Grey Goo Hard Difficulty Campaign Walkthrough

Introduction

Grey Goo is a sci-fi RTS.  With millions of possible planets out there humanity created a system for deciding which planets were habitable and had life on them and which ones were barren or had no life on them.  The probe became known as “goo.”  The probe would replicate using the resources of each planet and forever expand outward in order to create more probes that could discover more planets.  But the experiment was a failure.  The Earth colonization program lead to only war and destruction, so the humans returned to Earth shutting down all of their colonies, and turning off the goo.  But the goo stayed alive and flourished in the universe.  The goo also evolved to form armies with the same goal, plotting the entire universe.  Now more aggressive the goo has sieged the planet of a group known as “The Beta.”  The Beta have been dodging The Goo’s detection for a long time and have developed a technology to move from planet to planet using a resource called Catalyst.  As they opened up a hole in the universe they accidentally let a human ship into their system.  Following the humans was a small bit of goo.  Now the three factions are at war with each other under the biggest galactic misunderstanding in history.

This walkthrough will show you how to get through the campaign on hard difficulty.  The campaign is 15 missions total with 5 sections per faction.

Each mission will introduce some new units and each section will first go through what those units are for and what they counter.  However so you best understand the game this walkthrough also includes an introduction into all the units of the game.  The game is all about hard counters.  A single anti-air unit can wipe out a dozen planes if positioned correctly.  A single anti-tank unit can ambush and quickly wipe out a dozen tanks.  Getting the right unit composition is very important for victory.

The Beta Units

Commando: This is a light infantry unit.  It deals 1/3 the damage of a stalker but only costs one supply.  The big difference is that this unit is only 4/5 the health of a stalker, which means equal supply you are getting a unit that is 1.5x the health of a stalker. This means this unit will act as your front line in an early unit in game.  Due to their slightly higher speed they are often used as early game scouts.

Stalker: This is the first anti-armor unit of the game.  It is faster, has high range, costs far less, has less population, and has similar health to the predator.  The downside to this unit is it has far less damage and far less armor penetration.  It makes for a great early game unit, but the predator will replace it.  If you do not have a tank attachment built, stalkers are your discount replacement for predators.

Predator: Can fire on the move.  As an anti-tank unit this in invaluable for taking out artillery units.  However they are very slow meaning that any strategy revolving around them will be one that is easy to point out.  They are the late game anti-armor unit and all armies will do well to mix in some of them.

Seeker: This non-combat unit is purely used for detecting stealth.  It is the cheapest and fastest to build detection unit in the game.  It also has a superior range to all beta units so it can be used to spot for artillery.  As well it has an invisible upgrade allowing for it to become an ultimate spotting unit.

Cloudburst: This is the ground anti-air unit.  It has exceptionally high range and can fire on the move, downside, it only shoots up.  It is on the pricier side of units however not many are needed to cover against air because of their high range.

Hailstorm: This is the beta artillery unit.  It is the weakest artillery unit in the game.  However it has the most health and is the most armored and has a high armor penetration scale.  This means in an all out artillery war, the hailstorm will come out on top.

Avalanche: This is an anti-building unit.  It deals very very slow damage and will not be that useful in an actual brawl.  However it does have awesome armor penetration allowing it to two shot most armored units in the game.

Guardian: This unit has no damage unless it is placed inside of a wall.  When in a wall it can fire land and air and is the ultimate defensive unit.  Common strategies involve planting walls inside enemy bases and putting these guys in them.  Their damage is very high, but unfortunately they are stationary.

Stratus: This is an aerial recon vehicle.  It will spot enemy units as well as act as detection against invisible units.

Warbird: This is an multi-purpose fighter.  It can provide anti-air support against incoming enemy bombers, or it can take to the ground and deal damage against enemies.  It is one of the fastest units in the game and has one of the fastest rates of fire in the game.  This makes them excellent for quick in and out missions.

Nimbus: Area of effect bomber.  Great against enemy units as it deals splash damage.  It also has an exceptional armor penetration value making it very good against armored units and buildings.  They have far more health than the warbird, but on the downside they are much slower and have a far lower rate of fire.

Hand of Ruk: This is the ultimate unit of the beta.  It is built by laying down a large hub and equipping it with two large factories and one of each attachment.  Upon beginning construction you lose all of those facilities.  Once build the Hand becomes a mobile construction factory able to produce all units in the game.  It has six equippable turret slots that most units can jump into to defend from close range attacks.  The Hand also has a long range nuke that will destroy most units in a single shot.  The downside to the unit is that it is very easily swarmed and has no natural anti-air defenses.

The Human Units

Trident: This unit costs less, has more health, and a higher rate of fire than the revolver, however it has half as much damage.  These units are best used as meat to the grinder.

Revolver: This is a human anti-armor unit.  It is much faster than the gladius, deals about 33% less damage, and half about half of the armor penetration.  If no gladius is available, these can make for a great addition to the army.

Dagger: This is the first detection unit for the humans.  It can be upgraded to become a stealth fighting unit.  It deals very little damage and has very little health.  But it has really good vision meaning it can be used to spot armies.

Gladius: This unit is the ultimate anti-tank weapon.  It is almost identical to the predators in every single way, including its ability to fire on the move.  It has 5 more health and costs half as much making it one of the strongest cost per pound units in the game.

Longbow: An anti-air unit.  Can be upgraded to attack ground targets as well.  Due to its high range the upgrade transforms it into a non-splash artillery.

Howitzer: This is the artillery unit.  It has higher damage than the hailstorm but far less armor.

Lancer: This is an anti-building unit.  After a slight delay it will begin channeling a beam that will deal more damage as it continues to channel.  It makes them very weak in an army but very good at destroying buildings, mother goos, and ultimate units.

Monitor: This is the aerial recon unit.  It can be upgraded to be stealth.  However it has no stealth detection.  In exchange it has very good vision.

Scimitar: This is the anti-air aerial unit.  It is the slowest air unit in the game and deals the least damage.  It can attack ground targets but has low penetration so will be particular bad against buildings and armored units.

Scythe: Aerial bomber.  Deals area of effect damage.  Compared to the Scimitar it is better in every single way in a very massive way.  However it only shoots down.

Alpha: This is the ultimate unit for the human faction.  To build it first build an attachment to a cross.  Now build a large factory on the attachment and build the three other attachments to the available attachment slots.  Once equipped you can build it from this factory, the factory stays unlike the beta ultimate.  The Alpha can fire a laser in a line wiping out anything in its path.  When units get close to it they will deploy an area of effect attack that will knock the enemy back.  The Alpha also has counter-measures to defend itself against air attacks.

The Goo Units

Mother Goo: Deals excessively high damage against buildings.  When they swarm units they snare them in place.  Can climb up mountain clifs.

Small Protean Goo: These goo units can swarm units.  When they kill a unit it provides a healing bonus.  Can climb up mountain clifs.

Large Protean Goo: These units can swarm units.  When they are around units they will provide a slow against those units.  Can climb up mountain clifs.

Drover: This unit is produced four at a time from small protean goos.  They are much faster than other light units but have far less health and have very low range.  However they can attack on the move making them very capable in large packs in the early game.

Strider: They are the weakest anti-armor unit in the game.  However you can build many more of them faster than you can build any other anti-armor unit.  On the downside they cost an even supply so they will not make good in an end game army.

Radiant: This is the only goo detection unit.  Like the dagger it can be upgraded for stealth.  However it does almost double the damage of the dagger making it far better of a harassment tool.

Tempest: This is the goo anti-air unit.  They are capable of walking up cliff faces meaning you can plant them in awkward places to catch your enemies off guard.

Dweller: This unit is essentially a land mine.  It will plant itself in the ground and become invisible.  When units step on it, it deals area of effect damage.  As an added bonus upon being destroyed it transforms into a small proteon goo to finish off whatever units stepped on it.  An upgrade can make it explode into two goos.

Destructor: Arguably the most powerful unit in the game.  They can be upgraded to deal area of effect damage or have a shot that bounces.  They are an anti-armor unit that with upgrades can take on all units and structures.

Crescent: These are an artillery unit.  They deal four times as much damage as the beta artillery unit and twice as much as the human artillery unit.  They are very powerful, however they deal no direct damage.  Instead they attack the ground and whatever units walk on their goo will take damage and be snared.  These are also able to crawl up cliffs and mountains providing for some excellent sniping positions on enemy units and buildings.

Bastion: This unit deals no damage, however with an upgrade it can deal area of effect damage upon death.  This unit will taunt enemy units and absorb damage.  They have extremely high health and are very armored.  On the downside it is very hard to save this unit from dying.

Purger: This is the goo ultimate unit.  Like all of the other goo type units it can swarm enemy units and buildings and deal damage to whatever is inside of it.  It also has an attack that will attack in an area of effect at range.  This area of effect attack is the weakest of all the ultimate units.  The Purger makes up for by having 2000 more health than the alpha and 1000 more health than the Hand of Ruk.  In terms of an ultimate meet up, the Purger always wins.

1. Battle at Hunters’ Valley

The Beta faction have hubs.  The headquarters can attach four possible structures.  There are three hub sizes small (2 structures), medium (4 structures), and large (6 structures).  The factory and large factory are the main ways of producing units.  Factories produce 1 at a time and large factories produce 3 at a time.  If a hub has a factory and an extension it can build the units associated with that extension.  Each extension will also unlock the ability to produce one technology from one group.

The refinery is your resource gathering structure, get down one as your first attachment and select it on the one resource node.

In this mission you will only have access to the factory’s base units.

Commandos are light units with no bonus damage.  They can be used as scouts and to provide consistent damage against all unit types.  In terms of building they are low priority due to their low utility.

Stalkers are your other choice.  Stalkers are anti-heavy units which have much more health.  Because of this microing them will yield better results.  However mixing some commandos in will be useful due to the low rate of fire of stalkers.

Make sure to have at least two factories down to produce units.

Once you have eight or so move northwest with your units.  In the forest you will find units, kill them and then kill units from the forest.  Forests provide cover and make you invisible unless you have detection, or an enemy ventures into the woods.

Continue heading north.  Here you will find another resource.

Add a small hub and attach a refinery to it.  You can also add another factory so you can make more units.

Now head southeast through the zigzag and make sure to go through the forests whenever you can.  This will allow you to get a lot of free kills.  You will notice that there is a base there that is under attack.  The computer AI by default will attack structures.  With a focused unit move in and wipe them out.  You can place your commandos inside the wall pieces (little cylinder pylons) to provide defensive fire.

There is a repair facility here.  Attach a hub to it.  Now this repair facility will become active and you can repair damaged units in it.

Moving north there will be more another resource.  You can setup a hub here and once again split between a refinery and a factory.  The forest here represents a great position to ambush enemies.

As you move north you will find a human faction base.  Destroying the connection pieces will disable the piece temporarily.  Alternatively you can just choose to beast down the base pieces which are far harder to replace.  The mission will end when you have destroyed all base pieces.

2. Battle at Ruk’s Bend

In this mission you will be able to use the tank attachment.  Building attachments also allows you to build a technology from that tree.

Build your refinery and then a factory.  Once the factory is done build up a single wall piece to the northeast near your base.  Load your single commando in there and continue building a second refinery.  The enemy will attack you very quickly in numbers you could not possible defend.

Now lay down your tank attachment on your factory.  Once it is complete begin rallying out Predators.  Go to the Tech tab and select the Predator upgrade from the tech tree to bolster your predator damage.

Lay down a small hub and build a Large Factory to help bolster your numbers.

Once you are stable and have some units head north of your base and snipe the units there using the forest as cover.  This is the first farm and you will gain free units by liberating it.

Next head to the east.  But make sure you have some units left at home base for defense.  There is a base there, destroy it.  Just north of the base is another farm with far more units, kill the units and you will get a group of stalkers.

You can build refineries near two more resource nodes which will allow you to further expand your production and allow you to get more units.  On the downside you will have to build a wall segment near there and man it with a commando.

Heading north (to the northeast corner) you will find another base.  Burst through the wall and move in.  The enemy will have a howitzer so move past enemy units and kill the howitzer.  Move into the base and force it down.  There will be one more farm just north of this base that you need to liberate.

Once you have done this take a group and move along the western side of the map from your base.  There will be some units sitting at a high ground that won’t be visible to you.  You need to go up that ramp and kill all the units in there to eliminate this death trap.

After this continue moving north to find the final base.  It’s an easier one to destroy.  You can attack from the south and use your other army (the one that took out the northern base) to flank it from the east.

Once this last base is destroyed the mission ends.

3. Battle at The Quarry

A bonus objective tells you that you will need to destroy the base.  This is not possible on hard difficulty.

The mission has three “catalyst packaging facilities” that you need to guard.  Each facility is a  small hub that will have a resource near by.  Building refineries and factories on all three points stat is very important.  You will also need to put a wall in front of each facility.  The more wall the better.

At home base build a hangar and a large factory to get out a lot of units to reinforce various zones and to get air units to help deal with multiple flanks.  There are two types of air units one is an air superiority fighter that can attack ground and the other is a fire bomber that deals splash damage.  Either will make for a good choice since their base damage is roughly the same.

Every so often there will be an earthquake.  Look at the health of your small hubs and repair after every earthquake as two earthquakes can destroy a small hub.

You will lose a lot of walls so keep re-building them.

Mid way through add a large factory with an artillery add on.  Send out some artillery units to all of your flanks to help bring down giant clumps of enemies.  After surviving so long the mission will end.

4. Battle at The Trench

The goal of this mission is to build a Hand of Ruk and move it to a certain point.

The Hand of Ruk is the ultimate unit for The Beta.  It is built by building a large hub with two large factories and one of each attachment type.  Unlike the humans you will lose all of these processing facilities as soon as you begin it.  So you can’t be dependent on this giant structure for your unit production, it just has to be extra.  Once you have all attachments on click on the Large Hub to create the Hand.

To start build a wall to the southeast of your base where the Catalyst Geyser (the resource) is.  Defend this point to your last life.  You will want to get an extra refinery built there so you can get some extra income.  You can also build a refinery directly north of the base (you need to follow the path east, north and then turn west instead of going across the river).  The enemy will never attack that point.

With all of these resources make sure to get a medium hub with some large factories, tank attachment and artillery attachment.

When your base is secure you can begin making your Hand of Ruk.  Large hub, two large factories, one of each attachment.  Hit the button and it will begin building…. it takes 5 minutes.  In the mean time begin cranking out the money units.

If you want to get the secondary objective of killing Crescents make sure to lay down a hangar and begin creating aircraft to patrol the map and quickly wipe them out.  Crescents can be particularly nasty for your ground forces so killing them should always be a priority.

Once your Hand of Ruk is complete make sure to have guardians or predators inside.  Note that around it are turret holes that units can jump in.  Now move your Hand of Ruk across the map with your units in tow.

Worth noting the Hand of Ruk can make two units at a time, a mobile unit building.

As well the Hand of Ruk has a literal nuke.  Right click on a unit and it will send a long range nuclear weapon at it wiping out anything in one shot other than buildings and other epic units.  This can be exceptionally powerful while on the move.

Once at the point the mission will end.

5. Battle at Crash Site

This is easily the most difficult mission in the game.  You will start off with a headquarters, a heavily damaged Hand of Ruk and a wall.

Build your refinery and after this begin building Guardians.  Guardians can ONLY be used in turrets.  They will not fire otherwise.  Build enough to fill up your wall.  You can change the wall design in the south so that the bottom piece is at a 45 degree angle instead of straight so that enemies will all get hit by the guardians as they walk by.

Once you have all of this done begin building a factory.

The Hand of Ruk is key in the defense.  Right clicking on a unit launching a nasty nuclear war head.  Use it whenever you can, as in on cooldown.

Once your factory is down build an Air Attachment and get out a Hanger.  With the hanger build a Stratus and send it directly north east of the base.

There are two Light Goo Nests here.  Destroy them using your Hand of Ruk (it’s just in range).

In the mean time build Warbirds from your Hangar and Hailstorms from your Hand of Ruk.  Use the Stratus to spot Light Goo Nests and send the warbirds in to kill them.  There are a select number of anti-air units on the map, watch the video to find out where they are.  You can also watch the video for which ones you should kill with anti-air and which ones you should avoid.

After killing so many of them you will have giant surges of enemies hitting your gate, you need to be dead on with your Hand of Ruk.  You can build a repair facility so that your Hand of Ruk can regenerate health and become useful again.

Eventually the reinforcements will arrive, a Hand of Ruk with units.  Jump the units inside the Hand of Ruk and get it on the move.  Head north.  Make sure to kill all enemies are you move making sure ton ever get overwhelmed.  Head east and north destroying all Mother Goos, Light Nests, and units along the way.  If your other Hand of Ruk is full on health you can move it directly north of your base to wipe out the light nest directly north and make way towards the middle.

The goal is to wipe out anti-air units so that your air units can reign supreme.  Once all air units are out make sure to plant stratus throughout the map and kill all the mother goo.  This process can take a while and can be obnoxious.  But once all mother goo are dead, you win.

6. Battle at The Headwaters

Humans can only have a single base, their headquarters.  You can build crosses to expand the amount of build space of your base.  All human buildings can be teleported into any position along the crosses.  Build a factory so you can start pumping out Tridents.  Tridents are light units.  Make sure to build some Revolvers which are anti-tank units.

When you have 6-7 units move to the east where a Large Protean is.  Before it dies it can transform into destructors.  Around this area is a tech upgrade you can pick up.

Once you grab it you can build a tank attachment.  Build the tank attachments on your factory.  These will allow you to build Gladius.  Gladii (the plural) are exactly the same as the Predator except they have more health and less damage.  They are a literal tank.  Getting out a lot of gladius will be useful as well.  Gladius like predators can attack on the move, necessary for killing some goo units.

Once you have a gladius head north and wipe out the units.  Then head all the way west.

You will gain an Econ upgrade secondary objective.  Add a silo and click on any of the available upgrades to get this secondary objective.

Pick up the tech upgrade to get Artillery Hub.  This will allow you to build a lancer.  The lancer will charge up its attack and deal more damage the longer it attacks, a perfect anti-building and anti-heavy unit tool.

Mother Goos can scale mountains and evade damage.  Hunting them down is a pain… but that’s how you finish the mission.

7. Battle at The Wetlands

This is the easiest mission in the game.  However the secondary objectives are not possible on hard difficulty because of how fast the computer is.  On other difficulties you have to bring your army to wherever the enemy is attacking and defend the units to take control of them.  The enemy will always attack Singleton last so there’s no threat of failing.  As you get new units your army will be much larger and you’ll be able to break the enemy faster.

On hard difficulty you just need to mass up an army and move to the west.  The second group of units to the west is Singleton.  Once you have Singleton activated move him back to your base and it’s over.

8. Battle at The Observatory

To start move your unit to the east and you will find some catalyst crates.  These rectangle boxes will grant you 100 catalyst to give you a strong start.

The enemy will send a lot of enemies at you.  So after you get down your first refinery start working on getting down an anti-sentinel turret.  You will have four anti-air units to start.  You can move them to the geyser (resource) to the northeast of your base to hit air units quickly.

Work your way to expanding your crosses in this direction and getting up a refinery here as well.  Getting down an air attachment is key so you can get some anti-air turrets up to stop the constant harassment of enemy planes.  This will give you a constant supply of income.

Expand your production to have two large factories and a single small one.  Rally you a combination of tanks and tridents.  You will want to get some air pads down and start building an air force.

You can use this airforce to deal with the enemy’s air bombers and ti make strike operations on the base to the northwest of your base.  Air deal very high burst damage so they will go down fast.

Get down a stealth attachment and rally out daggers.  You can create an army of daggers and use it to target down the headquarters to the east.  Without a headquarters they will be unable to re-build anything.

After destroying this base move your army of daggers to the north and have them walk around the most northern part of the map.  When at the HQ have them destroy it, and then all of the other hubs.  With the enemy unable to produce any new units you can just clean up the remainder of the buildings to win.

9. Battle at Mago’s Pass

There is only one unit you will realistically need for this mission, the Gladius.

You will need to make six refineries total to support your expensive tastes.  The enemy won’t challenge too many of them so go ahead and put them all along the west side of the map.

Take your starting force and move into the middle of them map near the north.

Make sure to get down a large number of large factories and pump out those gladius.  Initially you will want just one group but eventually you will want to expand into two groups.  The goal is hunt and destroy, make sure the goo can’t get units.

The Mother goos will spawn randomly from time to time from various points of the map.  Your goal is to patrol with two groups to make sure they can’t get resources to build units.

To make the pathing easier you should break down all of the rocks around the map.  This makes civilians get to their check points faster and will allow you to move around faster.

Eventually you will want to get two air units.  These are only needed for spotting mother goo quickly so that you can wipe them out as they spawn.

10. Battle at The Terminal

The secondary objective of this is to wipe out ten light goo nests.  This is sort of a difficulty slider.  The more of them you kill, the harder it will get.

This will assume you want to kill all of them.

To that extent build up a base at home with three anti-heavy sentinels and as many artillery sentinels as you can afford.  The enemy will come in giant waves of units that you will need to be able to defend.

As well you need to keep your computer ally alive, although he won’t help you very much.  Randomly he can just die to an opening rush so keep an eye out for it.

Other than that you will want to build up a base army with a mixture of units, but mostly you will want to get air units.  You will use the air units to wipe out light goo nests.  Each light goo nest also allows for another resource point.

The enemy will have anti-air all throughout the map but rarely does the AI make new ones.

As you clear the map with your air units it’s time to build… THE ALPHA.

It is never made all that clear how it is made.  You will need to attach four attachments to a large factory.  When you build your large factory you’ll notice that you can only build three.  That’s because the fourth point is being connected to the Cross.  So you have to build your attachment first (connection it to the cross) and attach a large factory to it, and then move your other three attachments in place.  Once this is built you will be able to build The Alpha.

The Alpha (unlike Hand of Ruk) will not take up your unit producing facility, so you can in fact continue to use it and build more alphas once you have completed your first one.

Once your alpha is completed sending it out on the map to go kill.  It has a lot more defensive measures than other ultimate units and can deal damage in a line attack.

The alpha is exceptionally slow moving however so it should be sent out to the northwest corner of the map where most of the enemy are situated (as well as a lot of AA).

You can use the alpha to clean out anti-air nests while your bombers come in to spot the new mother goos and kill them.

It’s a bit tedious but all vs Goo encounters are, you have to track every mother goo and kill every last one.  They can replicate very quickly so eventually you’ll need to have your army split around the map quickly tracking locations and killing them.

11. Battle at The Cauldron

Welcome to Goo 101.  They are a very hard micro oriented faction and because of this the missions themselves are all very easy… however the mechanics of the goo keep them challenging.

In this first mission you will be able to create mother goos, small proteons, and four other groups of units.  Each of these units has their function.  Mother goos when used on an enemy will snare them in place.  Small proteons when used on an enemy will heal.  Your first unit is sort of a close range shotgun unit, however it can attack on the move and uniquely pawns four at a time.  The strider is an anti-armor unit.  The Radiant is a scouting unit.  And then you have your anti air unit, which is unavailable.

To start move your units to the east side of the map.  Here you will find a light goo nest.  Break it open to get a mother goo.

Mother goo is the main production unit of the goo.  It can build small proteons, large proteons, or make more mother goo.  It can also do research.  For this you will only get small proteons and mother goos.  Mother goos also do exceptionally high damage against buildings.  They renegerate health over time but require to take energy from some source.  They can climb over the vent of a geyser to steal the vent.  The vent returns occasionally providing more health.  You can also destroy buildings or destroy units to get energy.

Get as many multiple goos as you can.  When enemies approach use your mother goos to kill them quickly.

To the northwest is a light goo nest.  Upon breaking this open you will gain access to Destructors.  Destructors are the armored unit of the goo and heavy very high damage.

You can flank from the northwest into the enemy base and destroy a few buildings.  Sometimes the AI will just let you kill the HQ.  Persistence is important in hitting them from this direction.  Be careful of the enemy howitzer, they can destroy many goo units at a time.

The mission ends when you can wipe out the enemy HQ.

12. Battle at The Shallows

You will need to destroy Encryptian nodes, which is easy enough.

Expand your mother goos around the map.  Get a research point and invest in stealth radiants.  Now make a pile of radiants and use them around the map to pick off the encryptian nodes.

These are spread through the map and will walk around with an armed guard.  A mother goo can also walk in their path and kill them.

Once they are killed you will need to push the northern fortress.  For this you will want mother goos, destructors, and crescents.

There is also a flanking position you can take from the northwest.  You should break the wall down with your artillery and slowly creep in using your radiants to give increased vision.

The artillery work differently from the other factions.  They apply a damage over time effect to the ground so that any enemy that steps in it takes damage over time.

Once ready to go send a large cluster of mother goos at their base to destroy its components while your artillery and destructors destroy enemy units.

Once everything is destroyed you will have to “hack” their computers by having a Goo sit on the base. Make sure to max out your units here and have tonnes of goos connected to the building.  If one goo dies, the other goo will give you credit.  Make sure to have tonnes of artillery.  Once a goo connects enemies will randomly spawn and you’ll have to survive until the connection can complete.

Once it is done, you win.

13. Battle at The Grotto

The secondary objective is required for bating this mission.

You will start off with radiants and artillery.  Begin by heading to the east.

Use the radiants to provide vision and the crescents to break down the walls.

Production wise it is non-stop mother goos.

You will use your artillery against everything while heading east, then south, and then east, and then south again.

Upon hitting this final south you will unlock a group of destructors and a new tank unit.  This new tank unit will not be able to fire but can absorb a lot of damage.  Send it and the destructors to take out a wall.  Once the Bastion takes too much damage pull him and the destructors back.  The Bastion also acts as a moving wall, so enemies will not be able to see what is behind it.

As you begin to dominate the northwest corner of the map get together an army of destructors, artillery, bastions and anti-air units.  Yes, the enemy will have a lot of air units.

Move directly south and there will be a base here that builds predators (tanks).

Move to the east and there will be a base that builds cloudbursts (but you have no air units soooze…).

Head north again and there will be an air base.

Finally there is one more gate to hit.  Break through and you only have to get a mother goo on a certain point to win.

14. Battle at The Barricades

The goal of this mission is to KILL EVERYONE.  But doing that is easier said than done.

The general strategy of this is to control your own progression against expected outcomes.

So to start build up your mother goos and spread them along the south. You can plant most of your army in front of the gate of the enemy and take whatever comes out heads on… but there won’t be much coming out.

Research radiant stealth tech and build about 20-21 radiants.  Send them to the gate stealthed and bust down a gate piece.

Move to the east and break down a wall here.  Have your radiants focus down the headquarters.

Once it is destroyed move to the middle and destroy the small hub there.  Then move to the west and destroy the two hubs there.  Now that the buildings are inactive and the enemy can’t re-build them focus on getting down the three walls completely.

While you are doing this you can prepare for the next phase of things.  Build a Purger, some destructors, and a lot of artillery units.  You can build the purger faster by creating mother goos and feeding them into the purger.  You will only want to do this when you hit army cap however.  You will also want to get a decent amount of anti-air units scattered throughout the map because the enemy will have air units sent in to wipe out your valuable units.  20-30 anti-air units should suffice.  The enemy will have 4 hangars producing 16 aircraft, so don’t underestimate it.

When you’re all ready break through the second set of walls to the north.  Make sure to break down the ones on the west and not the ones on the east.

Move through the walls and two Hand of Ruks will activate, how to deal with them after.  For now move your army of radiants towards the west and break down one piece of wall to get your units in.  Send your stealthed radiants against the headquarters until it is down.  This will prevent another enemy from re-building their buildings.  After this is destroyed move this army to the east to destroy the walls of an area and wipe out all the hubs there.  This will be the end of the usefulness of these radiants.  You can use them to wipe out scant units, destroy walls, destroy buildings but they should never progress any further north as there is static detection there (and also the only detection of this mission).

Now for the two Hands of Ruk.  They will come at different times, so the first one has to be destroyed very quickly or else the second will show up to reinforce it in time.

Grab a few mother goos with this as well.  When the first Hand of Ruk fires its first missile send your purger up to challenge it.  Use your purger’s ranged attack on it non-stop.  Bring your artillery up and spread them out.  Move your destructors in and spread them out.  You want the missile to do as little damage as humanly possible.  Now also send in your mother goos to attack it directly.  The mother goos will deal excessively high amounts of damage and if any of them can swallow it they’ll gain full energy.

Now the second Hand of Ruk has no units on top of it, it is completely defenseless.  You can technically just kill it with a mother goo and let your purger do other things.  But you want to do it fast, so send in the purger to deal some damage.  You can also produce more artillery to try and wipe out out faster.

Once it is dead, move your anti-air as far forward as possible along the cliffs in the middle of the map.  This will stop the air units in their tracks.

Send your purger directly north down the middle of the map and wipe out the final headquarters, they will now be unable to re-build any buildings.

Destroy the remaining hubs here and then head directly east avoiding all of the guns.  You can take out the hub here without having to deal with any of the guns.  Then move on to the west and do the exact same thing.

Now it’s just a matter of clearing out the remaining buildings.  Use your army and your mother goos to help speed this up.  Once all the structures are down, you win.

15. Battle at The Aperture Device

It’s the final mission of the game and it’s the bad guys, so no happy endings for anyone.

So much like the last mission you really need to race out that Purger.  Build as many mother goos as you can hitting all of the vents along the entire southern half of the map.

There is a human base east of the middle of the map and a beta base to the west of the middle of the map.  Each base will be working on their respective ultimate units.  However in reality they cheat, they will spawn on the map regardless of what you do.  That however doesn’t change how you will play this out.

Make sure to not actually hold any of the points you have to hold.  They will just hold you back.  Instead you will focus on destroying the enemy’s base first, with the purger.  Remember that once you begin purger construction you can feed it mother goos.  You should begin producing mother goos and feeding them to it whenever you can.

Once the purger is made it’s out to destroy.

The human base is the easiest to destroy so kill that first.  Focus on the crosses to wipe out power to various structures.  The turrets all have the no-power upgrade so you will have to destroy them directly.  The fastest way to kill them is to just sit your purger on them while it destroys other things.  Killing off the headquarters will prevent all future unit construction.  However as was stated, the alpha will still spawn randomly.  Killing off the base will delay the first alpha.

Next up to kill the beta base.  This has to be more precise and more careful.  Bring destructors, bastions, crescents and some anti-air units to support your purger.  Wipe out every single wall.  Do not single wall and every single unit.  Once you’ve wiped them out move in and take out the headquarters.  Finish up by killing off the remaining structures.

Saturate mother goos all over the map to collect maximum number of resources.

Every single base will need some artillery, some dwellers (land mines), some destructors, and 2-3 full health mother goos.  You want back up mother goos in case one goes down quickly.  You can also add in some cloaked radiants to help target down some particularly nasty units.

Once you have all of your units in place and a maxed out army activate the 5 minute rounds by attaching a mother goo to all three points.  When you can, focus down the lancers, they are anti-heavy unit units and can get very nasty.

Since all of the enemy units are gone you can try this over and over until you get this.

Once you can survive the five rounds you will get a tonne of reinforcements, which are useless to you at this point.  Move a mother goo to the point noted on the map and finish it off.  Worth noting that the Alpha and Hand of Ruk can arrive even without bases there so if they do you will need to focus your resources and energy in destroying them again.

Concluding Thoughts

Some aspects of the campaign were exceptionally difficult, and others might have just been too easy.  The campaign lacked a lot of balance of progression and struggled to teach how units work or how they are built.  The campaign itself only took me 11 hours to complete, but maybe 20-30 of them might have been spent just trying to figure out game mechanics.

The game did offer many ways of beating each level as many people could come up with completely different solutions to the game.

However with a lack of sales it is unlikely this game will see expansions.  The studio that made this game, Petroglyph Studios just came back from bankruptcy, so it is likely they will be scaling down and moving on to smaller projects.

 

How to Put down Unrest in Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar

I wrote this guide because I felt this was one area of the tutorial that was rather lacking and something they decided to skip over.

Upon conquering a city you may notice a red bar appearing over a conquered territory, you may notice that they will revert back to the previous owner rather quickly.

Putting down unrest in Hegemony Rome is an important factor in conquering and maintaining control over territories.  If you cannot create a permanent solution for unrest in a conquered kingdom, you will never be able to move forward.

The first part of putting down unrest is staging army in the city.  This will hold off the unrest and give you the ability to create more permanent solutions.

In the second tab under the Training menu are a unit called Hostages.  Hostages will lower unrest.  Building these and maxing them out takes time.  Each time has a recruitment rate which can be increased by focusing the city’s attention towards Recruitment.  Once you have created your hostages you can move them to another city and hold their citizens “hostage” in order to lower discontent.

Finally make sure to build a Night Watch.  In order to do this you will need to connect wood to your conquered city.  It can take quite some time to build.

As you construct this structure and increase your total number of hostages you will slowly be able to remove your army from this city and move on to other endeavors.

You will not need to have all of these for all cities.  In some cities maybe you will only need a single hostage.  Hostages consume local food so obviously making too many hostages will have a large effect on your economy.

Complete Walkthrough of Command and Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight

Command and Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight is the 17th and last Command and Conquer in the Command and Conquer series.  Due to its incredibly poor reception the precepts of the gameplay were completely abandoned, no DLC or expansions were made and the 18th Command and Conquer, which was set to be a free to play title, was cancelled.  A lot has been blamed on the shoulders of Command and Conquer 4.  Did it deserve it?  Who knows.  This is a walkthrough.  At the end of this walkthrough will be my final thoughts on the game.

The format of this walkthrough is pretty simple.  The first three missions will explain how each Mobile Construction Vehicle (which will here on out be referred to as Crawlers) works and then it will follow up on how to quickly get through the objectives.

This walkthrough assumes you are playing the hardest difficulty of the game and thus can be used at any difficulty.  It also assumes you are playing solo.  You can play with another person and the community is large enough for you to find someone to play with.

The Story Up Until Now

Kane is the son of Adam and Even who killed his brother and was cursed to forever roam the Earth.  Kane uses his immortality to try and bring humanity from the caves into modernity acting as a shadow in the background guiding it to fruition.  He starts up a secret society called The Brotherhood of Nod.  Nod is a reference to the Desert of Nod  he was forced to walk.

In Command and Conquer Red Alert, The Brotherhood of Nod have been standing behind Joseph Stalin’s push into Europe.  Here Kane was working under Stalin feeding him essential and vital information that was always tinged to cause a predictable reaction from Stalin.  When Stalin was successful in conquering all of Europe he was immediately assassinated by a Nod sleeper agent.  This was followed up by Kane revealing himself to the world with those iconic words “I am the future.”

What we heard was that the world would have to be reset and allow for the Brotherhood to grow in strength and numbers through this chaotic world.

This opportunity came with meteors crashing to Earth.  These meteors planted seeds that would create a new resource, tiberium.  Kane began harvesting this tiberium and used the profits from it and his new tiberium related inventions to fund the growth of a Brotherhood of Nod army.  The existing world army, The Global Defense Initiative was a shadowy black ops group that Nod exposed.  The two forces eventually clashed in the First Tiberium War in which the GDI won.  They also fired an ion canon at Kane that would horribly scar him.  He was presumed dead.

In the Second Tiberium War, Kane re-emeges to go to war with the GDI.  This time around he is trying to contact the aliens (The Scrin) that infused the meteor with stuff that creates tiberium.  The GDI are successful in stopping him and it appears that Kane dies.

Kane however doesn’t die, but he nearly does.  Instead he is placed in a machine to regenerate over a few decades.  When he re-emeges the Brotherhood of Nod has splintered into many factions and he seeks to re-unite them under his thumb.  All the while GDI was weakening having seen all threats removed.  During this time GDI had to re-draw the world map to indicate tiberium infected zones.  Tiberium extraction had a significant effect on the planet in which 30% of it was habitable by aliens, but not humans.

GDI created a blue zone to indicate civilized world and yellow zone where decades of unrest and civil war were.  Because GDI abandoned these zones and controlled the blue zones, it allowed for a place for the Brotherhood to fester.

When not expected all of the GDI bases were attacked at once. When GDI retaliated a lab they found in Brazil had a Liquid Tiberium Bomb, a weapon equivalent to 20 nuclear bombs.  The GDI pushed back Nod one last time and thought they were done.

However the Scrin arrived and were invading in full force.  The Scrin emerged from a Relay Tower which later becomes known as the Scrin Tower.  The GDI were successful in pushing back the Scrin, but not indefinitely.  Since then GDI has been planning its defenses not just for regional threats, but now galactic threats.

Introduction

1. Beginning of the End

For the intro all of your forces will be GDI.  As a GDI commander you have access to a distinct set of units from NOD.  Both sides are balanced assymetricly, which means different but equal.

The first Crawler you will be introduced to is the Offensive Kit.  If you however over the portrait of each unit it will indicate what it is strong against as well as what it is weak against.  As well when you however over an enemy portrait it will name what units can be best used against them.  Each unit costs a certain amount of population indicated  by the stick figure in the bottom right of the UI.

Unlike in previous Command and Conquer titles, the Crawler is a mobile vehicle that will supply every single unit you want.  You do not need to build any static structures and will not need to gather any resources.  Your only concern is fielding appropriate counters to what the enemy has.  If you feel like you are missing so much of each unit, you can simply delete a unit by pressing the Delete key.  This is also how you can change one Crawler for another.

1. Rendezvous with the VIP Convoy

Kane is in the convoy and needs to be brought to safety.  First things first drop your crawler in the green hexagon.  Once deployed rally out the Wolf unit.  The Wolf is an anti-light unit with anti-air capabilities.  As you rally them out focus your attacks on a cluster of rocks to the east that is blocking your path.  Upon doing this you will be able to rendezvous with Kane’s convoy.

2. Defend the VIP Convoy

Kane’s vehicle will project a red shield around it protecting it from damage.  This means that it cannot die.  Focus all of your wolves on attacking one target at a time.

In between fights begin rallying out Hunters.  Hunters are an anti-medium armor unit.  These will be necessary for killing enemy stealth tanks.

Follow the road until you get to a ramp in which you will find a Nod roadblock.

3. Destroy the Nod Roadblock

You will gain extra population.  With this rally out Shockwaves.  Shockwaves are anti-building units.  Focus them on the obelisks of light ahead.  You can bring your other units and crawler up to help support this attack.

Once you have destroyed most of them GDI ships will come and finish off the last one.  This will also signal you losing the convoy and the mission complete.

2. Bad to Worse

The second Crawler introduced is the Defensive Kit.  The Defensive Kit is one of the two crawlers that will use energy.  Defensive Kit can deploy turrets to deal with multiple types of threats.  However once energy is capped old turrets and bunkers have to be destroyed to make way for new ones.  All of the units in this kit are infantry and because of this can make great use of garrisons.  On the downside this makes them very slow and very vulnerable to anti-light units.

1. Build and deploy a missile turret at the objective marker

So as the description says, build a missile turret at the green marker.  Missile turrets are found in the Structure Tab in your build menu in the bottom right.  The missile turret is the only turret currently available.

2. Build and deploy a bunker at the objective marker

Bunkers are garrisonable buildings that you can put infantry units in.  They are very good at keeping your infantry alive against overwhelming odds and give the defensive kit most of its strength.  Place it at the objective market.  The bunker will now appear in your Structure Tab in the Build Menu.

3. Collect Upgrade Crystal

Upgrade crystals come in two colors.  Green ones can be exploded for massive AOE damage, however they damage the person holding them.  Red ones allow you to get generic upgrades for all of your units through the upgrade menu.

There are also round globes on the map.  Green globes give a full vet and blue ones give a half vet.  Veterancy makes your units stronger, they will fight harder, faster, and take more hits.

This globe is a green one meaning that whichever unit gets it will gain one Veterancy.  Veterancy is important in units as it allows them to fire faster, deal more damage, take less damage, and have more health.  Higher vetted units perform far better than lesser ones.

The crystal you need to pick up is to the north and is a red one.

To pick up the crystal build a unit and move it over the crystal.

Now if you move into the Upgrade Tab in the Build Menu, you will have various upgrades you can get.

4. Scout TCN Node Location

As you move north to scout the TCN Node there will be two tunnels, one to the left and one to the right.

This is a Nod unique structure that allows them to quickly deploy units from one location to another.  In the campaign this allows the computer to rally out units.  Quickly destroy these tunnels so that you do not have to deal with any Nod units.

As you move north you will find there is a Nod Crawler defending the node.

5. Capture the TCN Node

The fastest way to capture a node is simply to move all of your units on top of it.  Any units you destroy on the node will make it move down faster.  The enemy is also using a defensive kit meaning that this will be far harder.

Deploy bunkers and turrets around the node as you push forward.  Your focus should be on destroying the crawler to prevent any future build ups.

With your bunkers deployed man them with your units.  Engineers can heal inside the bunkers as well.  Surround the node with your structures until all enemy signs are destroyed.  After this simply wait for it to be captured.

Once you capture the TCN Node an EMP will go off and all of your units will be destroyed.

3. Hard Choices

In this mission you will be forced to use the Support Crawler.  The Support crawler is an airborne crawler which creates mostly air units.  This means they will not be able to pick up ground based upgrades.  The support crawler also has abilities that it can use against enemies or to support your forces.  Some of these abilities can include missile strikes, healing, and scouting.  Each ability will cost energy.  Energy will regenerate over time very slowly.  This means abilities have to be well timed to be worthwhile.

1. Repair Defense Base

One of your abilities is Repair Zone.  You can find this in the Support Tab of the building menu.  Hover it over the base defenses (two turrets) and repair that area.

2. Help Colonel James Destroy Nod Tunnel Network

The Support Crawler will normally have aggressive units.  In this case you are being given three spanners which are healing units.  You will have to win entirely with abilities.  Follow James to the three Nod tunnels.

You can use Repair Zone over Colonel James’ clumped units so that less of them die.  You can use the air strike over groups of units and the enemy base.  The airstrike will stay around for quite a while so make sure it’s something that has a lot of health.

3. Eliminate Remaining Nod Forces

You will now be able to build Orcas build as many of them as you can and send them on the enemy Avatar.  It’s the very tall unit.  Once it is destroyed you will unlock the Engineer which can be used to take over the Avatar.  Any unit that is a “husk” can be captured by an engineer.  Some of these husks are more useful than others.  This Avatar is strong vs medium vehicles and can be used against air units.

4. Redeploy as GDI Defense Crawler to reinforce the area

Select your Support Crawler and hit Delete.  A light blue bar will show how the crawler is destroyed.

Re-click on your crawlers.  Note there is a number on it.  This acts as your number of lives.  For every crawler destroyed you lose a life.

5. Construct bunkers at designated locations

Drop your crawler near the green markers.  Plant a bunker at each market.  After you build each bunker units will automatically rally into them.  They will defend the area and the mission will be complete.

This will lead you into deciding what path you will go for, GDI or Brotherhood of Nod.  Scroll down further for the Brotherhood of Nod walkthrough because this walkthrough starts with GDI.

GDI Campaign

1. Spontaneous Outbursts

Use the Offensive crawler for this.  Immediately rally out one engineer and use it to collect the red crystals around the map.  This will give you very early upgrades and a huge advantage moving forward.

1. Secure Evacuation Centers

For most of this walkthrough you will be using three units, Wolves (anti-infantry units), Titan MK 2s (anti-heavy armor), and Avengers (anti-armor).  You will want to get three wolves initially as there are a lot of infantry units on this map.  Wolves will eradicate Nod Separatists very quickly.  Armor should be used to demolish any buildings that are fortified.

Worth mentioning the Titan Mk 2 is an anti-air unit as well.  There will be very large air units (The Basilisk) which it can be deployed against.

Clearing out the three zones is a linear progression from east to west.  Go to each location, clear out units using effective counters and move on to the next one.  As you clear each you will be given free units that will put you over unit cap.

2. Defend the Feeling Refugee Trucks

You will get an unlimited number of refugee trucks that will come by, so there is no time limit on this.  They will move east through the center of the map and then south through the center of the map.

There will be two enemy crawlers that can be deployed.  Any combination of Offensive, Defensive, and Support can be deployed here.  The offensive crawler is still the best bet.  Killing crawlers sets a time limit for when they can re-emerge, so killing crawlers is a huge priority.  Use whatever units you can counter with to counter enemy units while using the remainder to target down the crawler.

Once you can squeeze through 12 of them, you win.

2. Cold Hard Truth

Use the offensive crawler on this mission.  You will want to get a couple of wolves, four engineers, an avenger, and as many more Titan MK 2s as you can get.  The two computers will deploy a large number of Massive units in this mission, so the Titans will be essential.

1. Secondary Objective: Stop dig teams

There is an injured mammoth tank to the north and south.  Directly to the west of the northern mammoth tank is a mastadon husk.

Move all your forces to each of the secondary objective.  Focus down the engineers first and then the other units.  Put an engineer in each mammoth tank and take them.  The computer will deploy commanders so watch for them getting stolen.

2. Get an Engineer into Satellite Relay

Bring your army and all of the massives past the enemy crawler in the south.  Don’t even worry about destroying it, just leave.  It will almost instantly respawn making it almost entirely pointless engaging them.

When you are in front of the steps for the relay send the mastadon in to destroy all of the stationary defenses.

Once all the stationary defenses are down send the engineer to take the satellite relay.  The remainder of your forces and your crawler should move up with him to support.

3. Defend Satellite Relay

Send your mastadon on the enemy crawler.  Use your Titan MK 2s to take out all enemy massives, including the air ones.  Use your engineers to keep everything alive.  Engineers can also be used to repair the array.  Use the wolves to wipe out light units and air units.  Use your avenger to take out enemy mediums.

If you’re really getting desperate you can use your engineers to capture enemy Avatars to do extra medium damage.

There is no reason for the array to get destroyed as an engineer can bring it to 100% health.

3. Transport Down

Use the offensive crawler on this mission.  You will want to get a couple of wolves, four engineers, an avenger, and Titan MK 2s.

1. Secure the Escape Pod Crash Sites.

There are three points that you will have to attack.  Each has a mutant army waiting for you.  Along the way there are three places that will spawn “the locals.”  These Mutant Hovels can be used to spawn useful units when your population cap isn’t maxed and you’re looking to get a lot of units.  The more of these you capture the better.

With each drop pod you save secure you will gain extra units, which will put you over the population cap.  To this end it is invaluable to keep your units alive.

Along the way you will also find a mastadon husk. It’s best to just rally this to home base because it is very very slow and you’ll be done before it gets to any of the points.

2. Capture the Tiberium Control Nodes

So now you need to capture the Tiberium Control Nodes, and the Nod have arrived.  Dash to one of the two possible landing zones and quickly dispatch one of the two crawlers.  Once you’ve done that make your move towards one of the control nodes.  You can send a single unit off to capture the most northern one.  Once you’ve captured one of the two southern control points head south and dispatch the other crawler.  Cap that final control node and head back to your ship for a defense.

3. Protect the Global Stratosphere Ship

This one is pretty simple.  Head back to base with your forces and surround the GST.  Send your mastadon on suicide runs to take out enemy crawlers while your forces tangle with theirs.

The only unit you need to pay attention to are Stealth Tanks.  They can spawn directly next to the GST to take shots at it.  Once the repair total hits 100%, you win.

4. Insurrection

Use the offensive crawler on this mission.  You will want to get a couple of wolves, four engineers, an avenger, and Titan MK 2s.  In case you are wondering this has been copy and pasted throughout the guide.

1. Destroy 1 or More Defense Crawlers Before the Strike Team Arrives

So we’re going to destroy, all of them.  Every single time you destroy one you will get extra units, it’s a win win win.  Your avengers will take care of all tanks.  Your wolves will take care of all infantry (of which the map is polluted with infantry).  If there is no unit that your unit type is not optimum against, that unit should be used against the defense crawler.  In this case it will mostly be your Titan Mk2s and your Avengers that will be destroying them.

When attacking plant your crawler directly next to the enemy’s crawler.  Your crawler will add vast amounts of healing to keep your units up as well will add a lot of damage on its own.

Destroying the southwest crawler will get you refractor which is a heavy anti-heavy tank that can be used against buildings.

Destroying the northwest crawler will get you zone lancers and zone captains.  The zone captains will be very good for wiping out the high numbers of infantry.

Destroying the northeast crawler will get you mastadons which are heavy anti-building weapons.

Destroying the southeast crawler will get you thunderheads which are long range artillery units.

The optimal way to do this is go to clockwise as the last two tend to have heavier defenses.

2. Guide Strike Team to GDI Central Command

A new unit will appear in the south, move this with your army.  It’s an empty carrier unit.

Have your mastadons, thunderheads and refractors clear all of the buildings out while your other units deal with enemy units.

Once those defenses are down move the transport next to GDI Central Command and you will have won the mission.

5. Lockdown

1. Capture Uplink Tower

You will have a few units and the enemy will keep sending infantry at you.  Slowly creep your units forward while killing theirs until you can get the uplink tower.  Once nearby just sit your units on top.  If you don’t make a move you can be killing the enemy for days and having nothing.  Once the tower is yours bring out an Offense Crawler

2. Use Engineers to Deactivate Tractor Beam Power Generators

There are three of them total.  One is very near you.  It’s worth clearing out the enemy infantry just south of you, there are two red upgrade crystals here.

Anyway get out the old mixture, wolves, Titan MK2s, Avengers, and some engineers.  As you move use your Titans to kill buildings while other units support.  The first one you want to kill is to the east.  There will be an enemy crawler here.  If you destroy it, it will just instantly spawn.  So instead just distract it and rush your engineer into the power generator before making a hasty retreat.

Head back away from that area to the west.  There is a secondary objective to kill all of the vehicles in an area.  None of them are functional, so it’s very easy.  This is also a good opportunity to get your veterancy levels up.

Once at the final one, once again distract the defenses and send in your engineer.  Oddly the building will begin leaking nod separatists, not even sure if this event is related to anything.

6. To Kill a Prophet

Use the assault crawler.  Your unit composition should be composed Titan Mk2s, Avengers, Wolves, and engineers.

1. Escort Colonel James to Sniper Spot

As you move you’ll be ambushed by spiders and scorpions.  Kill the spiders with wolves and have everything else on the scorpions.

Eventually you will run into an enemy crawler, except this one is different.  It produces units faster than normal.  Colonel James will destroy it for you.  All you have to do here is survive.  Try to get slightly more avengers out as the enemy will only ever use tanks on you.  You can place your Titan Mk2s on it when you get a chance to speed things up.

2. Protect Base

As you move forward you will find a base with mostly offline equipment.  Make sure you are unit capped with a lot of engineers.  The enemy will attack you with some massive units that can be stolen via engineer for later use.  Colonel James will eventually turn on turrets that will fire on the enemy.  She tells you to stay behind them but really your best bet is to push out instead of fighting inside the choke point.

The enemy will throw a lot of units at you in various types, the avengers and Titan MK2s will be able to deal with most of them.

3. Escort Colonel James to Second Sniper Spot

Quickly get through a tiberium field.  If you wait too long the computer may grab some and try and implode your army.  As you walk towards the mine field there will be a large number of Mantises and Stealth tanks waiting, hopefully you have some massive units with you.  Push on through and there will be Nod tunnels, focus them down as they will eventually produce units.

As they die Colonel James will get to the second sniper location

4. Activate TCN Node

Colonel James will feel like you’re massively out gunned and send down 5 crawlers to help you.  Each crawler will move north and assault the base.  Bypass all of them and move to the far east where there are some turrets, a single crawler and some units.

Use your Titan MKs and your massives to quickly wipe out the buildings as your avenger tanks and wolves clear out enemy units.  There should be a decent number of enemy light units due to a defense crawler being in play.

Once you’ve destroyed most of the stationary defenses move everything north to the TCN Node and sit on it.  Activating it will win the mission.

7. For All Humanity

Use the assault crawler.  Your unit composition should be composed Titan Mk2s, Avengers, Wolves, and engineers.

1. Capture the Deploy Zones

Move along to west via a southern path for the first deploy zone.

Along the way are artillery and anti-air towers.  You should capture all of these.  They will be critical in the latter half of the mission.

You will also run into crawlers.  Target your Titan Mk2s on them and destroy them as soon as possible.  You can use engineers to capture any towers that happen to be off level ground.

Each deploy zone you capture means the enemy cannot deploy from that location (but you can).  In a very linear manner you will push the enemy back to the final deploy zone.

2. Deploy your MCV at the base of the Scrin Tower and Remain There

Once you have set your MCV at the Scrin Tower you will gain a new objective.

3. Survive until the timer expires

Nod will send three crawlers at you.  One of each type.  The support one will fly and try and flank you.  The defense and offense will try and push your front.

Your absolute best bet is to meet them about half way and try and destroy them quickly.  You can send your wolves to try and keep the support crawler at bay.  You can send a lot of units on suicide missions as you can just replace them with more appropriate units for whatever crawler is closest.  If you’re getting overwhelmed move back to the next tower until you’re at the Scrin tower, which is where you will have to make your last stand.

Preventing the enemy from capturing deploy zones is important.  With them they will deploy right next to you.  Only having one far away means they will be building units a very long distance and sending them at you with no support.

Survive the timer, and the campaign is over.

Brotherhood of Nod Campaign

1. Things Fall Apart

Deploy the offensive crawler.  Get out some Scoripon tanks and avengers to take out all of the units towards the south.  The forces to the south won’t activate until you activate the southern tower.  Get out bulldogs to deal with infantry.  Bulldogs are very fast high damage low health units.

Once you’ve taken down the gate you can walk through with your bulldogs and kill off nod separatists for a lot of very easy and fast veterancy.  If you are patient you can rank up every single one of your units here.

There is also a mastodon planted down the ramp and a little to the northwest.  This can be captured with an engineer.  Mastodons are anti-building massive units.  But they do move very slowly.  You can close the gate by clicking on the gate (next to the point) so that the rebels don’t come take that place over.

1. Capture TCN Hub

The secondary objective is to bypass the enemy game.  Simply destroy the tower in order to lower it.  Upon moving closer to the tower you can capture it and close the gate behind you.

After this simply move your forces to the red point where you will have tonnes of enemy defenses.  Kill them with the mastodon and the scorpion tanks.  Once they’re all destroyed use your bulldogs to clean up the infantry units and capture the TCN Hub.

Once you capture it you’ll move on to the next half of the mission.

2.  Escort Refugees

The refugees won’t move until your crawler moves in front of them.  This means you can control its pacing using your crawler.  It also means you won’t have healing available for your units other than the engineers.

To the south is going to be an enemy crawler, destroy it.  The enemy will respawn where you started.

This crawler will put out a lot of armor, so Avengers will be very powerful here.  Use your scorpions and mastodons to attack the crawler.  Once it’s wiped out push the refugees forward fast.  You can wipe out the nod forces with your bulldogs while they follow together.

Remember to open up the gate and get them in the zone.

2. Further Complications

Deploy the offensive crawler.  Use avengers, scorpion tanks, bulldogs, and engineers.

1. Capture TCN Hub

The secondary objective is to destroy the enemy crawler.

Move north with your army wiping out all enemies along the way.  You will find one enemy crawler here.  Focus your scorpion tanks on the base, tanks on tanks, and bulldogs on light units.  This isn’t the separatist crawler you’re looking for, but destroy it anyway.

Continue pushing north capturing points as you go.  If your crawler dies you can redeploy it at these points.

There will be a TCN dampener to the northeast. Destroy it.

As you move up the steps you’ll notice the purple crawler is on the move.  Send scorpions on a suicide run after it.  The purple crawler will continue to send forces to attack the front line and attack you.  With the GDI forces sort of helping you destroy it, it will go down relatively easy.

Once it’s down move your crawler up to the TCN Hub and move your forces up with it.  You will need high numbers of avengers to deal with enemy armor.  Destroy the GDI crawler and capture the point.  Once the enemy crawler is down it cannot be redeployed.  Capture the zone for the win.

3. The Harder They Fall

Deploy the offensive crawler.

1. Prepare for GST Fly Over

So rally out engineers, bulldogs, scorpion tanks and a flame tank.  The goal is to clear out the path of the enemy ship.  Attack directly to the north, move to the east, and move to the south.  Destroying crawlers or even engaging them is mostly pointless because they respawn too quickly.  Instead focus on clearing out all of the extra units from the map so that they will not interfere.

Once you have cleared out all of these extra units evacuate the remainder of your units back to the most northern anti-air tower.  Destroy your crawler and rally out a defensive crawler.

Place your defensive crawler by this anti-air tower and begin rallying out a lot of turrets.  You will need some turrets for anti-ground and you will need some for anti-air.  But make sure you max out on turrets, no bunkers.

You will also want to rally out as many Reapers as you can.  Fill in with Ascended as you begin to cap out.  Reapers deal high damage vs heavy meaning, almost every unit coming your way and the actual ship.  You will need some ascended for other units that come with it.

2. Eliminate GST

Make sure to focus down the Spanners.  Spanners are small healing units, they will out heal a lot of your damage.

All of your reapers should be targeted on the GST.  Select few bulldogs and reapers can be pulled to repel enemy attacks.

Once the GST has flown past this point pack up, move your crawler south  (but north above the enemy crawler) and setup shop near the artillery turret away from any enemy attacks.  Begin deploying your reapers again and focus down the GST.  Note the GST can get new spanners at some point so you will have to deal with that.

4. Reversal of Fortune

Guess what?  Deploy the support crawler.  Yeah, not the offensive one.  Rally out marauders, cobras, engineers and scalpel.

1. Protect the Nod Shuttle

The shuttle needs to be protected for 4 minutes.  It doesn’t really matter what units you focus on, just get rid of anything attacking the shuttle.  Make sure to emphasize for the best possible match ups.  If a unit is low on health, bring it in for heals, otherwise just keep it chasing around the shuttle picking them off.  You also have abilities that will allow you to heal, use them to keep your damage time up.

There are two anti-air turrets.  They are invisible until something hovers over them.  They can be killed for the bonus objective, rather easily.

2. Use Crawler to Hack Gideon’s Command Crawler

This is the main reason why you are using the support crawler.  With the support crawler you can just have your’s follow his around in a circle.  Any time he lands his, you can land yours to get out more units.  Keep your crawler in the circle of his.  The longer you keep it in the purple circle, the easier you will win.  If your crawler is getting low on health you can just refocus your engineers to healing it.

5. Heresy’s Reward

Deploy he offensive crawler.  Your units will be 2x bulldog, 1x engineer, 1x scorpion tank, 2x avenger, 1x spider, and 1x mantis, 1x flame tank and 1x cyborg commander to start.  Try and get whichever units you need as units are dying.

1. Infiltrate Gideon’s Compound

There are two infiltration locations east and west.  For maximum experience you should back track and go for both.  This also means clearing out stationary defenses which will become enormously valuable in the future if your crawler was to be destroyed

There is a secondary objective to save people from prison.  They are spread throughout the map.  After you’ve released all of them they will come back and provide aid against Gideon.

So head north to the first gate and then the second.  Clear both of them out and then make the breach.  It’s easier to start on the eastern side of the map.

2. Attack Gideon’s Crawler until He Submits

Gideon’s crawler is the purple one, it is super charged by three other crawlers in the area.  For every crawler you destroy, Gideon’s Crawler will lose some special ability.  Gideon’s crawler has one default ability, it can magically teleport to a random location and drop a few infantry.  Gideon will activate a self destruct node in which if all of them are activated, you lose.  Engineers can be used to disable them.

Your strategy will be to clear out stationary defenses and mobs, destroy crawlers, and get your engineers to the nodes after Gideon leaves that place.

From the eastern gate head along the narrow path to the northwest.  There will be a crawler here.  It is the easiest one to destroy.

After it is destroyed head down into the pit next to it and there will be another crawler here.

After hat’s destroyed head west and there you will find your third crawler.

Once they’re all destroyed it becomes rather easy.  You chase down Gideon with your crawler and units while sending engineers off to recapture the self destruct devices.

When Gideon is roughly down to 20% health, he will tap out.

6. Bleed Out

1. Repair the GDI MCV

You will only be able to use the offense GDI crawler for this mission.  You will start off with defensive units.  You will have one of each unit, two reapers and a large cache of engineers.  Use your reapers against anything tank like and use everything else against light.  You have only a few minutes to get to this crawler so you need to be efficient with your match ups.  While you are fighting you should be slowly creeping up all of your units.

2. Deploy the GDI MCV Next to Kane

With the MCV captured the timer isn’t gone.  Now you need to deploy it next to Kane.  Simply manually click deploy it on Kane’s location.  You can build units in the crawler while it is moving and have your other units follow closely on foot.  Wolf units will be very good given your lack of anti-infantry at the moment.

3. Get Kane to the Extraction Zone

Once you have Kane you need to get him to an area that is surrounded by purple structures.

Move to the east and clear out the units here.  There will be an artillery turret there, capture it and make it yours.

A secondary objective will appear to kill the sniper, we know this is Colonel James.  Use cliff jumpers to track her down and kill her.

As you climb up the ramp with your main army there will be a mamoth in the way.  Now it’s time for that standard GDI pack of Wolves, Titan MK 2s and tanks.  These will allow you to clear out those heavies as well as quickly push through the defensive turrets and buildings.  You can use your engineers to capture the mammoth tank.

The enemy will also pull out a mastadon.  You can also capture this one as it will be very valuable in destroying enemy buildings.

If you move all the way to the west you will find a secondary objective to capture the Mutant Hovel.  This will allow you to build some mutant units.    The Ironback can make for quite a good tank in the upcoming battle.

Push up the ramp into the main compound.  Send your crawler directly to the location.  Use your forces to take down enemy units and towers while your engineers follow along the crawler healing it up.  Once it’s there, the mission is complete.

7. The End of All Things

Deploy the offensive crawler.  Build bulldogs, avenger tanks, scorpion tanks and engineers.

1. Gain Control of the TCN

So with this mission you have a signal that shifts to whoever has the most TCN hub control.    You will have some forces that will defend you, but are not as good as the GDI forces and will inevitably lose.

Your goal will be to capture the point on the blue side in the north.  There will be a crawler south of there, it should be destroyed.

This crawler also holds a point.  Once you capture it you will gain all the points you need.  You can move south to get the other one but you do not need it.  Their respawn point is just to the north so you will constantly be contesting the north base.  The advantage here is that they cannot push any of your other bases and your computer AI can focus on defending against just one crawler.

Once you have the signal at 99% delete your offensive crawler and rally out a defensive one.

2. Gain Control of the TCN

Destroy the Bomber would losing TCN Control

This bomber will move around from point to point recapturing them and dropping infantry units there.  To take care of those infantry build enlightened.  As well building defensive structures will make it much harder to build a foothold.  The bomber does excessive amounts of damage so you will need these defensive structures mostly to stop him from landing infantry in that area.

The unit of choice for taking out the bomber is going to be the reaper.  It is very high in damage and is highly mobile.  Your goal is to more or less guess where the bomber will go and intercept it.  Maintaining at least 50% of the points should be a priority as this will prevent losing.

Once the bomber’s health hits 0%, you win.

Final Thoughts

Did Command and Conquer 4 deserve all the grief it was given?  Probably not.

Command and Conquer 4 was built in an RTS genre that had become stagnant and dominated by online MOBAs.

What they were trying to do was create something that was different and co-op friendly.  They couldn’t help but look at successful franchises like Dawn of War and think that this might just be the future of RTS games.

Their mistake was the presumption that people no longer wanted to play games with base building, that we all wanted to play co-op games.  In attempting to build something distinct they lost out on what made the Command and Conquer series great.

Like many series titles that make too many changes to the equation that worked in the past, Command and Conquer 4 might have been better off as a full new franchise.  Although it is lacking in depth in terms of tactics and style, it is refreshing to have an RTS game that is trying to be micro focused.

Complete Walkthrough of Stronghold Crusader 2

Author’s Note

Hi thank you for choosing Troublmaker as your choice for a walkthrough in this game.  A little about myself before the actual walkthrough.  In 2002 I found a copy of Stronghold Crusader in a dollar bin at Walmart.  I had been a fan of siege type games in the past but early in my progression into a real job, I was poor.  At the time I was working at a highway craft shop of which there was absolutely no access to internet, and other than a lightbulb… no power.  So I had a little laptop that I would charge up at home and bring to work… to play Stronghold Crusader.

The original game had no campaign but instead featured a 50-skirmish track that became so painstaking hard that they allowed people 3 skips of missions they chose.

The new game comes with a lot less skirmishes but also comes with a campaign.  They get aggressively more difficult over time and because of this I have chosen to write a formal walkthrough featuring the tactics and strategies used to beat these.  This walkthrough with completed with the presumption that you aren’t going to be a little bitch forever and you will eventually try on the hard difficulty.  Everything discussed here will work on lower difficulties… but you really should grow a pair and stop saying things are too easy while playing on easy mode.

Each level is completed with a video.  For best learning how to beat these levels watch the video while reading down the instructions.  Think of it like learning Shakespeare in high school.  The easiest way to learn was always by using Cole’s Notes (or Spark Notes these days I guess) while reading through the actual book.  Thank you for your time and have fun.

Intro – Preparation

You are a young commander that has to setup the grounds for King Richard’s landing.  You have to setup the camp, clear the harbor front and deal with the challenges associated with being a junior commander.

1. Arrival

This is the simplest of the missions.  The goal is to collect wood and food and destroy some buildings.

Wood is the key to success in this game.  It is the building resource that is used to produce the buildings for every other building in the game.  You should never be short on wood builders.

When placing wood builders make sure they’re close to trees.  In this map aim to have them around the oasis. The oasis is the patch of green on the desert.  Clearing this is important because this is also the only space where you can place your farms.

On this mission you will not be able to build hovels.  Hovels increase your worker base.  Because of this you have a limited number of buildings you can create.  This means patience is a virtue.  Whenever you can make sure to build your food building on the oasis.

The mission will end as soon as you have collected enough food and wood.

To speed this up make sure your few soldiers are destroying ruins.  These are narrow walls and are considered to be the objective building.

Once you begin food production scour the map looking for little covered supplies.  These are all food caches.  If you collect them too early they’ll just get eaten up by your population, so save them for last.

2. Blacksmiths and Bows

The objective of this mission is to Collect Iron, build bows and build swords.  Iron is the ingredient for swords and wood is the ingredient for bows.

As always wood production is key.  You will need a lot of wood for this mission so don’t cheap out on your wood.

You will also still need food as without food your people starve.

To add a bit of zest they’ve added in lions to the north to block you from getting your iron.  To dispatch them send your lord with some peasants to destroy them.  You need to lay down a Barracks to build peasants and require no weapons.  In any other situation your lord is the King in a Chess game, he dies and it is over.  In this instance he will slay the lions quickly.

Make sure to destroy the lion’s lair.  It will constantly spawn lions and lionesses regardless.

After you’ve dispatched them there is a cache just to the north of the lion’s camp.  Grab it and get a nice little boost.  You can now get your iron resource.

All weapons must be placed in an armory, so before you can build any weapons you will need to lay down the barracks.  This can be found in the same tab as you found the barracks (the one to the left of the tower looking thingy).

You should aim to build the blacksmiths first to get your swords.  If you start with bows you will have less overall wood and slow down production of buildings.  One blacksmith will suffice.

As well once you can build your one bow making archery go for it.  If you can squeeze in another it will make the mission go ever so slightly faster.

3. The Lion’s Den

This is the first training mission in which you will have an enemy.  To make matters worse you have a deadline to complete this mission.  The objective is to collect stone.  Unfortunately without dealing with the enemy you cannot collect stone.

To make matters worse the enemy will also send units at you.

You will want to build an archer heavy army.  Build as many archers as you can.  Mixing in a few mace men will be invaluable especially when dealing with the next issue.

You can use your keep as a defensive structure to defend against the enemy.  The macemen are skirmishing units and although lightly armored they will be able to charge into enemy archers and wipe them out quickly.

Obviously wood production is going to be important again because of your need for archers.  But also you will need some food.  Having large wood production will be necessary for getting your stone making facilities down later.

When the time is right march with your archers.  You can build a step and a wall piece near the enemy’s base to give your archers a bit of cover.  It will also increase their range as the higher you are the more range your shots have.  It will also provide moderate cover.  Removing the enemy’s advantage is important.  Once they’re all dead you can just move your army into that base and use it to defend against small enemy invasions.

Put down your stone production facilities as fast as possible.  Each stone production facility should have at least two oxen because of how far the distance is to transport the stone.  But leave the oxen to as you need them.  Lay down an oxen whenever all oxen are busy.  The key is to get down stone facilities and get your men working.

It will be tight but you should be able to get all of your stone.  The eraser tool can be used to destroy buildings and refund 50% of the building.  If it is getting real tight recycle your wall, barracks, and armory.

If you are short on workers you can quickly turn off all weapon’s production.  This can be done by clicking on the building and clicking off the Global Off button.  This will turn off all building’s of that type.

Campaign 2: Lionheart

Richard the Lionheart has landed in the Holy Lands and is looking to carve out a new fiefe for England.  He has made you a commander of a small army supporting his operations.  The conquest of The Holy Lands is not an easy one.  The great Arab General Saladin waits and has planned intricate defenses and traps for the greatest army man has ever seen.

1. First Blood

King Richard is thirsty for blood and has charged you with taking the first fort.

You are given an army which makes it exceptionally easy.  To add a bit of a time constraint lightning will periodically kill your troops, so it is a rush.

Move your three catapults forward and burst down the front wall.  Don’t aim for towers or the arch at first because they have too many hit points.  Just burst down a wall.

Once it’s down push your knights in and get your archers inside the walls to fire. The catapults can now redirect their attention to taking out towers and arches.

Now rush in with your knights and aim for the lord in the keep.  Once the enemy’s lord dies it’s over, so pushing for him is important.

My best time doing this was 2 minutes 22 seconds.  Time is important here as the longer you take the more of your units will randomly die to lightning.

2. Ambush

Word spread of Saladin’s ambush and Richard has heroically retreated away from it.  He has left you to deal with the ambush and to defend the small fort from all enemy’s.  You must survive for 25 days in which each day is roughly 1 minute.

The castle you are given is already built so you simply have to place your archers along the various flanks.

You will need some stone production to repair and extend your current castle.  To the west is your stone pile.  You will want to eventually create walls to protect this area by extenting your walls from east to west around it.  It will screw with the computer’s AI however and you will be forced to eventually dispatch forces to deal with the bugging out group of enemy’s.

Another priority is to the north of you.  This is your source of wood and food.  The enemy will often send men carrying fire to try and burn it.  Man at arms are perfect for dispatching these.  They have a very fast attack, can hurl one attack and will keep a lot of them occupied.  Preventing this area from burning down is key.  Make sure to have a well available in case a fire begins.  All of these structures spread fire insanely quickly and will set you back very far if any catch on fire.

Man at arms are pretty cheap to build so losing them to enemy archers is not a big deal.

Other than that there are three real flanks to worry about.  The northeast, the southeast and the southwest.  Generally speaking the northeast will only be ranged units which can be easily dispatched, this means you will not need to defend this flank very heavily.

In the southern flanks it is a very different story.  There will be catapults, archers, and knights.  Your archers can wipe out the enemy’s archers and knights with ease.  You will want to build macemen skirmishing units to run in and wipe out the catapults.  Don’t get them caught in melee combat with non-catapults, they’re only there for catapults.

This is a rinse and repeat operation where you’re constantly expanding your forces.

When the final push comes it will come directly from the north.  Move all of your archers to the northern wall and get your melee ready to rush out and occupy enemy melee forces while your archers take them out.  Macemen should take out catapults out first.

If the mission doesn’t end it means some units have bugged out and you’ll have to go around the map to hunt them.  Just look on the mini map for dots that are not yours for their hidden location.

3. Antioch

It’s the first city that you will have to tackle… and it has a time limit, 50 days or 50 minutes.  Most people are going to look at this mission in which you have to attack someone and focus on attacking, but this is Stronghold.  In Stronghold the best offense is a good defense.  You will have to defend against constant waves until you can reach a critical mass of units.

The critical mass of units is one in which if you lost half of your army you would still have enough to win the game.  It will take almost the full time to hit this mass.

So your opening focus will be on wood, food and stone… in that order.  You will need a lot of stone to build a fortress so you can defend against the enemy’s attacks.  These attacks will get stronger over time.

Stone is a very valuable resource, you can sell it.  To sell it go to your Stockpile and select stone, then sell it.  Sell it basically when you have no more need for it.  With this money you can buy more wood to build more buildings, build weapon’s producing facilities or purchase units.

Having a strong economy is key to this mission.

Worth noting that you have a trebuchet at your disposal… and you can make more.  The trebuchet is an ancient war device which is purpose wise a catapult.  The trebuchet (pronounced Tray-Buu-Shay) requires setup time.  Once setup it can fire off large boulders much more powerful than a regular catapult as well as a large number of “diseased animals.”  By toggling to diseased animals you will launch whatever animal it happens to be at the enemy and create disease clouds.  These disease clouds will kill off the enemy slowly.  With 3 trebuchets firing at once you can wipe out an entire army with a single volley of diseased animals.

You can use this trebuchet by itself to harass the enemy knocking down walls and throwing animals, but you shouldn’t be too aggressive with this as it moves very slowly.

Another unit you will gain is the Ranger Archer.  The ranger is a mix between a ranged and a melee unit… which for these kinds of games makes them really awful.  They are your scout class that will switch between melee and ranged and will.  You shouldn’t build too many of these because their usefulness is rather limited to niche engagements.

Instead build a weapon’s shop and armorer to build pikemen.  PIkemen are the first frontline soldier you get.  They are heavily armored and exceptionally slow.  However they tear apart enemy archers and cavalry.

The challenge of this mission will be balancing pushing with defending.  The honus should be on defending here because the enemy attacks can very easily wipe you out.  Focus on increasing production and getting large numbers of archers, swordsmen, and trebuchets.  Just about every other unit is going to be useless to you here.

If the enemy is able to get to your wall you should use your pikemen to delay them.  Losing too much wall will really hurt you fast.

You should also be looking for men with torches.  They will burn your farm land and that just cannot happen.  To deal with them rally your pikemen out and have them spread out.  Pikemen like man at arms attack very quickly and will make short work of these cheap enemy units.

When you have a large number of archers you can use them to harass.  Kill off enemy archers. This will cause the melee units to “pull.”  Move your archers back, they move 10x faster than the enemy units.  As long as you continue to move them away from enemy units and fire they will kill off the enemy.  You can clear off the entire first wall with this method.

Adding in a few boulders from trebuchets from time to time can also help as the enemy will have a massive height advantage.

After you have down this first wall you will need to plan for one giant push to the enemy.  You will want to wait for about 30-35 minutes in before you consider moving out, you will need a lot of units.

Move forward with your trebuchets and knock down any old wall at all.  Once it’s down work on knocking down walls and towers with archers on them.

Move your archers in to try and pick off some archers.

Move your giant ball of pikemen and whatever melee units you can must and have them directly attack the lord.

Once the lord dies, you win.  If you do not kill the lord, you lose.  If you have the time use your trebuchet to wipe out as many walls and towers as possible before doing your final push, this will make resistance far less.

4. Jerusalem

Not quite the capitol of the Muslim empire but it was a very important holy city to both sides.  Jerusalem has been building walls for centuries, making it one of the easiest cities in the world to defend… but a hell of a fight to capture.

This is a layered siege with the first layer being traps and wood picket, the second layer being a single wall, the third layer being a circled wood picket, the fourth layer being a wall with towers and the final layer just being a wall.  Each layer has a large number of archers and select groups of swordsmen.

Lucky for you there is no time limit.  What there is, is an enemy army constantly being sent at you.  The army grows larger over time and waves will increase over time.  Eventually the enemy will just start spawning on your base because the army is so large.  This is an artificial timer because eventually the enemy army will become so big that you have absolutely no hope of defeating it.

The goal to beating this on the hardest difficulty is to to constantly increase the size and scope of your economy.  This means constantly increasing production of food, your population, and weapons production.

Early on you will want to max out your stone production so that you can build up a mini fortress as fast as possible.

A good fortress should be square have multiple gateway doors for fast travel and a few towers to keep your archers on.  Make it as close to the front as humanly possible.  You will even be able to get a few early hits on the enemy doing this.

Once you have this monstrosity built you can lay down your barracks and armory.  Once they’re sold you can sell off your stone.  The amount of stone you should be getting from six quarries will be huge so use Shift+Click to mass sell items.

Your iron production is what you need next.  You can sell some at first but eventually you will need it for weapon’s production.

You will be building a varied army here.  Swordsmen are the frontline grunt of the army.  They are slow but very powerful.

The templar knight is also very slow can be updated with a mount to charge faster into battle.  Their attacks are incredibly powerful… buy they also cost 150 gold to make which means the stronger your economy the more of these juggernauts you will get to keep.

The Sergeant at Arms will grant your army a buff.  The buff will increase attack power and reduce damage coming in. These you will only need a few of as their attacks are not that strong.

Man at arms or pikemen can be mixed in for a little bit of extra damage but are not all that necessary.

The core of your army is crossbowmen and archers.  The more of these you get the better.  In large numbers they can obliterate just about anything.

When the enemy invades an important consideration is getting down enemy catapults first.  Catapults will destroy your walls very quickly.  After that your ranged can take care of whatever the enemy throws at you.

You can get some trebuchets out to harass the enemy.  Once you get 3-4 of these things their diseased animals will obliterate packs of enemy’s.

Before moving up trebuchets and the bulk of your army make sure to send in some Fire Carts (also found in the tents that build trebuchets) ahead of the army to attack areas that are wooded.  Wooded areas are loaded with traps and the fire will burn them all down making it safe for your army to travel through that region.

This mission is all about balancing progression with defense.  The enemy will spawn from two distinct points.  At the far end you will have very powerful cavalry archers who will obliterate anything that isn’t on a wall.  Directly next to your base is the main army spawn point.  If your forces are caught too far from your base they will be flanked and obliterated quickly, the wall provides a massive advantage to your army.

Once you have about 50 crossbowmen you will be able to quickly take out the enemy.  Slow progress with your trebuchets knocking down walls with your swordsmen and crossbowmen supporting against the possible cavalry archer attacks.

It’s important to remember for this one that as you are taking longer and longer you have to consider investing more in food, hovels and weapon production.  You need to keep ahead of the size of the enemy army that will spawn.

Campaign 3: Saladin

Saladin, commander of the Muslim armies has set you, a young general, with the task of controlling out lying areas and keeping things in check.  Chaos is spreading throughout the Muslim world and you are the one who has to put it all back together.

1. Crusader Incursion

The crusaders are making a beach landing and you need to stop them from getting a foothold.  They have landed their ship and setup a preliminary fort… that has to be demolished.

The trick here is you can only purchase mercenary units.  Mercenary units are far more expensive than regular ones but there is no time cost in terms of getting weapons.

There are a large number of mercenaries to choose from.  There are two types of ranged.  The first archer has the unique ability of shooting in a very large curve which can fire over walls.  This is useful in wiping out enemies that are not on walls but are waiting for a ground attack… like computer melee.

The second kind of ranged is a cavalry archer.  The cavalry archer can shoot on the move making them perfect for picking off melee units… but awful against other archers.

In the melee category there is the generic foot soldier which has slightly worse armor than the swordsman and slightly less damage… but is functionally the same.

Finally there is a Healer who… can heal units.  This is purely a support character.  As a unique feature they cannot heal other healers… but there is an achievement for healing your lord up from 50%.

So with this one it’s all about economics.  You can build stone to sell and cheese.  You will need to sell a lot of these to make the army you need.

While waiting on that though make sure to get a decent sized cavalry archer army, 15 should do.  Have them wipe out all of the armed peasants and man at arms in your way.  They should avoid the wall if they can as the archers there will cut through them easily.  If you have idling time you can use your cavalry archers to wipe out enemy’s production.

Your invasion composition will be 2-4 catapults a few healers and the foot soldiers.  The foot soldiers will walk in and take out the lord.

You simply have to use the catapults to knock down the walls and kill the archers on top.  Going with only one is silly as it will get easily destroyed.  This mission is a balance of pushing in on the enemy and sitting back to defend random spawn pushes.

2. Treachery

One of Saladin’s own Caliphs has betrayed him… and you’re left to deal with the traitor.  The traitor is attacking your post and you are left to quickly defend.

In this mission you will gain access to fire throwers.  These are powerful low range area of effect units.  Because of their insanely low range it’s recommended to not build too many of these.  They are great for clearing units off of the walls, not so great against archers.

As well you will gain a new trap, pitch.  Pitch traps require you to lay down the actual trap and to place braziers in towers.  When the enemy steps over the black tar you select an archer near a brazier and hover your mouse over the pitch and right click to light it on fire.  You will need to place a lot of pitch to cover territory.

For your economy you will have stone, food and pitch.  The swamp for the pitch is located in the oasis where your food is.  You can fill this up with pitch extraction as anything you don’t use you can sell.  Likewise you can sell stone and food for extra troops.

You will want to initially destroy all of the ruins around the wall.  After this build in place real walls.  You’ll want to add in a couple more gates and one more tower to the mix.  After that sell any stone you don’t need for repairs later on.  Also a bit worth it is to wall off the eastern side where your stone production is.  This will stop the enemy from burning it indefinitely.  But much like other missions it will bug out any enemy that is set to go there.

For “clean up” you will need a few melee units.  The new Whirring melee unit is an excellent anti-artilley unit.  It will dash very quickly towards the enemy and begin doing an area of effect attack.

Keep hitting pitch when an enemy is on it and this campaign level will be done very quickly.

3. Justice

Stronghold 2 Crusader is a real time strategy game in which you have to create resources and use those resources to build units to kill the enemy’s castle. It is often categorized in the sub-genre of castle siege.

Richard has taken Jerusalem. Saladin fearing that they would plunder the city ordered you to take back the city at all costs. The goal is to break through with a limited army and reach the main gates.

It’s off to go hunt that dirty Caliph and you’ve been given an army to invade his keep.

This mission looks really hard but is in fact quite easy.

For the first wall use cavalry archers to pull the melee unit and kill it.  Send in your regular archers with mantlet to pick off the one archer on the top.

You get a new unit, the assassin.  This is a unique siege unit that can climb walls and remain mostly invisible unless around enemy units.  Use it to climb the wall and open the door for your troops to get through.

Next up is a wood barricade.  Send your torch runners to light it on fire.  After it runs out send them again to the next wood barricade to do the same thing.

On the next wall you’ll probably not have any archers around.  If you do have them kill the enemy archers on the wall.  If you don’t just have your assassins all in to unlock this wall.

For the next two walls you are going to “brute force” your way in.  Having your foot men attack the gates and break them open.  Nothing the enemy has does a terribly high amount of damage.

After this simply click on the lord.  The mission will end as you reach him.

4. The Holy City

This is a very unique invasion mission.  You will be able to purchase new units as you find caches of gold spread throughout the map.  There is one visible cache of gold.  This cache is designed to trap you as getting it takes time off your clock and hurts your goal.  On hard difficulty it is best to just ignore this extra 250 gold as you will never be able to make the timer.

You now gain access to a brand new unit, the Sassanid Knight.  These knights have a charge ability that will deal very high bursty damage on first strike.  After this they do regular damage.  They are most effective against armored units but can be used for tying up ranged or knocking out peasants quickly.

To start rush your knights north past the first wall.  There is a hill leading to a second path.  On that hill in the western corner there is a pocket where you can pick up 250 gold.  Use this to get another Hassinite War Wagon and a Catapult.

The Hassinite War Wagon will be used profusely from here on out.  When you place ranged units in it they will be able to fire on the move, while being protected.  These will be used to pick archers off of walls and towers so the remainder of your forces can get through.  Load up your war wagon and move them north.  Move your armored foot soldiers with them to add a bit of bang for your buck.  After it is clear move the rest of your forces up.

Your war wagons should move forward again on the hill and wipe all of the ranged off of that wall.  Bring in your catapults to wipe out enemy towers in the distance.  While this is happening your armored mercs can be used to destroy the enemy wall.  With your catapult focus on getting rid of wall pieces with archers on them and any towers.  If an archer is destroyed you do not need to destroy the full wall, just focus on getting rid of the archers with the catapult.

After you get this wall down there will be another hidden gold cache by the ruins.  Grab this and get more catapults out.

You will want to aim down the long wall segment on the northeastern part of the map.  Use the war wagons to pick up archers while your catapults break it down.  Your foot soldiers should charge forward to aid in breaking the wall down.

Once it’s down move your soldiers through to deal with melee.  Your sassanid knights can be brought in to support as well.  Once you have enough space from that wall to bring your catapult and war wagon in do so.  They’ll offer amazing support for this final push.

There is a “counter push” by the computer that will randomly get rallied out.  They arrive at your leader when there is only one minute left on the clock.  If you’re taking too long you can use a horse archer to pull these units away from your leader.

There’s one very heavily defended area left.  Any kind of melee you can rally out at all will be helpful.  Armed Peasants can be especially good for breaking down walls.  Use everything you have to knock down this wall.  The goal of the mission is to get to a point so once this wall gets down ignore the units and just move your forces forward.

Campaign 4: Delivering Justice

After the fall of Jerusalem, King Richard feels this land is not as plentiful as he had once thought.  This land was full of crimes, petty lords, and a total lack of nobility.  One “swine” (The Pig) is taking the time to rob local caravans.  King Richard sends you out on a mission to hunt this Pig… I mean swine.

1. Robber Baron

The enemy patrols come from one of five locations.  There are two entry points in the southwest and three in the northeast.  They can come from any of these points.

To deal with this you are going to make a ball of fast units.  Archers, mounted knights, macemen, and man at arms are all going to be amazing units here.  Simply have high production of resources as you have been in the past and add in work shops for these types as you can.

You will be given a high supply of random weapons so adding in an armor work shop will be invaluable.

To better see the enemy locations go to the Mini Map and hold Shift while zooming out.  This will zoom out the map all the way so you can better see where the enemy is coming from.

About half way in you are going to want to begin building a second army that is only for the west.  This army should be composed of pikemen, footmen, knights, and crossbowmen.  It will need far less units, but they will also be far more expensive.  Since they only have two flanks to cover they can just sit in between the two points.

This mission is all about maintaining your economy and getting your numbers up.  As long as you can balance having a strong mobile group and having a moderate strength static group you will do fine.

2. Swine

With the caravans protected Richard has now charted you to hunt down the swine and take him down.

This is another siege mission in which you are gaining access to a huge variety of units.

Use your catapults to wipe out the wood walls.  You want to create a straight path for your units to just walk on through.

With them knocked out walk forward with every unit but your ranged, mantlets, and assassins.  After you have your units near the square tower at the entrance have your guys attacking it.  This tower will actually provide cover against many of the archers firing.

If you’re looking for brownie points get your Dervishes (the spinning guys who run fast) to wipe out archers on the bank to the east.

Your archers and crossbowmen should be moving out slowly picking archers off of the enemy walls to eliminate enemy fire.  If you move all of them too far forward at once they will be the ones getting targeted heavily and be wiped out quickly.  Your catapults are in a similar situation, they need to have most archers cleared before they can move forward and aid with taking out that square tower.

Once you get down the square tower you can move to the next round of towers.  It’s not as heavily fortified.  Use the archers and crossbowmen to pick off whatever enemy ranged you can.  This time have your footsoldiers targeting a wall segment.  This southern wall fragment will also act as cover.

Oh did you forget about your assassins?  Unfortunately they die to fast to be involved in the main siege.  Once you get down that last wall you can bring them in to assist with damage on the lord.  However before doing this just try and clear out the enemy’s melee behind the wall, you don’t after all want to have yourself pinned down while archers are firing.

Once those last few units are down bum rush the enemy with knights and bring in your assassins for extra damage.

Campaign 5: Freedom Fighters

With Saladin’s empire destroyed he is seeing a mass revolt of Arab lords all turning against him and trying to get their own share of the property.  Saladin has a small army now and must re-unifying the Arab world under his boot in order to drive out the Crusader lords.

1. Kerak

One of the lords claiming their stake in the region calls Castle Kerak their home.  Striking down Kerak will not be easy.

Kerak is a simple two wall design.  However it being on a mountain means that all ranged units gain extra range making a traditional siege impossible.  It is a fortress.

To start lay down 8-9 wood cutting places, one home and 2-3 fruit farms.

Buy up as much wood as you can and sell off everything else in favor of wood.  Get up the maximum number of stone production buildings followed by the maximum number of iron buildings.

As you get stone build the largest tower on the southern part of the island (to the east it’s very small).  This is what you will be using as a choke point to beat the enemy.  Build your gatehouse, a large strip of wall and some stairs to get up.  Once that’s all built sell off all of your stone to build a mercenary camp.  Pump out as many archers as you can, enemy forces will arrive soon.

In terms of the enemy forces there will be a scouting party and the main force, both will gain in strength over time.  For the main force focus on destroying the artillery pieces first and enemy second.

With your wood once you have all of your stone and iron production you should focus on food.  Some milk and some meat production will be valuable.  But the real money will be in bread.  Lay down wheat fields, a mill, and some bakers.  Throughout the game this is the one resource you will be constantly expanding on as it is the only one that will provide decent income.

As a finished product bread provides insanely high income and will be used to generate the revenues to pay off the lord for assistance.

However you don’t want to pay the lord off right away.  Instead work on getting your wall full of archers.  You can mix in one slave master (for the armor buff) and one healer to keep your forces from dying.  You can also add a few fire throwers to deal with melee on the walls.  Archers are very cheap and eventually you’ll be swimming in gold.  Lay down a siege camp and pump out War Wagons.

War Wagons can be loaded with archers and will fire on the move.  Once you have eight fill them up with archers and move out with them.  Make sure to move out with them AFTER the enemy has attacked.  Look on the map to make sure there are no slow moving knights coming.

Move these eight war wagons to the east along the mountain face.  The goal here is to wipe out the enemy units along the western wall of the enemy as well as the two towers.  If you can do this you can bring your own forces to link up with your purchased units for a full push.  You will lose some war wagons here… try not to lose any archers if you can.  Once they’re all wiped out bring the war wagons back, you can reuse them later on in the final push.

In the mean time start hard production of foot soldiers for the final push.

Keep in mind this whole time you should have been expanding bread production by adding in wheat farms, mills, and bakeries.  You should be swimming in bread and be able to pay off that final sum immediately… but you’re not.  Instead you’re going to prepare as many foot soldiers as you can.

The point where you should push it over and call on the Shah’s army is when you see a siege push with a trebuchet and four catapults.  That is the final big push by the enemy.  To defeat it send out your giant army of knights to meet the enemy and focus them on wiping out the enemy catapults.

There will be another scouting party and some enemy knights after this, but with the size of your army they are easy to deal with.  Send all of your units to the middle south of the map to link up with the Shah’s forces as they arrive.

The Shah will give you an interesting mix of units, some are useful, some are useless.

Load up archers into the war wagons.  You can send the war wargons and foot soldiers ahead first.  Just make sure to slow the war wargons so they’re always behind the foot soldiers.  The mantlets can also be used to soak some of the ranged damage from the war wagons.

Your cavalry archers can be used to wipe out enemy archers on the eastern wall…. unfortunately they’re one of the most useless units here.  The knights can be used for charging down enemy armor.  They should however be pulled back when they’re not attacking enemy armor.

Catapults and surplus archers should be moved up slowly after the bulk of the archers have been wiped out. The catapults can be used in breaking down walls and doors.  Your knights should also be focused on this.  Once the gatehouse has been knocked down send your units in.  Focus the catapult and units on knocking down a wall.  Your war wargons can slide in and provide that cover, as well other archers can be brought in to help with this as well.

Once the wall is opened move in with your footmen.  You should have at least 50 footmen by this point.

Your catapults can provide support now hitting walls with archers on them, gatehouses and towers.  Once you climb to the top of the master’s keep… you win.

2. The Horns of Hattin

Welcome to RTS hell, there is very little room for development and your only two tradeable resources will be Bread, Stone and Wood.

You should start by building a medium sized tower, a single stretch of wall and a stairs next to it.  This should be placed just south of the fortress beaming over you.  Send your archers up this tower and wipe out as many enemy archers as possible.  Once you can’t fire on anymore bring them down.  This will allow your workers to actually work instead of constantly getting sniped.  You will have to buy some stone to do this.

Next up plant down your wood, a lot of wood.  Look to 9-10 wood camps.  You should place your stone next, only the two.  Make sure to have 3 rams carrying cargo for better efficiency.

You will note that in your stockpile is a lot of wheat.  This means that you can skip straight to making a mill and start mass producing bread with bakeries.  So that’s going to be your plan here.  You can add one or two wheat farms from time to time throughout but for the most part that 100 stack of wheat should last you the whole game.  In terms of your economy make sure to constantly expands your homes, milling and bakeries.

You will need to complete your castle eventually.  Just make a few more walls and create a half fort.  This will draw the enemies in towards your half fort instead of skipping to your castle.

As for items to sell, it’s only going to be bread and stone.  This means your revenues will be insanely small.  With what you get make a lot of archers and as many foot men as you can.  These are your two main battle units.

Saladin will send you free units, they won’t be the ones you necessarily want… but they will be the ones available.

Eventually you will get assassins.  You can send a single assassin to eliminate the dog traps on both sides of the map.  Once activated the enemy will destroy them themselves without the assassin losing stealth.

If you move your group of assassins to the south of that fortress overseeing you, you can actually climb them up without being spotted and kill off all of the enemy archers and rangers there with relative ease.  This gives you control of the fort, and also 500 gold.

For another extra piece of gold look to the northwest.  There is a giant open area there behind a wall.  Have an assassin climb over that to get the extra gold.

You will need to spend a decent amount of time defending here.  You won’t even begin your first push until the half marker.  At this point you will have been given four catapults from the computer and will have a massive force of archers and footmen.

You should send two knights to clear out the little picket of archers before moving too far.  They will just slow you down and the knights unfortunately are not that useful in this mission otherwise.

Move forward with the footmen in the lead and have your catapults try and target down archers on the walls.  Your knights can punch through here.  You’ll probably get as far as the second wall before this fizzles out.

This gives you the other half of the time to prepare your last attack.  Try and time it for the final big push of the enemy.  Push when you get the two war wagons arrive from Saladin.

You can send your forces in and simply bypass them (like two trains passing in the night).  At this point you just try and slow down their advance while your own ball of units pushing in and kills the lord.  You only need 10 surviving footmen to kill a lord, so the number you should have by this point will be ample.

In terms of management make sure your catapults are targeting down walls with archers on them while your footmen blitz through hitting the walls and killing melee enemy.  Your war wagons can be used to support as well to try and wipe archers off of the walls.  When the walls are all down you can bring in your assassins for some extra killing power.

After Thoughts

The Stronghold campaigns have always been known for being challenging and this is no exception.  In terms of learning time I spent 20 hours learning how to do each of these missions with many being far more difficult than others.  The campaign has tonnes of balancing problems and many bugs that will make you feel like quitting.

Every single mission is completable on hard difficulty.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this guide.  In the pipeworks will be the skirmishes walkthrough.

The Anti-Air Guide

An effective anti-air network will be very dependent on battlefield situations, player skill, and enemy strengths.  Anti-air is a primarily defensive play and so this guide will focus on the static uses of anti-air.

Radar Guided vs Infrared

There are two primary weapon’s systems.  There is a third type, but more on that later.

Radar guided systems will track a target through a laser.  With that target pin pointed the munitions will be deployed against the target.  This makes radar guided systems highly accurate and as well very long range.

The downside is that enemy planes can track this laser to its source.  The kind of enemy weapon that does this is the SEAD fighter.  These will have the tag of “Anti-Radar” in the armory and will often make radar guided systems highly vulnerable.

To trick an SEAD plane turn off your radar guided systems.  They will not be able to see the radar if they can’t see it.  Once an enemy plane is no longer facing forward you can turn it on and get an easy hit on them.  However if they send out SEAD fights and bombers in tandem you will lose this anti-air vehicle regardless.

Infrared systems track heat signatures of their targets.  Infrared systems are far less accurate and have a much lower range.  Their advantage is that SEAD planes will not be able to deploy against them.

The SACLOS system (sometimes called MCLOS) is used in a few anti-air systems.  It is not easy to kill like radar but it has one problem.  The SACLOS system’s attacks can only hit a target it can see.  Once it moves out of your vision range the missile will fizzle out and land in a random location.

Fire and Forget?

A large number of anti-air systems will have a tag on the side that reads [F&F] this stands for fire and forget.

Functionally F&F means a unit can fire more than one missile at a time.  Non F&F systems will only fire a second missile once the first one hits.

Vehicles with fire and forget systems will do substantially more damage per second than those without it.  However since they are launching so many missiles so fast they need to be re-supplied far more often.

MANPADS

Manpads is short for Man Portable Air Defense System… it is essentially a GI JOE with a rocket launcher on his back.

MANPADS are the only anti-air type that is safe to deploy to the front lines.  When placed in a town they gain bonus damage resistance.  They can and are most often deployed on mountain areas and forests.

All MANPADS carry infrared weapons.  This of course means they have short range.  However a plane that fires over a MANPAD is going to get hit.  Helicopters are going to be very easy targets for these units.  Manpads should never be grouped with your army.  They are very vulnerable to artillery and napalm and anything targeting a more visible unit, will demolish them.

They are however insanely cheap and a very cost efficient and supply efficient way of anti-air.

Their biggest weakness is mobility.  Once deployed they move very slowly.  It means once you’ve burned through all of your anti-air missiles it will take a long time to re-supply them.

Anti-Air Artillery

In German it would be referred to as Flak.  These have been deployed since World War 2 with the goal of spreading the sky with gunfire in hopes that some of these ordnance hit it.

This is still the same philosophy of the anti-air artillery.  They are fast shooting weapons that are primarily used to deal with helicopters.  They can deal some damage to airplanes but not nearly as much as missile based systems.

The Anti-Air Artillery, often simply called AAA, is the only anti-air system that can hit ground and air (other than the ADATS System which is niche). They do not deal terribly high amounts of damage to infantry, but in a fire fight having that extra fire power can most definitely help.  However the default AI does have it preferentially fire on air units rather than ground.

One of the main problems with AAA is that they will reveal themselves for longer periods than other types.  This makes them far more vulnerable to missile attacks from far more targets.

As well the AAA are radar based.  This means SEAD bombers will be able to very easily destroy them if radar weapons are left on.

Much like Manpads AAA are often very cheap.  Some vehicles like the Tunguska have the Anti-Air Artillery system and infrared.  Many of these hybrids will require you to turn off one weapon to fire the other.

Deploying your Anti-Air Net

If you deploy too many anti-air units you will have a very weak front and be very vulnerable to tank and vehicle pushes.  If you do not have enough anti-air you will become vulnerable to air attacks.

Having an effective anti-air network means mixing in cheap anti-air units with expensive ones to get the best bang for your buck.

This guide won’t be talking about air superiority fighters as that is another topic all together.  But air superiority fighters can be used in an effective anti-air strategy.

Generally speaking infrared based weapons should be closer to the front.  Their shorter range makes them less useful in dealing with planes however they can be used to stop helicopter skirmishing.  They are also a low cost investment which means losing them is not nearly as bad as a more expensive radar guided system.

So obviously radar weapons should be at the back of your anti-air network.  They cover far more ground and thus do not need to be at the front.  With this setup if an SEAD bomber is moving in to try and pick off radar weapons, the infrareds can take them out.