Tiberian Dawn hardest in the series?

[KILL]

I just played Tiberian Dawn for the second time in 19 years.  I remember it being very difficult when it came out in '95, but I kept going until I beat it.

 

I just did my second playthrough and finished it in 3 days, putting in around 6-7 hours each day.  What a great game and still as difficult as I remember.  I'd say it's equally as hard as Starcraft 2 brutal which I beat 1.5 years ago.

 

In my opinion GDI was the hardest.  Slovika took me a good while because those civilians either died from flamethrowers exploding or friendly fire.  Another pain in the butt was Greece where you land on the beach and your guys are getting pounded immediately.  The last mission was tough in the beginning when I had no defenses, then the trick was manually moving my harvesters to the bottom right field.  Until I dealt with the 2 construction yards, the NOD AI would rebuild that turret and the 2 tank patrols instantly!

 

For NOD, I would say either Ivory Coast or Egypt #2 were the toughest mission.  On Ivory Coast, I made it out to the extraction with a sliver of red on my light tank while two GDI grenadiers and an APC chased me.  There was really no room for error on that mission.  The first time I made it to the extraction it bugged and my last guy died and I lost.  On Egypt #2 this mission basically showcases the fast-pace gameplay of Tiberian Dawn.  If your too slow, you lose your engineers to grenadiers.  If your even slower than that, you will miss out the crate and your commando will get bombed by planes.  This mission took me 4 tries to get my timing down to minimize casualties.  It then it took me a good while to build up my base defenses and army.  Last mission was tough until you had a good defense of Obelisks up.  Stealth tanks made the rest a breeze.

So TLDR:  Hardest game in the series?

 

I plan to play Tib Sun next to continue the story.  I played RA1-RA2 and Generals, but never C&C 3 and beyond.  After Tib Sun I'll go to Red Alert 1 which may have been my favorite C&C.

 

 

[Jacko]

IMO the hardest C&C mission I have played in ANY C&C game is Nod 11 (A and B)

I still can barely do it once every so often

[Chimas]

I plan to play Tib Sun next to continue the story.  I played RA1-RA2 and Generals, but never C&C 3 and beyond.  After Tib Sun I'll go to Red Alert 1 which may have been my favorite C&C.

 

If you need some different taste in TD let me know ...

[X3M]

TD indeed has missions that are very hard to standard games these days.

But there are also missions that are very easy to play.

 

GDI 8 can be made very easy if you fail on GDI 6, just to get to play GDI 7. Then cash up a mountain. So in GDI 8 you have a starting funding of, let's say 100k?

 

I find NOD missions tougher.

[MattAttack]

I always found the most difficult part (primarily for GDI missions iirc) was the relative scarcity of Tiberium.  Although I think the only mission that's a challenge to me these days is the Nod mission where you have to hijack the orca and trash the village.  Although I think it's been quite a while since I've played through the stock campaigns.  After TD I got Red Alert, but it just wasn't as fun of a game to me for some reason.  It should've been with all the new features, but it just didn't hold my attention.  Then life happened and I didn't really didn't play any more of them.  Years later I played RA2 which was kind of fun (still not as much as TD imo) and then Tib Sun which I found to be a huge disappointment.  I think it has to do with your age/mindset at the time and I always found TD's units, landscape, graphics (yes, I know  ) and perfect balance of sci-fi and real life military weapons very appealing.  I'm not trying to be political, but I remember being horrified back in '03 when the US invaded Iraq, but I couldn't stop watching the news footage because I love seeing tanks blow shit up.... thanks, c&c!

 

Although now I know how the AI works, most are incredibly easy (just look at rc1985's speedruns) which is why I started making my own missions.  Trying my best to tighten the loopholes and compensate for the AI which appears to have an IQ of -60

[KILL]

IMO the hardest C&C mission I have played in ANY C&C game is Nod 11 (A and B)

I still can barely do it once every so often

Yep that was another difficult one.  Like I said, you have no time to waste in this game or you are finished.  I ended up losing everything but 2 engineers and had to build up my defenses before I could consider any assault on their base.  Those carpet bombing attacks did not help the situation.

 

I plan to play Tib Sun next to continue the story.  I played RA1-RA2 and Generals, but never C&C 3 and beyond.  After Tib Sun I'll go to Red Alert 1 which may have been my favorite C&C.

 

If you need some different taste in TD let me know ...

Glad to see the original game still supported.  After I finish the vanilla games I will definitely check this out!

 

TD indeed has missions that are very hard to standard games these days.

But there are also missions that are very easy to play.

 

GDI 8 can be made very easy if you fail on GDI 6, just to get to play GDI 7. Then cash up a mountain. So in GDI 8 you have a starting funding of, let's say 100k?

 

I find NOD missions tougher.

I am not sure what you mean?  You have to beat the missions in order to continue on to the next, unless you have some mod?  I know in the Covert-Ops expansion you could choose any mission you please but those were not campaign based.

 

I always found the most difficult part (primarily for GDI missions iirc) was the relative scarcity of Tiberium.  Although I think the only mission that's a challenge to me these days is the Nod mission where you have to hijack the orca and trash the village.  Although I think it's been quite a while since I've played through the stock campaigns.  After TD I got Red Alert, but it just wasn't as fun of a game to me for some reason.  It should've been with all the new features, but it just didn't hold my attention.  Then life happened and I didn't really didn't play any more of them.  Years later I played RA2 which was kind of fun (still not as much as TD imo) and then Tib Sun which I found to be a huge disappointment.  I think it has to do with your age/mindset at the time and I always found TD's units, landscape, graphics (yes, I know  ) and perfect balance of sci-fi and real life military weapons very appealing.  I'm not trying to be political, but I remember being horrified back in '03 when the US invaded Iraq, but I couldn't stop watching the news footage because I love seeing tanks blow shit up.... thanks, c&c!

 

Although now I know how the AI works, most are incredibly easy (just look at rc1985's speedruns) which is why I started making my own missions.  Trying my best to tighten the loopholes and compensate for the AI which appears to have an IQ of -60

I loved Red Alert.  Maybe my opinion will change when I play it again, but I doubt it.  I thought Tib Sun had the best atmosphere of any of the games; kind of a post-apocalyptic Tiberium infestation.  Red Alert 2 was one of the best LAN games, but the campaign started getting really cheesy at that point in the series.

 

I also love Tiberian Dawn's graphics.  Great models, animations (commando tossing a cig), great voice acting, and perfect soundtrack.  One of the best games of all time!

[Chimas]

Glad to see the original game still supported.  After I finish the vanilla games I will definitely check this out!

 

Given there are 600 misions there, I'm planning a player guide for the collection, so ppl coming to play don't feel lost with so many choices.

[Jacko]

TD indeed has missions that are very hard to standard games these days.

But there are also missions that are very easy to play.

 

GDI 8 can be made very easy if you fail on GDI 6, just to get to play GDI 7. Then cash up a mountain. So in GDI 8 you have a starting funding of, let's say 100k?

 

I find NOD missions tougher.

I am not sure what you mean?  You have to beat the missions in order to continue on to the next, unless you have some mod?  I know in the Covert-Ops expansion you could choose any mission you please but those were not campaign based.

 

GDI mission 6 (with the commando) asks you to bomb a specific (unknown) structure, which turns out to be the airstrip.

If you bomb the airstrip, you go to mission 8 no problem, if you bomb something else, you have to an extra mission in the same area but you blow up the whole base.

 

If you exploit the "carry over money from previous mission" feature (its not 100% but its a fraction) you can build up sometthing like 100000 credits from mission 7, and start mission 8 with like 10000 instead of 4000 (or however much it was)

This is incredibly useful in certain Nod missions as well.

[KILL]

TD indeed has missions that are very hard to standard games these days.

But there are also missions that are very easy to play.

 

GDI 8 can be made very easy if you fail on GDI 6, just to get to play GDI 7. Then cash up a mountain. So in GDI 8 you have a starting funding of, let's say 100k?

 

I find NOD missions tougher.

I am not sure what you mean?  You have to beat the missions in order to continue on to the next, unless you have some mod?  I know in the Covert-Ops expansion you could choose any mission you please but those were not campaign based.

 

GDI mission 6 (with the commando) asks you to bomb a specific (unknown) structure, which turns out to be the airstrip.

If you bomb the airstrip, you go to mission 8 no problem, if you bomb something else, you have to an extra mission in the same area but you blow up the whole base.

 

If you exploit the "carry over money from previous mission" feature (its not 100% but its a fraction) you can build up sometthing like 100000 credits from mission 7, and start mission 8 with like 10000 instead of 4000 (or however much it was)

This is incredibly useful in certain Nod missions as well.

Oh I had no idea...  I just blew up the first thing I saw and I completed the mission.

 

I didn't know about this credit exploit either.

[Nyerguds]

Oh I had no idea...  I just blew up the first thing I saw and I completed the mission.

 

I didn't know about this credit exploit either.

Really? The briefing video of mission 7 literally told you that you blew up the wrong thing, and if you open the briefing text , it'll tell you you should've bombed the airstrip.

[KILL]

Oh I had no idea...  I just blew up the first thing I saw and I completed the mission.

 

I didn't know about this credit exploit either.

Really? The briefing video of mission 7 literally told you that you blew up the wrong thing, and if you open the briefing text , it'll tell you you should've bombed the airstrip.

I remember the mission transmission was all glitching up (as it's suppose to be).  My commando was low hp so I think I ran straight to a power plant.

[Nyerguds]

No, I mean in the NEXT mission. They actually tell you you did it wrong

 

(if you blow up the correct thing in mission 6, you skip straight to mission 8, so you don't get the "you blew up the wrong thing" video either)

[MattAttack]

Yeah I never knew about this stuff until I came here either... Now I totally plan to exploit the cash carryover thing in my campaign (which makes use of all this built in logic), as well as purposely exploiting the commando mission alternative winning thing to make make mission 7 a hidden mission. 'Allow win' comes to mind since I guess the airfield being destroyed thing is the ONLY way to skip to mission 8.... right?

[KILL]

No, I mean in the NEXT mission. They actually tell you you did it wrong

 

(if you blow up the correct thing in mission 6, you skip straight to mission 8, so you don't get the "you blew up the wrong thing" video either)

Guess I wasn't paying attention. 

 

I already beat the game so it's no biggie.

 

Tib Sun is next!

[X3M]

For those who want to feel the C&C from TD in a sequel. I advice to play C&C3.

 

The cash over bug was 20%?

 

So if you safe up 100k in one mission, you get 20k in another.

 

It helped me through GDI 8, but also NOD 9(the one with the commando?)

Although, these days I can beat those missions without the cash help.

 

TS was extremely hard for me. The reason? It is such a slow game. And almost no strategy. Just wall'o'defence and titan/tick rush.

[Jacko]

Its not a bug, its an actual gameplay feature that wasnt ever used in any other C&C game.

It was a cool one too.

[X3M]

Well, that cash feature could have been tweaked.

Perhaps some rewards divided over other missions? Not just with cash, but also units?

[Nyerguds]

Besides CarryOverMoney, there's also an unused CarryOverCap option, theorized (but I think never tested) to be tiberium capacity. Which wouldn't be very useful since you rarely ever start with a base or tiberium storage.

[AchromicWhite]

The missions are not so hard, if you save in the right places and know the layout. But yeah, first time play through, probably really damn hard. The AI is really dumb, though, and you can take serious advantage of that.

Mostly, I find it's the startup, which is hard. Once you have some defenses up, it's usually as simple as scouting and then just building up a force and more or less throwing it at them.

  -Liam

[KILL]

Just finished the Tib Sun GDI campaign.  Just as good as I remember!  Great maps on this one, huge and varied.  I really enjoyed the missions, cutscenes, and soundtrack.  As far as difficulty?  Tiberian Dawn is harder.

 

WHITE, you say the AI is dumb in Tiberian Dawn but I have to disagree.

 

In Tiberian Dawn, the AI is way more aggressive.  On maps where you have a base, they will constantly attack with decent size armies from any direction.  On Tib Sun hard difficulty, the AI rarely attacks your base and when they do the 'threat' is insignificant.  Also in Tiberian Dawn, the AI will react faster when their buildings or harvester gets attacked.  The AI rebuilds about the same speed in both games.

 

Base defenses are also way stronger in Tiberian Dawn.  An Obelisk or two can handle a couple of Mammoth tanks no problem.  In Tib Sun the defenses are weak.  10 Titan's or 10 Disruptor's can easily level a big base, or at least do enough damage that the AI won't recover.  Compare that to 10 light or medium tanks from Tiberian Dawn, which is not enough for an aggressive assault.  I had to go back to the AI's base on many missions in Tiberian Dawn, even when I took out their construction yard because my army was not big enough.

 

Money is also much easier to get in Tib Sun.  There are Tiberium fields everywhere and you never seem to run out, even if you stretch the mission out.

 

Back to the AI...  In Tiberian Dawn the AI will constantly pump out infantry from their barracks.  In Tib Sun that doesn't happen.  Plus infantry are way, way better in Tiberian Dawn.

 

Also I didn't find the air units impressive in Tib Sun.  7 orca fighters could only take out 1.5 NOD turrets.  Both the bombers and fighters have terrible reload and are not worth the cash.  I guess they were trying to balance them for multiplayer.

 

The only time I messed up during Tib Sun was when I was sleepy.  I had a lot of friendly fire on those missions with the mutant who used the railgun, so I had to restart. 

 

Looking forward to doing the NOD campaign next and then Firestorm.

[Nyerguds]

Oh, the TD AI is definitely challenging... but it's still really, really dumb

[X3M]

wall in their harvester.

Now enjoy

[Jacko]

I could imagine certain GDI missions would be harder if you took away the airstrikes (particularly Blindsided)

Dunno what you would do on Blackout though, other than that (and one of the PSX/N64 missions) all their missions should be completable without it.

[ore_truck]

I find GDI missions harder. For me, the hardest mission was the one where you start with 6 grenadiers and 1 MCV at the beach with turrets pounding you from the north and a light tank to the east. For the Covert Ops, it's definetly Eviction Notice and Blindsided. Nod missions can be easy because of fast recon bikes, nuke that can destroy more than half of their base, 1 obelisk can defend most attacks since the GDI AI attacks in small teams and parking stealth tank on a spot where they want to build a structure.

[AchromicWhite]

Yeah, see, I can handle that mission SO easily now. It's just knowing where to drive to set up a base, knowing what's coming, etc.

And yeah, my comments on AI were more about how they always attack the northern most thing, or whatever attacks them. So you just move things that don't take much dmg to the certain projectiles, in range, and then attack with everything else. Yeah, true, like 10 tanks won't sort everything out, but if you use a mixed army, you'll do much better. Put some troops in front of the tanks and let the obelisk waste it's shots on them, also take 2-3 hummers with you to snipe flamer inf. The grens will kill the buildings much faster, also. (remember, the ob has light armor, so HE weapons will do more than the AP tank shots).

 

All this sort of knowledge makes the campaign super easy, BUT, if you don't know it, you'll get wrecked, haha

 

  -Liam