GDI Strategy Guide Version: 1.05 Last Update: 5/12/07 Author: Josh Karpel email: maventree@gmail.com =================== Table of Contents ----------- 1.0 - Preface 2.0 - GDI Units/Structures/Abilities 2.1 - Units 2.2 - Structures 2.3 - Abilities 3.0 - General Strategies 3.1 - General 3.2 - Rushing 3.3 - Turtling 3.4 - Mixed 4.0 - Specific Strategies 4.1 - GDI Vs. GDI 4.2 - GDI Vs. Nod 4.3 - GDI Vs. Scrin 5.0 - Frequently Asked Questions 6.0 - Credits 7.0 - Guide Version Info 8.0 - Legal Info =================== 1.0 - Preface ----------- This is a general strategy guide for the GDI faction in Command and Conquer 3. It will not teach you how to play the game, because I assume you were competent enough to read the mini-guide the game comes with, or played the tutorial and figured it out. The GDI's philosophy is "slow but steady". Your powerful units move slowly, and cost quite a bit, but once you get them out, they're tough as nails and can destroy just about everything. But this doesn't mean you can be careless, as no plan (no matter how good) survives contact with the enemy. So, I hope you find this guide useful. Please feel free to contribute using the email at the top of the guide. =================== 2.0 - GDI Units/Structures ----------- 2.1 - Units ----------- Infantry: Rifleman: 300 Tiberium The rifleman squad is the basic combat infantry for the GDI. They have rifles, and are relatively effective against other infantry. Try to phase out of them as soon as possible, because a combination of missile squads and snipers is far more effective. They can build small bunkers, that are effectively a garrisonable (1 unit) tuuret. Because of the serious lack of good anti-air fire the GDI have, filling these bunkers with missile squads can be quite effective at defending your base from air attacks. Missile Squad: 400 Tiberium Missile squads are your workhorse infantry. A few well-placed missile squads are quite capable of taking down vehicles, especially if garrisoned. A good tactic is to put two missile squads with a sniper squad into a building. Then, the building can serve as a "take-all-comers" defence unit, taking down both infantry and vehicles. Sniper Squad: 1000 Tiberium Your other main infantry unit. Teamed with missile squads, these will eat through the opposition. Once again, throw a squad of snipers in a building with two missile squads, and the building is a sort of mini-fortress. It is very important to have at least a few of these when you garrison troops: if you don't, enemy building clearing units (flamethrowers, grenadiers, etc.) will tear you apart. Make sure to throw a few of these around your base and main advances to keep fanatics off your buildings and vehicles. Grenadier Squad: 800 Tiberium Grenadier are used to clear garrisoned buildings. Use them to break through when the enemy has garrisoned buildings. Don't put them in front of the attack though, because a garrisoned building will fire at the closest target. Use tanks or a horde of cheap infantry to soak up hits while the grenadiers do their work. Once you get up into the higher tech levels, these become less useful, because vehicles are much more resilient and still able to take down garrisoned structures. However, you should always keep a few of these squads around, just in case you REALLY need to take down a building fast. Zone Trooper Squad: 1300 Tiberium The zone trooper squad is your most powerful infantry. They use rifle-sized railguns, giving them an absolutely deadly (one shot, one kill) attack against infantry, and deal serious damage to vehicles. With upgrades, they can also detect stealthed units, making them a great support unit for a vehicle attack. Their jetpacks are useful for surprise attacks, but be careful where you land them: they can't fire while jetpacking, and have a cooldown before they fire once they hit the ground. If you aren't careful, you can lose a ton of them by jumping into a group of enemies. Of course, if you are careful, you can zone tro Commando: 2000 Tiberium The commando units are an oddity. They are useful in certain situations, but I generally avoid them. They cost 2000 Tiberium that could be used to buy things that will probably serve you far better than a single commando. If you have Tiberium to spare, and want to play around with a cool unit, go for it. If you don't, consider not using the commando. If you do though, remember what the commando is good for: infantry killing, building killing, and walker killing. Drop him in an APC and he becomes a ludicrously deadly anti-infantry tool. When attacking, jump jet him up to the enemy defences while they're occupied and start blowing them up. Basically, think of it like this: the commando won't win the game for you, but it can certainly help. Engineer: 500 Tiberium Engineers capture buildings. That's pretty much their whole use. They have no weapons, and will die very quickly if they come under fire. Use them to take over neutral building like tiberium spikes, and to steal enemy buildings. Interesting tidbit: For harder AI levels, when an engineer gets close to a building, the enemy will sell the building. If you can get an engineer into the center of an AI base, and they may very sell off their whole base to stop you from capturing it! Ground Vehicles: Pitbull: 700 Tiberium Pitbulls are basically a missile squad on wheels. They also detect stealth, a useful ability for any combat group. Use them with APCs to create a fast, all- around effective combat group that can engage everything in the game. However, make sure you keep them out of serious trouble, because, as with all light vehicles, they are very fragile against serious anti-vehicle fire. If you're going to use them in an assault, or extensively in any way, you should invest in the mortar upgrade. It is a very cheap and effective upgrade. APC: 700 Tiberium APCs are, in my humble opinion, one of the best GDI vehicles. They can hold one infantry squad inside them, but more importantly, the unit inside can fire out of the APC. So, though the APC only has a machine gun effective vs. air and infantry, an APC with a missile squad inside is effective against all targets, and in groups, can slaughter just about anything. Plus, they're more manueverable than the mammoth tank, and can hire air transports as well. APC's can also drop minefields, useful for blocking off bridges or other natural tight-spots. Predator Tank: 1100 Tiberium The main mid-game tank for the GDI can be toughie to produce, but can smack their Nod equivalents around with no trouble. Also, the railgun upgrade will affect these as well. Though with less firepower, two or three predators will be able to engage different targets, with more speed and maneuverability than a mammoth tank. Juggernaut: 2200 Tiberium Juggernaut are another oddity. If you have some well-placed sniper teams, you can use these to knock out a large group of enemy units cleanly and quickly. Use them if the game is going slowly and you want to crack a tough defence. Some people use them for frontal assaults, but I suggest using them in more of a support role. Mammoth Tank: 2500 Tiberium The GDI main battle tank. A few of these will crush through most opposition, and it will take some actual tactics to take them down. With the railgun upgrades, mammoths will really come into their own. However, you must support them or lose them. Vertigo bombers will pound them into dust, so make sure they can't. Rather than building ten mammoths, build two or three mammoths, some zone troopers, and a couple APCs with missile squads. This group is more versatile, can move better through small spaces like city fights. MCV: 2500 Tiberium Not a neccisity because of the Surveryor/Outpost, but if you want a real backup base, you need one of these. It's totally unprotected, so make sure to send and escort if you really need it to live. When deployed, this will create a construction yard, the building you need to start doing, well, anything! Rig: 2000 Tiberium An interesting unit, that creates a battle base when deployed. The base is equipped with some turret weapons, and can repair nearby vehicles. It does not create a build zone around it, but pairing a rig with a surveyor lets you create a defended expansion base quickly, and you can even pack it up and put it somewhere else. Surveyor: 1500 Tiberium Surveyors are used to create outposts, which generate a build zone, allowing for the creation of expansion bases. Totally unarmed, so you want to defend them if you're in the thick of the battle. Harvester: 1000 Tiberium Harvesters... well, harvest. They have a light machine gun, but it's pretty much useless, so defend your harvesters well. You can build more from the war factory, but refinerius come with a free harvester as well. Note though: if you make a refinery, then sell it, you get a harvester for 1000 tiberium, the same as it's individual price at the war factory. Useful for getting extra harvesters in the early game. Air Vehicles: Orca: 1100 Timberium Orcas are like small nuggets of goodness, filled with rockets of course. Orcas are excellent support vehicles: bring them in to support tank charges or to counter-charge enemy tanks. A group of twelve orcas is easily maintainable, and will rip tanks and even infantry to shreds. Try not to attack with only orcas though, because they are very vulnerable to anti-air fire. Also, after you research the sensor pod upgrade at the tech center, orcas can drop small sensor pods that will detect stealth and reveal the area around them. These are a must buy. Firehawk: 1500 Tiberium Firehawks are your bomber unit. Upgrade to these late game, but don't stress it if you don't have the money. Firehawks are very fragile, and can only fire one salvo before needing to return to the airbase. Of course, with their special upgrade, they can travel anywhere on the map instantly, and drop their devestating bombs to cripple enemy bases. However, DO NOT USE FIREHAWKS ON ENEMY UNITS. You will fail miserably. The bombs fall too slow to hit moving targets, and don't deal enough damage to truly disrupt enemy attacks. Use them to destroy enemy bases, twelve firehawks, split into three groups of four, can kill or seriously damage three buildings. AND, they can drop directly into the enemy base, right on top of that building. Remember though, that the cooldown means you can't stratosphere fighter your way back out, so you may lose some on the way out if there is a lot of AA around the enemy base. Of course, that is only the ground attack mode. If you switch them to AA fire, they become massively effect verse most air attacks. 12 firehawks can seriously damage even the Scrin's mothership in a very short time. 2.2 - Structures ----------- Construction Yard: FREE (at beggining, deployed MCV) This is the most important building in the game: it lets you build everything else! Keep it protected, or you might suddenly lose your whole building ability to a sneak attack. Crane: 1500 Tiberium The crane allows the use of another building queue, so you can build two building at once. This also affects the support building queue, so you can build defences two at a time as well. Often one the first buildings someone will build. Oupost: FREE (deployed surveyor) Outposts are created by surveyors, and create a build zone to allow creation of an expansion base. It also functions like an armory in regards to healing your infantry units. Power Plant: 800 Tiberium Power plants provide, get this, power. After you build a tech center, they can be upgraded to produce even more power. In the meantime, you should try to stay ahead of your energy needs. Running out of energy in the middle of a fight could lose you the advantage if you use base defences. Tiberium Refinery: 2000 Tiberium Refineries are absolutely essential. They let harvesters drop off their Tiberium, giving you it to use for buildings everything else. Another one of those first-few-minutes buildings. Tiberium Silo: 500 Tiberium Silos let you store more Tiberium. If you have some extra Tiberium to throw around, buy them. If you don't, don't bother. They aren't necessary at all, and are more a luxury item than anything else. Barracks: 500 Tiberium The barracks creates your infantry units. Building more of them will give you more infantry build queues, and since they're cheap, you should consider it. Once again, a first-few-minutes building. War Factory: 2000 Tiberium The war factory constructs your vehicle units. Building more also gives you more build queues, but the higher build cost may prohibit this. It also has drones to repair damaged vehicles, so bring damaged vehicles back to preserve them. Command Post: 1500 Tiberium The command post only gives one thing, the radar scan ability, but also opens the gate to the higher tech levels. Build it when you need to, not before. It is relatively expensive for the early game, so focus on the other buildings first. Airfield: 1000 Tiberium Each airfield only provides space for four air units, so you will definately need more than one. They also provide repair/rearm to units that are landed at them, so make sure to return your aircraft to home after their attack runs. Armory: 1000 Tiberium The armory has your infantry upgrades, and also allows the building of some more advanced infantry. You need this to build snipers, so if you plan on a mixed sniper/missile squad defence, you'll need to build this fast. The armory can also heal infantry units by garrisoning the infantry inside the armory. Tech Center: 4000 Tiberium The tech center has the upgrades for your vehicles and aircraft, and also allows construction of advanced vehicles and structures. It costs quite a bit, so unless you're rushing for the more powerful vehicles, save it until you have a good economy going. Space Command Uplink: 3000 Tiberium This is the highest level tech structure for the GDI. It grants some nice abilities like the zone trooper drop pod. It can only be built after the the tech center is up, so you probably have a good enough economy going to cover the price. If you're rushing for high tech, you probably shouldn't bother grabbing this. Ion Cannon Control Center: 5000 Tiberium This is your superweapon building. It enables the timer for the Ion Cannon, which can obliterate basically anything. Hit the enemy base with it, and follow up with some supported mammoths, and you're set up for the win. It costs a lot, but if you're worrying about superweapons you should have a good economy going. Watch Tower: 600 Tiberium The watch tower is an anti-infantry defence. Almost useless against vehicles, it will slaughter infantry that get in range. As with all other defences, you should build multiple watch towers, so that they cover and support each other. Guardian Tower: 1200 Tiberium Basically a watch tower that is effective against vehicles instead of infantry targets. Build a lot of these if you're going to use them, because they have a very slow fire rate, and only moderate damage. Sonic Emitter: 2000 Tiberium The most powerful GDI base defence. Though it has a relatively low range, it will destroy anything it hits in just a few hits. They are expensive, so build them sparingly, and only where they will really count. They are especially effective against any kind of grouped rush, because the sonic attack will continue until it reaches it's range limit, damaging every target it hits. And, when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. The sonic blast can hurt your own units and structures, so place your Sonic Emitters in front of your other defences. AA Battery: 800 Tiberium This is your turreted air defence. It deals constant damage, but each hit does almost nothing. Overall, this isn't a very good turret. Build them, but if you keep some rocket-based units around your base, you're probably safer. Missile squads in rifleman-made bunkers, missile squads in actual buildings, and of course pitbulls, are great substitutes. Battle Base: FREE (deployed rig) A frontline base which has several turret weapons, and can also repair your vehicles. It can be repaired like a normal building, and with an outpost can create a great expansion/frontline base. 2.3 - Abilities ----------- GDI Airborne: 1000 Tiberium, enabled by Armory This ability drops in two veteran rifleman squads and two veteran missile squads. This is very useful for reinforcing a crumbling position, but is better used in conjunction with your other powers. Sharpshooter Team: 2500 Tiberium, enabled by Tech Center This drops in three veteran sniper teams. Extremely useful when you need to defend something verse an infantry rush. Bloodhounds: 2000 Tiberium, enabled by Airfield OR War Factory This drops in two veteran pitbulls and two veteran APCs. A good combo is to use this with the GDI airborne ability, and then put the two missiles squads into the APCs. Combined with zone trooper drop pods and sharpshooter team, you can make a small, effective attack team pretty much where ever you want to. Zone Trooper Drop Pod: 3000 Tiberium, enabled by Space Command Uplink This will almost instantly drop in three veteran zone trooper squads. This is the most useful single ability you get other than the Ion Cannon, because the zone troopers are effective against all targets. You only get a few of them, but if you drop them where it counts, they'll be able to do quite a bit. Radar Scan: 250 Tiberium, enabled by Command Post There's really only one use for this: figure out where things are. Use it on likely expansion areas to see if the enemy is there, or to check up on the enemy base. Orca Strike: 500 Tiberium, enabled by Airfield Basically useless. It can take out some kinds of turrets, but pretty much nothing else. Use it to take out tough enemy units if you have to, but the strike is slow and easily avoidable. However, if you really need to that last little bit of damage to something, this is perfect. Shockwave Artillery: 1500 Tiberium, enabled by Space Command Uplink Good old artilley strike. It does moderate damage, so it won't take out many buildings, but it's great to crush enemy assaults. It's even better against vehicles, because it has an EMP effect that disables them for a few moments. It's especially effective agianst Nod "turret farms", where you can knock out a large amount of defences in just a few moments. Ion Cannon: 0 Tiberium, enabled by Ion Cannon Control Center The Ion Cannon is the GDI superweapon. It will easily wipe out most of a base by itself, and will kill basically everything except construction yards in one hit. The seven minute recharge is a killer, so use it against bases, not enemy attacks. Follow it up with an immediate, massive assault if you can, because the Ion Cannon strike will probably tie up the enemy while they reconstruct their base. =================== 3.0 - General Strategies ----------- 3.1 - General ----------- There are a few general strategies you may want to take under advisement while playing the GDI. First is the very start of the game. No matter what specific strategy you use, your first buildings should look something like this: - 2 refineries (you may want to sell the second one) - 2 power plants - barracks - crane - surveyor (if there is somewhere to expand to) You can build those buildings in whatever order you want to, but I prefer to start with either the crane, or a power plant and a barracks. After you build those buildings, you should advance as you wish. However, two things you should definately do are build up your expansion base (if you made one), and to start making infantry and turrets for defence/attack/expansion. Garrison infantry to maximize their effectiveness. If you use this strategy, you will get a strong start to kick off the rest of the game. Of course, the true best strategy is to figure out what works best for you. After this point, your strategy will fall into one of the three general categories explained below: Rushing, Turtling, or a mix of the two. And, some general tips that will help against anyone: - Use the firehawk's stratofighter ability to knock out construction yards. It will only take about 8 to destroy one, and with stratofighter you can appear right next to their construction yard. You should also do this with their most important buildings: cranes, war factories, and tech buildings. If you take out all their construction yards, cranes, and factories, the enemy is pretty much done for. Taking out top tech buildings disables certain units and abilities, so you can launch an assault while they're reeling. - Orcas are another great accompanying unit for mammoths. You use them to take out units that you don't want your mammoths to deal with: hordes of beam tanks are a good example. Five or six beam tanks can easily rip apart small groups of mammoths, so sending orcas ahead of them can help keep your mammoths alive. Even better, Orcas have two ways of detecting stealth units, so they can find cloaked avatars, stealth tanks, anything that might threaten your mammoths. - Before an attack, try to use your zone trooper drop pods power on the back of the enemy base. If you're lucky, you may be able to knock out enough power plants to put them below their required power. If you do it at just the right time, you can attack just as this happens, and kill their base defences with little or no resistance. - Take advantage of the veterancy system. When a unit gets to max veterancy, it becomes far more useful. Watch for units shooting in red, or watch for the symbol near their name. At max, they self-heal, do more damage, have a farther range, and reload faster (if it's a unit that reloads). Protect these units, and put them where it counts. - Use orcas to coat the map in sensor pods. They're completely free once you get the upgrade, and have no recharge timer. One orca can get most of the map covered, and inside that area you reveal fog of war, and also have stealth detection. They do go away after a while, but you can just drop them again. - Throw down a battle base and surround it with mammoths. If the mammoths take damage the battle base will repair them, and the mammoths will shred anything that gets near them. It costs a lot more than your static defences, but is quite a bit more effective. - Instead of using mammoths, consider a large group of zone trooper APCs. It's not as good at anti-air, but it is equally or even more effect against ground targets. 3.2 - Rushing ----------- Rushing is the art of a fast, early-game, crippling strike. The goal is to get to infantry and light vehicles quickly, then using them to "rush" the opponent. The idea is that crippling the enemy early on will allow you to dominate them through the rest of the game. Of course, this can backfire very easily. If your attack fails to do enough damage, you may be the victim of the reverse of your plan: your opponent will counter-rush you, and you just used all your early-game resources to build an army which was just killed! For a GDI rush, you should be incorporating rifleman squads, missile squads, and pitbulls for sure. If you can, throw in some APCs to pile your missile squads into, and snipers to take care of infantry. Be careful not to take too long building your army, or you won't attack early enough to actually cripple the enemy. Another option is to use less combat units, but throw some engineers in. If you capture some of their buildings instead of destroying them, you can then sell them to give yourself more riflemen squads for the battle, AND to fund your own base. Though the goal is only to cripple the enemy, if you can destroy them, that's obviously better. This is entirely possible, especially if you use engineers, because you can use the money to fund a larger army to send in. If your opponent(s) rush you as well, you should keep up the attack with the units you already sent, but use everything you produce from then on to protect yourself. The worst situation you can be in is being behind from a failed rush, or crippled by the opponent's own rush. Recover as fast as you can, and get a strong defence ready. Be prepared to fail many, many times. Rushing is an art, and can be hard to do correctly. However, I think you'll be happily surprised once you master it. 3.3 - Turtling ----------- Turtling is the complete opposite of rushing. You stay in your base (and your expansion bases), and build up your economy and tech level. Once your tech and economy are running strong, you can build a massive army to attack, while the opponent may still be in the mid-tech levels. Just like rushing, this can backfire in an instant. If you get rushed, your plan will completely fall apart. If the opponent manages to break your defence while you're still building up your tech level and economy, you're done for. So, focus on your defence. Keep building turrets, and make sure the ones you already have are in tip-top shape. Build airfields as soon as possible, and use orcas to shore up trouble spots. Once you're fully teched-up, you have two main options. The first is to keep building airfields, and sit behind an impenetrable wall of turrets while you slowly bomb your opponent to death. The other option is to build up a massive land army, and using it to push directly toward the enemy bases. A good end-game army would consist of a spearhead of mammoth tanks, followed by zone troopers and APCs filled with snipers and missile squads. Throw in some juggernauts at the rear for artillery support, and you can crush through just about anything. Turtling is generally seen as a "noob" strategy, but it really isn't. It is an entirely valid strategy, and is just as much an art as rushing is. Practice, practice, practice, and you will be quite happy with your performance. 3.4 - Mixed ----------- The mixed strategy is a (you'll never guess this) mix of the rush and the turtle. You could also think of this as the harasser strategy. Build up your economy and tech just like in the turtle, but keep the pressure on the enemy as you go. Build groups of units and send them to hold key locations and slow down your enemy, or to actually attack the enemy base. Good units for this strategy are predator tanks and light vehicles. These units are tough enough to hold out for a while, and powerful enough to fight off an actual attack sent against them. The beggining and mid-game should follow a general rusher strategy, and in the end game you should be pounding the enemy with a turtler-like army. The true strength of this plan, at it's basest level, is to adapt to what the enemy does, and to counter it. Move your units to strategic locations to disrupt the enemy, and put pressure on their main base. Basically, your goal is to stop the enemy's plans, while still building up your own forces. Done correctly, this could be considered the best of the three strategies, because it is the most flexible. Adapt and survive, commander. =================== 4.0 - Specific Strategies ----------- 4.1 - GDI Vs. GDI ----------- - The main trouble with this match up is that you use the same units. Make sure you know how to counter things. For example, counter mammoths with mammoths, because they're an even match. Match infantry with snipers, and snipers with vehicles, vehicles with missile squads, and around and around again. Use your common sense. - Get to high tech levels fast. Because each of your units exactly matches the enemy units, you need to use something they can't match. Getting to a high tech level faster means you can use your advanced vehicles to stomp them, before they use those same vehicles against you. - Set up AA on the inside of your base as well as the perimeter. Your opponent may use firehawks to get into the center of your base, where you may be in lack of serious AA fire to take them down. - Space out your units. Shockwave artillery and juggernaut strikes can make a good assault a sitting duck on the battlefield. The EMP from the shockwave artillery will freeze your vehicles, then the juggernauts will shred them. Of course, you can use this little trick on them as well, in fact, it's useful against any of the factions in this game. 4.2 - GDI Vs. Nod ----------- - Make some extra snipers and scatter them around your base, and send them with your attack forces. You will need them to kill fanatics, which a good Nod player will likely use them extensively against you for anti-vehicle and anti- building purposes. Even if they don't, the snipers are still an excellent defence against infantry. - Watch for the Nod stealth towers. If you see one, make sure to approach cautiously and bombard it in advance if possible. Chances are that the enemy has placed a horde of turrets under the stealth field, just waiting for you to walk in and get yourself slaughtered. - On the same note, be aware that Nod is the master of diversions. A stealth tower (or any other unit or structure) may just be a diversion to make you advance more cautiously, and miss other oppurtunities while you concentrate. - If the enemy has set up a large amount of AA towers, just give up with an air attack unless you feel like losing a lot of units. Each Nod AA tower can fire three missiles, and each one they buy comes in a set of three turrets. Nine missiles will seriously damage, if not destroy, any of your air units. - Watch for vertigo bombers. Vertigoes are stealthed, so you won't get an early warning if they come at you. So, you need to: 1) detect them, and 2) hit them. Detection is easy, any stealth detector will do it. Hitting them is another issue. The bombers fly faster than mammoth tank missiles, so use missile squads or pitbulls to hit them. You shouldn't rely on your AA turrets for the reasons in their description. - Make extra sure to defend the sides of your base. A diversionary attack to the front of your base in conjunction with a group of stealth tanks pouring into the side of your base isn't fun. 4.3 - GDI Vs. Scrin ----------- - Keep up the air defence. If you don't, you'll die. Simple as that. The Scrin have a devestatingly effective air force, and without air defence they will simply eat you up. - Build defences on the inside of your base as well. The wormhole power, the mastermind, and shock troopers can all teleport things, possibly right into the middle of your base. - Watch for the Scrin superweapon. One deadly strategy the Scrin can use is to drop their superweapon, then fire up a wormhole and dump a bunch of tripods into the middle of your base. - Another nasty Scrin trick: using the mastermind to capture a building, then building the signal transmitter next to it and summoning the mothership in the middle of your base. If you see the mastermind, kill it IMMEDIATELY! =================== 5.0 - Frequently Asked Questions ----------- Q: What is the best way to quickly boost your economy? A: Well, obviously you'll need more harvesters. You also want more refineries along with them, depending on your ratio: 3 harvesters per refinery is usually ok, but you might want to go 2 harvesters per. If you're expanding, build some defences to go with them, so they don't get killed. Q: Is there any combination of units that is very strong? A: There is no perfect combination, because any unit can be countered by another unit. However, the "tried-and-true" combo would be a group of mammoths, APCs (with a mix of zone troopers, snipers, and rocket troops), and pitbulls. This group can handle just about anything, and with air support can be nearly unstoppable. Q: Is there a monthly fee to play online? Do you need a fast connection? A: There is no monthly fee to play online. I would suggest a fast connection, but you can play with a slow connection as long as the ping bars are good. When you're looking at a game to join, watch the little bar on the side: if it's green, you're good. =================== 6.0 - Credits ----------- To EA, for making this great game. To the people on the GameFAQs forums, who, despite the trolls, were a great resource for this guide. And to these people specifically, for their great help on many of the specific strategies and tactics in this guide: flamereaver MBO-Sephy h337l4x0r Fearful Ferret mattlorrigan Adam_Grif keith lim UltimateCane99 mico cavas AGP Ecko =- If you would like to contribute to this guide, feel free to email me. -= =================== 7.0 - Guide Version Info ----------- Version .90 - Initial release Version 1.00 - First full release. Added to most sections, and fixed some spelling errors. Version 1.05 - Added to several section, fixed some errors. =================== 8.0 - Legal Info ----------- Copyright 2007, Josh Karpel All right reserved. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. The sites listed below have the right to post this guide: www.gamefaqs.com Any site, magazine, or other form of media (including but not limited to electronic, digital, print, or broadcast) that is not included on this list caught hosting this guide without my written consent is in violation of copyright laws and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.