Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Firestorm Campaign Walkthroughs by Steven W. Carter (scarter831@earthlink.net) March 24, 2000 ****************************************************************************** * DISCLAIMER * ****************************************************************************** I provide no guarantees here. These are strategies that worked for me on version 2.00 using the normal difficulty level. I played each mission at least twice and generally tried to mix up my strategies to see what worked best. What follows is a summary of that work, with an emphasis more on how to start up each mission rather than on details on how to destroy an enemy base once you are able to repulse its attacks (and where preferences will vary anyway). ****************************************************************************** * GDI CAMPAIGN * ****************************************************************************** Mission 1 (Recover the Tacitus) ------------------------------- Objective: Find the Kodiak and recover the Tacitus. Strategy: Not long after you gain control of your units, two light infantry and two rocket infantry units will attack from the east. Quickly group your wolverines together -- the new ``t'' option works well -- and bring them to the front of the battle so they can take down the two rocket infantry first and then the two light infantry. Then put your engineers back in the APC and send your units south. Eventually you'll come to a mutant village. More NOD infantry units will attack, but a bunch of mutant infantry units will arrive to dispatch them. Let the mutants do all the work so you can save the health of your wolverines and titans. Ignore the broken bridge for the moment, and head east. You'll come across some more NOD infantry units and a couple of visceroids, which you should be able to kill easily with your wolverines and titans. When you get past the tiberium patch, leave your titans behind and continue east with your wolverines. They'll find the Kodiak not too far away. Send an engineer to the Kodiak, and he'll announce that he can't fix it -- surprise, surprise. Then send your truck to the entrance of the Kodiak, and it will pick up the Tacitus. About this time you'll hear that enemy reinforcements have arrived. The reinforcements consist of two tick tanks and an MCV, but they'll enter the area right where your titans are. Quickly kill the tanks, and then you can either kill the MCV or wait for it to deploy and then capture the buildings it produces. You don't need any extra firepower to finish the mission, so go ahead and destroy it. Then send everything back west to the mutant village. NOD will continually send infantry units at you from the east, but the mutants should be able to handle them easily. Have one of your engineers repair the broken bridge, and then send your titans across. Two infantry units will attack, and the easiest thing to do is simply squash them. Then have the titans head toward the beacon. Two devil's tongues will be nearby, and once the titans kill them, it's safe to send the truck to the beacon and complete the mission. Mission 2 (Party Crashers) -------------------------- Objective: Protect the citizens and defend your base. Strategy: Start cranking out titans. You'll be facing visceroids, fiends, and floaters, and titans are your best weapon against them. Once you have six titans, send them to the civilian town in the southeastern corner. If the enemy creatures appear before your units get to the town, don't worry. Titans are slow, but they'll still get there in time. When the creatures attack the town, they'll use two fiends and two floaters. They won't coordinate their attacks, so you should be able to face them one at a time and kill them easily with your titans. When the creatures are dead, the civilians will run to the takeoff point in the center of the map. You don't actually have to escort them. During the lull between attacks, send your titans to the town in the northwestern corner. Also build some more titans, but leave them in your base. Sometimes the enemy creatures will get bored attacking civilians and take a shot at your base, and your vulcan cannons aren't much defense. When the creatures attack the northwestern town, they'll have three fiends and three floaters. Dispatch them the same as before, watch the civilians scurry away again, and then head to the town in the northeastern corner. The story will be the same there, and once those civilians are safe, send your titans to the city area southeast of your base. Inside the city is a church, and if you destroy the church you'll find a health crate. Your titans can probably use the crate at this point, and since the civilians are evacuating the city anyway, it's not like they'll miss the church. Eventually the creatures will attack the city, and since it is so close to your base, more will attack your base than in previous skirmishes, so be ready to defend the southern wall. Once the city is safe, the creatures will mount one last offensive against your base, but you should have enough titans around to kill them easily. Mission 3 (Quell the Civilian Riot) ----------------------------------- Objective: Neutralize the four riot leaders while protecting the supply depot. Strategy: Things look bad at the start, but the rioting mutants and civilians only carry pistols, and eventually they'll start attacking each other rather than the depot. Send your EMP tanks and a couple of riot police to the depot, and use the rest of the police to hunt riot leaders. There are four riot leaders. The closest one is in the southwestern corner. When you get close, he'll be displayed on the map. He'll be easy to recognize because he's one of the few civilians your police can actually target. When he is neutralized, head north. The second civilian riot leader is just south of the depot. During this time a mutant riot leader in the northeastern part of the map will start whipping up the local mutants into a frenzy. The mutants will head to the depot and attack, but again they don't have powerful weapons, and the riot police you have there should be able to handle them. Now that you know the location of one of the mutant riot leaders, send your police there to neutralize him. The fourth leader is nearby, and he'll probably be shooting his pistol, making him easy to find. When all four riot leaders are neutralized, the mission will end after a short delay. Mission 4 (In the Box) ---------------------- Objective: Destroy the two bridges in the area to prevent enemy reinforcements. Capture CABAL's core. Strategy: Set up your base slightly west of your starting position so you can place your refinery next to the tiberium patch with the blossom tree. Get some vulcan cannons set up quickly. The reinforcements the enemy gets consist of attacks cycles, attack buggies, and tick tanks, and they'll come at you at regular intervals. Plus CABAL will send cyborgs and engineers at you via subterranean APC's, so you need to put some cannons within your base as well as on the perimeter. The cannons plus about four roving titans is enough defense. You don't have to worry about SAM embankments because CABAL won't attack you that way. Build six titans for offense and send them north along the eastern edge of the map. Eventually you'll find a cyborg commando guarding a tiberium patch. Kill the commando and then kill the enemy harvester when it shows up. Farther north is one of the bridges that CABAL uses for reinforcements. Attack the bridge from below, and then send your titans back to your base when it is destroyed. Build some more titans to replenish your losses, and then have them scout north of your base. You should find an entrance to the enemy base fairly quickly. It is guarded at the front by two laser turrets and in back by an obelisk of light and an artillery tank. Move your titans out of the way for now and build some jump jet infantry. The enemy doesn't have any air defenses in the area, but there is a nearby Hand of NOD, and CABAL will train some rocket infantry as soon as your jump jet infantry start attacking. But if you're quick and have six or so jump jet infantry, you can destroy the obelisk and cause the artillery tank to undeploy. Then bring in your titans and either destroy or capture the buildings you want. North of this part of the enemy base is the civilian town with the technicians. When you get far enough into the town, five technicians will appear, and a part of the map in the northwestern corner will be revealed. Send the technicians back to the safety of your base, and then send your remaining jump jet infantry to the northwestern corner (by way of the southwestern corner) so they can destroy the revealed obelisk of light and cyborgs. They can also destroy a radar station and a power plant before venturing too close to the enemy SAM embankments. With the area clear, send a technician in an APC to the area and have him capture the power array. The nearby tick tanks won't be able to kill him before he gets inside. >From here it's just a matter of destroying the base layer by layer, capturing a power array on one layer so you can move on to the next. If your technicians get killed, you can always destroy the laser fencing in the old-fashioned way, but it is tougher than usual. Once you take the second layer of the enemy base, send a couple of titans to destroy the remaining bridge so no enemy forces sneak up on you from behind. And then once you destroy CABAL's core in the third and innermost layer, the mission will be complete. Mission 5 (Dogma Day Afternoon) ------------------------------- Objective: Recover the Tacitus fragment from the Temple of Tacitus. Strategy: Deploy the juggernaut about where you receive it. It will kill three tiberian fiends for you. Then send the ghost stalker north and west. You'll see a bunch of believers worshipping at two tiberium veins. Believers only have pistols, and the ghost stalker can kill them easily. When they're dead, have the ghost stalker also kill the veins. Two shots from his rail gun are all it takes for him to kill a vein. There is only one way to go, so follow the path with the ghost stalker in the lead. Kill more mutant creatures and believers, and eventually you'll come to a temple. When you send your archeologist inside, you'll find out it's not the temple you want -- no surprise there since you still have half the map to go. Head west and you'll run into three tiberium fiends. The ghost stalker's rail gun will damage anything between it and its target, so aim for the trailing fiend when you attack. If the ghost stalker can kill multiple fiends with his first shot, or if he has the medic helping him, then he can kill three fiends by himself. Continuing on, you'll find three more fiends surrounded by believers. Ignore the believers and use the same strategy as before on the fiends. Then mop up the believers. The second temple is to the east, but before sending the archeologist inside move all of your other units a safe distance away. Entering the temple will trigger lightning strikes on the blue tiberium crystals nearby, starting a chain reaction and doing a lot of damage to anything unlucky enough to be standing on top of them. Now head east and have the ghost stalker kill another tiberium vein so the juggernaut can pass safely. In the southeastern corner is the third and final temple, and it is guarded by cult guards, which are fairly nasty. It takes the ghost stalker three shots to kill them, and they do quite a bit of damage to him in the process. Luckily, you only have to fight one guard at a time, and with the medic helping out, the ghost stalker should be able to kill them all with little trouble. Finally, just send the archeologist into the temple, and then send all of your units to the transport waiting for them to the north. Now if we only knew who Mortimer is.... Mission 6 (Escape from CABAL) ----------------------------- Objective: Rescue Dr. Boudreau and then destroy CABAL's base. Strategy: Take your starting forces and flee to the southeast. You'll find an existing but damaged GDI base. Send Dr. Boudreau to the beacon, place your wolverines and titan just west of the barracks, and put your infantry units around the vulcan cannon. Also build a few more disc throwers, but not too many because you still need to build a war factory and a harvester. The infantry units (with the medic in guard mode) can kill all of the oncoming cyborgs and tick tanks, and the wolverines and titan can kill the two devil's tongues that arrive near their position. After Dr. Boudreau leaves on a transport, you'll receive an MCV. Deploy it northwest of the ramp leading down to your base. Then build a war factory and two harvesters. Then place a couple of RPG cannons north of your construction yard. Finally, start cranking out titans and juggernauts. When you have a few titans, send them east where they should find and kill two reapers. Then send them west to the entrance of the red NOD base. There will be a handful of cyborgs there, and the cyborgs will either attack your units, the red base, or both. Supposedly the red units are allies, but I've never figured out a way for them to do anything useful. Now all of the enemy units are in the enemy base where you started. It's cloaked, so build a mobile sensor array, and then start bombarding the base with juggernauts. CABAL's harvesters have to go out the front of the base in order to access tiberium, and you can kill them then. With no tiberium coming in, CABAL won't be able to produce new units or repair buildings, and you can just pound away until everything is destroyed. Mission 7 (The Cyborgs Are Coming) ---------------------------------- Objective: Warn the civilians about CABAL, and then destroy CABAL's forces. Strategy: You start off with a commander, who can do nothing but scout for you. Watch as your base gets attacked and three of your light infantry units get abducted. Then start moving southeast towards the first town. Your path will be blocked by a pair of cyborg commandos. Wait for a few seconds and CABAL will call the commandos away. In the first town you'll receive 4000 credits, two light infantry units, and two rocket infantry units. You'll need the infantry units because blocking your path to the next town is a reaper, and CABAL won't call it away this time. Spread out your units so the reaper can't ensnare them all at once, and lead the charge with your commander so he gets ensnared first. You should take some damage but be able to kill the reaper without losing any units. In the second town you'll receive a harvester and three mutant soldiers. The only thing between the second town and the third town is the civilian holding pen that CABAL uses when creating cyborgs. You can skirt around the pen if you want and avoid any fights, or you can kill the two reapers on the eastern side of the pen. If you move any farther to the west, you'll come within range of some enemy artillery units. In the third town you'll receive a bunch of disc throwers and find out you need to warn the city to the north as well. Leave all of your units except the commander in the third town, and send the commander into the city. He needs to go to the streetlight where an MCV is parked. When he gets there you'll receive the MCV, and you'll also receive some reinforcements next to the two broken bridges in the area. Send everything to the third civilian town and build your base there. Before deploying your MCV, sell all of the buildings at your original base. If you don't, the two reapers and tick tanks there will start attacking the buildings and destroy them. You could also kill those units before deploying your MCV and either run two bases or build your base there instead, but that location is difficult to defend and far away from CABAL's two bases. So have your infantry units start destroying the buildings in the third civilian town, and set up your base there. CABAL will regularly send cyborgs into your base using subterranean APC's, and he will also send an air unit at you every so often, so build your defenses accordingly. CABAL won't send any infantry units at you, so don't bother with vulcan cannons; use RPG cannons instead. There are three blossom trees south of your base, giving you plenty of tiberium to use, but CABAL will try to use those patches as well, so your first priority should be to take them away from him. Build some juggernauts to harass his harvesters, and then build some titans to go in and finish them off. You have to be careful in the tiberium patches because they are within range of CABAL's artillery units as well. The next thing you should do is destroy the cyborg commandos and the hospital next to the holding pen. Move some juggernauts south and guard them with titans. Once the hospital is destroyed, CABAL will no longer get free cyborgs every several seconds, and you'll be able to attack his bases in earnest. The first enemy base to target is the closest one, the one in the southwestern corner. Create a force of half a dozen titans and send them through the north entrance. This will be a suicide run, so don't use any veteran units. CABAL will have two obelisks of light guarding the entrance, and there will also be a few artillery units nearby. Ignore the obelisks and go after the artillery units. When the artillery units are gone, you can move your juggernauts within range and start bombarding the base. CABAL will keep replacing the buildings you destroy, so the attack will be slow going. Keep building titans and juggernauts of your own, and every time you destroy an obelisk, try to put some light infantry units in the location so CABAL can't replace them. Once the southwestern base is destroyed, move on the southeastern base. It is guarded in much the same way, with obelisks of light and artillery units, and you can take it down the same way. Once all of CABAL's units are dead, the mission will be complete. Mission 8 (Factory Recall) -------------------------- Objective: Infect the network center and then destroy all of CABAL's forces. Strategy: Send all of your units except the infected cyborg southwest across the bridge. You'll find a gate guarded by two obelisks of light. Have your units destroy the obelisks by concentrating their fire at one at a time. If more than one of your vehicles is destroyed, start over and try again. It doesn't matter if your infantry units get killed. Past the obelisk gate is a second gate, but this one is only guarded by laser turrets. Destroy the lasers and any cyborgs that wander by. While you're doing this, have your infected cyborg join your attack group and help out. Then march through the gate and destroy the Hand of NOD and any cyborgs that it produces. The network center is just to the southwest, surrounded by laser fencing. Remove the fencing and send your cyborg inside. Once the network center is infected, you'll gain control of two reapers and two more cyborgs. They'll be located to the southwest of the network center, and they'll be among some other cyborgs and reapers who will attack randomly. Move your attack group southwest and try to save your new units. Then destroy the enemy buildings and SAM sites nearby. There's no reason to save them so you can capture them later; as soon as you build a barracks later in the game, CABAL will sell them all off. Eventually you'll be shown the cyborg manufacturing plant in the southwestern part of the map, and you'll receive an MCV and other reinforcements. Build your base in the northern part of the map, between two tiberium patches. You won't have a lot of room, so plan carefully where you want to put your buildings. Then the mission becomes pretty standard. The enemy base is situated along the western edge of the map, and there are two entrances: one at the south and one at the north. You have to pass by a tiberium vein to get to the southern entrance, so it is easier to attack from the north and work your way south. Once you've destroyed all of CABAL's forces, the mission will end. If you think you've killed everything but the mission won't end, you might have missed the power plants and stealth generator in the southwestern corner. Mission 9 (Core of the Problem) ------------------------------- Objective: Capture three control stations and then destroy CABAL's core. Strategy: You start off with two titans and a wolverine. Leave the titans where they are and move the wolverine forward. You'll discover two regular cyborgs and a cyborg commando waiting for you, and at the same time you'll receive two more titans and a mobile EMP tank as reinforcements. Have the wolverine immediately run away from the commando, and move the EMP tank forward to disable the commando and the other two cyborgs. Now you can kill the trio without taking any damage. You're not done with the welcoming party yet, though. Move your wolverines and titans across the western bridge and destroy the two artillery tanks creeping up on you. Meanwhile, have the EMP tank cross the eastern bridge and disable the other two artillery tanks. Then have your wolverines and titans finish them off. Somewhere in the middle of all this combat, you'll receive an MCV. Send it and your other units east and build your base in the southeastern corner. CABAL will make concerted air attacks finally in this mission, and he also has missile silos at his disposal. So try to space out your base as much as possible, and put up a few SAM sites along the northern edge. After setting up your base, your first priority should be to build six hover tanks. CABAL's missile silos are in the southwestern corner with one of the control stations you need to capture, and only four reapers guard them. The reapers are spaced out enough that you can attack them one at a time with your hover tanks and only take minimal losses. Once they're dead, take out (or capture) the silos and the nearby SAM sites and power plants. At this point you can capture the control station if you want, but there's no hurry. It's a good idea to wait until you've killed all of CABAL's forces before attacking the core itself, and you don't need to capture the control stations until you're ready to attack the core. The easiest way to get an engineer to the island is to load one into an APC and then have a carryall drop it off. Now it's time to start cutting off CABAL's supply of tiberium. North of your base, past a shootable ramp, are several patches of tiberium. Northwest of the tiberium lies one of CABAL's bases, and it has three refineries inside. It is defended in the standard way, with obelisks of light and artillery tanks, plus random other units in support. Advance, destroy and capture what you want. If you take all three refineries while enemy harvesters are unloading, then you'll have all of the tiberium you need for the rest of the mission. The control station in the northeastern corner is guarded by an EMP cannon. If you send your units across the bridge leading to the island it is on, the EMP cannon will fire, freezing your vehicles, and several APC's filled with cyborgs will pop out of the ground. The better way to approach is through the back door on the eastern side of the island, past a shootable ramp. Send several hover tanks to clear the area. The EMP cannon will still fire, but the cyborgs won't notice until after your tanks start attacking the nearby buildings. Destroy the EMP cannon first, and then attack the other buildings until the 20 or so cyborgs show up. Retreat the way you came, and then kill the cyborgs with titans or whatever else you have handy. The last control station is in the middle of the map, surrounded by another enemy base. Destroying the base and the rest of CABAL's forces should be straightforward. CABAL should be about out of credits by now, and so it's just a matter of advancing with titans and juggernauts, laying waste to everything in your path. Now for the fun part. Save your game and then capture all of the control stations. The firestorm walls surrounding CABAL's core will come down, and CABAL will activate his ``defense protocol.'' The defense protocol is one nasty unit. A shot from an ion cannon barely dents it, and it can kill most units with one shot. Watch where it walks (usually east), and then restore your game. Now put a whole heck of a lot of units in the protocol's path. I put about 100 rocket infantry and titans together, and they killed it fairly easily. After the protocol is dead, it's just a matter of marching to CABAL's core, destroying the defending super obelisks, and then destroying the core itself. ****************************************************************************** * NOD CAMPAIGN * ****************************************************************************** Mission 1 (Operation Reboot) ---------------------------- Objective: Locate the three pieces of CABAL's core, and then return them to the rendezvous point for evacuation. Strategy: There are a lot of ways to finish this mission. I'll just present the shortest. Take all of your units and head south to the southern edge of the map, and then head east until you see three GDI light infantry units and an amphibious APC. A tiberium fiend will kill the infantry units, and then you can use the APC as your own. Put both cyborgs, two rocket infantry units, and an engineer into the APC, and then drive it north to the temple. Drop off the units and capture the temple to gain one piece of the core. At about this time you'll see the location of the second piece. Send the APC back to get the rest of your units, and then cross the bridge to the northwest. Have one of your cyborgs touch the crate to get the second piece. It will also give him a promotion. Then head generally west to the northwest corner of the map where you'll find a truck carrying the third piece of the core. Kill the truck and grab the piece with a cyborg again. Now all you have to do is return to the place on the map where you started the mission. You could probably go back the way you came, but that would be boring. Instead head south and capture a barracks and a power plant. This will alert GDI to your presence, and it will start producing light infantry units to attack you. Sell the temple you captured earlier and start cranking out light infantry of your own. When you run out of credits, sell the power plant, and then eventually sell the barracks so you can receive radar information again. Now just walk your way south, destroying everything in your path. You only need to get one unit to the rendezvous point to complete the mission. Mission 2 (Seeds of Destruction) -------------------------------- Objective: Cleanse the area using tiberium creatures. Strategy: Take your units and head north to a broken bridge. Have one of your engineers fix the bridge, and then move your toxin soldiers southwest to a civilian town. Convert the six civilians there and watch what they do. Each civilian will lure a tiberium creature out of the ``Genesis Pit'' and into the rest of the map where they will attack GDI forces -- plus anything else they see, including your units. As you play the mission, different parts of the map will be revealed. Put your toxin soldiers into an APC and send them to each of the revealed areas, and have them convert the civilians there. The only tricky part is in avoiding the GDI forces. If you attack them or they attack you, then you will be detected and lose the mission. Otherwise, all you have to do is sit back and watch the tiberium creatures destroy all of the GDI forces. Mission 3 (Tratos' Final Act) ----------------------------- Objective: Kill Tratos. Strategy: You won't be able to get a limpet-infected truck into the GDI base as long as the mutant soldier is guarding the entrance. With six cyborgs and six rocket infantry units, you have more than enough firepower to kill the guard and the nearby vulcan cannon. But here's a trick to save some wear and tear on your troops: order your units to attack the guard, and then force-move an APC unit onto the guard. If you time it right, the guard will only get off a couple shots before he is squashed. Once you're past the gate, use two engineers to capture the barracks and power plant, and then build as many disc throwers as possible. You're going to have to destroy six vulcan cannons and one RPG cannon -- plus a variety of enemy infantry units -- before you get any more credits, and so you need to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. Send you units across the bridge and have them destroy the infantry and cannons guarding the gate. Then have them move north and destroy the two vulcan cannons guarding the construction yard. Then have them move northwest and destroy the two vulcan cannons guarding the western entrance to the base. Finally, move them east to destroy the vulcan cannon within range of the western refinery. Now you can send your remaining engineer to capture the western refinery when the enemy harvester is unloading. With credits coming in, build more infantry units and more engineers. The GDI base should largely be visible to you now, and you just need to capture more buildings and destroy several more cannons. If you need extra credits, there is a money crate hidden beneath the subterranean dwelling surrounded by four enemy barracks on the eastern side of the base. Four of the power plants you need to capture should be visible. The last two are east of the northern two visible plants, across a broken bridge. Once you've captured those as well, the firestorm generator will explode, and most of the infantry inside the firestorm walls will come out to attack. Make sure you have enough units of your own to defeat them. To finish the mission, load a couple of APC's with cyborgs or light infantry units, and send them to the patch of ground where the firestorm generator used to stand. Have them target the Tanya-style sniper first, and then they can kill Tratos at their leisure. If you try to simply walk into that part of the base, GDI will detect you, and Tratos will get away in a transport. Mission 4 (Mutant Extermination) -------------------------------- Objective: Retrieve the Tacitus and kill the mutants. Strategy: Move northwest and build your base in the area surrounded by tiberium blossom trees. There are several trees, so build two refineries and at least three harvesters. You'll be facing mutants in this mission, so you don't have to worry about subterranean or cloaked attacks, and although the mutants will have harpies at their disposal, the harpies will only defend the mutant base. So you only need put defenses at the two entrances to your base (mostly the northern entrance), and you can skip SAM sites. The mutants will have numerous sniper and ghost stalker units, so you won't do very well if you try to attack them with infantry and cyborgs. Thus you should create a dozen rocket infantry early in the mission and have them kill the tiberium veins on the map. You might have to create some cyborgs to chase away or destroy artillery units guarding the vein in the middle of the map. Then you can swarm the mutants with tick tanks and artillery. The tick tanks can take a lot of damage from the mutant infantry, and at worst they can squash their targets. Once your base is set up and you've killed the tiberium veins, build a dozen tick tanks and go exploring. Have them go north from your base using the shootable ramp, and then have them turn west when you see some mutants. If you keep moving west you'll run into the mutant base in the northwestern corner of the map, and in the process you'll pass the tiberium patch that the mutants use. Kill the enemy harvester if it is nearby, and then see how much damage you can do to the base. As soon as you attack the mutant base, the mutants will release six tiberium fiends, and the fiends will either attack your tick tanks or travel all the way to your base and attack that. The fiends are nasty in packs that large, so fend them off as best you can. The only other surprise on the map is triggered on one of the plateaus on the northern side. When you approach a group of civilian buildings, about ten mutants will appear and attack. If you find them with tick tanks, you should be able to do enough squashing to reduce the threat. If you find them with infantry, you'll probably lose the infantry. Once you know where the mutant base is, send a force of tick tanks and artillery. This force should be able to destroy the base. The truck with the Tacitus is located on the northern side of the base next to a hospital. As soon as the truck appears, send it east and then south to your base. The mutant harpies are on the western side of the base, and they can kill the truck quickly if it goes near them. Once you've destroyed the mutants and the truck arrives at the southeastern corner of the map, the mission will end. Mission 5 (Escape from CABAL) ----------------------------- Objective: Locate the abandoned airfield, repair the damaged array there, and then call for help! Strategy: This mission is disturbingly easy. Send your units north where they'll find a cyborg. Kill the cyborg and then move east to receive some attack cycles. Head west until you come to a civilian town. The town is guarded by two reapers, but once you kill them you can destroy the church and find a health crate. Continue moving west staying as far north as possible. You will come across two cyborgs chasing three engineers. If you want, you can kill the cyborgs to rescue the engineers, but you don't really need more engineers. Continue west and shoot the ramp leading down into the airfield. Send your engineers into the base, and have one repair the array while the others repair helipads. Don't have your military units enter the base. Send them south to the southern edge of the map. Once the array is repaired, the Montauk will appear, and all you have to do is send your units to it to complete the mission. Mission 6 (The Needs of the Many) --------------------------------- Objective: Capture the GDI radar station. Strategy: I've never been able to finish this mission using the strategy suggested in the mission briefing. The GDI base will send some of its air units out to defend the civilians, but it'll never send out all of its air units, and so sending an APC into the base while attacking a village doesn't work. I've even tried attacking all three villages at once, but GDI still won't send out all of its air units. Potentially you might be able to kill off the air units as they leave the base to investigate each disturbance, but I usually get my stealth tanks blown up trying to do that. So here's another way to finish the mission. Crank up the game speed to its highest setting, and then explore the map with the three stealth tanks you start with. Find the truck in the western civilian town, and destroy it when it has its cargo. That will net you a health crate, which your starting tanks can use. At some point during exploration, you will receive several more stealth tanks. Group all of the tanks together and sneak them into the GDI base using the western entrance. They should be able to enter the base without drawing any fire. Then send a pair of tanks to attack each group of six helipads. The tanks will explode when they die, and if they're among the helipads, they'll blow them up as well. Now GDI's air units can't replenish their ammunition. So one at a time have a stealth tank attack an air unit. Eventually the air units will run out of ammunition and just sit on the ground. Now is the time to send in the APC with the engineers inside. The engineers will only have to take some machine gun fire on their way to the radar station, and they should be able to survive that easily. Mission 7 (Determined Retribution) ---------------------------------- Objective: Capture CABAL's command station and destroy his forces. Strategy: Immediately move your two artillery tanks towards each other and then deploy them when they meet. Group your tick tanks together and move them east. They'll come under fire from a reaper and two cyborgs. When those enemy units are dead, move your forces west and kill another reaper and two more cyborgs. Now you can start setting up your base. Move the MCV northeast so that you can eventually place a refinery north of the nearby tiberium patch. Your base will come under almost no attacks during this mission, so don't worry about defenses yet. Place another refinery near the tiberium patch on the plateau to the northeast, and get your other buildings set up. Create a force of about a dozen light and rocket infantry. Move them north and then east, and you'll find a broken bridge. There is an adult visceroid on the other side, so try to kill it with your rocket infantry while it is unable to reach you. Then send an engineer to fix the bridge and one of your infantry units across the bridge. This will trigger your reinforcements. The first reinforcements from the eastern bridge will consist of two artillery tanks and two devil's tongues. If you leave the tongues to their own devices, they'll travel to the southwestern corner of the map where the other bridge is. They'll also attack the three cyborgs guarding it and get killed. Devil's tongues aren't really necessary for this mission, so go ahead and let them suicide themselves. Now create some defenses for your base. You should have at least six tick tanks and six artillery tanks, plus some laser turrets on the northern side. Go back to the infantry group that discovered the broken bridge, and have them move west and then north. They'll trigger a massive attack by CABAL. Several APC's filled with cyborgs will appear, and the cyborgs will descend upon your base. What's more, CABAL will attack with a multi missile and likely destroy a good chuck of your defenses. Start building and placing laser towers while the cyborgs approach, and then kill them as well as possible. Meanwhile, have your infantry group continue north and attack an obelisk of light. They might be attacked briefly by the cyborgs, but eventually all of the cyborgs will head south and ignore the infantry. After the obelisk is down, move the infantry east and you'll find CABAL's three missile silos. Destroy two of them and build an engineer to take the third. Then create some more infantry units to attack the other obelisk of light (north of the first one) and then destroy or capture the remaining enemy buildings. Create some tick tanks (if you need to) and send them west from your base to the second bridge. They might encounter some wandering cyborgs, but they should be able to clear the path for an engineer easily. Once the second bridge is repaired, you'll start receiving a steady stream of tanks, and the mission will essentially be over. All you have to do is take down CABAL's base, and that should be a piece of cake with all of the tanks at your disposal. Once the base is down, head northwest to find CABAL's core -- plus some laser turrets and a cyborg commando. Destroy what you need to and then send an engineer into the nearby control station. CABAL will disappear and give you a parting gift of five or more multi missiles. Then the mission will end. Mission 8 (Harvester Hunting) ----------------------------- Objective: Protect the nearby civilians and disrupt CABAL's harvesting capabilities by destroying all harvesters, refineries and silos. Strategy: Deploy your mobile war factory where it stands, and then start cranking out tick tanks. Patrol the area while your tanks are coming out, and kill what enemy harvesters you can. Form your tanks into two groups: one for east of your war factory, and one for west. For the moment, the eastern group only needs six tanks. Put everything else into the western group. Also build two mobile repair vehicles, one for each group. Kill all of the harvesters you see until the civilian town comes under attack. The town is located in the northeastern corner of the map, and it should be revealed when the attack starts. Send your eastern group to deal with the enemy cyborgs and reapers. The six tanks in the group should be more than enough. When the town is safe, you'll receive some reinforcements. Move the engineers south to your war factory so they don't get squashed by enemy harvesters, collect the money crates, and produce some more tick tanks. Meanwhile, send your western team west. You should have about a dozen tanks in the group now, and that should be enough to overwhelm CABAL's base in that direction. Don't destroy all of the buildings. Use the engineers to capture a couple refineries, power plants, and the construction yard. Then you can create a Hand of NOD to create more engineers and capture more buildings if you want. Back at your war factory, start producing some artillery tanks to go with the tick tanks. The second (and last) enemy base is in the southeastern corner of the map, and CABAL will have had enough time to defend it reasonably well, so you won't be able to simply storm it with tick tanks. Send a cheap unit to probe the enemy perimeter, and then set up your artillery to start pounding away. You'll need a mobile sensor array here because the base will be stealthed. Luckily, CABAL doesn't have a construction yard in this base, so once you destroy a building, it will be gone for good. Thus, try to take out the war factory quickly, even if you have to kill off a few of your tick tanks to do it. Once you've destroyed all of the tiberium-related units and buildings, the mission will end. Mission 9 (Core of the Problem) ------------------------------- Objective: Capture three control stations and then destroy CABAL's core. Strategy: Group your units together and start killing cyborgs. As the battle progresses, you'll receive some rocket infantry in support, then some engineers and more elite cadre in two APC's, and then finally an MCV. Use your APC's to ferry your units across the chasm. That way you won't have to waste an engineer fixing the bridge. Move your MCV off the plateau and deploy it near the tiberium patch to the west. Use your engineers to capture the Hand of NOD and a power plant, and then build two more engineers to capture the other power plant and the radar station. Then build the rest of your base. CABAL will throw missiles at you right away, so keep things spaced out. He'll also send regular squadrons of banshees and orca bombers at you, so be liberal with your SAM sites and rocket infantry. The only other attacks will be from cyborgs arriving from the northeast, which you can kill using a couple of laser turrets (aka missile magnets) supported by tick tanks, and from hover tanks arriving from the east, which a couple of artillery tanks should take care of. Once you have your ground defenses set up, and after CABAL has sent a missile at you, send a light infantry unit northeast of your base. He'll trigger an attack similar to the one in mission 7, but he'll also cause a couple of juggernauts to expose themselves. Your devil's tongues (if they're still around) can't kill the juggernauts because the juggernauts are close enough together to support each other. So build some banshees to dispose of the juggernauts and then repeat the process to expose more juggernauts. Eventually you'll clear enough juggernauts away that you'll be able to attack the enemy outpost to the northeast. The outpost as an EMP cannon, and once that is destroyed, the APC/cyborg surprise attacks will stop. Your next priority should be to take out CABAL's missile silos. They're located in the southeastern corner of the map, and you'll have to follow a circuitous route to reach them. Along the way you'll discover one of CABAL's harvesting sites, and you should take the time to capture the silos and refineries and secure the site with lasers and tick tanks before moving on. The site will be attacked regularly by visceroids, so you should defend it even if it doesn't look like CABAL will send any attacks that way. There is also a war factory across a bridge west of the harvesting site, and it's a good idea to take that out quickly so you can stop the hover tank attacks on your main base. The missile silos are east of the harvesting site, past a tiberium vein, and across a broken bridge. They're guarded by four reapers, but you should be able to fight the reapers one at a time, so a dozen rocket infantry should be enough to do the trick. Once the missile silos are gone, the mission will be very straightforward for a while. CABAL's income will be cut in half, and you should be able to advance slowly, using tick tanks and artillery tanks to destroy everything in your path. If you have your own missile silo and a few banshees to play with, then your advances will be even easier. Besides CABAL's core, the only other interesting place on the map is along the northern edge, where CABAL has a GDI tech center and a GDI upgrade center -- complete with a seeker upgrade! It is hidden with a stealth generator, so be sure to include a mobile sensor array with your attack force. Once you've killed all of the enemy forces outside of the core, save your game and then capture the three control stations. Inside the core area CABAL has a special defense protocol, which looks something like a very, very tall robot. It can take a lot of abuse, and its rail gun attack can kill most units in one shot. However, it has the same weakness as the obelisk of light: you can swarm it with numerous infantry units, and since it can only kill one at a time, it will eventually fall. Once the robot is dead, just walk over to the core, kill the super obelisks guarding it, and then destroy the core itself. ----- Copyright (c) 2000 by Steven W. Carter