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Working for a living

The concept of leading battles as various personas of a General has been abandoned, in favor of an easier-to-balance roleplaying model. The GLA, USA and China each have one general, who gains experience and levels through combat. With these levels he purchases various abilities which come in three tiers. Tier 2 unlocks when the General reaches level 3, and tier 3 with the ‘ultimate’ ability is achieved with level 5 which is incidentally the highest level.

Of

God

Let's drop the other specials

Even though the game has undergone such massive changes, the combat still remains distinctly Command and Conquer. The units are still relatively brittle and can die all too quickly even in a regular engagement, never mind one where nuke cannons, artillery strikes or level bombing runs are involved. Generals’ economy will be familiar to fans of the series, with a single resource distributed across the map in limited qualities and oil wells that will provide a steady stream of income.

The oil wells have a serious problem. Since their locations are fixed and visible by default, and they can be destroyed permanently, the long-range special abilities each side is equipped with make short work of them during mid-late game. Although it hasn’t occurred to the author personally, stalemates where each side runs out of actual units to throw into combat have been a real possibility. More than once, a multiplayer match was won with judicious use of an A-10 air strike against select defensive emplacements, since the regular army was too poorly armed to pull it off and resources had been exhausted.

Cheese please

Engineer cheese rushes may be a thing of the past, but rebel uprisings are not. The rebel uprising is a GLA special ability, where they summon a number of regular infantry anywhere on the map. If the capture building ability has been upgraded, this small force (or horde, depending on the level of ability) of infantry can capture a whole base. China is generally immune to such a tactic, since chaingun emplacements make mincemeat of all infantry, but the USA and GLA, with Patriot battery or Stinger defensive structures have serious problems. USA is particularly weak against infantry, with no dedicated infantry mauling vehicles (such as the chaingun tank, dragon tank, quad cannon or toxin tractor.) The strategy is easily defeated with smart deployment of Rangers who have the Flashbang upgrade, but it doesn’t change the fact that cheese still exists.

There's the e-bomb

ZAPPED

See they're powered-out

Balance?

Generals’ balance is surprisingly good. The weekly stats show a fairly even win percentage for each side. Our own personal experiences suggest that China is the most potent foe, since neither the USA nor the GLA can win a pitched battle against an equal number of Chinese forces. However, China’s lack of speed is a serious detriment. Rocket buggies and Tomahawk Launchers are excellent at slow a Chinese ground force. Air power is less effective, as any China player will build considerable numbers of chaingun tanks, which are remarkably potent against light vehicles.