Command & Conquer/Austria or Slovakia

There are two choices here.

Repair (Austria)
Choose the left arrow to do this mission.

This is a very easy mission, relative to your current level of expertise, if you have got this far, although it is much harder than the first scenario. There is no point in providing a detailed walkthrough, but there are some points worth noting.

1) You now have the use of Rocket Launchers and Repair Bays, although you cannot produce any vehicles or buildings until the end. Nod now gets mobile artillery. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to understand that you should attack these units with your armour, and keep all your other units far away.

2) The scenario gets easier and easier as time passes, as you push the edge of the visible region forward, especially when you find the choke points, one in the west and one in the east. Eventually, you learn that the Nod base has only one exit, and then you can really bottle them up.

3) Nod has 3 SAM sites. Two of them are trivial to take out, but the third one, in the far NW, presents a bit of a challenge, albeit nothing serious. If you take out the SAM sites, then you can bomb the Nod base with impunity. Keep in mind that Airstrikes are only effective against infantry and other soft targets. However, Nod does use batches of infantry ... :)

4) You could certainly do a frontal assault on the intact Nod base, if you like losing troops. It is to be hoped that you do not throw away your irreplaceable vehicles doing this, but you do have enough money to buy hordes of infantry. On the other hand, you could shell the Nod base from the surrounding hills, a la Dien Bien Phu.

5) Nod has a Construction Yard hiding in the far NW corner of the map. This means that, no matter how many Nod buildings you destroy from range, they can always be quickly replaced.

6) It won't be long before the Nod Harvester comes out to play. You could certainly pick it off, but there will be a massive response. You have been warned. And BTW, Nod can replace their Harvesters in this scenario.

Special: free cash
You can find a crate containing $2,000 on the map. Just touch the crate with a unit to get the cash. The crate is north of the village, in the river bend, and by a tree.

Defend a village (Slovakia)
Choose the right arrow to do this mission.

This scenario has a bug-like flaw that makes it almost unplayable. Basically, there is a random factor, entirely beyond your control, that may cause you to lose instantly, no matter how well you are doing, and even if you have already invested a large amount of time and effort in the scenario.

In the final cutscene before the scenario starts, you see some strange plant-like things, possibly life forms, that appear to be associated with Tiberium. If your intuition tells you that they are dangerous, you will be right. Any unprotected human that gets too close to them will die. They are called "blossom trees". More about them later.

Let's say you start the scenario by scouting a bit with your initial force, finding some Tiberium, setting up shop there, and then heading for the village. This isn't obviously wrong, and it doesn't immediately cost you the game, but you quickly learn that the village was already under attack as the scenario started. So you restart the scenario.

This time, you send most of your vehicles into the village immediately, head north from there, and defeat the early Nod attack on the village, while setting up shop in your starting location. You build up normally and advance toward the Nod home area. After some time has passed, and everything appears to be under control, you get the "mission failed" message. WTF???

You will have noticed that there is a lot of Tiberium in the village, and you might have noticed that the villagers wander around, and it turns out that they do wander into the Tiberium, and yes, this could cost you the game. So you do some situation analysis. Actually, you don't have to do that, because we have done it for you.

You need to know that if Dr. Moebius or 10 villagers die, you lose instantly. (You can determine this by killing them yourself and counting.) Because you are in some sense under time pressure, you might consider attacking Nod quickly. You need to know that Nod has TWO heavily defended bases, so any fast attack is guaranteed to lose. The only viable strategy is to fight a long battle of attrition. At this point, you may decide to abandon this scenario and play the other level 8 one. That's fine, but we still do have a couple of cards left to play.

The basic problem in this scenario is how to stop the villagers from being killed by the Tiberium. The obvious answer is to set up your Refinery in or near the village and erase the Tiberium deposits there as quickly as possible, also blocking the ford to the Tiberium deposit east of the village with a vehicle. Now, this is problematic, because the village is too cluttered with obstacles to allow you to develop a good base there, but it might work. However, random walks by the villagers may still cost you the game. Furthermore, a Blossom Tree appears in the village quite soon, and it also kills villagers, and you cannot remove it by any means. You need to know that you cannot destroy it or Tiberium with "forced fire", even though there is at least one combat process that does destroy Tiberium (see scenario 7). In addition, Blossom Trees generate Tiberium. So it's time to play our last card.

There is one bizarre approach that is virtually guaranteed to work. When the scenario starts, rush your entire force into the village, leaving one tank and half your infantry behind to guard (block) the east bridge. Leave one Rocket Launcher behind in the south (they do too much collateral damage), and use the other one to block the ford to the Tiberium patch just east of the village. Take out the Nod artillery unit north of the village with your two tanks, and then block the two fords north of the village with them. You can afford to do a little bit of scouting north of the village at this time, but your main focus needs to now be on walling IN the villagers. That's right! You are going to build a sandbag wall right through the middle of the village. Unfortunately, building a wall in C&C is rather painful, because you have to build it one square at a time, and you cannot build any other infrastructure at the same time.

Start by deploying your MCV SE of the Tiberium patch. Then quickly run a sandbag wall straight up from its right edge; this wall sits on the road and ends up in the right ford north of the village. At the same time, run a wall diagonally to the SW; this wall turns west two squares north of the road that passes by the hospital. You will need to try this several times until you get it right. If villagers insist on standing where you need to build, just reload the scenario. By the time you have finished your wall, no more than 3 villagers should be dead. Save the game.

Now extend your wall right into the ford and build a Power Plant immediately NE of that. When placing your buildings, keep in mind that you must leave room to move around inside your base. Note that the bottom row of squares of each building are blocked for construction purposes but open for movement. Next, build a Refinery, immediately NW of your Power Plant. The NE edge of your Refinery is jammed right up against a group of trees. Your Harvester starts taking Tiberium from a patch to the NW. It is important to erase this patch very quickly, because that is where your Weapons Factory needs to go. Next, build a Repair Bay, immediately SW of your Refinery, sandwiched between the river and some trees. Note that a Repair Bay is entirely open for movement purposes. Repair any combat damage right away. Next, build 3 wall sections west from the Repair Bay, and then a second Power Plant against the edge of the map, immediately north of the river. Finally, build a Weapons Factory, immediately NW of the Refinery. Due to the many obstacles you have to deal with, there is very little flexibility in this entire construction program. At a minimum, you must complete your second Power Plant before the first Nod attack, and hopefully your Weapons Factory as well. If you cannot meet this target, restart the scenario and try again. Save the game.

Your first new vehicle should be a tank, to solidify the defense in the SE, and then an APC, for overruns and to protect your infantry against Tiberium. (In order to produce APCs, you will need a Barracks. Place that just north of your second Power Plant.) By this time, you should see the first Nod attack waves: 3 types of vehicles and a big group of infantry. The infantry is dangerous to both vehicles and infantry, so you have to overrun it very quickly, using every available unit. The infantry group assembles just north of your base; this assembly area will be a serious threat for a while. Nod also sends airmobile attacks right into the middle of the village. If you are lucky, your Rocket Launchers or rocket infantry will shoot the helicopters down as they approach. If you are unlucky, collateral damage will kill villagers.

After using up your first Tiberium patch, switch to the one east of your Refinery (this happens automatically), because you still need a high income. However, after producing a few new vehicles, switch to the Tiberium patch NW of your Construction Yard. You want to clear this area out entirely, because you want to position some rocket infantry there to shoot down the Nod helicopters. (You cannot produce rocket vehicles in this scenario.)

After defeating several Nod attack waves, when your base is fairly secure and your army is a decent size, you will see BOTH Nod Harvesters invade your Tiberium patches. You do not want to attack them yet, so you will need to physically block them. You might be able to wall them in somehow. Whatever happens, they fixate on the Tiberium near the village; they never head for the SE map corner. At this point, the Nod income drops to zero. At least, it would if the AI is using standard rules. However, it will become clear that Nod still can produce a lot of stuff.

When the Nod income is eliminated, you may think that you are in good shape. DO NOT attack a Nod Harvester at this time! You will regret it. DO NOT approach the NW map corner with a scout at this time! You will regret it. You can have a look at the Nod base in the NE. It produces vehicles (only), and appears to be fairly quiet. You may think that this is a good place to attack. DO NOT attack the Nod base in the NE at this time! You will regret it.

Even if you're not doing any of the really bad things, the Nod attacks will be getting quite dangerous by now, especially the infantry. You just don't have enough troops yet to deal with a gang of more than 10 infantry armed with rockets and flamethrowers. Most likely, you will have already tried all the DO NOTs mentioned above, and been trounced every time. You may be rather fed up. It's time to use a dirty trick. Run a line of sandbags north from your base and block the river ford. This will make it a lot harder for the AI to attack you from the NW, because the AI is unable to shoot at walls. Thus, their infantry will either mill around on the north side of the river, or take the long, roundabout route.

What you need to do next is upgrade your economy. You should have harvested all the Tiberium near the village by now. If you have about $4,000 left, you are in pretty good shape. Run a line of sandbags from your base to the SE map corner, and build a new Refinery there. This will be a long, slow process, especially if you have to wait for villagers to get out of the way. If you don't have enough money, you will need to distance harvest, and that will be really painful, because you will need to move your Harvester there and back again manually.

At this time, you should also be herding the villagers into a small part of the SW region of the map so that you have a clear route through the village. Expect this to take a long time, as you wait for villagers to move.

Once your economy is booming, build up a large attack force and go after the NW Nod base. Be very careful! The Nod base defense force is enormous. Lure them out and kill them piecemeal. Eventually you will be able to crush this base, and then you can wipe out the other base. Note that any attack on a Nod base is liable to provoke a strong airmobile attack on the village that teleports in from nowhere.

Wall manipulations
In order to move your forces from your base area to the SE part of the village, and vice-versa, you will need to cross your sandbag wall. You will need to keep selling wall sections, replacing them quickly, of course.

In order to maneuver more freely, and to keep the villagers away from the combat zones, you will need to herd them into the SW corner of the map. For example, when the villagers have wandered away from the area NE of your Construction Yard, build a new wall east from the Construction Yard to the river. Due to the rock formations in the area, you will only need one wall section.

Note on destroying Tiberium
Your rocket units cannot shoot at Tiberium directly, even with "forced fire". However, if the warheads scatter onto Tiberium, they will destroy it.