Game comments: Supreme Commander 2

I really love this new Supreme commander 2 game. It has many improvements over the predecessors while keeping the style of construction, epic large scale battles with long range artillery and the same well known factions.

The game itself had many things simplified and automated, like the automatic repairs done by engineers as well as automatic nearest placement of buildings when trying to put them onto an area that is not meant for construction, like being too close to an edge for example.

The single player campaign is not impossible and there is an exact roadmap laid out to see how far there is still to go in a campaign. Multiplayer is unfortunately internet only, but it automatically uses the friends list from Steam, which gets rid of that problem. For me that is a really nice way of doing it instead of having to add the friends all over again like other games do. The building and unit parts flying off when attacked is also a nice twist as well as getting mass resources back from the wreckages as it has been tradition since Total Annihilation.

Some people were of course complaining about this game, but the reality was that it took far too long to build the big things in the previous games or to get started in a good battle. Supreme Commander 2 simplified all of this and made the existing system far better in my opinion. The game is now more fun than the previous games used to be. Long battles can still be fought.

More exciting Red Alert 3 tips and tricks

During the last few weeks a friend of mine and myself have discovered various new techniques of counters in Red Alert 3 (RA3).

Playing as any side (Soviet/Allies/Empire):

1. Build walls around your generators and resource places.

2. Spread your base to prevent massive damage when something big hits.

3. Always have air defense.

4. Set defense turrets to aggressive, this makes them attack enemy buildings.


Playing as Allies:

1. Countering a Soviet Bullfrog: Use a Shrink Ray from the Cryocopter at a safe distance (it has a wider range than the freeze ray) and then freeze the Bullfrog. A shrunken Bullfrog is useless with anti-air.

2. When someone is about to blast your base with a superweapon: Check the target marker, use Chronic Fissure to temporarily remove your own buildings and units, which should be back after the blast and hopefully be gone before it starts.

3. Use a Chronosphere to teleport an enemy bomb in your base out where it can blow up safely. The bigger the bomb, the more time you have.

4. A bomb can be put on ice with a Cryocopter. If my information is correct, this will disable the bomb skill for the player who planted the bomb.

5. MCVs can be repaired for free in vehicle mode by factories, engineer in a defense turret and an engineer in an IFV.


Playing as the Empire Of The Rising Sun:

1. Multiple of your own Shinobis with Tankbusters and some anti-air unit in an enemy base is bad news for the enemy. The Shinobi can shut down the power generator and take out bears, dogs and other ground troops, while the Tankbusters take out vehicles and buildings. Having Yuriko along with Emperor's Rage does wonders to the landscape.

2. Use Nano swarm to protect your own base during an attack.

3. Use Nano Swarm in the enemy base when you plant the five Tankbusters to give them time to take out a building. This protects them from bears and dogs.

4. Use Nano Swarm in the enemy base to protect your own units when you blast a Decimator Core attack in the enemy base.

5. Use a Burst Drone to slow down the pesky bombers of the Allies to give your anti-air plenty of time to shoot them down.


Playing as the Soviets:

1. If the enemy base is raised and there is no ground defense near an edge, try to shoot at least five bears into the base to clear out dogs/bears and then send in ground troops. Computer enemies are quick to respond during the landing procedure, so aim them well.

2. Use the Twinblade to transport various vehicles. This includes Sputnik, Hammer Tank, Apocalypse Tank and the V4 Rocket Launcher.

3. Use Iron Curtain if you want to deploy yoru MCV in the enemy base. Apply the Iron curtain as late as possible to buy time to deply defense turrets. Do note that you have to set defense turrets to aggressive to attack buildings.

4. Iron curtain can also be used against those bombs that someone plants in your base. The area of effect is limited but it will protect what you target.

Red Alert 3 Battle nearly lost

Last night I was busy on a 6 player map in Red Alert 3 with 3 teams of 2 players each. All others were computer players and I was sitting in a nasty location. The team I was using was Empire of the Rising Sun which does not have any anti-air troops, but several anti-air vehicles. A lot of their defenses and vehicles have toggle modes depending on what is needed. Power generators is a weak spot. It helps to build walls around the ore refinaries to prevent group forces from causing any real damage. The V4 of the soviets shoots over those.

In the battle last night my resources got cut off. Fortunately, I had one depleted ore harvesting spot left and a good base defense with garrisoned buildings from the beginning of the game when all players were still present. The medium computer player on my side was a good help. Yuriko was of good use to take out two enemy bases. Since there is a limitation to the number of replays that Red Alert 3 can store, I did not store the replay for later viewing.