Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3/Santa Monica

Quick Walkthrough
After you get your Conyard, build power barracks refinery power refinery war factory Place all power in sea where the lasers will protect it.

Build up engineers, capture derrick above you, capture derrick to the southeast (right of you). Avoid the mirage tank guarding the area to keep your engineers safe.

Place an engineer near the airport tower (ready to capture when you get the secondary objective).

Capture the allied bases directly to the north of you and the air base on the right. You will need some antitank infantry to take care of the turrets.

Capturing all this will significantly reduce the enemy's capability to assault your position.

Build a mixture of forces for defending your base all the time. Use special powers on the observatory to give your ally breathing space.

Take it slowly from there by eliminating the other allied bases and capturing the media centers. You can build allied units after capturing one of their construction yards.

Tips

 * Build everything on sea except barracks and war factory and defences
 * Use engineers in the beginning to capture various bases

Big Guns
Your first objective is extremely easy. You watch as four of your ships are destroyed by a group of allied units on the shore. The corner of the Black Tortoise is visible on the screen, along with two of its huge gun turrets. Select a gun turret, then target an enemy unit to destroy it. Destroy all the visible units on shore to progress to the next objective.

The Big Picture
The next phase consists of you building a base and taking over the media towers. However, the media towers are your least concern. There are lots of enemy bases spread out all over the area. There are lots of optional objectives as well, that are doled out as the mission continues.

Each base poses its own danger to you. For instance, the base immediately to the north builds two naval yards. Left unchecked, it will crank out aircraft carriers that can strike your buildings without moving an inch.

The base to the east guards the airport tower (an optional objective) with airfields and air units. Several other unseen bases crank out armor and infantry.

Just taking out the unit-producing buildings will not be enough. As long as there is a construction yard available in a given base, any building destroyed will be replaced. You must get the construction yard in each base you are attacking.

Early in the game, the enemy bases are vulnerable to engineer strikes. The problem is that if you neglect your own base defenses you will soon find yourself vulnerable to the mass armor strike which is coming. Part of that armor consists of athens cannons which can destroy your base in a matter of seconds, and can attack from outside the range of your defense turrets. Nice, huh?

Ignore naval defense early on, because the Black Tortoise defense turrets will defend your base against enemy naval units coming out of the bay. However, sometimes late in the mission they stop auto-targeting enemy units for some reason. Hopefully you'll have eliminated the threat before that happens.

Base Camp
Timing is of the essence to keep from being overwhelmed. Build a power core, dojo, power core, refinery, mecha bay, power core, refinery. A good strategy (from the Quick Walkthrough above) is to set all buildings except the dojo and mecha bay to construct in the water. This keeps them away from enemy armor attacks, and reduces the amount of buildings you must protect.

As soon as the dojo is out, set it to train 6 engineers. As soon as the first one comes out, send it north to pick up the cash crate and the oil derrick.

BONUS: If you think you have time, build a defense turret and set it up to the northeast of your base, near the houses. For some reason, the houses are enemy-tinged, so your turret will destroy them. Inside most will be a money crate.

As soon as the mecha bay is ready, set it to build a sudden transport. As soon as that comes out, set the mecha bay to advance up to the next tech level. Sit and collect money until all of your engineers come out, then put all 5 of them in the sudden transport. Take the sudden transport to the eastern oil derrick, dropping off one engineer by the oil derrick to take it, and loading the rest back up.

Take the transport into the enemy base and capture the construction yard, a refinery (preferrably while the truck is dumping off so you get that too), a power plant, and an air base. Immediately build an allied barracks with the construction yard and set it to crank out engineers. As fast as the engineers come out, have them take over buildings, unit producing structures first, powerplants and refineries next, and the airport optional objective last. As you take them over, sell them except for the refineries. You will not be able to keep this base without a major fight, and the money is worth more to you than the base. Let the refineries remain, making you money, until they are destroyed by the enemy.

If you capture all the buildings and are not yet under attack, train 5 engineers from the enemy barracks and put them in the sudden transport. Scan the field for an enemy armor unit to disguise your transport, and take it north and slightly west. You are looking for the enemy construction yard and armor facility. Overall, the enemy air is not overwhelming, but the athena cannons are devastating. Try to get at least one of these if not both. If you get both, you will have cut the teeth from the enemy.

After that, accomplish the rest of these tasks as soon as possible:


 * 1) Advance your mecha bay to the max level.
 * 2) Get a mainframe core built (steps 1 and 2 let you make wave-force artillery).
 * 3) Build attack/defense groups of 10 tsunami tanks and 2 wave-force artillery.  Hotkey these at your base and save often to take out groups of armor with athena tanks.  When you are on the offensive, set the artillery to attack enemy structures and protect them with the tsunamis.
 * 4) Build some infantry and tank busters and fortify all the buildings to the north along the water corridor with mixtures of both.
 * 5) Set up four defender cores as air defense along the north edge of your base to defend against bombing runs on your refineries.  A set of four mechatangus won't hurt either.
 * 6) Build sudden transports, load them with 5 engineers, disguise them and attack the enemy bases to the northeast.

Gut the base to your north by using artillery to take out the construction yard, then the two naval bases. Defend your artillery with the tsunamis and infantry barricaded in the buildings.

If you haven't gotten both the enemy armor and construction yard to the northeast, get them both as soon as possible.

After that, take out the mid-northern base with the same kind of force.

Ignore the main objectives of capturing the media centers until you've eliminated most of the resistance, then the main objectives will be a piece of cake.