This guide is not for those who want to learn how to play Red Alert but
rather for those who want to learn to play BETTER in tournaments or
games in which experienced players are plenty. Therefore I will try
to cover the basics of pro play as well as some tricks I have learned
over the years but will not tell you things that you should already know
as a relatively experienced player like "Pillboxes are good against
infantry" or “put a Tanya and 2 medics together to kill lots of infantry
duhhhh” and all that bs.
Another important thing to note is that the guide is primarily for
playing against HUMAN players, not computer skirmishes. The computer
is very different in everyway; they have a few strengths but much more
weaknesses.
BUILDING BASICS
The best approach is the most direct approach to your goal. In most
maps, the goal is to mass as many tanks as possible. This does not
apply to maps which as sea dominated, in which case the strategy
becomes a little different. We will only cover the building basics
behind a land dominated map.
LAND DOMINATED BUILDING BASICS
The general starting building order should be deploy MCV, small power
plant, barracks, ore refinery, war factory, advanced power plant, and
afterwards you can keep churning war factories (4-6 being a max depending
on available resources) and ore refineries (don't build too many as you
will need to protect your trucks and may not even be able to build fast
enough to use up resources, especially in money maps).
In the initial general building order, when you place your first barracks,
in the wait time for getting the ore refinery, build infantry (rifle,
they are cheap) to scout the map and enemies if you don't know the
map (you should have a good idea of the layout of the map you are
playing to be most effective). If you are playing a 1v1 the opponent
should be opposite to your corner.
You should just keep building tanks once you get a factory. Building
more than one ore truck to 1 refinery is also a good idea, no need to
keep it 1 ore refinery to 1 ore truck. Keep it max 2-3, cause ore trucks
are retarded and sometimes wait for the “main” truck (the one the ore
refinery came with) to come back before dumping its own.
Also good to keep 5-10 rifle infantry near your base at the beginning
to prevent idiot enemies from trying to send engineers into your critical
structures right at the beginning. When you get past the initial building
pattern, you should simply focus on tanks (heavy for Soviets and light
or medium (if you are not good enough) for Allies). Infantry are useless
and air is easily countered. Reasoning will be given later.
If you are playing a map in which the opponent is rather close and he is
not in the habit of building a barracks first before the ore refinery,
you can try a quick strategy which involves building 2-3 barracks and
building 3 engineers, and 5 rifle infantry and sending them into the
enemy base, using the infantry as distraction, send all 3 engineers
into the enemy MCV and sell immediately.
Also if you suspect your opponent of being very crafty, keep 1-2
defense structures near critical buildings or use a gap generator.
Hence the structures you should concentrate on are dependant on the
time in the game. Early game, stick to the basics, making ore refineries
and war factories and stocking a few defenses if needed. Later game
you may need other things as they come up. I will go through a list
of the major ones and what you should do about them:
Defense structures (ground) are generally useless because in Red Alert,
the best defense is certainly a good offense in terms of tanks. But
if you feel you really need them, the Soviet tesla coil is the only
building worth constructing. Try to build concrete walls around the
tesla coil, quite effective against small groups of tanks. The Allied
camo pillbox may be useful against Allied light tanks (they can’t miss)
en mass, but in that case, cover with concrete wall for sure (light tanks
attacks are weak). Defense structures can be built early or late game,
more effective early game though.
Especially useless for primary defense are flame towers, don’t build
them unless you plan to be attacked by masses of rifle infantry and
dogs. However, they are good to discourage gay shit like an enemy Tanya
dropping into your base and detonating your MCV. Build 2 near your
MCV or any other critical buildings if you suspect your opponent of
being an asshole.
Defense structures (air) cost too much money and power, use rocket
soldiers instead (see below UNIT section).
Silos are not needed because you can use the bug in which you construct
an expensive building, then cancel to get the money back, but in credits,
as opposed to ore.
You probably will not need the Soviet tech center as mammoth tanks are
useless against expert players, you will see why later. Allied tech
centers may be alright and serve as a very good, very expensive radar
dome, good if you do not know the map well, or if you are against 1 or
more crafty players. Obviously a late game choice.
Nukes are a good touch if you have the money but the Chronosphere and
Iron Curtain are quite useless. Use nukes primarily to destroy power
right before an attack. Then when you get in try to take out another
power plant to further reduce power. Nukes can also be used if you find
the enemy is massing something damn weak but a real threat, like tesla
tanks or shock troopers. Don’t bother nuking units otherwise.
Obviously a late game choice.
As air units are mostly useless, you will see why later again, the only
air-related structure worth building is a single Soviet airfield, for
spy plane and paratroopers. Early to mid game, you should have this,
the earlier (if you can afford it) the better as you can keep scouting
his base and be updated on what he is doing.
Concrete walls are highly underestimated. If used well, it can save you.
I will go over how in the later advanced strats. But for now know to
keep tesla coils/pill boxes surrounded if you do use them.
Some players do not like to use radar domes as they think they are a
waste of money but if you want to control your units and plan your attacks
well, you will need it. Helps you keep track of ore trucks and make sure
your enemy isn’t pulling a quickie and sending engineers into an unguarded
portion of your base via APC. Have this by mid game or before you attack.
Supply depots are generally useless for repair, however you should have
one in the cases that you need to rebuild another MCV when the opponent
either swoops in with tanks in a suicide mission to remove your MCV,
or does the same thing with migs. You should have one before the
enemy has any serious threat to you MCV, probably mid-early game.
Gap generators can be useful, especially in a long game, to hinder nuking,
prevent annoying small attacks on unguarded parts of your base and hide
your base. Build over critical structures.
Also try to keep more advanced power plants than needed, to prevent
the enemy from downing your power, especially important if you have
tesla coils. Build as needed. Power plants are cheap so feel free to
slap a few around everywhere even if you don’t really need it. The reason
is that extra power plants (especially advanced) serve as cannon fodder
as players see power plants as an essential, but weak and easy target.
So while junior idiot tries to down your power and starts going crazy
attacking your power plants in your base, you can take his tanks down,
resting assured that you have much more than needed. Junior idiot will
wonder why the hell your power is not down yet and the tesla coils are
still making short work of his tanks. Don’t use small power plants,
they are too weak for even cannon fodder and are not good lure targets.
With structure fodder in mind, fake structures are a good idea. They are
cheap and quick to build and can help save critical structures. Put 1-3
of the same type mainly around your MCV’s, war factories. Therefore if the
player decides to suicide mig your MCV he’s gunna have to guess. Also if
he attacks your base with tanks he will have to try a few times to get
your real MCV. If you decide to build them, have them by mid game.
Any other structures I may not have mentioned, i.e. sand bags, aren’t
important.
LAND DOMINATED UNIT BASICS
Although you should mainly try to stick with heavy for Soviets and light
or medium (if you are not good enough) for Allies, other units may or
may not be as effective as the above, and I will explain for most of
the major ones. We will discuss the units in terms of usefulness in a
PRIMARY ARMY:
As I said before, stick to tanks. Why? Because if an enemy comes at you
with infantry, crush them all. Keep moving and crushing and don’t bother
stopping and firing at them. If an enemy uses lots of air units, THAT IS
THE ONLY TIME INFANTRY IS USEFUL, TO COUNTER AIR. Mass rocket soldiers as
they are the only good defense against air. Keep them somewhat scattered and
have a few rifle infantry in the mix to prevent infantry dropping from downed
planes from killing all your rocket soldiers. If you have enough, air units
should become obsolete against you. Air structure defenses cost too much,
are too easy to hit, and take up power, space and time to construct when
you could be use all of them for more war factories, ore refineries or tanks.
The light tank should be the staple for any allied player. Its main
strength is speed, KEEP THEM MOVING when attacking because otherwise,
they suck. If you can’t keep them moving as much, use medium tanks instead.
The heavy tank is the staple for the soviet player. It’s the only basic tank
you can mass but they are quite easy to use. Just remember, as in all tanks,
to keep them moving especially while attacking.
Having a primarily tank dominated army is weakness to only one single
land unit (not counting air, which is not really a threat as they miss
and take out units too slowly), that is the shock trooper. Being unable
to crush them, and the fact they cannot miss make them quite a formidable
unit, especially against light tanks. HOWEVER, don’t be fooled, they cost
as much as a heavy tank and move slower. A heavy tank can take out a
shock trooper 1v1 and the fact that shock troopers are really slow say that
shock troops should not be used for normal attacking, especially since it
has many other weaknesses being the infantry class. Use as base defense
can be foreseen although you should probably not waste you time with them,
only other use is as a powerful escort to your ore truck or annoyance.
Other types of infantry suck balls. Tanya is too expensive, however if you
somehow manage to find a distracted or totally unguarded base you could
possibly make short work of it (which never comes up if you play a halfway
decent player).
Hence for the most part, air is useless, however it can serve 1 purpose.
Other than the spy plane and paratroopers, you can have 2-6 Soviet migs to
take out retard enemies who snipe at your structures using V2’s or harass
your ore truck with 1 or 2 rangers. Moving your army to remove them may
prove fatal as these are mainly distractions that players use to get your
army out of the way of guarding your base. The rest, hinds, yaks, and
unfortunately the only Allied air attacker, the longbow are all quite
useless. The longbow sucks since it takes forever to acquire the target
and positioning itself, allowing the enemy to either withdraw their unit
or move them about, preventing effective removal of the unit.
Many players believe massing mammoth tanks are certain victory, however
this is not true. Due to their slow speed and rate of fire, they can be
taken out by more agile units.
V2 rockets can be used well, but generally only useful against structures
and infantry, especially shock troopers.
Tesla tanks are quite good. The only setback being that they are expensive,
take long to build and have a slow rate of fire. Other than that, they are
deadly. The greatest advantage being that they do not miss. If you
manage to mass a platoon of these guys it can decimate a base in seconds.
They are also quite weak in armor so a mix of heavy tanks and tesla tanks
could be envisioned, however against a top notch player; he’ll probably
overwhelm you with too many more tanks after you wasted your time
building tesla tanks.
Chronotanks are shit in a main army, useful for distractions though.
The following are units you probably should not consider. Rangers are not
tracked, too weak (armor and dmg), and all rounded shit. Artillery are
simply too weak (armor) and slow. Mobile gap generators have too little
a covering range to be effective. Radar jammers are more of an annoying
unit as opposed to a threat. Mine layers take too much time to lay
mines, but can be used for annoyance, more on annoying strategies later.
Specialty units such as the spy, thief, medic, mechanic, are all too
expensive and hard to control to be worth it. You could possibly use a
spy to scout out their entire base if you have an inept opponent as
units don’t auto-attack it. Don’t bother building one to keep an eye on
their power because any normal player will sell power plant and build
another one. Thieves are simply useless.
Demotruck? No, expensive, slow and only good against structures.
If I didn’t mention any units, like attack dogs, they are not important.
LAND DOMINATED STRATEGY BASICS
You want to keep your tanks moving while attacking, and harder to hit
(called queuing). You can do this by clicking attack on an enemy unit,
then clicking move next to it and repeating quickly. Time it so you
move while they fire. This is probably the main and most effective
strategy. In fact I have destroyed a mammoth tank with a single
light tank before by doing this. Basically all turret based weapons
are rendered useless with this strategy, including turrets, other tanks
and rockets.
Just remember to keep your tanks moving. Don’t bother with the “V2’s
in the back and tanks in the front” strategy or something of that idea
because the concentration split in controlling 2 groups of units is not
as effective as keeping 1 group of units well controlled. Also those
far ranged units projectiles are easily dodged and you may find yourself
running into them.
Focus fire on units to destroy them one by one quickly. Choose units
that are high damage dealing, accurate and low health first (i.e. tesla
tanks and artillery) but make sure they are also close by and you don’t
have to run through an army to get them.
When attacking a base, try to down the power first if it is not too much
trouble. It slows production and turns the deadly tesla coil off. It
also serves to scare the shit outta the opponent. Assuming the army is
destroyed (you should not try to take an army on at its home base but if
you do, try to lure out by clicking attack on an enemy unit, then clicking
move away from base and repeating quickly. Go for all defense structures
but leave tesla coils IF offline and air defense structures. Meanwhile
take out more power, now with the base semi offline you can make a choice:
If you see no way in destroying the entire base because his army is coming
back or there are too much base defense, try to take out his MCV and
supply depot first, then war factories and ore refineries although the
latter may be harder as players usually have multiple.
If you can destroy the base, simply destroy in order, the power, the
constructing buildings, the ore refineries, then everything else. I
say the power first since if you manage to remove all power, the game
is done. Everything builds too slowly for the opponent to recover.
However if the opponent has cleverly split up his power plants, then
take out the constructing buildings while removing power plants on the
way.
When getting attacked at your base, try to get your defense structures
in on the fight so you should have your army situated around your base
defenses in the first place so you don’t have to run back.
Despite the above guidelines, those are only basic tips. You should
take into consideration first the proximity of the structures, i.e.
you don’t want to run though layers of base defense to simply get a
crack at the MCV, take out the base defenses first or find a better
way in.
REMEBER whenever you leave your base to keep base defense for annoyance
attacks. Never rely only on your base defense against a primary attack.
You can never have enough against a large platoon of tanks.
If you ever find a small pond near your base and you decide to place a
cruiser or missile sub in it to help defend your base against land
attacks, DON’T BOTHER! Both are not perfectly accurate (yes even
the sub) and easily dodged by any decent player. Also if some idiot
does that and you are attacking his base, move all your units right
into his base as his own cruiser/missile sub will tear apart his own
base while missing your units (keep them moving while in his base).
LAND BASED RESOURCE MANAGMENT
In maps with a small amount of ore, don’t go wasting all your resources
on frivolous things, keep your building concise and take over as
many ore patches as you can. Although you should still focus mainly
on getting tanks, you should also be pulling annoying attacks (see
FINE TUNING) to weaken your enemy.
Taking over ore patches is an important thing to know how to do properly.
While you don’t need your entire army guarding the ore patch you are
mining, you need to keep an eye on them. This is probably where
anti-tank mines or shock troopers are very useful. You can also mine
up your own ore fields in a jagged pattern to keep ore squares for
ore regeneration, if it’s on. Depending on the map, you may be able
to enforce ore fields with your primary army, without leaving your
base fully unprotected. Also mid-game try to mine fields that you
know will be disputed over long-game. Don’t do this beginning-game
as the beginning is critical to mass a large amount of tanks and ore
refineries for stability. Keep fields that are mostly yours (hard to
access for enemy) in case things get too hairy.
Protect ore patches you are CURRENTLY mining actively. Don’t bother
actively protecting an ore patch that you haven even started mining yet.
By actively I mean using units like shock troopers or tanks etc.
You can discourage the opponent from ore patch stealing by mining (mine
layer) up ore patches.
Ore patch protection should not be overdone as it is only for stopping
lame attacks, not full army attacks. Full primary attacks should always
be met by your primary army. Protect by scattering units around the field.
A good way to incite your opponent to fight you in open territory as
opposed to near his base is the attack his ore truck and obliterate the
opponent presence on the ore field if possible. When the opponent comes
with his primary army, move your units behind the ore field, then engage
the enemy as he is crossing the ore field, it slows down his units and also
destroys the ore field. Therefore use it on ore fields that you don’t
really want, or are mainly the enemies’. Try to circle the ore field as
opposed to go into it to attack your enemy.
Many players like to start the attack by attacking your ore trucks
(especially if they are easy to attack), which is a good idea. If you
find that happening to you, move ore truck back immediately after first
sign and face the enemy at your gates. Don’t, unless totally necessary,
leave your base to confront their army at the ore patch as they can send
Tanya’s and so on into the now unguarded portions of your base.
Keep an eye on your ore truck because when it is attacked, you get no
warning, only the “Unit lost” and screen shake when it died. Also the
chronosphere can be useful here in which you transport a hopelessly
ambushed truck back to base. But be wary as the truck will appear back
where it started.
You should never think about attacking an enemy ore truck with infantry
(except shock troopers) because the truck can just crush them all.
If you find money becoming tight, and ore patches becoming rare, use
more annoying attacks to whittle enemy resources, but preserve units.
In stagnant games, i.e. the opponent and you built lots of base defense
and your armies are small due to plenty of fighting, aggressively take
over regenerated ore patches as resource gathering is the primary
strategy here. Also know that a poor player will tend to leave things
unguarded. In that case feel free to take advantage of that, i.e. ore
truck unguarded? Shock-drop it (see below FINE TUNING).
In maps where resources are plenty, focus more on destroying your enemy.
Keep massing more tanks and less annoying attacks.
LAND DOMINATED STRATEGY FINE TUNING
This section contains the “annoying” strategies that are not “main”
strategies (WITH EXPEPTION OF QUEUING) and that can be used to win
small skirmishes or annoy and frustrate the opponent. These are mainly
used to weaken their main army by forcing them to split up their army.
A good thing to do is to piss off your opponent enough to mass you at
your base and try to destroy you only to be destroyed by your army and
your base defenses. After which you quickly retaliate and completely
level his base. I’ll also give you counters to these strategies, in
the case you are faced by them.
Note that one should not spend too much time on these strategies in
a game since it takes up time and effort. It is probably best to
use these when you and your opponent are doing nothing and massing
tanks cause both of you are too pussy to attack each other. Just
remember in that case, too keep building those tanks. Use also if
resources are low and you are not doing anything anyway, but in that
case your primary focus will be to attempt to engage the enemy where
you have the advantage, i.e. piss you enemy off enough to mass your
army and base defenses at your base, or whittle enemy forces.
Queuing:
The most essential strategy, I have kinda covered it above but I want
to be clearer here. The basis behind this is to keep your tanks moving
while the enemy fires, then stop and fire at them. It becomes a small
dance, which requires good timing and coordination. To start off, first
label your army 1 using ctrl+1. That way if you click something else by
mistake you can quickly select all your units again. Keep your army selected
throughout the procedure. Move towards the enemy, let them fire first,
they will miss as your tanks are still moving, then immediately focus fire
on one enemy unit when they finish firing (or most of them). Move before
they fire, let them miss again, then focus fire on another enemy unit if
the latter is dead. Repeat. Try to keep outside or around their army,
you want to be moving perpendicular to their shots as opposed to towards/away
(parallel). Try circling their army; you want the enemy clustered so tanks
in the middle of his cannot fire. If you find your army basically merging
with theirs that is fine, but if that does happen you want to start
getting rid of enemy units faster as opposed to being so focused on
dodging enemy shots so simply move, attack, move as fast as you can.
Move as much of the time as possible but attack frequently. You will
find later, after lots of practice that you are clicking move and attack
so fast, that the tanks look like they are firing at the enemy while
moving. That is when you know you are pro, what you should always strive
for, and the level I am at now. As for circling, try to move so your
units are circling your opponent, that way you can kinda corral them
into a circle. Finally when you queue, if you have units that are
generally weaker then the opponent, try to keep a distance away; if
you have units that are generally more powerful (and therefore probably
slower), move in closer.
Counter:
You better hope you queue better than your opponent. But when you
master that, and play an opponent that has mastered that as well, you
should find (after many battles in which 2 armies are circling one
another) that faster units eventually prevail. The reason being that
they are much harder to hit, and can circle better due to their quickness.
A pro with an army of light tanks can be devastating.
Dodging a longbow:
If your opponent ever decides to attack one of your land-based units
with a single longbow, run the unit basically under the helicopter, the
missiles fly slightly off to the side. The longbow will reposition but
you just do it again and it wastes more missiles.
Counter:
Fly longbow off a bit and attack, unit has to catch up to get under you
but you can get a few shots off.
Force field:
This takes advantage of the fact that concrete wall can be built so
fast. If you find a lone enemy tank or 2 attacking your structure,
and you want to prolong the life of the building while your planes
come over, slap a wall right in front of the structure between structure
and tank. Rinse and repeat.
Counter:
Move tank to better position.
Dodging a yak:
In case an important infantry is faced with a yak, towards the
speeding movement of the yak, as they tend to over shoot, keep running that way,
they will turn around and undershoot the other way. I have dodged a yak
attack run with an engineer once, but it was kinda pointless cause I
didn’t need the engineer (I got the damned thing in a box, what can I say).
Counter:
Force-attack behind of running unit.
Dodging squishing:
For the most part a determined player will eventually be able to squish
your infantry, as infantry are very slow, but you can delay it and piss
off the player by running to either the square diagonal to the units
coming towards you or side to side. Just time is so JUST when the tracked
unit starts moving, you are moving away. In fact by perfecting this,
you can really infuriate players. Attack their unguarded ore truck with
infantry but keep dodging, sometimes the player sends his army (or part
of) over then you can make your attack on his base.
Counter:
Really depends how good the player is at this, for the most part you can
eventually get him but if not, bring over a nearby ore truck to help.
Basically you don’t want to have to make your army come over and leave
your base defenseless if you’re dealing with 1-2 rifle infantry.
Outranging:
A rocket soldier or tank can outrange a pillbox and flame tower, a V2
can outrange anything. Use annoying attacks to pick off defenses, or
structures. You can use on units but usually it results in your V2/rocket
soldier/tank being chased down and annihilated.
Counter:
If the defense structure is very isolated, that is your army will take a
while to get him, use planes if possible, otherwise as a last resort,
sell structure right after he fires a shot and rush the fucker with
the infantry. Up against a V2 split up the infantry so it takes
multiple rockets to kill all the infantry. Build it back later if
you need to.
Tanya drop:
If opponent happens to leave critical structures unguarded (esp MCV)
load 1-2 Tanya in 3-4 APC (some will be empty for cannon fodder) and
run into base fast, unload and detonate. Chinook is also an idea
if they have no air defense as well.
Counter:
Keep flame towers/pillboxes near critical units or use gap generator.
Engineer drop:
Same as above but with more engineers, you need 3 to damage and take
over any structure from full health. Best to sell it after, as the
opponent will most likely swoop in and obliterate it or recapture. You
can try the build tesla to 99% then capture and place tesla next to
captured building for extra annoyance factor.
Counter:
Keep flame towers/pillboxes near critical units or use gap generator.
Radar jam:
Use the radar jammer when you attack, it adds to the frustration. Or
feel free to jam, then run away when units come, come back, jam some
more and run away. May incite opponent to move some units there.
Counter:
Don’t let it bother you too much, use of planes are best here but
otherwise its not much of a threat. Usually it can scare a player as
it also is the calm before the tesla tank storm.
Ore truck harass:
You can aim to either, destroy it, or simply annoy it. If you want to
annoy it use rangers, they are cheap and cannot be crushed. Use 1-2 and
opponent will have to send something to stop that mess. If you want to
destroy it, try using 6 migs to quickly dispatch of it. Move migs at
edges of map so they are not easily detected and also attack when the
ore truck is not moving (i.e. mining) by hovering for a bit until the
truck stops moving. In case you are a retard and don’t know how to hover
with migs its just moving them around the location not yet telling
them to attack in which case they will just fly about. If you decide
to use tanks be wary, opponent will probably try to corner and destroy
your tanks, leaving you a few tanks light.
Counter:
Escort with shock troopers against ground protagonists, or rocket
soldiers against air. I find it also good to simply stake units
around the ore field as escorting can lead to ore truck getting stuck
and bumping around.
The shock drop:
This may be seen as similar to above but I find is takes a different
strategy to execute. If executed properly it can be devastating.
Fill 2-3 Chinooks with shock troopers, fly (avoiding air defense) over
to their mining ore trucks, deploy and destroy. Load back in quick
and run. You may consider not filling your Chinooks with 5 shock troopers
but 2-4 so you can load them back in faster. Repeat until they end up
escorting their trucks with tons of units, lightening up their army.
Counter:
Have V2’s in the field before they come as an added protective unit,
along with shock troopers. If you have nothing, use planes to kill
Chinooks right away and send units over. You may need to lighten your
army a bit for this one as shock troopers are really annoying.
But remember it cost quite a bit for your opponent to set this up and
destroying them all by preventing escape discourages the enemy from
doing this again.
Chrono-drop:
The only good thing is that you can target chronotanks anywhere on the
map without worrying how to get there. Harass ore trucks, attack
unguarded buildings. Move to enemy base defenses and outrange a tower,
when opponent comes to stop the fun, chrono back to your base.
Counter:
Planes are a good idea however be careful as chronotanks are really
good against air for some reason. Otherwise chase with fast unit,
and dodge the missiles.
Suicide paradrop:
Paradrop is mostly useless. Use only if this situation arises: your
enemy placed expensive infantry or lots of infantry near his flame
towers. Drop right on top of enemy infantry, let flame tower fry both
you and all his infantry.
Counter:
DON’T PUT YOUR INFANTRY NEAR FLAME TOWERS, RETARD.
Invulnerable nuke truck:
Iron curtain a demo truck and send it into a bunch of power plants.
Counter:
Don’t think many people will use this as it requires building 2 very
expensive and useless things, the iron curtain and demo truck. Otherwise
try blocking it with tanks or even slapping a concrete wall right
in front it, so that you cause it to STOP and turn not simply dodge it.
It requires timing to do this though. Get ready for an attack because
players who do this usually combine with the nuke silo nuke to fully
reduce your power before an attack.
Mining the ore fields:
The only mine layer that is useful is the anti-tank ones. One of the
oldest tricks in the book, mine up your opponents mine field. To make
it more effective, watch for the ore trucks mining pattern, the empty
diagonal squares. Lay mines where the truck is likely to mine next and
opponents will find it a very hard time to mine, the more the better.
Counter:
This is one of the most annoying things if an opponent managed to carry
it out successfully as you cannot force-fire the ore and getting rid
of them will mean losing vehicles. Best counter is to prevent it from
happening in the first place (keeping shock troopers staked around your
ore field), otherwise if it gets too bad you may have to find another ore
patch, take over one of theirs for revenge :P.
Suicide migs:
Build 6-7 migs and fly them (avoiding air defense) to enemy base and
attack and quickly destroy an enemy critical structure.
Counter:
Backups, air defense, fakes, gap generator; too many counters for this
so many pro players don’t really do this often, as migs are rather
expensive.
OTHER STRATEGIES
Honestly, I don’t like sea dominated maps and I don’t really have
well-defined strategies I stick to. Allied have a clear advantage in
the sea, by using gun boats as sub destroyers with the help of destroyers.
Cruisers can be used to force fire near subs as well to obliterate them.
Use the formation bug (putting sea units in formation with a fast sea
unit like transport) to dodge shots (yes, subs can dodge destroyer shots,
easily).
Basically if the enemy’s base is near a shore, you need to take over the
sea asap and annihilate his base with cruisers/missile subs, warning:
keep your own base secure as well. If you are near a shore you need to
secure the sea. If you didn’t do that fast enough, you are mostly likely
screwed, unless you have a large tank army and he has a small one. Then
it becomes who can destroy the other base faster. In that case run out
of cruiser range.
In maps that you can ONLY get to enemy base over sea (those are the
gayest), then obviously the strategy is to mass sea. In these cases,
annoyance attacks are frequent.
For those who like playing against the computer the difference is that
the computer follows a set of rules. So if you find something that
works against them, it will always work. Therefore they suck. The
computers only strong points (on Hard) is the ability to ruthlessly dodge
squishing, see the whole map despite gap generators and the fact they
can build faster and more than you in general.
Also don’t bother playing nurple maps, most are rigged and gay.
INTERESTING THINGS I’VE DONE OR PEOPLE HAVE DONE TO ME
I add this section mainly because the best way for a player to get better,
is the play more. Playing more exposes players to more strategies and
situations that one can learn from. Here I present interesting things
that I have done or players have done to me and may or may not have said
before that one can note and take into consideration:
I have out-queued a mammoth tank 1v1 and beat it with 1 light tank, trick
is to keep a distance from the mammoth tank.
I ran into an enemy base with a tank, inciting all the enemy V2’s to fire
at me while I was nearby a pair of enemy power plants, destroying one and
severely damaging the second, ok that was kind of luck.
While I was queue-battling with another enemy, he (I didn’t notice them
coming) ran 3 demo trucks right into my path of tanks. From now on I
keep an eye on what else is going on while I queue-battle.
In a long battle, I was attacking the enemy army when I realized my base
was being torn to shreds despite my defenses by tons of… rifle infantry!
Turns out the opponent had been paratrooping infantry at some dark corner
near my base for the whole game and since the plane comes from the nearest
side, I didn’t even see the plane fly by.
On an island that was my main ore supply there were only 2 thin paths in,
one towards my base and one towards the enemy. Suddenly I realized my ore
trucks were running though the enemy base and getting decimated, looking
on the minimap I couldn’t see anything, upon investigation with 2 heavy
tanks I realized that my opponent had placed 3 mobile gap generators
blocking the path to my base and I couldn’t even see them, with my ore
trucks being retarded and moving through the enemy base hoping to
return the ore.
I once queue-battled someone light tanks v light tanks, the battle was
intense. It seemed like I was going to come bad on this one so I
ran my nearby ore trucks right into his circular path (he was attacking
one of my ore patches), slowed his light tanks for a second and
managed to wipe him out and survive with 3 red light tanks and 5 damaged
ore trucks.
GUIDE INFO
Created from scratch by me. When I played Red Alert I always went by
different screen names so I don’t have a defined name. cLass1C was my
general screen name for other things like chat rooms. This guide was
originally created on March 16, 1999 but recently transferred onto a
Word document basically to make it easier to read and for a format more
people are used to, I wonder if anyone uses Windows 95 anymore… Anyways,
hope you learned a bit, I’ve stopped playing since 2001 but I have played
this game for about 3 years, competitively in tournaments before.
You or anyone can use this guide (post or as attachment in websites) as
long as credit is retained and nothing is changed. Thanks a lot, good
luck although people these days are playing much fancier games now. It’s
too bad, this was a good game when it came out. As for me… well I stopped
playing games altogether in 2001, kinda got busy with work and a new
family :P.
Note: Most recently tranferred to notepad for proper formatting to
GameFaqs.com
