Radar Dome until I had a decent income. You will notice my base is quite clumped at one spot, I was lucky the SCUD never got to fire. Between the Palace and SCUD, I would destroy the SCUD first because it would surely send me to oblivion while I was able to defend against Palace stuff for some time.
At one point I also destroyed the toxic bunker north, so the weak vehicles would get contaminated which probably did help me develop my base further.

The hardest part is to defend until you get enough bombing powers to start destroying his Palace and Scud, while still having some planes to defend against palace units and a few Supply Drop Zones - which is so hard to reach at the limited time.
Might I say this was the hardest thing ever I had to accomplish in this game so far.



My base to the east


Other part of the base


Defenses north

I'm not sure how destructive the mine-drop power of Ironside is so I took no chances and went with A10 instead. Could it be that mines can do even more havoc?

Probably you've noticed, I know no differences between "defense" and "defence" as english isn't my native language. I hope you'll get the meaning anyway

Posted by: RodentDung 29 Oct 2015, 4:58

Golly you became the God of Generals. You did the impossible! Dude!
I'm gonna change my halloween costume to a FabulousPug.

About the game.....
What is the Radar Dome and rocket-firing plane?
What is the icon on the right with the B1 bomber? I've never seen that before.

That is good idea to shoot howitzers forever on the area. That stops them from moving around and getting blown up. In reality they often do continual bombardments to interdict so it is good tactics.

The satellite dropped grenades are absolutely brutal but I don't know if they are more deadly than the reliable A10 strike. The grenades hit a bigger area and do a lot of collateral damage to passing vehicles and SAM sites etc plus they are the coolest thing in the game to see. I usually go for both A10s and grenades but I always lose so you've found a better way.

Your base is packed with goods. Wow. Those turrets are so close. I was scared to put turrets close together because of the bomb trucks, but you can stop the bomb trucks and Scourge missiles. Excellent work.
You used the luxurious bombers a lot. Did you have problems with Python tanks shooting down the planes?

That is a very strong win. I will keep trying.
hamatchi is game site? I will have to learn about it.
Good pictures and detailed story. Thank you.

I wonder if Paperside can beat any other generals in the challenge? On hard level, all the generals are a bit difficult to beat.

Posted by: Sam 29 Oct 2015, 11:28

If you want to play ShockWave online, http://forums.swr-productions.com/index.php?showtopic=2090

You might have to make a personal Hamachi room if you can't access the main ones. A personal room can hold maximum 5 people.

Here is the public Hamachi channel :-

http://forums.swr-productions.com/index.php?showtopic=2090&st=75&p=107400&#entry107400

Another much better option is to use Gameranger as it reduces online mismatches : https://www.gameranger.com/

Posted by: FabulousPug 29 Oct 2015, 13:56

Ok the rocker-shooting plane is a general's power, I always forget its name. It's the 3rd from above in my screenshot.

I refer to the radar building as Radar Dome, the one which sets the minimap to functional state; I'm not sure if that's the real name for it, I rarely learn the actual names of stuff in the game lol.

The general's powers in the picture are following, from top to bottom:

All enemy reveal
A10 strike
Rocket shooting plane
Satelite scan (I think the Radar building enables it)
Cluster Missile
MOAB (before was Fuel Air Bomb ofc)
Spy Drone


The thing I believe saved me this time compared to my other fails, were more anti-tank defences to kill Battle Busses faster + a stealth detection defense for Jarmen + lots of micro for planes.

To preserve planes, I needed to wait until there were no Pythons close or close behind Scourges; otherwise they would shoot them down instantly.. also, when they come close to defences they will either die or forcus the defences and not care about planes. I think it was very important to scan the map with "All enemy reveal" (which I used only when I suspected the palace is up again) and spy drones, to preemtively strike at Scourges and such - sometimes just circle with planes away from the pythons to let them get further ahead to Scourges would be vulnerable. In tolal I lost up to 3 planes.

The most frustrating thing is to defend against initial Palace units, so after the Palace is down, you will get some breathing room (lol) for economic boom via Supply Drop Zones, and then you can continue to build a Superweapon just to keep the SCUD down as well. I probably had a lot of luck to time my general's powers so that both SCUD and Palace were down for most of the time. I even was destroying them while they were in the middle of rebuilding it, which shows the power of Spy Drones, as I didn't even need too many bombing powers for 1 spot.

EDIT:
And you're right, this time I clumped the defences together to save room and to kill Bomb Trucks and Battle Busses faster.

Posted by: FabulousPug 30 Oct 2015, 2:28

Again I'm on my phone and can't edit my previous post so I guess I'll put it here.

The next general for the Paperside challenge is Air Force dude.
Didn't try it yet because I'm taking a break from the Paperside induced stress also I'd like to see how you emerge victiorious in this goo-ridden battlefield.

Did you try to set up a network game? I do have Gameranger and managed to see Shockwave games in there, but at the time so few players were active, maybe Hamatchi is a more populated place?
I generally dislike online games like Generals; maybe the stress I put on myself or because I don't like hardcore competition. Yes yes, can't be a pro without hundreds of totally failed games, but I'm not intending to be one anyway.I'm such a noob . But if you want we could arrange something?

Sam - as you seem to know more,does Hamachi have many Shockwave players?

Posted by: RodentDung 30 Oct 2015, 6:32

Sam: thank you for the links and info

FabPug: Very intelligent adaptation to the vigors of facing Thrax. I can see how micro'ing your planes would be smart to avoid the Pythons. Also smart was moving your turret line closer to the bridge which (oddly) causes the buggies to thrown themselves within range of the turrets and certain doom. I tried again but I only had 1 plane when his Scourges attacked so he cleared out my turrets. I had 3 Phalanxs but they couldn't stop any missiles at all. Not sure how to get the turrets and planes built at the same time before the dreaded Scourge attacks come and those nasty bomb trucks.

I was tinkering with the bomb trucks by putting RPG soldiers in front of the eastern derrick as hapless targets to set off his bomb trucks before they hit the turrets. I'm thinking now of building a dummy turret line in front of my turrets to soak up bomb trucks and missiles. A dummy turret is the base with no top on it.

I had the GP grenades at level 3 which took his palace down to half health as well as destroying the SAM next to it and the 2 Scourges that are parked there. That was just as his Scourges cleared my turrets. I also made 3 drop zones which may have been too early (supply dump was emptied just then) cause I could only make 1 plane. Also the SAMs by the bridges were still intact making bombing runs very risky. I had no war factory yet due to no money. I had 5 turrets and 3 phalanxs facing north and 2 turrets and 1 phalanx facing east with a scattered group of infantry to distract bombs. All were destroyed so I had to give up. I think better making only 1 or 2 drop zones and then making all 4 bombers plus more (*sigh*) turrets to soak up hits and then hopefully make more drops later. And I won't bother making Phalanxs cause they are useless for me and just use up money and power.

As for online, I can try logging on tomorrow a few hours earlier than this (internet connection here is dodgy in the evening due to some dodgy characters in the sharehouse online all day). My name will be RodentDung if not taken yet. If someone takes RodentDung, then I will be PondScum as a backup name.

If we play online, we can be on the same team. Either we can go against other humans or do a us vs AI team or something. We can figure it out. Maybe two Papersides vs two Thraxs. (just kill me now)

Posted by: FabulousPug 30 Oct 2015, 7:22

Not sure but I wouldn't say that the AI Thrax attacks the same way every time.
I mean, after he said the "Be ready I'm coming" line, there was a window of 3-4 minutes before he actually started using palace units. So before they arrived to my base I already managed to build 2 bomber planes to kill the N stinger site and then I could kill the scourge that came. After that I defended vigorously with those 2 plane, taking out the E stinger site asap. For a long time I had no Phalanx on my E side either, cause the few scourges that came were dealt with planes quickly (again, a Spy Drone was invaluable there on the bridge). I also saw some vehicles coming from his main base to my E side, so I guess the E arms dealer isn't a big deal anyway...

The dummy turret seems like a briliant idea!
It would probably be good to build them out of shooting line of other turrets but still a little further out as to attact more fire?

I've built the 3 and then 1 Phalanx on my N side as soon as I had 2 planes, 1 vulcan turret and 3 anti-tank turrets. (the first I build was the Vulcan one then I continued to line up the rest). 4 of them can actually deflect most missiles even when 2 Scourges are at it, but without planes it's just a matter of time before they penetrate. The only way I could deal with those disguisting Bomb Trucks was to select an anti-tank turret ot two and focus them.
I'm afraid the only way to deal with palace units is to heavily micro everything and check the attacking routes very frequently.
For the start I'd say only 2 planes are optimal for saving cash and defending.

And the one detection.bunker-turret has that laser-designator thing, no idea how exactly it functions or does it funcion at missiles at all.

I'd always recomment to take the lv.3 rank GP with the plane picture ("rocket-shooting plane" as I call it) as it does a lot of more damage compared to just 1 level of A10 or Grenades - it's more devastating to use this plane+ a Lv.2 bombing power, than to use only one Lv.3 power in my opinion.

If I ever get to play online, my name would probably be something Pug related, or if it's Gameranger I'm already Mops413 there (which means Pug in my language lol)

And.. Do not let Thraxina make a fool of you! Bomb him to smithereens, roll over him and then some!
Crush the ugly b***ard!

Posted by: RodentDung 30 Oct 2015, 8:43

I tried again but lost again. I made more turrets but the Scourges just destroy everything every time. I accidentally made 4 phalanxs in the mouseclick panic which wasted money and they do nothing at all. Seems it only takes 2 Scourges to wipe out my stuff cause the 2 bombers I had targeted one Scourge and another one came to replace the ones I destroyed so he kept 2 scourges on the bridges at all times destroying my turrets. I got his palace again with grenades but in the moment I spent to target his palace he wiped my base out again. The buses and toxin trucks were all over and sank my command center in ooze.

That is the B-52 cruise strike you are calling a rocket. It is good but I don't live long enough to get it. I need the grenades and A10s first cause I think the SAMs will shoot down the B-52 but I don't know for sure cause I never got it. The grenades are the only thing Paperside has that work well for me. Most probably with the A10s, grenades and the B-52, you can destroy both the palace and Scud. But I think the B-52 is the same as Alexander's and that one is bad for hitting mountains. In the Granger battle, the B-52 was useless cause it hit mountains everytime.

The best bomber is the Chinese carpet bomber. It is very strong and does a lot of damage. Also Granger's B-1 bomber is brutal and can't be shot down.

Posted by: RodentDung 30 Oct 2015, 9:05

And another try. This time I made 4 bombers and I damaged the palace with the grenades and then the bombers destroyed the palace. But of course all 4 bombers were lost so $1800x4 was the cost. Meanwhile his Scourges again destroyed all my turrets and I counted 10 Python tanks plus toxin trucks, a bus and some square APCs were destroying my base for free. I can't do this anymore.

Posted by: FabulousPug 30 Oct 2015, 10:40

Well try with just 1 plane per Scourge, gets them even on the move and the plane doesn't need to be upgraded. Pythons are a problem, that's why Phalanx need to buy time so the base defences would survive until Pythons are dead and planes can come in. I'm not sure what else to do, maybe I was lucky as I said already, enemy forces we numerous but palace units came later than expected; AI could have some randomness built in?
When you see an opening destroy the Toxic Bunker to slow them down and the SAM next to it, so you'd have more free room to navigate planes hunting scourges. It's frustrating and exhausting, but bombing those palace units needs to be done as soon as they're in sight and safe to kill. Often he will send those slow Scourges without Python escorts and at least they can be dealth with.

Idk if it's important or if it affects enemy's build speed, but I destroyed the Oil Rafinery relatively early. Capturing it is even easier, just after capturing the Oil Derrick but sometimes something will come by to melt your soldier to prevent it :/ I just bombed it with 2 planes. In any case, if you'd time the capture on it at the time you plan to build a plane or two and you have enough money, it could save you a few hundreds of dollars, just some extra little benefit which I managed to pull off only once in all my attempts at this challenge mission.

The challenge would be so much easier if just general powers would be gained in faster u_u


Another detail I might have missed! The first Battle Bus that came after my base was seen cause of the Spy Drone, so I shot it with 1 plane (if i remember correctly). The bus then exploded once and became stationary as usual, so I left it on the brigde there forever (you can see it on one of the screenshots). MAYBE this messed up Thrax's AI, because the next Battle Bus I saw was much much later - he didn't even build them till then-- his palace was up again for about 5 min so I was surprised. o_O

Posted by: Sam 30 Oct 2015, 14:35

It used to have many players. But now with ROTR released, everybody switched to that so I don't know how many still play ShockWave there.



You are Welcome.

The best way to set up your Defenses is on that mud ridge : http://i.imgur.com/m01Khd2.png (In Green Rectangle) at the start of the game. You need to put it in such a way that it destroys Thrax's First Tunnel Network on the Bridge without the Tunnel Network attacking back (As it has shorter Range). It takes a few tries to get it right, but if you build the defenses on that side, defending becomes very easy.

Posted by: KingKickAss 30 Oct 2015, 17:45

But check out those 3 superweapons

You can get something called Gentool to play online.

Posted by: FabulousPug 30 Oct 2015, 17:59

Yeah I'm a sucker for Superweapons especially here I didn't want to take any chances
I've seen some hardcore 1v7 teamed AI matches and it's clear online-level macro/micro is over 9000 levels above mine

Posted by: RodentDung 31 Oct 2015, 3:40

Gentool is for online Generals?

FabPug, don't get down cause people beat hordes of AIs. I think they are using bottlenecks and they rain down arty fire on the approach for automatic defense. I think anyways cuz I watched one for about 10 seconds and that's what I saw. Thrax was far more deadly than anyone online and you beat the evil demon. Thrax is like the god of unfettered sadism.

Posted by: RodentDung 1 Nov 2015, 21:29

It is official: I have beaten the evil Dr. Thrax using Ironside on hard difficulty.

I did the same as in my previous attempts except I only made one drop zone instead of three in the early stage so I had more money to make 4 bombers to clear the SAMS and tunnel on my territory before the dreaded Scourges came. Plus the A10s were destroying his palace which helped a lot because he kept rebuilding it continually so I had Scourges causing terrible damage off & on so sometimes I had to expend 4 bombers to hit his evil palace. And I made more turrets with 9 protecting my front and 4 more on each flank including laser turrets to detect Kell who only sniped one dozer the whole match cause the cowardly terrorist was killed off on the approach from the bridge each time. I only made one cluster missile and it could be won without it. The A10s and grenades are the key to winning plus massed armor and infantry to gain control of the bridges and push into his territory.

Oh! The battles for the bridges were long and destructive. Both sides poured hordes of infantry and armor into the endless fighting. I filled & repaired buildings all over my base area and the eastern island. I took the vehicle depot cheap refinery thing and had it for a long time with massed troops & tanks protecting the bridge, but the dreaded Scourges were able to destroy it. I took over the central island with a violent attack, but he was able to retake it again in a seesaw battle. Finally I broke through by attacking at the same time north from the eastern island and directly north from my base in a massive attack with much killing and explosions. I was using all the infantry and armor types available in a combined arms attack with my bombers working non-stop and off-board stuff suppressing his SAMs and industrial Ruhr area. He couldn't take the pressure and cried about me having issues with innocent toxins.

Thrax has been taken to a safe house where he will be well taken care of with years of torture, interrogation and explosure to all kinds of vile ooze including radiation, toxins, laundry detergents, and carcasses and his boarding room will be the bottom of an outhouse.

Bad news is I was awarded for my weeks of effort with a 'serious error' upon winning so I can't continue the challenge using Ironside. Go figure. EA should award me with a medal and a package of new games as a reward for this, not a serious error.

Posted by: FabulousPug 2 Nov 2015, 8:55

Nooooo! As a last act of defiance he seems to have contaminated your game.

But it feels good to finally wipe the floor with him, doesn't it? Mission Impossible is impossible no more, as ultimately you have beaten the toxic w**re!

What now? Do you have any save game prior to the victory? Do you think you have the nerve to challenge him again?
I like your play style, I usually feel too unsecure and resort to superweapons...

I hope you get it done again but without errors, so we could share the pain of facing other generals.

EDIT:
Is it possible to share a saved game file?
If you don't want to go trough with it again or the error persists, maybe you'd like the 2nd challenge mission start save game?

Posted by: RodentDung 3 Nov 2015, 1:42

I loaded my last save which was about 1 minute before victory and IT WORKED!!

Thrax is now sitting in the hole of an outhouse and everyone who poos on him yells down at him, "The first samples are free!! hehe!" After 1 month we let him out and let him continue mail order study but more peaceful topics than terorism.

Let us enjoy new battles against other deranged leaders.

Now I have to fight Granger. It will be weird Westmoreland vs Granger because they are both hardcore USA generals and both enjoyed bombing Vietnam. Feels like a civil war.

Now onto an hour or two of horrific, unending bombing!!

Watch out for Granger's missile trucks. They are very similar to Scourges. I fought him with a few other generals (all 3 Chinese generals plus Alexander) and know well about his fighting style.I got swarmed a couple of times by massed infantry and missile trucks from the eastern bridge approach. We will need constant new AA armor and Phalanxs. I found AA trucks are better because his bombing is so brutal that it can blow up AA turrets like Chinese gatling gun very easily so the AA trucks are a bit cheaper to mass produce.

Do not trust Granger. He sounds friendly and funny, but he is mean.

Posted by: FabulousPug 3 Nov 2015, 16:48

Probably spamming those AA vehicles and taking out arty with planes is good, will try it with Black Widows as they are cheaper and can't bomb his base without dying anyway. I played vs Granger on Medium and he rebuilt his Strat. Center immediately every time so I'm not sure if he can be cut off Auroras (which I really really hate).
Probably gonna place some Spy Drones above water along the coast to detect stealth fliers.
Placing a few Vulcan turrets east can deal with infantry but will probably prone to destruction..
Well, this is my initial plan..

Posted by: RodentDung 3 Nov 2015, 17:51

You should play on hard. Granger is not that strong. If you can survive the bombing you will win. I beat him with 4 generals on hard.
Turrets are not so good because his Scourges, called Hurricanes, will just blow them up. Having a couple of vulcan turrets is good for killing off paratroops and downed pilots.
You can put bombers on guard mode and they'll protect the east and put a lot of troops and tanks there and counterattack when his assault begins. Granger is like a newborn hamster compared to Thrax.

The enemy generals seems to always rebuild buildings but they do suffer loss of money. Eventually Granger cannot keep replacing buildings as he goes broke. He gets his money from 2 drop zones.

I tried once and lost cause I had a good base made and AA tanks coming out. Then my power shut off and I wasn't allowed to make new power plants though I had $12,000 so I could only wait while he destroyed my base for free and my AA trucks were slowly destroyed and then his big ground attack came in and the Hurricanes finished my buildings. If he starts winning it is impossible to survive because he keeps destroying your buildings as you make them so you can't make soldiers or tanks or get money. His B-1 bomber will always drop bombs across the middle it destroys a lot of buildings in one attack.

Phalanxs and AA tanks work very well against planes and choppers if the power does not shut off. Best to make double the power buildings necessary.

Posted by: FabulousPug 3 Nov 2015, 19:29

Still I din't find the time to try the challenge, but I can certainly agree that the carpet bomber (b-1) is a problem. On medium, at least, he targeted the area a little left of the oil derricks. With some additional AA on its flight path on my side of the coast I was able to shoot it down onn time, although a lot of money went into those AA so that it would be difficult to find funds for keeping other AA instalations up.
Gonna try it as soon as I can, good luck !

Posted by: RodentDung 3 Nov 2015, 20:57

I underestimated the weakness of Paperside. I've lost twice now against Granger. There's a big difference on hard cause he really spams out bombers non-stop. Basically I was trying to build a barracks every 3 or 4 seconds and he bombed it away every time. Paperside's AA tanks and Phalanxs are too weak to shoot down stealth bombers and his ground attack was briefly held at the bridge and then smashed into my base and the Hurricanes (Scourges) missiled the few remaining buildings away. I had like $18,000 but couldn't use it cause everytime you start a build, he bombs it. With the chinese generals their AA tanks were enough to defend when a constant flow of new ones were being made. Alexander was the best cause she has the AA laser trucks and strong AA turrets and they stopped the bombing.

Next time I will spam dozers and then spam AA tanks from multiple war factories because he will blow up the factories when he's done blowing up the barracks and power stations. Need to keep making power stations to appease the bombers but don't make more than 2 phalanxs cause they are useless when the power goes out. Probably need at least 50 AA tanks to hold off the bombing cause it takes up to a dozen to shoot down a single stealth bomber after it finishes bombing a building.

Posted by: Lobo Solitario 4 Nov 2015, 17:43

I recommend a three-layer defense:

Anti-air infantry: right on the edge of the river in a loose spread so you won't lose more than one at a time, and you can garrison one in each building at the beginning. These guys probably won't do much damage, but they will make Granger waste some attacks on relatively cheap targets. Remember to make a fresh batch every so often to replace losses. You can even mix some basic riflemen in with them, if they're cheaper, just to act as pure meatshields and to shoot any pilots.

Anti-air vehicles: a little further back on the river banks, screened by the infantry. These are your main damage dealers, you want as many as you can put out, also spread out so you don't lose too many in one airstrike. Keep building a steady stream of them. Once your production outstrips the losses and your base area is saturated, you can put the extras into groups and start pushing into enemy territory - you want to take control of the village both to kill Granger's resource collectors and to keep the fighting away from your base.

Phalanx turrets and anti-air modular turrets: Spread out on the land between the river banks and your base buildings, behind / mixed in with your vehicles, and a safe distance in front of your base buildings. While they are excellent anti-air, that is not their main purpose. Granger's Auroras and stealth fighters will always prioritize these turrets over your other buildings, so as long as you have a line of them up, your factories are reasonably safe, except for some of the nastier general's powers. It may be demoralizing to keep throwing money away on building these and replacing dozers lost while building them, but it's a worthwhile investment to keep your production line safe. I generally go for a double line, with about one war factory worth of space between the front line and the back line, and 2-3 war factories worth of space between each turret horizontally - so there's enough to always have one within attack range for any passing bomber, even if a few get knocked out, but not so many that you're wasting money/space. These are really just decoys, and you should rely on your vehicles to do the damage.


Other notes:

-I can't remember all of the specifics of Ironside's forces, but for obvious reasons a few detectors and units with point defense lasers mixed in with your vehicles will make a big difference, if you have them. Most of his attacks are missile based, so PDLs are effective. Anything that repairs vehicles too.

-You'll be hit by a parachute drop very near the beginning of the game, so make sure you have a few anti-infantry vehicles or enough rangers to fight them off (the anti-air vehicles are pretty rubbish at fighting infantry). You'll want to keep a few anti-infantry vehicles mixed in with your forces to kill off any pilots that parachute into your base, so they don't distract your anti-air vehicles too long.

-You'll also be hit by a mainly infantry-based attack over the bridge leading to your island not too long after the air attacks have started. Make sure you've got some units and defenses here that can repel a light ground attack.

-Make full use of the space you have, and spread your base across the whole island. I generally keep my buildings in a line along the very edge of the map except for the area where the command center is, so that Granger's planes have to cross as much AA-infested land as possible to reach them.

-Use general's powers to suppress Granger's base - the strategy center is a great target, as you can take out most of the power plants around it in the same strike, and it will stop him from building more Auroras until it is rebuilt. Otherwise his airfields are probably the best target to get a temporary respite. I haven't noticed any significant effects from targeting his supply building or drop zones - the other targets are probably better.

-Go all-out on offensive general's powers. I don't think any of Ironside's other powers/unlockable units will be much use on this map. The one possible non-offensive power you could take is the spy drone, as you can put these over the river as an early-warning system. They'll get shot down real quick though.

-Don't bother attacking his base by ground until you're ready to finish it. The passages leading to his base are a real killing zone, and you'll lose a lot of units. I also seem to remember that they might have some permanent invisible detectors there that uncloak any stealthed units that try to get through, but I might be wrong.

-Don't let yourself get put on the defensive. You want to get out and contest the middle as soon as you have the power to do so successfully - once you control the middle, Granger is as good as dead, as his planes will be dying before they get anywhere near your base, and he'll be wasting production and money on supply chinooks suiciding into the village supply pile.

-On the other hand, don't do anything by half measures. Any single units or small groups are going to get picked off very quickly, and likely do no damage in return. You want to keep your units in groups big enough that they can take an attack by a couple of jets and still have enough firepower left to kill them, and make sure you keep reinforcing with fresh groups to keep plenty of guns aimed at the sky.

-Getting out and capturing the oil derricks near the village and in the top left-hand corner of the map as soon as you can, preferably right at the beginning of the game, will give you a nice little money boost. You won't be able to hold them, but it's still worth it (speed is of the essence, do it as soon as you can get a ranger or two in a fast transport). I don't know to what extent the AI cheats money-wise, but it's probably a good idea not to let them fall into Granger's hands. Try to kill any rangers attempting to capture them, and if they are captured, destroy them ASAP with Burton or a general's power (or an airstrike if you squeezed an airfield into your base somewhere).


tl;dr: Build plenty of AA turrets, Granger will always target them before any other buildings.

Posted by: RodentDung 4 Nov 2015, 22:07

I won the fight Ironside vs Granger without using the superweapon. I actually did twice because the first time I tried to save it when I was winning and I accidentally loaded my Alexander campaign vs Granger so I had to restart.

Lobo, I did everything the same as you except don't make Phalanxs or spy drones. Well I made about 3 phalanxs right at the start but then spammed AA tanks and occasionally rushed a group of AA soldiers. I had my barracks and war factory hotkeyed and fully queued up at all times while I pushed through the middle and fed a ferocious meatgrinder fight up the roads to his base. He even used the particle cannon on my advancing troops to cause mass casualties for his sick pleasure. At the end, I destroyed all his remaining buildings by using Burton and remote detinated them all at once to piss off Granger and then he moaned about having to go get a job at Walmart.

It was a fun fight once I had a good rhythm of AA vehicles and troops spamming out. The off-board Mother of all Bombs as a brutal weapon to plant in the middle of his base and I waited for the B-52 strike to time them together. I could see large groups of Granger's troops falling out of the sky after the strikes. I wish Granger had sent more ground forces into the village and fortified there for a lively urban battle. He only garrisoned a couple of buildings and send some groups of troops and Hurricanes to attack.

Next I have to fight the explosives terrorist. I remember his small Scud launcher and endless waves of armor coming from the north and east supported by deadly long-range missile trucks which are very big. As the China infantry dude, I whooped him without a problem on Hard, but with Paperside it will probably take about 5 tries. I"ll have to use the grenades and A10s to suppress the Scud site because he has a lot of SAMs blocking normal airstrikes.

Posted by: FabulousPug 4 Nov 2015, 23:22

I have won the Granger challenge but didn't save before the win so I guess I'll have to repeat it...
It wasn't as hard as I expected it to be; he almost never had sufficient power for his base for some awkward reason resulting in less pressure on me from his units and particle cannon (which never fired). After my defences were at a decent level I just steamrolled him with Bradleys and. AA tanks.
Is my version of this challenge bugged or something (because of the power thing)?

Posted by: RodentDung 5 Nov 2015, 5:58

No, not bugged. I've noticed too that Granger doesn't mind being out of power. He relies totally on his planes. His particle did fire on me though and he seemly quite lively, but when I fought him with other generals he is sometimes very strong and sometimes weaker so I guess he is bipolar.

Now onto the explosive terrorist!! Let the bombs and Scuds rain down and his tanks pour forth like puss from a infection.
He is not as strong as Thrax but does have very steady armor output and missile trucks which can be bombed. The SAMS are probably the worst thing about him. As China, they have a carpet bomber so I could explode all his IEDs witih random carpeting. This time we will need stealth tanks to see them.

Posted by: FabulousPug 5 Nov 2015, 10:25

I think the problem is just getting the base up and running with a few supply zones, because he likes to send those Terror Bikes and Bomb trucks. Ironside is on a huge disadvantage as he has no helicopters; I've played this challenge on hard with a few other generals where choppers could destroy almost anything he threw at me. Including the Demo Traps on the way to his bases. I guess Black Widows will have to do this time. His Palace should also be vulnerable to general power bombing.

Direct assaults will be inefficient as with a few random explossions groups of tanks can just be humiliated, so I'm thinking about a few air fields later in the game and just bomb him like crazy... Stinger sites. are numerable but possible to destroy before the are rebuilt.
Against his SCUD I guess I'll use the infamous superweapon bombing along with a GP.

It could be a good idea to take out his NE base with planes and/or airlifted tanks, to cut the pressure on own base or to even establish an expansion.
Anyway, at the start a few basic soldiers should be build and scattered around the base, to make him waste the suicide squads on them so the base can start off like normal.

Similar to thrax, money is scarce and the oil derricks are booby trapped while the land around them is mined....
Topol launchers are a problem too; until now I would kill them with choppers, but this time I'll need Black Widows and some Phalanx to defend against the missiles - which btw are traveling vertically so the Phalanx should have more time to destroy them until planes come in.

I really hate Juhziz's tactics u_u

EDIT
This is how I did it - I defended with the usual anti-ground defences along with some infantry scattered in front to divert Terror Bikes, although the Bomb Trucks target only buildings. I had mostly anti-tank defenses so that took care of that.
An airfield full with Black Widows was to kill of the artillery and Buggies as well as softening enemy tanks before I had sufficient defences. I've built some Predator drones and stationed them south, just below the southern hill, so they could move in against the Topols and buggies there as well as kill the occasional bike.

To my surprise a full A10 strike on the Palace doesn't finish it, so something else is needed to compliment it. When I first destroyed his palace, he never bothered to rebuild it. I have took Spy Drones to see incoming artillery attacks followed by full A10 and Mines strikes.
Using a Cluster missile helps with his SCUD, but even coupled with the Mines Lv.3 it can't fully destroy it, only suppress it to the tunnel level.

Well, after the Palace was out of the game, I built a lot of bradleys, predators and some wraith tanks to navigate to his bases and take them out.
Plane attacks won't work cause 3 $1800 planes are needed for 1 stinger site and they will mostly get destroyed as well in the process, as I painfully learned..

For max supply gathering rate, a good placed suppy depot with 3 trucks is best in my opinion, as the truck move in circles trough in all the time.

Posted by: RodentDung 5 Nov 2015, 18:57

So you won the fight?
I tried it briefly once and he sent in some bomb trucks to destroy my first buildings right away even though I had 2 turrets up they didn't shoot.
I will try again today.

You are right that China is much easier to win against this enemy because of choppers and the gatling guns are very useful and the Chinese bombers massacred the tanks and vehicles while they approached. Also the carpet bomber cleared all the approach routes of mines.

He has a lot of SAMs. They all shoot together so bombing is not possible. Also A10s are weakened too. Best to use those grenades dropped from a satellite somehow. I wonder if howitzers will actually be useful in this case because the missile trucks are slower to fire than the dreaded Scourges of Thrax so it may be possible to howitzer them?

Posted by: FabulousPug 5 Nov 2015, 20:35

Yes I won it, mainly because he didn't rebuild the Palace.

The hardest part is getting started. 3 Terror Bikes will rush from the north very soon
To counter this you should probably build a barrack with the first dozer and send at least 3 soldiers a bit north of the base. So when they come, they will suicide on soldiers (soldiers need to be spread a little ofc).
Even when you've built defences, a few soldiers inn front will slow the Bikes down a lot, not only by being the meatshield but also cause bikes will move all at a time to siucide on 1 target, then the next etc.

Bikes will come from the south too but later. As for Bomb Trucks, I don't have a particular tactic
. but what you said before when we were vs thrax could work - placing unupgraded defense buildings to divert trucks?

I think planes are a better answer to Topols but maybe I just don't like Howizers much. Topols have huuuge range and damage a wide area, so even if Howizers kill 1, they could get killed by a missile from the other one. But I didn't even try it, can't really tell.

A10 are a good thing vs palace but bad vs SCUD cause of SAMs there. I did take the mines lv3 too, but the damage to buildings compared to A10's is lower.
The SCUD is very hard to kill off, probably gonna need a Cluster plus everything else at disposal.
I tried bombing the SAMs with planes but it's just ridiculous how much damage they endure.

Posted by: Sam 6 Nov 2015, 13:05

There is a certain trick to Juhziz mission which makes the Scud Takeover very easy. His Scud Storm and command Center are mostly in a small corner of the map at the side. What you can do is bomb the Stringer Sites surrounding the areas (For China, use EMP Bomb), fill a transport chopper with Burton or Lotus with few infantry and then take them to the corner (Decoy Choppers help). After that evacuate and wait for 20 seconds on the timer. Capture his Scud and then fire it on his own Palace and after that sell it (Otherwise it will get destroyed by the Stinger Sites). For GLA, you just need to use Rebel Ambush GP. I once tried it and the mission was a cakewalk.

Posted by: Lobo Solitario 6 Nov 2015, 13:28

Juhziz is is a pain as mentioned because it's tough to survive the opening minutes of the game. No particular Ironside tips, but I think he's reasonably well-equipped to deal with the challenge, although having no helicopters hurts. Learn the opening moves and how to clear the area below your base as fast and cheaply as possible, and I recommend having at least two full airfields once you can keep them safe from bomb trucks/bikes - good use of planes will help a lot.

I've noticed a couple of things about this one:

-Juhziz seems to cheat flagrantly with regards to money. His factories will pump out the same set groups of units at the same rate regardless of income. They even build multiple units at the same time - so focus on keeping his factories offline as much as possible rather than destroying his economy.

-As usual blowing up the palace is a good idea, and it's even better on this map due to the point above - taking it out will directly reduce the number of units attacking you, as any palace-dependent units in the build group will not be produced, nor will they be replaced by other units.

-I've noticed that while he generally rebuilds rapidly at his main base, Juhziz doesn't seem to ever try to rebuild his secondary base in the top right-hand corner of the map. If you take out the factories here it will mean a permanent reduction in the number of units attacking you.

-Phalanx guns and other AA weapons can take out Topol missiles (might need more than one per missile though). It's worth putting down some Phalanxes behind your defensive line at the main entrance above and to the right of your base, and in the area on your side of the bridge at the bottom of the map (close enough to take out Topol missiles targeting your defenses, but far enough to avoid rocket buggy attacks).

-Sometimes bike terrorists will climb the cliffs to the right of your base. In general I find it pretty hard to defend anything near the cliffs as he has a lot of long-ranged units as well as the bikes. It generally seems easier to keep a safe distance from the cliffs and have a few defenses mixed in with your buildings to take out any bikes that come in that way.

-Some good micro with aircraft can make your life a lot easier here. Juhziz has some pretty nasty AA, so you can't generally leave your planes on patrol without them getting shot down sooner or later, but there's a lot of space for hit & run attacks and airstrikes before his units reach your base. It's generally better to take out Topols before they get a chance to fire, unless they have a huge AA escort. Some blobs don't have any AA at all, and you can annihilate the whole group before it gets anywhere near your base.

-I seem to remember that he doesn't use many, if any, detectors, so you can use Burton to watch the bridge to the north of his base in order to get early warning of incoming Topols and rocket buggies, and snipe the occasional unit.

-The bridge at the bottom of the map can be a bit of a pain to defend, as with their long range, Juhziz's rocket buggies and Topols can fire on your units from his side of the canyon, where they're under the cover of his stinger sites and frequently some Pythons as well. You should plan around this and try to set up your defense in the way that minimizes this, and also have some backup defenses in case he gets through the first set - make sure to keep a good eye on this area and get used to microing airstrikes to take out the most annoying units while trying to stay out of AA fire as much as possible.

-In my experience it's not worth wasting effort on trying to clear the minefields. There's just too many of them and it takes too much time and effort - your units will invariably bumble into a mine if you're not watching the cleanup efforts closely, and your general's powers and other AOEs are better used in attacking the enemy base. Only clear out the minimum you need where you need to - perhaps to finish off the base in the top right once it's crippled, or set up a defensive line at the bridge above Juhziz's base. Remember Ironside has some great airlift capabilities as well, so you don't need to drive everywhere. I'd recommend against much in the way of ground assaults until you've got him nicely bottled up on his island, and even then it's cheaper and quicker to just build factories near the bridges to his base rather than clear all the mines in the middle.

Posted by: FabulousPug 6 Nov 2015, 13:56

Just to mention, Predator drones are really good to clear mines, not to mention other tanks with helfire drones in addition to predators. This will detect mines and automatically destroy them (hellfires) and make the trip much easier.

Also a thing to keep in mind:
Juhziz's southern (main) base cannot be bombed to submission as he will rebuild very fast, even the otherwise inreachable SAM on the hill. The reason for this is, his workers spawn on various locations (including the hill spot) and will then rebuild. So there is no way to kill off all his builders to prevent him from recovering losses at that base.
The only exception I found so far was his Palace, which never gpt rebuilt after destruction. It's. his biggest weak point imo.

And I can only aggree he can't be starved out of funds, I'm fact I will boldly say none of challenged opponents can, based on my experience.

The infiltration strategy is a great one, so far I've used a solo Burton with GP support, but the tactics mentioned before are even better.

Good luck with it and prepare yourself to face the lazoor freak next!

Posted by: RodentDung 6 Nov 2015, 19:30

I beat the explosives and now I have to fight the laser fanatic.

How do you make predator drones?

Posted by: RodentDung 6 Nov 2015, 19:39

Whew! I've been trying to post here for 2 days but the website won't load for me.
Thanks Sam and Lobo for your ideas. Very sneaky!! I'm more of a tank & infantry frontal assault type general. I like big battles.

I started the fight by making 6 turrets (3 machine guns and 3 AT) before making a supply gather place. It worked perfectly.
I made 2 airports but only used 4 bombers to clear away all the Topols. I never lost even 1 bomber the whole battle. That bomb terrorist has no mobile AA to protect his tanks and Topols so that is his weak point.

I cleared the whole map using a very large tank & infantry battlegroup. The stealth tanks detected the mines and I attacked using the guard funtion so they blew up all the mines as they moved ahead to avoid useless losses.

I made only 1 cluster silo and that was enough with the A10s and grenades to remove his Scud. But my base was hit by 4 or 5 Scud launches.
I also made many drop zones so I had like $200,000 by late game.
We had many tank battles in the desert like Rommel and the British.

Main problem was his Scuds shut off my power and made my turrets free targets for his tanks. I had to use infantry and planes to destroy his tanks in the early era before I had a war factory.
I cleared the northeast village first and captured the black market and the two utility buildings on the hill. Then I fortified infantry in the buildings next to the bridge to mow down all his bikes and troops coming over the bridge.
The final attack on his main base was a simple advance using two battlegroups in a pincher around the middle hill.

The laser general will be very difficult to beat because we don't have mines. His laser tanks are absolutely deadly and his air force is also a pain. And he builds A LOT of tanks. I remember his base was jammed with over 100 tanks when I was playing as China and he left hundreds more on the mines for me to capture. But we will have to beat all those tanks in combat. I think we should make Mammoth tanks for this battle.

Posted by: RodentDung 6 Nov 2015, 20:15

I tried fighting the fanatical laser general but his tanks and infantry overran my base so easily that his 3 photon lasers didn't even need to fire.

I'm not sure how to stop that huge force of tanks. His brutal armor combines Paladins, Crusaders and advanced Microwave Tanks that shut off turrets. His infantry join the tanks and there are constant choppers overhead. It is a powerful combination. I wish the USA had discovered the glory of using mines.

My usual strategy of housing troops in all the buildings with dozers behind them to repair the structures did not last long. My troops held off a couple of waves but his tanks and infantry blew through them once they massed properly. The one good thing was those weak anti-air soldiers are actually useful in buildings to defend against choppers. I heard Townes complaining about his choppers being shot down.

Posted by: FabulousPug 6 Nov 2015, 23:48

I've managed to beat Townes in my 2nd try! 2 things that propelled me to victory: Early eastern supplies and HOWITZERS. Finally Ironsides artillery shines!

I strarted with 3 dozers at once, 2 were left in the base doing usual stuff and one was appointed to circumvent possible enemy garrisons and defenses and to arrive to the eastern suppy pile. To get any use of it I needed fast money so again, well placed supply building with 3 trucks constantly moving in cirles through it was optimal, and the cash income was enough to get my base up and running plus a war factory to produce 2 AA tanks and something to defend against infantry.
This is because the all the air attacks were going there, as I painfully realized the first time, in addition to some infantry squads; they also might garrison nearby buildings and shoot at supply trucks, so the war factory can be used to produce a garrison-clearing vehicle to deal with that, along with repairing your tanks and trucks.
I didn't manage to hold it in both tries, but it was enough to allow me a stedy development of the main base.

Now in the main base, I've built the line of defences in an arch starting left of the suppy pile and building to the right, ending near the dark civilian building at the border of the map. The defences were all anti-tank except one anti-inf. I've also built one anti-if to the right of the supply pile on the road, and one to the right of the vehicle-auto-repair buulding to deal with some infantry and a possible Burton attack respectively.

To manage to defend myself from armored blobs coming at me, I selected Howitzers as my first GP and build one as soon as I had funds, so the enemy long range stuff can be dealt with. Then I made more Howitzers with 3 AA tanks to deal with both the tank blobs and possible air attacks (which came only after my expansion was destroyed).

I found my infantry to be lacking here, as they're expensive and the point-laser-defense on Laser Paladins just deflects missiles and kills them if too close. Would only work in masses, bur due to their costs and the small time window to prepare defenses, infantry didn't cut it for me


Later when the particle cannons are about to fire, there's a trick to divert them where you want - they will always target your Superweapon if you have it. So if you have one, all you have to do is constantly repair it with a dozer, avoidind the beam when it comes near; this way all 3 particle beams will fire on the same thing and will do nothing but damage the Cluster Missile. If you don't want to use the Cluster, it's no problem as long as you can repair it constantly, although I've used it on his Particle Cannons along with Grenade Drop lv.3 which removed all 3 of them very nicely.
After that is just a matter of tanks and howitzer production to attack and finnish him.

I hope it helps, good luck

EDIT
For the earlier question, by Predator Drone I meant the stealth drone-tank which can also detect stealth.

Posted by: RodentDung 7 Nov 2015, 10:34

Wow you are becoming a master of general warfare. I expected this battle to be very hard without mines to stop his powerful tanks.

I will try using the howitzers like you say.
When I was China I also noticed his use of the photon lasers was wasted on strong nuke silos.

I don't trust Townes. If I had a daughter and she brought home Townes as her date, I would call the police and recommend they sterilize the predator.

Posted by: Lobo Solitario 7 Nov 2015, 11:00

Sorry, no Ironside-specific Townes tips - tbh I don't remember ever playing this matchup. Unfortunately Townes' main weakness is that he hardly uses any AA outside his base, so helicopters can make short work of his attack forces - but since Ironside doesn't have any, you'll need some other trick.

Keep an eye out for Burton - he likes to sneak in along the raised highway and enter your base through the ramp on the right.

Apart from the brutal ground attacks he's going to be sending groups of laser commanches, which really chew up ground targets.

For a quick economy boost, at the far end of the map, squeezed in between Townes' base and the top edge of the map, there's a set of oilfields and tech buildings. You might be able to sneak some rangers in here in an air transport if you're careful, by skirting the very edge of the map. As far as I know he only sends some infantry here, so you might even be able to hold it all match.

Posted by: Sam 7 Nov 2015, 13:09

As far as I know, Juhziz never builds AA Units when playing on Medium and Hard Difficulty. It's a challenge bug. So, on those difficulties, focusing on aircraft more is a good strategy.

Posted by: FabulousPug 7 Nov 2015, 15:28

I actually saw two AA tanks from Juhziz on hard but that's all he ever had. 4 planes are enough imo, cause it's suicide to attack his bases with Ironside's weak planes anyway. Attacking his northern base can be done this way, though it will use up a lot of resources for rebuilding planes, and the southern base can't be penetrated unless having like 4 full airfields constantly bombing.. Though playing as Laser general this could be a viable strategy because of point laser defense on his planes.. just a theory. Leang's black planes could also drop bombs safely when upgraded but they do too low damage vs buildings and are more of support units anyway, I guess.
I love this thread, I could discuss tactics all day with people here.

Posted by: RodentDung 7 Nov 2015, 19:54

For the bomb terrorist, good old-fashioned troops & tanks in a big battlegroup pushing into enemy territory is the key to success. Just have to use guard mode instead of 'attack to' so buildings (mines) will be destroyed too.

Yes discussing tactics is a very good thing to do.

Now I will face the fanatical laser freak again. Wish me luck.

As for the northern oil derricks and utility buildings, he has very heavily garrisoned condominiums blocking the way there. I plan to fight my way up there using infantry and tanks but that will be a late game project using carefully planned bite & hold tactics to defend against his ongoing infantry & tank attacks coming off the ramps.

You said Townes doesn't use mobile AA so I will try to make an airfield. I"m concerned about his photon lasers which could melt an airfield before I get the expensive cluster silo made as a decoy for the lasers.

FabPug, how did you get rid of the hundreds of tanks up on his plateau? As China I kept nuking them but that is a bit cowardly I think so I prefer to use a ground attack to reduce his base this time.

EDIT:

Okay I just tried doing an airplane strategy against Townes. I lost within 10 minutes or less when his Paladins crushed my base. His photons never even had time to charge up before I lost. The first airplane I made was shot down immediately by his troops so I used the next planes over my base directly and they good work. I made about 8 turrets on the ground for defense plus some infantry but I don't think his armor even noticed them cause his microwaves turn them off. Turrets are useless in this battle. I think only the war factory stuff can defend with any chance.

Posted by: FabulousPug 7 Nov 2015, 21:43

Turrets are good but for the first attack or two try to get a howitzer ready. Just one or two howitzers can turn back the attacks because his tanks and microwave/railguns arty will clump together in the spot below a bridge to the north of your base. Howitzers do area damage and just need some meat shield so they don't get attacked. Turrets are built as money allows just to hold enemy forces still. 2 AA tanks by the Howitzers, behind the turrets we enough to kill off all his air attacks. I wouldn't recommend planes early because it's expensive, the Black Widow isn't effective vs Paladind and Avengers (yes, he did send his laser AA tanks at me), and the $1800 planes are even more expensive - IMO, a $1500 Howitzer is much better and doesn't take up much micro-time.

For late game, bomber planes could be good to demolish some buildings like war factory or strategy center, though I can't tell for sure as I've never tried it this way. What I can tell is what happened to me - his Laser Turrets never actually got online! Even when I was storming in with my armies, they were just sitting there, black and idle, so only the Laser Designator turrets (his other defence type) and his tanks were fighting me.

This is similar to Granger not bothering to do something about his power outage. Fine strategists they are, beating at us who only got a dozer and a puny command center while they possess a million buildings and troops.

Posted by: RodentDung 8 Nov 2015, 0:16

Townes base is designed to turn on lasers where needed and keep them offline when not needed. He has too many lasers to keep powered up. If you find his lasers are off, either he is using lasers somewhere else to defend or you destroyed too many power plants using cluster bombs or something. When I fought him using China and Alex, his lasers always worked so it was impossible for me to bomb him with planes. When I was China, I nukes his laser turrets so maybe I helped him by reducing his power need. I'm going to try and win this battle conventionally with troops and tanks after I have a secure base with many defenses. I will make drop zones and a few factories making stuff non-stop, then launch a huge attack with much destruction and fighting.

I will try again today using howitzers for defense instead of planes. Hopefully I will have Townes in a paddy wagon on his way for some intense tasering by my interrogation team. After electrotherapy, maybe we will hire him to yell insults and complaints at enemy generals while I am fighting them.

Posted by: FabulousPug 8 Nov 2015, 0:28

You're probably right I did dump a cluster on him.

Have you ever tried to go for the northern supply pile? I did try it once but my dozer was killed so I gave up on it. It could be possible to take both northern and eastern supply piles to get some fast cash, although a lot of time and resources would be spent at early game.. main base could easily fall due to lack of proper defenses.

I'd gladly put some screenshots if it would help, but currently I'm switching my internet provider and the for a few days from now I won't have a connection. Right now my old phone is the only thing linking me to the net x_x

Posted by: Lobo Solitario 8 Nov 2015, 16:36

Weird, I could swear he's used it against me before - maybe I'm mixing up difficulties, as there isn't much difference between easy and hard for Juhziz.



Yeah, I think you'd have trouble using planes as the primary defense against Townes - you just need too much time, space and money to get enough of them to be effective. Helicopters are a lot easier as you only need one production building and you can mass them easily - or for the infantry general a few helixes full of rocket troops can slaughter most of the stuff that Townes throws at you. He does garrison plenty of missile soldiers, so the space your aircraft can maneuver in is limited. FabulousPug's howitzer option sounds much better.



Agree that planes aren't cost-effective here. I find helicopters better as even when he does send Avengers it's normally only one or two at most, and they're less dangerous to your airforce than the Paladins and railgun artillery are to your ground units.

I've noticed that the laser turrets don't seem to work now too, although I haven't investigated it too thoroughly. In the original ZH they used to turn on by sections to not overload his power plants - I think the idea was that you should rush him from all sides at once so he wouldn't be able to turn them all on, although in practice that's too much effort compared to just nuking a hole in his defenses or taking out his power grid. Maybe the scripting got messed up somewhere along the way when the map was changed to Shockwave.

Posted by: Sam 9 Nov 2015, 17:34

Also Ironside's Stryker (The repair vehicle) can actually clear garrisoned buildings.

Posted by: RodentDung 9 Nov 2015, 20:51

I tried a howitzer strategy and it also failed in about 10 minutes. The howitzer is expensive to get so I only had 2 laser turrets (cheaper & sees burton) with 2 soldiers inside, 2 phalanx and 2 AA tanks, 1 howitzer and a few troops and a couple of Wraith tanks for defense when he attacked and steamrolled. The howizter couldn't damage his units at all so it ended up with AA tanks pecking away at his paladins for no damage and so he basically steamrolled for free. Not sure what to try. Turrets get shut off, AA and Wrath tanks gets destroyed easily but the AA tanks are vital for his steady chopper attacks but they can't damage other units, and the howitzer only did 1 millimeter of damage to an enemy tank's health bar each shot so they would take forever to kill anything. The Wraiths were destroyed before they could do anything even with that rocket upgrade which is supposed to help.

Mammoths are the only thing left to try but are expensive so I might only get 1 made by when he attacks. If I make no turrets at all it will help with money but leave the front naked to attack except for a few infantry I could put down to delay.

Posted by: FabulousPug 9 Nov 2015, 21:31

Try an AT turret or two and possibly some concrete slabs positiones so they would be attacked first
Don't build laser designator turrets, Burton doesn't come that soon if at all, and infantry are just too expensive plus their rockets get shot down.. The turrets should serve primarily to shield the howitzers behind. If you didn't try an expansion you should as it helps immensely early in the game.
I absolutely don't want to sound like ordering you to do as I say, please don't get that feeling.
Personally I would loose every time had I not went for that expansion. And I never encountered his burton either.
At the beginning of attacks I had 2 howitzers and 1 AT turret, and they did manage to defend with some micro with Howitzer shooting. But then, I did have 2 supply collection operations so I was able to produce more turrets and howitzers in main base + 2 AA tanks at my expansion to delay its destruction.

He usually attacked with just 2 either choppers or stealth planes and just 2 AA Tanks repelled them, gained veterancy and were more effective from there on (they did not get targeted often so I guess that's how they survived until veterancy).

I can only agree that laser paladins are too stronkkk, give them an AA laser turret and they're the most OP thing ever u.u

edit - oh and I did had a dozer repairing the turrets all the tim even in middle of battle.

Idk what else to add, I know, Paperside is rarely good at challenges but if we complete it on hard, we should get medals!

Another edit:
Seems like many challenges are bugged, maybe dev team couldn't solve scripts or something as mentioned. For exaple, in addition to Granger-no-power there is also Kwai attacking with very few tanks, infantry attacks are as in ZH, almost no other tanks other that few emperors and b.masters, but after some time he stops producing units completely making it just too easy while set to hard difficulty. o.O

Posted by: RodentDung 10 Nov 2015, 3:37

I was thinking the turrets are too expensive cause they are 300 for the base plus 1000 for the turret plus another 1000 or whatever for a powerplant so 2300 is enough for something else.

Kwai is a paper tiger. He is extremely weak in Shockwave which is weird. The original game made him strong on hard level but shockwave on hard makes kwai easy. I thought it was a money shortage after his supply dump runs out, but he has a hacker group and an internet cafe also making profits. This is a mystery. We still have to fight the camouflage terrorist who is tough in shockwave and the Tigress chinese woman who is incredibly powerful.

Maybe you are ready to crush people online now. You've reached elite status in the world of Generals.

You are ready to fight the greatest enemy of all which is yourself.... I mean the people online.

Posted by: FabulousPug 10 Nov 2015, 9:44

I get overzealous in competition, eating myself up for every mistake and I mostly can't help it even when I know the other guy plays it like 5 years online more than me x_x

Anyway, I faced the stealth guy and won in the first attempt. He's pretty much the same as in ZH, differences are Frog artillery and rocket troopers popping around the base. Puts up a decent fight but not as strong as Thrax that's for sure. Next is Tao, didn't try it yet.. gonna be a pain to kill his nuke arty without choppers.

Posted by: RodentDung 11 Nov 2015, 6:25

I beat the stealth thug with the chinese generals. It wasn't hard except for his scud and his underground tunneling attacks and the anthrax bomber which melted my base when I was Leung a few times.
His vehicles are dangerous in the first half of the battle until the bombers are in place and some gatling guns and AA tanks to stop that deadly anthrax bomber. That bomber is just as bad as a scud launch cause it kills everything on the ground and the gatling guns were destroyed by his buggies from long range so they could fly in. But Thrax is about 20 times stronger than the stealth thug. Thrax has the mail order advantage.

For the nuke general, you need to space out your base to accept the nukes without a problem. He has 6 nukes active I remember. The 2 left side nukes you can attack with ground forces but the 4 right side nukes need some GP weapons like grenades and A10s to destroy because it takes longer for ground forces to get there. You don't need cluster silos for that battle cause he's quite weak except for the nukes. Just use bombers and tanks to destroy his nuke trucks. And AA tanks to stop his choppers.

For online play, it is best to train yourself not to be angry about losing. That is just ego. After you lose, just sigh and say "Hai hai". That is Japanese and it means 'okay no worries' and people say that when other people or children are complaining loudly. And people online find out exploits and cheats that you don't know, so you even smart people lose because they don't want to cheat. Just don't play cheaters twice.

Posted by: FabulousPug 12 Nov 2015, 18:27

I'll try the Tao challenge today. My plan is to space out building and defenses to slow down enemies while my Bradley group does the killing. Howitzers will be places on the northern hill to defend vs nuke artillery, the giant bunker there will destroy the rest. With 3 supplies and 2 oil derricks from the start, there should be little he could do to cripple me. Once again A10, bombs and MOAB will be taking out nuclear silos. Planes will be the bomber ones, to finish off his nukes and to clean stationary stuff on the way to his base, after that a tank aassault will crush everything red on the minimap.

I faced Tao as Leang on hard and it wasn't difficult, all he did was fire off a nuke and destroy 2 defensive buildings.

edit:
Before I forget to add; indeed, you have spoken wisely. Only times I truly have fun online in any game is when I don't care about winning, just to do my best and have fun.

another edit:
Tao was crushed as planned. Taking over all the resources around allowed me to produce whatever I wanted so I went with very few defenses, but turned my 3 war factory towards his attackers. While his Nuke cannons we shooting at my defences, some quick bradleys with hellfire drones drived close to eliminate them (or planes picked them off in the middle of the map). AA wasn't even needed, the Wraith and Bradley missiles did the job. It is possible to destroy his Nuke Silos without him even firing once, I did it using planes on the 3 in his main base after his AA defense was bombed and the 2 on the right side were taken care by planes+GP.
Could be good to just take out his Propaganda asap to cut him off nuke cannons for good - he didn't rebuild it. It's probably one of the easier challenges cause of the enormous amount of suplies close to the base and his weak attacks, the only trick is to bomb his nukes. When I was Leang, he actually launched his 1 nuke somewhere on the hill area, the fat bunker there suffered minor damage and a helicopter was destroyed - AI syndrome

Posted by: RodentDung 13 Nov 2015, 5:06

Sounds like you crushed Tao with ease. He is quite powerful if he gets his momentum up. I lost twice to him using other generals before beating him. He managed to roll off his 6 nukes on my base and his nuke trucks finished the job while choppers hung around adding to the grief. You got him early though. I almost feel sad he wasn't allowed to play at all.

Maybe you are gonna have an easy time of it until you meet the deadly Tigress who is about equal to Thrax for danger but she has more resilience I think cause Thrax's base doesn't have much depth but hers does.

Posted by: Sam 13 Nov 2015, 12:55

That's a bug in Tao's challenge. He will always fire one nuke in that area. So, don't build anything there.

Posted by: FabulousPug 13 Nov 2015, 14:50

Tao's weakness is he doesn't send almost any armored units like tanks, his air can be repelled easily and his nuke trucks are unprotected. Unlike Tao, Thrax sends just. about everything he has all the time.. And. becaise of so much money all for yourself, even 3-4 dozers can constantly build stuff, including lots of planes to chew up his defenses and nuke silos.
Leang is next; I already had a feeling she's one not to be taken lightly.

EDIT:
Alright! The Paperside emerged victorious in all his challenges! As he has no rivals atm, he will return to his job as a developer of high tech papers which would hopefully endure 2 more shots before they're dead.
So, to deal with Leang I've bult 2 Clusters asap to keep her Gaia off my neck. I didn't expand, but built a modest base with lots of AA tanks by the Command Center and some Howtzers to kill attackers on the hill and the bridge. When I had several supply drop zones, I pushed with lots of stuff produced constantly from 2 war factories, to take the map and build war factories all over to support the push. After a MOAB cleaned the entrance to her base, the armor went in rampaging.
The next general was Alexander... VERY annoying challenge. Many Particle Cannons, pesky aircraft, chinook drops and very early "orbital bombardment" (the GP) were very frustrating to outlast. I gave up on tank assault tactics and instead again used an early Cluster combined with Grenades drop and A10 to take out her superweapons. After that I just bombed her to death, using Burton to snipe everything left (he actually outranges her defences with S&D strategy). The biggest problem against Alex is her very early Comanche rush right before the orbital tungsten shell bombardment (don't remember the exact name of it), which is hard to defend against at this point. The only way I managed it is to build a barracks with the first dozer and captured the 3 neutral AA turrets along the coast to kill the choppers... the bombing remained an irritation on my base till the end.

I'm thinking of Granger as my next general to try on Hard... I like planes cause perfect airstrikes look so cool. Also, I don't think he's perticulary powerful in general's challenges because of weak defences and awful armored units.
If I remember correctly... Thrax is his first challenge.... ....

Posted by: RodentDung 15 Nov 2015, 7:27

Golly you have become a god. You beat Leung. She is about the equal of Thrax, unless you can destroy her Gaia and have enough AA to stop the masses of choppers. The Alexander woman attacks with those choppers before you can even start. It is a cheapshot but you have to take it. Her base is very poorly defended so she is one of the weaker generals because she relies on the lasers and the narrow space for movement as defense.

Granger will be fun for the challenge. He is, I think, very weak compared to the strong Chinese and Alexander clans. Even his planes are weaker than some others but he has an absolutely deadly B1 bomber strike from off-board. I don't think the B1 bomber can be shot down even by many AA. Also he has one of the hated missile trucks - Hurricane. Against Thrax he might do okay if you get those planes and choppers out in big numbers. He has no tanks or mines so you fly or you die.

Posted by: FabulousPug 15 Nov 2015, 17:59

Are you planning to go on a Hard challenge crusade as Granger or some other general?
I've beaten Thrax with Granger on Hard already, but it was far from easy..
I didn't destroy his Palace even and without stealthy choppers I'd be doomed. They were very useful as defense and could also attack the easter arms dealer. But the final assault was difficult cause Granger has so weak ground vehicles and Thrax's AA is formidable so that aircraft wasn't as useful as for defense. The only great thing is that Hurricane arty which did most of the killing while ecerything else on the ground was serving as a meat shield lol..

edit
I think I'll stick with Granger till I'm done. Probably the most frustrating challenge (after Thrax ofc) will be Leang. Since Granger has only weak missile-based AA it will be tough to defend. Choppers are also easy targets for her AA even without power in her base so I'll have to stick with super-fragile ground forces and lots of hurricanes. I find Hurricanes to be unbelievably good vs any group of enemies. His main battle tanks would. be good if their missile attack would be automatic, but as it is, it's useless cause there is no time to micro this in a big clash... Granger seems to be a very defensive faction in challenges...

I've tried the Salvage general vs Leang on hard; it was tough but I've succeeded in the end. Has some nice artillery which is similar to Howitzers but imo much better - can fire on the move and is cheaper.
Once I tried Infantry gen vs Granger and it was very hard to penetrate his base with infantry or vehicles because of his Tornado bombers; was a very long match (I didn't use superweapons).

Alexander blonde is imo the easiest one to use to complete all challenges because she can defend against everything and can strike where ever she wants (bombing GP, Enforcers, cheap and effective superweapons), Alpha Auroras really suck in Shockwave but other stuff is great.

Playing as the Stelth dude was interesting. stealthy bikes are great as defense vs artillery, and I like his stealth rocket snipers which were a great help at destroying some of Tao's nuclear silos.
I did also try with Kwai vs Thrax on Hard, and compared to Paperside, his tanks actually crushed the green postman it wasn't even funny.

Still I didn't find out which would be my favorite general, but close come the blonde and the stealthy guy.

Posted by: RodentDung 23 Nov 2015, 6:13

I think the same. Alexander is the easiest to play and the Chinese generals like Kwai are much easier at beating Thrax.

I haven't tried the evil terrorists yet. I think I tried the explosives one briefly but lost.
I like the Leung faction. But Alexander is my favorite for sure.

Posted by: FabulousPug 23 Nov 2015, 9:49

From what I understand in this thread, Salvage general would very much suit your playstyle. He has really nice armored vehicles especially the Basilisk heavy tank, an equivalent to Overlord, one could say. Add the super Quad Tanks to that and you already have a formidable mix that can take on almost anything. Also has great artillery units. And probably the bast AA defences with great groud defense. You should cert ainly try it! Feel kinda OP

Posted by: RodentDung 1 Dec 2015, 3:40

Okay I will try Salvage. I've never played that clan. Basilisk tanks and quad tanks sound like my style for sure. What are you playing now? Did you finish the campaign as Granger?

Posted by: FabulousPug 1 Dec 2015, 15:01

Actually I didn't.. I wanted to see what's RotR like so I deleted Shockwave cause it wouldn't work together, then I tried to make it work then I failed at that, now I just need to find some time to download and install it again. RotR isn'tas fun for me sadly.
Before I did all that I was having a Hard challenge match vs Leang as Kwai. That was almost as agonizing as Paper vs Thrax - just brutal but somehow I managed after a number of restarts xd.
Will definitely continue with Granger dude.

Posted by: RodentDung 5 Dec 2015, 22:20

How did you beat Leung using Kwai? You spammed nukes and turned her base to goop or your made a huge number of tanks and troops and attacked normally? She has that deadly Gaia thing that is deadly to your base.

Posted by: FabulousPug 6 Dec 2015, 10:01

I built 2 Nukes which were ready to use about a minute before her Gaia completed cooldown, so their sole purpose was just to keep gaia down. Artillery Barrage would be great too, but at the time I wasn't able to get enough GP to unlock it...
At the start it's not a good idea to build a barracks close to the E bridge cause that would lure some tanks to attack you right at the start, so I've built it closer to my CC and trained a few missile soldiers and then I went for the Oil D.
Problem with Kwai is it's difficult to defend against her Grinder artillery which would attack from the hill, while bombers are not really an option to deal with that cost-efficiently. Grinders can only be targeted uphil by tanks if they're right on the ledge - so when I saw one shooting at me, I took the unit which was targeted and moved it a little back so Grinders would come closer, and when close enough on the ledge, they're toast. Of course there were usual difficulties coming from air, but only constant rebuilding of Gattling tanks could save me (clumping gattlings together is bad, cause her aircraft mostly deals damage in an area, and the Phoenix bombers perticulary are able to destroy a whole group in one attack - at first they will target the Oil Derrick and anything close to it).

I'm not that great at fast expansions so I went with turtling until hackers kicked in, then without money problems I built a big group of tanks to push out, while dozers followed it to capture the supplies on the way and build war factories on random places to support the pushing force. The push continued into her base and with 3 W.Factories right at the entrance replenishing the tanks, it was only a matter of minutes before Leang was stomped into snowy dirt.

Edit
Granger is well suited in challenges cause of nice options to defend the base (like stealthed choppers, acolyte drones, medic chopper etc). Good for turtling and bombing but his ground forces are really bad when assaulting enemy bases. Hurricane artillery, while great vs units, totally sucks vs buildings so the only good option is to use Humvees with rocket troopers, imo. His planes are very nice but their supperiority only is felt when they're upgraded (which costs a ton of money and quite some time).
I found Granger best agains Juhziz because a group of choppers can repell any attack while the HALO drop GP can be used as a cheap way of getting rid of his scud storm, then a group of rocket-vees makes their way to his base and destroys it (the palace is destroyed by air stuff before that). Tao is also a suprisingly easy challenge where constant use of choppers for defense and planes for offense can deny him of his Nukes before even one can fire, and even Tao's artilery strike can't destroy your airfield (but planes should be sent to circle in the air when artillery sound is heard). I can imagine Granger in multiplayer to be either too strong, or too weak because aircraft needs many upgrades

Posted by: RodentDung 9 Dec 2015, 18:07

Wow you are really becoming a Sun Tsu at this game. You can beatdown any general you want to now. Your power has peaked. Beating Leung is quite difficult (except for Alexander who can whoop anyone) but you figured out a careful strategy. I think for the cliff Grinders, you could also make an airfield and destroy the AA on the cliff and then the Grinders would be destroyed easily. I don't know if Kwaii has good enough air force to beat that strong AA up there. And did you takeover the cliff area using chopper transports to move troops up there and cross the bridge? That bridge has a Gaia trap on it which is quite deadly.

Granger doesn't have any tanks?? Sounds like you have mastered him though.

You should try multiplayer too. You will probably own everyone.

Posted by: FabulousPug 10 Dec 2015, 2:28

A sure way to win any challenge is by getting to a point where you have enough income to save yourself from anything the AI can throw at you. Getting there is the hardest part of a challenge.
Personaly I turtle up and get a superweapon or two to counter the enemy's as I always fail at fast expansion tactics seen many times on videos.
Kwai can't do any sort of "surgical strikes" behind enemy lines, like vs Leang so the nukes were a must for me. Only then did I build my hackers. I'm not sure if planes would be a good thing to clear the hill area so early, because of the space airfield takes and the bombers being costly and would get massacred by the AA.. And they need to fly close to the targets to drop bombs ensuring their horrible deaths.. Would be very cost-ineffective how I imagine it, while money could be spent on some more gattlings and hackers/nukes.
I honestly can't imagine a victory in case Leang would use her other artillery

While I can defeat the AI, the online gamers would probably destroy me along with my monito, lol. What you say about me is nice but highly unlikely to be the case

Posted by: RodentDung 11 Dec 2015, 9:53

Ya the Gaia is priority. I only beat Leung using Alexander and with her I used Auroras to clean off the cliff top and then I chinooked troops up there to take over the area. But Alexander has deadly AA protection plus some other stuff. I think I had 5 or 6 drop zones as Alex so I could afford to replace those expensive Lamborghinis.... I mean Auroras.

I tried playing large Ai battles before I tried the Challenge and I got smashed. I tried 2 teams like 3 on 3 or 4 on 2 so I had Ai friends with me. Would be nice to have a real human team mate or opponent for more unexpected gameplay.

Posted by: CWAL 30 Jan 2016, 19:28

It is funny for me to see this topic now because I tried doing the challenge for the Demo General today and Dr. Thrax kicked my ass from left to right all five times that I have attempted it.

I beat the challenge with both Tank and Nuke Generals in vanilla ZH and this was my first attempt at doing it with this mod.

Posted by: (USA)Bruce 30 Jan 2016, 19:45

Is this thread still going?

Dear god guys, just send me the replays of the challenges and get me on skype, I'll show you how to beat each and ever single one on hard mode...

Posted by: RodentDung 9 Apr 2016, 18:46

I already did win all my campaigns on hard difficulty after I figured it all out. I just haven't tried a couple of generals. I'm gonna fire up the challenge (always on hard) as that evil terrorist that salvages parts. I forget his name. Maybe the battles to come be violent and produce a high bodycount. The evil Dr. Thrax was always the hardest to beat. I might also try a random battle with 2 full teams and scrap it out.

Posted by: (USA)Bruce 9 Apr 2016, 23:25

Thrax is easy, you just need to balence out your arty with your air or just crush him with sheer armour....

Posted by: mr_Skittles 10 Apr 2016, 3:55

how is this thread still going.

Posted by: RodentDung 10 Apr 2016, 23:26

Tigress was the first fight which I won after a long violent struggle, but evil Thrax beat me twice without even a hint of hope. Salvage has the weakest airplane Desert Flies which die like flies when Thrax's tanks shoot at them. On the ground it was briefly okay until.... as per usual.... his missile trucks and buggies blew up my tanks from long range. I tried to attack his missile trucks but my tanks were destroyed before getting a shot off. And infantry can't be used at all in this battle. I don't think Salvage has any chance against Thrax.

Posted by: (USA)Bruce 11 Apr 2016, 0:37

^Are we littarly playing the same mod or game?

Deseart flies are arguebly one of the top 10 best helis in the game. (I count it as a heli as it doesnt need an airfield to reload)
Also your katushyas have a broken prefire delay...Hell you can brute force with baslix too or waypoint micro with lantrun spam

Posted by: RodentDung 11 Apr 2016, 4:33

ok

Posted by: mr_Skittles 11 Apr 2016, 5:01

^^ this

im kinda lost on this thread there's been several viable strats explained in this topic on how to deal with thrax with any general.
Heck you can cheat the dam ai and not trigger his attacks for ages if you dont build your base forward towards the bridge allowing you time to build your forces/base up.
or not triggering his flank attacks either by going past the oil derick.

theres even a cheep map exploit with burton if your a usa general to completely screw thrax.

theres countless videos and play threws on the internet on doing this.

tbh if your having trouble surviving against thrax with what ever general your playing.

The answer is simple, Try, Try again dont be afraid to save your game every few mins to try different things.

But then again theres this.

A - your either not bothering to try different strats
B - your ignoring advice you have been given in regards to strats
C - your the usual kind of i cant do this in one or two goes im gonna go whine about it on a forum.

Posted by: RodentDung 11 Apr 2016, 16:31

Skittles, don't be angry. The thread is a discussion about beating Thrax with different generals. I've already beaten him with 4 or 5 generals on hard level. I've only tried Salvage twice so far. And I don't play games doing silly exploits like save & load and avoiding triggering attacks.

Posted by: mr_Skittles 11 Apr 2016, 18:27

o thats not me angry

Posted by: FabulousPug 25 Apr 2016, 16:28

Probably, for you veterans this thread looks silly, but we like to discuss the ways how we play. Obviously useless to you, but newcomers could benefit from it - unless there is already a guide or something on the topic available, which I never saw anywhere. I rarely see similar threads, so yeah why not just pile our gameplay experiences here? You may just ignore us anyway, it's just one thread.. :/ If possible, the thread could be renamed into something more suitable like "Hard mode GC strategies discussion" or something.
I haven't been playing Shockwave for a while, but since the update is here, I'll probably start again on those challenges ...Topol missile invulnerable...demo challenge went from hard to crazy lol. Eager to try it out, have fun everyone

Posted by: RodentDung 1 May 2016, 18:22

OMG the deadly Pug has returned!! Very good!
Please post about your demo experience.

There is a shockwave update? Where can I get? I hope thrax doesn't get stronger. I feel like the Kurds trying to fight off ISIS and the Turks at the same time.

Posted by: RodentDung 1 May 2016, 18:28

Okay I installed the update. I will try playing as the demo terrorists too. Weird playing as an ISIS cabal but other teams are evil in their own way too so it all balances out for punishment and deservability.

Posted by: FabulousPug 2 May 2016, 19:04

Hi, yeah I've lost my password, then recovered it, then lost again and recovered it again lol...
Haven't had much time to play anything, but I plan to test all the new stuff as soon as I'm done with another game.
Hopefully the challenge mode is still enabled, I did read the changelog but don't remember much, except the changes like Enforcer tank, removal of the stupid AT gun and rebalanced Quads
I might even try some online games if I'm able to, competition in RTS games isn't something I like very much (probably cause I'm a pure NoOb haha), although it does make the game playable for a longer time and it's time to stop stomping AIs all the time see you around!