Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight takes a very different approach to strategy gaming than its predecessors. With base building and resource management thrown out of the window in favor of a mobile crawler, low unit limit and crystal-based upgrade system, you’ll have to throw all the old strategies out the window.
So after I finished the singleplayer campaign in hard mode yesterday, I wrote up a list of tips to help new players who may be struggling to adjust to the new rule set. Also included are strategies for the three most challenging missions.
Keep in mind that these tips aren’t much use in multiplayer, which is a whole different ball game than the solo singleplayer experience.
Tips
- Hard mode is pointless. There are no bonus missions, achievements or cinematics. You may gain mildly more experience from extra unit kills, but that’s it.
- Engineers are key. Always have 3 or 4 of them just to auto-repair your units. With them you’ll survive pretty much anything.
- Do not pick the Support class, because it’s practically useless in singleplayer. Air units just don’t deal much damage in C&C 4.
- You’ll usually be facing mixed groups of infantry, air and various armored types. Your best option is to simply assemble a mixed army yourself, which can deal a wider spread of damage than a pure laser or rocket force.
- Secure tiberium crystals as early as possible. Send out engineers or other fast terrain-jumping units on suicide runs for red crystals. Remember: units cost nothing to produce!
- Take over husks of fallen enemy units with engineers to expand your army well beyond the food limit.
- The crawler can build units and structures while on the move. Queue up an army and the moment it deploys it will spew them out one after the other.
- Send your crawler out along with your army to the frontlines. It can instantly replace lost units, repair damaged ones within a certain radius and has defenses that deal damage to enemy units. It also has tons of hitpoints so it will not go down easily.
- Ignore enemy crawlers and bases, they take ages to kill even with veteran units. Most missions have a single objective and you can just race in on it and take it down for a quick win.
- Bind your engineers to their own control group. You can then instantly select them all and keep them out of harms way, but in range of your army for repair duty.
- R selects the crawler, use this to move it, queue up units and assign new waypoints. Double tap Q to select all combat units if you don’t bind them to a control group. Double tap W to select all units of the type you have selected, ideal for quickly grouping your engineers into their own control group (Ctrl + 2 to assign, 2 to select).
- If you really want to gain a lot of levels so that you can use all units and upgrades in the later missions, then use a mission without a time limit (e.g.: GDI’s “Cold Hard Truth”) for unlimited kills. Set your forces down outside a crawler’s range and watch the experience meter soar.
Mission Guides
Spontaneous Outbursts (GDI)
You have to defend a convoy of civilians while they drive straight through NOD lines.
Send the bulk of your army to advance just in front of the convoy, while you set up a base in the center of the map. Keep 2 or 3 units behind.
When the convoy is about to hit the NOD roadblock on the right side, send in your 2-3 units to harass their lines from behind. The NOD troops will focus on your army over the convoy and as long as you stay out of their way the convoy will make it through.
Rinse and repeat.
This is what you want to see at the end of The Harder They Fall!
The Harder They Fall (NOD)
You have to take down a large GDI command ship.
Pick the offense class and stick to a stable unit composition, but keep in mind that you’ll need anti-air (laser/rocket/light) towards the end. You’ll be facing a lot of ground units before that.
Take control over the nearest AA battery and push on straight into enemy lines, taking out the crawler if possible, while heading towards the next AA tower. You’ll need to thin the GDI forces a bit in order to maintain control over the towers, but do not focus on crawlers beyond the first one blocking your path.
You will not be able to take over every AA battery before the GDI ship arrives. Nor will you be able to hold on to every AA battery at the same time. This does not matter. The secondary objective is fulfilled if you’ve held each AA battery at some point in time.
After the secondary objective is complete send everything towards the GDI command ship and keep pumping rocket units. Focus down repair drones before attacking the ship! You should be able to kill it before it reaches the end of the map.
This experimental bomber is a pain - if you don't know to stay out of its wake
The End of All Things (NOD)
You have to hold on to your tiberium control nodes until a point roughly 20 minutes in. Then you need to take down a totally overpowered GDI aircraft.
Send engineers to capture the nearest two red crystals, then a blue crystal and research tech. While your engineers are off capturing crystals, pump out units and head for the left or right flank.
Once you’re teched up, get Stealth Tanks and Avatars. Push into the left or right flank base and annihilate the crawler. Keep doing this on both flanks until the timer runs out, this will make it easier to take on the aircraft.
When it arrives, keep pumping stealth tanks and avatars. Stealth tanks will run alongside or ahead of it (avoiding the bombs) and fire rockets. Avatars will tear into it when it lands.
Shoot down any repair bots before attacking the aircraft, they will simply undo your damage. Keep in mind that units are free so just keep sending them to the frontlines and queue up a lot of them.
You will also need to maintain control over the TCNs, but most GDI ground forces retreat when the aircraft arrives so you’ll have little trouble holding on to them.
The aircraft itself is fairly simple to kill if you avoid the bombs so focus on maintaining TCN control if you need to.
Loading ...