ADG Episode 40 - Command & Conquer

[@AlexeiVoronin]

One tip from me: Learn to use "Guard mode" - you activate it by pressing "G" while your units are selected. This will make your troops automatically engage any enemies within their visual range - useful when your army is surrounded by lots of enemies and it becomes hard to micromanage it.

[@Bigbacon]

one of the best soundtracks in a game ever.

[@Wagemutter]

Absolutely true!:D

[@hi5gamey211]

Yes true :-)

[@remarkablehairdo3110]

And the creator was only 15 when he made this soundtrack !! Unbelievable! It still holds up so well today.

[@roguerifter9724]

Attack Bikes are still my favorite Command and Conquer vehicle, and I've played every game in the franchise.

[@Nyerguds]

The freeware version is no longer available on any EA source nowadays, but many sites still host the isos nonetheless. However, the 16-bit Windows installer on the CD doesn't work on 64-bit Windows systems anymore, which is pretty silly since the actual game is 32-bit. I've released a full game installer of the Win95 game to address this issue: www.moddb.com/mods/command-conquer-unofficial-patch-106/

[@SteveMacSticky]

from this gameplay footage I can see you play better than me

[@EdmondDantes224]

Thanks to this game, I can no longer hear the phrase "great shot!" without expecting it to be followed by "return to base immediately." Thanks to the post-victory screen repeating those lines, in that order, over and over. It makes it weird any time I'm playing another game and I really do make a great shot.

[@raydeen2k]

Finally, someone else who sucks at RTS but rocks at Populous. :D

[@Christopher-N]

(4:37) NOD Recon Bikes are also vulnerable to Tiberium, which is to be expected since it would be difficult to operate a motorcycle in a chem suit. While I will use Recon Bikes to bait GDI patrols due to their fast speed at full health, I won't send them into Tiberium fields unless I plan on sacrificing them, as they can't sustain very much damage. There's no GDI equivalent unit, though.

[@Christopher-N]

(9:45) Another helpful tactic: When you infiltrate an enemy base after, say, destroying their guard towers, if the enemy still has construction capabilities, that guard tower will eventually be rebuilt. To avoid this, you can park a unit on top of that square to prevent it from being built. For some reason, infantry don't matter in this regard, so you'd lose the unit and the building will still be rebuilt. Instead, park a vehicle, or even build your own structure / wall on the spot. Walls are good, because the AI won't directly target them... but they can still be destroyed.

[@Christopher-N]

It should be noted that Westwood Studios' predecessor game, _Dune: The Battle for Arrakis_ for the Genesis/MD, doesn't adhere to these rules. So, expect the AI to rebuild base structures even when you have a tank parked on top of that spot. Considering the unit build limit for the Genesis port, this can be rather frustrating.

[@EdKolis]

I always thought the engineer looked like Al Borland from Home Improvement.

[@Christopher-N]

"I don't think so, Tim."

[@7thDementia]

KANE LIVES! But seriously, good game, and I'm glad they remade it and EA didn't screw it up.

[@y0urs03pic]

RIP WestWood Studios!!! ;~;

[@MrEk0o]

RA1 and C&C these used to be my no.1 strategies . :) .thanks for the review :)

[@akaTheWilyFox]

C&C will never get old. It has all the right ingredients. Shame that the series got progressively more ludicrous after Red Alert.

[@Reyon88]

Dat soundtrack

[@antdude]

I remember buying this game from a local Egghead store and sharing the game with my college buddies. We were addicted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah, its DOS installer kicked arse.

[@jez9999]

C&C is a fantastic game. Although I've mostly played Red Alert - it basically seems to just be a skinned version of this game with new missions and cutscenes.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Jez Red Alert has some definite improvements over the original C&C in terms of balancing and mechanics, but yeah, it's otherwise a very similar game, excepting the story of course which is completely different. :B

[@Christopher-N]

The AI responds to walls much differently in _Red Alert_ than in regular _C&C,_ so it's more difficult to keep enemy units walled inside / outside / in place. Also, they don't extend your build radius in _Red Alert_ like they do in _C&C_ (mineral silos will work for extending your base, but the enemy may target them).

[@AlexeiVoronin]

I have both the DOS and Win 95 edition of C&C, but I've only ever played and beaten the latter. I guess the low resolution of the DOS version scares me... yes, I generally suck at strategy games too, and this one kicks my (gluteus maximus) pretty bad. Note that the two editions of the game are separate products, whereas Red Alert had both the DOS and Win 95 version in the same package, which is more convenient.

[@Knifeworld]

C&C = automatic like!

[@Pixelmusement]

+invisiblem0vement Even when I'm terrible at it? ;D

[@Knifeworld]

+Pixelmusement Totally, :D I never even thought of using the line advancing tactic! :o

[@Christopher-N]

I'm fantastic against the AI, but the few times I played a friend over a modem, no matter what tactics I tried adapting to, I lost miserably every time.

[@DFuxaPlays]

A Fantastic game. I was always a fan of the C&C Strategy as opposed to that of the Warcraft or Starcraft 'twitch' strategy. I sort of disagree with the idea that stationary units are necessarily better then mobile units - the game is base on the nature of how you attack. Stationary does have the advantages you stated, but then it tends to only work in GDI's favor because they are generally slower. Nod is more about mobility and surprise - which is why their units are geared to be faster or in the case of the Stealth Tank, stealthier. Using Nod units you'll want to attack enemies from all flanks, use distracting units while say a Flame Tank approaches from the rear, or simply just move where your opponent can't (such as their Harvester with Recon Bikes). Then of course there is also taking advantage of your specific units strengths and weaknesses - like attacking 'Medium Tanks' with 'Bazooka Troopers', using 'Heavy Armor' to soak up 'Vulcan Cannons', etc. Really - this is just a well put together game in many aspects of Real Time Strategy.

[@rharms_]

DFuxa Plays i've never played warcraft starcraft since im not into their fantasy universe, but is TWITCH tactics comparable to the say tank rush tactics of c+c ? i never did those rush tactics though, maybe its used in multiplayer

[@DFuxaPlays]

R. Harms They really have different strategy elements to them. Blizzard's sort of RTS generally centered around micromanaging units while Westwood or Activision (in the case of Dark Reign) were more about macro control. Probably the best way to describe it would be with a comparison between Command & Conquer 3 and Warcraft 3 - with Blizzards Warcraft 3, each specific unit from the Human Footman to the Undead Ghoul had some unique ability about them to exploit to make the best use of them; comparing that to EA's Command & Conquer 3 where you had group options to exploit how as a group your units would function.

[@LuaanTi]

Micro is absolutely essential in C&C, even more so than in WC/SC. Sure, you can select more units at the same time... but a single well-macroed unit can do absolutely imbalanced amounts of damage (flamethrowers, grenadiers etc.). At least you get the hotkeys like "spread out", but it's still really painful. Micro in WC/SC is more plentiful, but also much less impactful. It allows you to do something like double the normal amount of damage for most units, while in C&C, it can do ten times more and even more than that. The inability to select more than 4 (later 6 and 12) units was meant to add more strategy and tactics to the game, rather than just sending huge masses of units, but it doesn't really work. But still, the unit limits are much lower, and there is a bit more base building (since more barracks means more production capacity etc.) But there were loads of RTS games that tried something really different, like Z. It's a shame somehow SC managed to completely dominate RTSes for so long. As much as I like the game, I also absolutely hate when everyone just follows the leader and stops really trying.

[@TheOnlyToblin]

Ahh, what do you know? Sweet, might look into this again ^^

[@Fre1maurer]

In the German version, the soldiers are bots, and instead of red blood you see black oil when units die. But in the construction panel the icons for the soldiers still show humans. Beside of that, you can also easily win in this game. The AI never destroys fences of any kind, not even the sand sacks. You can enclose the enemy with cheap sand sack barriers in his base, build turret guns inside the enemy base, or let the tiberium fields grow to immense sizes by closing entrances to it.

[@TheFifthHorseman_]

You can imgmount multiple images to one drive letter and cycle through them with a keyboard combination - I think it's CTRL + F4

[@Pixelmusement]

+The Fifth Horseman There are limitations to how this works; I'm not certain if you can use CD images with IMGMOUNT this way. Either way though, with this game in particular, you only ever need one CD at a time. :B

[@TheFifthHorseman_]

You can use that with CD images, but not with floppy images (at least not after 0.63 or so) due to some obscure issue. I believe some third party builds reenable that option, however.

[@clovenbullet]

Do you own the original dune? i would like to know what you think of it.

[@gz6616]

Hi all the fans, check out OpenRA, it brings these timeless RTS games to morden systems including Win, Linux and Mac. They are constantly updating the game, improving graphics and fine tuning balances. Definitly give it a try. And since it is open source now, you can "hack" the game rather easily and create your "super" units.

[@mattiassollerman]

Sandsacks were overpowered.

[@TheOnlyToblin]

The only real drawback of this game these days is the incredibly small viewing area. Otherwise, it's still a decent RTS.

[@RoboticMagus]

Never played the games that came before Red Alert 2. Luckily, they remastered the old C&C games.

[@thewhyzer]

Unfortunately that url with the free win version no longer works :(

[@Pixelmusement]

That's because they came out with a remastered version. I have a link to that in the video description but yeah, sucks there isn't a free download of the original anymore. :P

[@JimBobJoeB0b]

I find it very strange that you would think that $60 is expensive. For just the disc and disc case, yes, but for the whole box as well? Considering how old this game is, that’s not such a bad price.

[@Pixelmusement]

+MasterBuchannon This was back when the price jumps in retro software were just starting to kick in. Scroll back just a few years and this stuff was DIRT cheap, thus back when I made this video I still wasn't fully cognizant of the spiking in retro game prices going on in the market. You just have to watch my filler video on Bubble Bobble Part 2 to see my surprise on THAT one... ;)

[@JimBobJoeB0b]

Pixelmusement Ah, that makes sense.

[@clovenbullet]

you should have done dune 2 before c&c

[@Maggerama]

Yeah, I also always sucked at RTS games. I still played a lot of them nevertheless, starting with Dune 2 and then Warcraft, Red Alert and all that. But to this day, even though I have a lot of respect for the genre, I have no desire to play another RTS in my life. To much hassle for my liking.

[@yusukeelric]

IM pretty good at this game. Well i became pretty good at this game, after finishing red alert 2 and Tiberian Sun. This is by far the hardest in the series just because of how unfair the campaign gets. The computer isn't very smart, but no problem, here are the map makers ready to make your life miserable, The main strategy in the game is countering the enemy, if the nods use flame throwers use light vehicles, if they use tanks, prepare grenadiers, wich in this game are pretty reliable against most enemies they got militia, use grenadiers, is that a tank? use grenadiers. Look, grenadiers.. Use grenadiers. Or machinegun vehicles if it's flamethrowers it's a very broken game and the creators know it. Tiberian sun is miles better, but fails at the soundrtrack . This is a soundtrack to listen ANYWHERE

[@NeilRoy]

I played and beat pretty much all of the C&C games but I don't think I ever knew about the X = scatter key! LOL... when playing any of these, power and resources is key. Also, that should be what you attack of the enemy as well, I like to take out their power first to slow their production, then attack their resources, harvesters etc... to limit that. As for your comment about there being no real good guys in this, oh yes there is! Nod is most definitely evil, and slightly insane. They're religious nutjobs who worship tiberium and want to use it to "improve humanity" and they will murder innocent people to get to their objective, so they are definitely evil and GDI is good. I finished the GDI campaign but never did complete the NOD one. The story gets better in later games with RED ALERT being a nice twist on an alternate reality. Red Alert 1 and 2 was my favourite story lines...

[@Pixelmusement]

+Neil Roy I never did beat either campaign. I agree, Nod is definitely evil, but I didn't quite get a "good guys" vibe with GDI either for as much of their campaign as I've seen. I kinda got the impression they too were trying to take control of the world in order to take a stranglehold on the Tiberium for their own purposes, however benevolent those purposes may've been. It's like trying to wish for all computers to be Windows or all comptuers to be Macs. At the end of the day, you're still wishing for a monopolistic corporation to claim superiority over something critical to our lives. And yeah, Red Alert's story is WAY more interesting! ;)

[@executivebexley252]

Awesome game, red alert was much better, a good start though