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Playing with the Balance of Battle in Red Alert

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A new article on PC Gamer called Playing with the balance of battle in C&C: Red Alert, the author goes back to days of the original Red Alert and remembers how unbalanced the game really was, especially in skirmish games. The Soviets always seemed to pack more fire-power than the Allies. Here's part of the article....

 

The problem is firepower. In no part of the game do the Allies have an advantage. Where they have light medium tanks, the Soviets have heavy tanks and the mighty HP-recovering mammoth tanks. If you’ve played Red Alert before, you know what I’m talking about – it’s like watching a chihuahua try to take on a cat. Not gonna happen. If an RTS was released with those sorts of balance issues now, the developer would have that **** patched on Steam in 24 hours.

 

I start the game in the top-right corner of the island-based map (it’s called Island Wars, there are bridges, you may remember it). Quickly I build up my base towards landing a tech centre, which grants full coverage of the map by launching a satellite after a certain time. I’m building as many medium tanks as possible. Intimidatingly, within five minutes, I can hear two armies going at it in the shroud. I send one ill-fated machine gun guy down to investigate, and sure enough, two Soviet armies of about 15 vehicles apiece that vastly exceed my powers are exchanging fire. If one of them wins, I’m close enough to be next.

 

Things were different back in 1996 I think. Anyway, check out he full article right here.

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The Soviets always seemed to pack more fire-power than the Allies.

Cruisers would compensate that, at least in part.

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The Allies are not as hopeless as the article make them out to be. The Allies' units are cheaper, faster and quicker to produce. Not to mention that the medium tank is just as powerful as the Soviet heavy tank and cheaper. Two light tanks can kill a mammoth tank while being cheaper than one. Gun turrets are almost as powerful as a tesla coil and cheaper...

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Charles Reid 9 days ago

I was a top 10 player and I played as allies....I literally ate soviets for breakfast....there was a technique called Q attacking where you press Q and then issue an attack command and light tanks would literally swarm that unit while moving in random directions making them impossible to shoot...the game is balanced people of this era just don't know how to play it... (snip)

 

^ this

 

(From the comments section at the article.)

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