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Which should I play as for the Generals Challenge? [Pick 3] This poll is closed. |
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| Laser |
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60 | 14.74% |
| Air Power |
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34 | 8.35% |
| Super Weapons |
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49 | 12.04% |
| Tanks |
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26 | 6.39% |
| Infantry |
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39 | 9.58% |
| Nuclear Power |
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68 | 16.71% |
| Toxin |
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48 | 11.79% |
| Stealth |
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42 | 10.32% |
| Explosives |
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41 | 10.07% |
| Total: | 189 votes | ||
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Granger does start to panic a little if you build a forward base for the supplies in the middle of the map. "You're not stealing my supplies... Are you, general?"
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Jan 5, 2022 13:10
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General's Spotlight #2: General Kwai Name: Ta Hun Kwai Aliases: Nona Affiliation: China Occupation: General Class AAA Voiced/Played by: Michael Bell Kwai is the Armoured specialist for the China Army, choosing to eschew infantry or nuclear power. His opponents quickly learn to respect his armored forces, or be crushed under their tracks! Bio posted:General Ta Hun Kwai is convinced that the People’s Liberation Army will see its greatest military successes in this century through the view holes of its tank divisions. A disciple of Soviet tank tactics of the Cold War, General Ta has produced technical papers on various modifications to them. He has initiated development of techniques to reduce the costs of tank production and has sponsored the Emperor program, whose first tanks rolled off the assembly line in 2013. Considered part of the old guard in the PLA hierarchy, General Ta nevertheless continues to roll up victory after victory in battle. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "General Class AAA" General Upgrades/Changes -All tanks start as Veteran A very nifty upgrade to have, making your workhorse and Overlord tanks more viable. -All tanks are cheaper to produce (exc. ECM Tank) There's no % given, but judging by the Wiki, the change is $100 less on every model. -Battlemaster tanks start as Elites (after BM Training) Starting out as level 2 is a pretty big buff, and for only one General point? Sign me up! -Battlemasters can be upgraded with Autoloaders It increases the Battlemaster's rate of fire, although no number is given on the wiki. -Emperor Overlord $100 cheaper than its regular counterpart, the Emperor Overlord is a straight upgrade. It begins life outside a War Factory with a Speaker Tower AND can give itself a Gatling Cannon to boot! -Aircraft and Infantry are more expensive to produce The values are different in either case. Infantry are 25% more expensive, whereas aircraft are (roughly) 33% more expensive. -Tank Drop replaces Cash Hack Tank Drop is similar to Paradrop, except the scale is 1, 2, or 4 Battlemasters. These also get the effect of Battlemaster Training. Great for reinforcing or harassing. -Emergency Repair available earlier Unlike General Granger, this is immensely more useful, as relying on vehicles as the majority of your forces will synergize well with this ability. -Carpet Bombing available at Level 5 To reflect Kwai's inexperience, or lack of coordination, with the Chinese Air Force, Carpet Bombing is available one level later than it normally would be. -Cannot produce Inferno or Nuke Cannons The lack of long-range weapons can be a particular hindrance for the Tank General, and must carry the day with tank rushes. It's pretty clear what Kwai aims to have in his composition, and how players should wield this army. Battlemasters are especially a problem if amassed in large enough numbers, as they will move faster, hit harder, and shoot more often, and that's just counting the upgrades! With veterancy, you can outpace any other armored force on the field of battle. One must be careful regarding opposing air forces, and the player should invest in a healthy amount of ECM Tanks. Manual Entries Emperor Overlord The latest generation of Overlord Tank comes equipped with turret-mounted Propaganda Towers. Emperor Overlord tanks can be upgraded with Gattling Cannons for stronger force projection. Tank Drop (1/2/3) This Level 3 Generals Power can drop (one/two/four) Battlemaster Tank(s) anywhere on the map. quote:ARMY MODIFICATIONS
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Jan 17, 2022 19:55
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IIRC the autoloader upgrade causes Battlemasters to effectively fire three-shot bursts with minimal relaod time between the shots and then a notable reload time between bursts. The overall rate of fire icnrease isn't that big, but the way it frontloads the damage is just disgusting. It stacks with horde bonus and makes a group of 5+ Battlemasters just able to hilariously instagib almost anything entering their range.
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Jan 17, 2022 20:15
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General's Challenge 02: Laser General Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS_oZeOUz8w General's Challenge 02: Laser General Part 2  The General's Challenge is a series of missions that follow the same basic theme - What if you fought a specific General from one of the three factions? Each of these Generals brings their own pros and cons, with the challenge being how one deals with them using their own special sub-faction.  N/A  Location: Unknown Objective: Destroy all non-defensive structures. Author's note: Dr. Thrax is a particularly annoying opponent as General Townes, as hard difficulty will mulch laser crusaders. Tao, by comparison, is a pushover.   Name: Unknown Aliases: Dr. Thrax Affiliation: GLA Occupation: Unknown Voiced/Played by: Uncredited Utilizing GLA's resourcefulness, Dr. Thrax maximizes their use of the deadly toxins they acquire. Enemies of Dr. Thrax should watch their step, lest they grow a third arm!  Name: Tsing Shi Tao Aliases: None Affiliation: China Occupation: General Class AAA Voiced/Played by: Uncredited The Chinese Nuclear Arsenal is almost completely controlled by this one man. His armies and techniques will wash over you like the glow of a nuclear blast.  N/A Aftermath: N/A
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Jan 17, 2022 20:23
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Magni posted:IIRC the autoloader upgrade causes Battlemasters to effectively fire three-shot bursts with minimal relaod time between the shots and then a notable reload time between bursts. The overall rate of fire icnrease isn't that big, but the way it frontloads the damage is just disgusting. It stacks with horde bonus and makes a group of 5+ Battlemasters just able to hilariously instagib almost anything entering their range. Yeah, its just weird how nothing on the wiki mentions that, and the manual completely omits that upgrade(!) Apparently 2003 was also too early in video game history to properly credit nearly all of the non-white performers. No GLA Generals have credits, and the Chinese roster is a smattering of names. Criminal.
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Jan 17, 2022 20:26
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I remember going all in on Emperor Overlords (they're awesome, why wouldn't you!) except I was up against a general who was much better at micromanaging bombers than I was at micromanaging tanks. so three billion dollars later or whatever, I learned that the upgraded Battlemaster swarm was disgustingly effective and a lot more economical.
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Jan 17, 2022 21:19
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Having every Battlemaster deployed at Elite is really powerful, but against human enemies, it can easily backfire. Sure your MBTs will be shot for shot a lot hardier and stronger than your opponent's, but keep in mind you get more Generals experience for destroying vetted up units. Destroying a big blob of Elite Battlemasters can easily push someone to Rank 3 pretty quickly. That said, a huge army of Elite Battlemasters armed with Autoloader and Patriotism is a disgusting armor composition. Get enough of them together and the screen starts shaking whenever they shoot at something. Oh, and the other thing with Kwai is they really take the "Infantry are more expensive" thing seriously. The Troop Crawler and Listening Post are both more expensive than vChina because they come with infantry. Sylphid fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 00:05
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dr thrax is definitely the general who has the most fun, and thus i am a fan
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Jan 18, 2022 03:13
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Dr. Thrax also sexiest General.
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Jan 18, 2022 03:26
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These generals seem fond of taunting at the precise moment they lose.
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Jan 18, 2022 07:46
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Dr. Thrax gets the absolute best voice lines. Good enough that his map is a bit less of a slog than it would otherwise be. He also has the absolute funniest line for being defeated.
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Jan 18, 2022 12:17
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biosterous posted:dr thrax is definitely the general who has the most fun, and thus i am a fan Hard agree, he is just having a grand time with his endless jokes and puns. Anyway, Trax's base is shockingly light on key buildings you need to destroy, but due to them being spread out, actually doing that can be tricky, double so with so many workers running around. His attacks are not to bad and come from predictable locations, and proper defeneses in key spots will shut him down, provided you have an answer to SCUD Launchers of course. The toxin bunkers can actually be very useful for blunting Trax's attacks if popped at the right time, as the resulting toxins spread far and last for quite a while, which will melt his lightly armored units. Trax in general is a pretty solid commander though, all the extra toxin damage on his units adds up fast and he doesn't give up to much for it. Tao's map is 100% a race to knock out his power before your base is obliterated by his nukes. Luckily he never rebuilds any lost buildings and he isn't super aggressive, with his Helix's being the largest threat. Air Power or Super Weapons will work wonders vs his base, but this mission defiantly will be a short, one way or the other. Besides all the things listed in the video, Tao also has more expensive infantry, sans the Hacker, and more expensive aircraft as well, with the latter making up for their nuclear bonuses at least. Good luck with the next two generals though, they are some of the roughest for completely differencing reasons and I can't even imagine dealing with them on hard difficulty.
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Jan 18, 2022 13:42
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UED Special Ops posted:Good luck with the next two generals though, they are some of the roughest for completely differencing reasons and I can't even imagine dealing with them on hard difficulty. Only one of them sucks, and took many tries.
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Jan 18, 2022 13:50
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Only one of them sucks, and took many tries. Almost 100% certain I know which one, cause even on normal would brick wall on them over and over before I learned how to mess with their AI, and even then...
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Jan 18, 2022 13:58
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UED Special Ops posted:Almost 100% certain I know which one, cause even on normal would brick wall on them over and over before I learned how to mess with their AI, and even then... Oh, on Hard they are just a pain in the rear end with their hyper aggressive style.
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Jan 18, 2022 14:02
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It's easy, you just memorize the timing of their powers and bait them with cluster of buildings that you cancel before the power lands. Simple!
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Jan 18, 2022 14:42
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FoolyCharged posted:It's easy, you just memorize the timing of their powers and bait them with cluster of buildings that you cancel before the power lands. Oh how wrong you are 
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Jan 18, 2022 16:01
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biosterous posted:dr thrax is definitely the general who has the most fun, and thus i am a fan I prefer nuke guy, he sounds legitimately unhinged and I love it. IIRC, if you get his map as one of the other Chinese generals your tanks at the beginning shout that he's gone rogue and is planning to nuke all of China.
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Jan 18, 2022 16:03
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Cythereal posted:I prefer nuke guy, he sounds legitimately unhinged and I love it. The nuclear general's map is...odd. The nuclear silos have pre-set targets and can be built around, and the AI never rebuilds anything. It has an unfinished feel. I wonder if it was the last one finished before the content lock? The Nuke General is a strange subfaction who are basically core China...but more. His units are a bit snazzier all round and he's not locked out of anything (the wiki says he can't trigger firestorms but I'm not sure that's the case, he just only has the Inferno Cannon and Dragon tank to set them off, and little reason to build either). He has a few cut units, mostly obvious stuff (nuclear-tipped Tank Hunter rockets and upgrades to replace the Nuclear Shells/Tanks, making him similar to Thrax in that he starts with the upgrade and was planned to be able to go even further). One curiosity is a mention in the files of "nuclear Red Guard". I wonder what they were intended to be?
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Jan 18, 2022 16:32
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Loxbourne posted:The nuclear general's map is...odd. The nuclear silos have pre-set targets and can be built around, and the AI never rebuilds anything. It has an unfinished feel. I wonder if it was the last one finished before the content lock? Could just be a like a Toxin Rebel, but for nuclear radiation?
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Jan 18, 2022 16:38
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My favorite cut unit has to be Nuke Hackers. Not only for the image of Hackers running around planting low yield nukes or whatever they were supposed to do, but also just to see what kind of lunatic would use Hackers in that fashion.You could probably count the number of times people have used the Hackers' other function on one hand since 2003.
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Jan 19, 2022 00:25
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Nuclear Red Guard should've just been RA2 Desolators.
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Jan 19, 2022 05:21
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I think one of the problems with the generals challenge is that, as Jobbo is demonstrating to us, by far the best way to deal with pretty much every map is to turtle up and spam superweapons/generals powers until the AI is crippled, and that's not really my preferred playstyle these days (or very fun to watch). Part of that is just the standard RTS solo mission dynamic where the challenge is to fend off predictable attack waves until you have built your win condition, and part of it is Generals specific with how destructive the powers are, the ease of spamming superweapons, and the fact that many of the generals aren't really built for slogging through layers of fortifications conventionally. Like, going over the list of generals seen so far, only two of them have both decent tanks and access to artillery units at all. So it tends to feel a little samey after a while. No matter the matchup, superweapon spam is a viable answer.
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Jan 20, 2022 04:15
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Skirmish has a toggle, that lets players have just 1 active super weapon at a time. Feels like that should've been turned on in the challenges, too. And then they should've had time for another pass on the maps. I'd have liked that you were only allowed to build a single super weapon, and if it gets destroyed you can't replace it, but make it way tougher.
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Jan 20, 2022 10:20
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Well the latter doesn't sound that fun and is ultra punishing but limiting superweapons like in previous games 100% could have worked outside of skirmish, as things do tend to devolve into super weapon spam on these challenges mostly. RA2 worked well with just one super weapon and those were likewise incredibly powerful.
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Jan 20, 2022 11:19
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The biggest issue is the fact that you always start at a huge disadvantage. There'd be much less of a need for using mass superpower spam if the enemy generals didn't immediately start with all their tech up and running. Because they will have a superpower up early, you need to outpace it to destroy it. In order to do that, you need to turtle up hard to survive incoming waves. We'll see a lot more of that limitation in the next video, and why its paramount to build defenses ASAP and generating the necessary weapons/powers to strike at critical enemy infrastructure, or enemy superweapons. Which may all just be a victim of a lack of development time, or 2003 was just that much of a simpler time 
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Jan 20, 2022 13:04
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Loxbourne posted:One curiosity is a mention in the files of "nuclear Red Guard". I wonder what they were intended to be? IIRC Shockwave restored that. Tao's Red Guard there don't have the restored bajonett mode, but can get an upgrade (which also affects other infantry in various ways, such as causing Tank Hunter missiles to leave radiation on impact) that gives them a special attack that has to be triggered manually: They fire a tiny little mini-nuke as a rifle grenade. It does very little actual damage - about the same as a tank shell - but leaves a radiation patch.
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Jan 20, 2022 13:26
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This is not the last game to have something like general challenge and I have to say I like the later incarnation better. I think this one lost a lot from not having enough time in the oven.
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Jan 20, 2022 14:04
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General's Challenge 03: Laser General Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brpd5OuFA6Y General's Challenge 03: Laser General Part 3 The General's Challenge is a series of missions that follow the same basic theme - What if you fought a specific General from one of the three factions? Each of these Generals brings their own pros and cons, with the challenge being how one deals with them using their own special sub-faction. N/A Location: Unknown Objective: Destroy all non-defensive structures. Author's note: The most frustrating General to date, General Alexander is the perfect example of a map and faction that force long, drawn out games.  Name: General Alexander Aliases: None Affiliation: USA Occupation: 4-Star General Voiced/Played by: Karina Thomas / Jeannie Elias General Alexander is the master of "a good defense is a good offense", having many tools to strike at her opponents without fear of retaliation, or simply shutting them down before they reach her base.  Name: Prince Kassad Aliases: Nona Affiliation: GLA Occupation: Unknown Voiced/Played by: Uncredited Preferring to remain in the shadows, Prince Kassad is a master of camouflage and stealth. The GLA has achieved much thanks to this man's ingenuity. N/A Aftermath: N/A
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Jan 27, 2022 01:23
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God these two are the worst. Even on lower difficulties they're assholes to deal with.
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Jan 27, 2022 09:01
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It's always been a tiny bit lame, that the US generals are all balanced around none of them having access to normal tanks. Makes them all kinda the same in practice.
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Jan 27, 2022 09:15
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:God these two are the worst. Even on lower difficulties they're assholes to deal with. 100% agreed, these two are always incredibly unfun to face regardless of your commander. General Alexander is flat out busted if you don't 100% understand how to cheese her constant Super Weapon and Air Strikes, alongside her air drops. The map is just wretched and incredibly tilted in her favor. Those EMP Patriots? Yeah, if they hit any buildable aircraft it is downed in a single hit, so good luck attacking her base outside of mass Super Weapon spam. Trying to get the supplies further up your island or on that center island is a fools errand and just further opens you up to air attacks, especially her incredibly powerful Alpha Aurora Bombers, which drop fuel air bombs and I believe 4 of them can flat out destroy ANY building in the game. Also, while it doesn't come up in the map here, I believe that she has a $300 discount on Col. Burton as well. Also her Particle Cannon's duration is a bit shorter but deal more damage. All in all, you HAVE to cheese her map or you will lose, no ifs ands or buts about it. Now Prince Kassad is a jerk for an entirely different reason. He is relentless with his needling attacks on your base and dealing with those Rocket Buggies gets old fast. Having your workers/Dozers melted by Anthrax Bombs and dealing with constant Sneak Attacks and Rebel Ambushes further adds to the "fun". Oh, and his base being divided between the top and bottom left of the map makes it a slog to root him out, and if you don't know where he builds his SCUD Storm enjoy eating a volley of that on your tightly packed base before it is shown where it is. He is just a lot of busy work that is constantly drawing your attention which can make launching your own attacks on him difficult if you are not good at multi-tasking under pressure. 100% need to advance slowly if you go on a ground assault thanks to tons of hidden Demo Traps everywhere and there always seems to be some hidden building somewhere to slow you down and force a second or even third sweep of the area. Still not as horrible as Alexander but a solid second in terms of pain and annoyance vs the other Generals.
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Jan 27, 2022 09:22
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A fun little exploit with Alexander that you can only pull off with Granger or Townes is stealing the southeastern Particle Cannon and using it against her. Normally, if you try capturing that Particle Cannon, this is the one time the AI is "smart" enough to sell it (even though it's scripted to happen if you try capturing it). The reason why only Granger and Townes can do this is that they can build Microwave Tanks, which disables all of a building's functionality while it's zapping a building. That means you can't even sell it off if an enemy is capturing it. As far as Alexander goes, this is the perfect map to showcase her strong points. Difficult to attack and you'll never be able to attack her with a large tank army. And even if you could, her numerous EMP Patriots would disable and dismantle even the largest tank armies. In the online meta, she's generally considered the second-weakest faction, edging out vChina, because all of her armored units, excluding Dozers, cost more. I think her Vees are 150 dollars more expensive but considering the Vee Spam any decent USA player will do, that really adds up after a while. But if an Alexander player can stabilize and prevent any crucial damage from being done early in the game, her late game is an absolute beast. You mentioned her Particles being cheaper, but that is an understatement. Her Particles cost 2500, half of the usual cost, and she can spam them like crazy. Aurora Alphas are so insane. A single Alpha can wipe out an entire army of infantry or lightly armored vehicles, like basically anything GLA makes, if they bunch up together, which they will tend to do. It can make her super frustrating to play against, because EMP Patriots + Pathfinders is a really hard combination to break, and even artillery will avail you little because, again, Alphas. Add these on to USA's usual very powerful support abilities and you have what I think is a fairly underrated general. It's just that early game can be brutal.
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Jan 27, 2022 12:52
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General Alexander is an example of how a balancing failure can also be making a faction that is no fun to fight. Alexander may play like a lot of RTS players, and I can see the design appeal of an ultimate-turtle faction that wants to hole up and blast the map with support powers. Generals is an unusually good game for such a faction, given the heavy reliance on powerful off-map abilities. But facing an established base of hers in a defensible position is such a miserable slog. Fortunately the designers did learn from her and we probably won't ever see her like again outside a Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander clone. Her cut units are fascinating. Buried deep in the game files are Americanised versions of the other factions' superweapons -a "Tomahawk Storm" and an American-styled ICBM silo. They're unfinished but do have 3D models, although the silo is just the US particle cannon bay doors without the emitter underneath. General Alexander with multiple superweapons would be interesting; I can see her becoming very overpowered with particle cannons to finish off survivors. The ICBM silo is buggy but functional and it's common for mods to re-enable them. (The Tomahawk Storm doesn't have the Scud Storm's obvious chemical tank, which is unsurprising. I can't image EA letting Westwood depict a US faction using chemical weapons).
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Jan 27, 2022 14:09
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It's not chemical weapons, it's freedom fumes.
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Jan 27, 2022 14:11
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Lets see, for Prince Kassad all I could find for cut stuff is three things: 1: His Quad Cannons would have had a Sniper Rounds upgrade that would one-shot ANY Infantry unit. Strangely enough in the GLA Zero Hour campaign when you take on Prince Kassad he actually can purchase this upgrade. 2: Kassad would have had the ability to use Disguise ability on Battle Buses, which would have been a sight and made them a bit more useful. However, Kassad in the final game never actually can build this unit so... yeah. 3: Fake Buildings would have had the ability to apply Camo-Netting, just like Kassad's real buildings, but for some reason or the other this upgrade was left out. All in all Kassad is a bit middle of the road for cut stuff, vs say poor Alexander or Townes, who had a swath of planned stuff that would have made them incredibly unique that never made it in.
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Jan 29, 2022 00:14
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Ok so, the Stealth General is without a doubt the basis of my best/worst/strongest memories of this game. In my mid-late teens we used to play this a fair bit a LAN parties, and all the bullshit and shenanigans of an 8 player FFA map made for great times. The memorable game, played at the point of 20 hours without sleep, was a 1v1v1v1 on a map neatly divided into four quarters with choke points in between, in which the guy playing the stealth general pretty quickly wiped one player out while me and the fourth dude was focused fighting on each other. By the time we accepted that we had to turn our attention towards him, he had covered literally all the available space on half of the map with hidden stinger sites, something which we were completely incapable of dealing with. I assume we were playing with limited super weapons and were pretty bad at the game, but even combining our efforts we knocked our heads bloody against that poo poo, to the point where GLA Guy left for a good while to make a sandwich, and we still hadn't made much headway by the time he returned. In the end, after several hours, we just resigned and went to bed instead. In retrospect I don't know how we didn't find a way to deal with it, but it still remains my strongest/best/worst/most frustrating/best/most hilarious memory of playing this game at release.
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Jan 30, 2022 03:26
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General's Challenge 04: Laser General Part 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf-hUbN0yp8 General's Challenge 04: Laser General Part 4 The General's Challenge is a series of missions that follow the same basic theme - What if you fought a specific General from one of the three factions? Each of these Generals brings their own pros and cons, with the challenge being how one deals with them using their own special sub-faction. N/A Location: Unknown Objective: Destroy all non-defensive structures. Author's note: General Leang [Pronounced Ling] is an interesting concept with a delivery that falls flat, limited by the AI that runs on scripts, eliminating what potential she has.  Name: General Leang Aliases: None Affiliation: China Occupation: General Class AAAA Voiced/Played by: Pamela Woon REDACTED N/A Aftermath: N/A
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Feb 7, 2022 17:54
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My understanding is that General Leang was meant to be China's 'boss' general and that the US and GLA were meant to have counterparts for the Generals Challenge as boss fights. Supposedly there was a planned US General Ironside based around tanks, and a GLA General Deathstrike based on suicide units.
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Feb 7, 2022 19:26
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| # ? May 5, 2024 06:48 |
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Cythereal posted:My understanding is that General Leang was meant to be China's 'boss' general and that the US and GLA were meant to have counterparts for the Generals Challenge as boss fights. Supposedly there was a planned US General Ironside based around tanks, and a GLA General Deathstrike based on suicide units. Makes sense, just a shame that the expansion had so much cut from it.
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Feb 7, 2022 19:33
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