I'm currently playing Earth 2140 on NORMAL and holy fuck. I'm 20 hours in and haven't finished the UCS campaign yet. Granted, some missions were harder than needed because I didn't realize you could call in reinforcements on some maps, BUT>Maps are a grind and sometimes come down to who runs out of resources first>I'm convinced the Devs are downright evil. They know the pathfinding for UCS mechs sucks, and the maps are a combination of chokepoints, cliffs, and destroyable terain you have to manually target. UCS air sucks so you have to grind them down with mechs all the time if you don't have the SHADOW vehicle that gives stealth to your mechs>One of the Scandinavia missions has you approach an enemy base from two sides with a 1 tile chokepoint on each sides. Your mechs stack up and die really easily. The UCS navy sucks, and you don't have air in that mission forcing you to grind them down wave by wave hoping to snipe some of their important buildings>Many missions start you in the middle between multiple enemy bases and they assault you immediately.>Constant raids by enemy air and land transports full of infantry that capture your buildings and blow them up.>Also, if the objective is to capture a building and you take it, they'll actively try to retake it and blow it up, failing the mission for you.>Scripted attacks all over the placeThis truly was a time when devs didn't give a fuck. I've heard that the Warcraft 2 expansion is hard but I haven't played it. Recommend some ball busting campaigns
>>2288856>ball busting campaignsCossacks 1: ww1 edition. If you beat any campaign on normal, not hard, normal you have my respect.
>>2288863I say it would be historical accurate if most of the mission was just throwing thousands of units to death just to slowly push the front forward.
>>2288856One of my first games ever. It has a bunch of unusual quirks.>you can capture the enemy's factories and build only some of his units that share the same technologies (I recommend massing medium cannon tanks and driving into ED's base when playing UCS, also the air troop transporters), and sometimes you can build unavailable units if the enemy queued them up>you can record orders for your troop transporters to automatically drive into the enemy's base, capture buildings and return (one of the quickest ways of dealing with them if you can lure the defenders away)>aircraft is dangerous not because of its own weapons but because of the missiles the defenders launch all over themselves>infantry is borderline useless, though the self-destructing bots can help against troop transporters in early UCS missions>the enemy doesn't blow up the mines it captures, but it will drive his transports across the map to fetch the ore, and will continue to do so even if you recapture the mine
>very powerful card mechanics, some which instantly kill everything on the map or instantly change the team of units>no way to acquire limited resources, instead money is distributed to players periodically>random pickups on the map which can decide battles>very limited LOS>crappy early eras RTS UI
>>2288920I distinctly remember bankrupting myself from the upkeep of ammo cost of few dozen MGs firing constantly for several real life hours. That's with lots of fully upgraded coal and iron mines fully staffed. The AI in that game does not fuck around with human wave tactics. Or bombers. Or artillery. Or tanks. Or poison gas permanently covering half the map, and those shells ain't cheap.
Kohan 2. I remember i beat it as a kid, but now i replay it after 20 years and man, AI is way too aggressive for me.
>>2288856Are you playing the original? Because I've heard the modern version that's on Steam and Gog has botched AI that's way more passive.>>2288863Cossacks 1 also had some bullshit missions if I recall. Especial the ones without base building, where you had to go the one correct intended by the devs path or else you get slaughtered and you can't know the correct path so it's all try and error.
>>2289015Such a shit game, the only redeeming factor is the cover art.
does total war count as RTS?
>>2289396Steam, but there is an unofficial patch that fixes the AI and other issues
>>2288920>le lions lead by donkeys tropeHistorylet detected.
>>2289396Cossacks 3 has some campaign missions that are now literally impossible because they rebalanced some stuff for multiplayer in a patch, and as a result the one option you had to complete the mission is now no longer effective.
>>2288856Do mods count? The DTA Covert Revolt campaign (also some other missions) is close to impossible and designed so that not every player is not able to complete it, according to the dev.
I think "hardest" isn't an interesting characteristic in itself. Anyone can battle an increasing number of skirmish AI until it becomes the "hardest mission".
>>2288856Empire Earth Russia campaign is up there. Mostly for mission 2 really.
>>2289797I have found the EE campaigns more tedious than difficult, but they aren't cakewalks either.
>>2288856I don't remember enough about all the campaigns I've ever played to rank them, but after watching GGG's recent C&C video (which is pretty good, recommend it) I was reminded of the atrocious GDI Mission in C&C3 TibWars that has you cycle buildings on and off until your MCV spawns that you need to escort to your base.As soon as you try to do that you get swarmed by BS scripted NOD units who focus the MCV down = Mission failed, do it again and wait another 20 minutes.Or the Red Alert 1 soviet mission where the allies destroy their own chronosphere as soon as you uncover it on the map, which ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE ALWAYS DOES the first time they play the mission because no one fucking tells you that and you are conditioned to use scout planes prior to that mission.
>>2288856Terminator Defiance on "realistic" is basically impossible without heavy savescumming in my experience, at least on a blind playthrough. And even if you know what's coming it's still a savescum game for 99% of people.I've beaten most campaigns in series like Combat Mission/Graviteam/Men of War/etc. with very little saving, but I find I had to save every 10-15 seconds in this one. It's not even that the AI or scenarios are that difficult, it just throws an obscene and unmanageable amount of Termies at you, sometimes on infinite spawns (meanwhile you have a fixed [small] number of units with limited ammunition).One thing I love about this game is that it uses physically-simulated projectiles (so, closer to Men of War than Company of Heroes when it comes to how shooting behaves). You can miss a tank with an SMAW rocket, have it fly over a dozen houses, just to land inside a window on a 10th story apartment in a high rise, killing your sniper who was chilling it that specific room.Also, despite how fucking cool it might look, don't ever bother putting a 30mm Avenger on the Abrams (or anything really). Unless they patched it in the last year or so, it's a really mediocre weapon compared to the default main gun + coax, against anything other than HK Aerials, and the fuel costs of running an Abrams as your dedicated SPAAG in the post apocalypse is too ridiculously prohibitive.
>>2289826Unrelated, but is Terminator Defiance any good? What's the best comparison to it?I sort of got Cuban Missile Crisis vibes from it.
>>2289826Yeah, and Syrian Warfare is the same.I remember the Mission in Defiance where you have to rescue Stevens (?), basically capture a building, wait, and extract with a convoy while they attack you from all sides.I remember just completing the mission without worrying about losses because I thought it's the last mission since its that obnoxious. I only beat it by sacrificing all my infantry and extracting the vehicles.
>>2289826If you need to save every 15 seconds is that even an enjoyable game?
>>2289831Haven't played that but I have played a ton of Blitzkrieg 1 (same engine). Hard to compare to any specific game, but it is an RTT rather than RTS, like those games.I really enjoyed it a lot (even though it's balanced terribly and incredibly difficult, at least on higher diffs). It's sort of like the tactical gameplay of a Men of War game (minus direct control), but also a strategic layer and logistics element in-between missions that force you to really pick and choose your force composition.There's a really enjoyable period at the end of (most) missions, wherein after you've wiped most of the Terminators and completed the Objs, you can basically scrounge around the battlefield and find vehicles and weapons (your own or from third parties) that are recoverable. Then after that phase, it goes to a strategic map where you have to decide what forces/units to keep with you (everything has a fuel cost/upkeep for every day you travel on the map). Really tickled my autism in the same way salvaging a adhoc fleet of captured ships in Homeworld 1 did, except this time around there's a balance mechanic added to it to keep it from spiraling wildly in the form of upkeep.It also doesn't quite feel like "Terminator" to be honest... maybe that's something to do with the "Dark Fate" branding (haven't seen the movie), but e.g. it's "Legion" now and not Skynet, there's zero Arnolds (even voice lines) in the entirety of the game, etc.Overall I give it a strong 8/10.>>2289837Yeah that mission was tough. One tip I found for that (and several missions) is that if you don't move the convoy up the road to the facility, you don't trigger the Termie reinforcements... so you basically have all the time in the world to get set up in defensive positions along the route. And if you want to get really cheesy, AP/AT mines on all the roads leading into the suburbs...>>2289847Yup. Could be balanced better, but the good outweighed the bad, for me.
>>2289854>Blitzkrieg 1So the answer is yes, but "better". Good to know.
>>2289856Have you tried Stalingrad?It's my favorite of the Enigma engine games. Has a number of improvements on vanilla Blitzkrieg like much longer unit ranges, and having buildings finally block LoS/shooting (kinda important if your game is focused on a largely urban battle, I guess). Also kinda fits the thread I guess, because it's hard as piss on higher diffs, too.It also has an industrial/heavy metal soundtrack that I personally really liked. Kinda gave me C&C/Frank Klepachi vibes. But I'll admit it is kinda weird for an otherwise very historical WW2 game focused on Stalingrad.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDoHTsx2XDU
>>2289854>>2289856>>2289882I found Blitzkrieg 1 too easy but it's very easy to cheese the whole map with Artillery.I see how it could be really hard if you don't do that. Haven't tried Stalingrad yet
The stronghold crusader trail has some pretty insane levels. Reaching the end felt like an accomplishment.
>>2289531The only egregious one I remember is in the Prussian campaign, Kesselsdorf, I think. What else was there?
I've heard that Beyond the Dark Portal is really hard
>>2288856I'll never finish this fucking game.
>>2291882Fucking hell anon, what's giving you trouble and why aren't you praying to either krolm or chaos gods to solve it?
>>2289831Best comparison I have is Syrian Warfare. Think of it as a fusion of MoW and CoH. Most of Terminator's easier missions are equivalent to Syrian Warfare's hardest ones. There is so much shit happening that I can see someone unfamiliar with SW getting overrun in the third tutorial mission.
>>2290294I've always been filtered by Cenarius mission in the orc campaign. Like, how do you counter getting absolutely obliterated. Never did it without cheats.
>>2292115Syrian Warfare and Terminator have the same mission structure:>Preserve units at all costs>ATGMs are kings>Scout with snipers, target fire, take everything out from distance if possible>Quicksave after every engagement>In Terminator you have to salvage everything, especially early >Missions are structured in such ways that you are often swamped by many objectives at once, especially Secondary one's are hard>The only viable way forward seems replaying missions and knowing whats coming ahead and prepositioning forces.They did mix it up in the first Terminator DLC where you play Legion. Terminators are lot more expandable, you are slower, less flexible, but preserving forces is not much of an issue and you can actually grind the enemy down with attrition warfare. I liked that contrast to the Resistance forces which have to babysit every Sherman or Bradley foreverGreat games but not for everyone
>>2292200Meant Abrams* not Sherman, but there's an Integrator Sherman with Energy Weapons you can get as well in Terminator
>>2292200>Missions are structured in such ways that you are often swamped by many objectives at once, especially Secondary one's are hardOne thing that I really liked about Terminator Defiance was the fact that it often forced you to divide up your forces, and actually consider factors like mobility/transportation/etc. in your force composition.It prevented (or at least dialed back [depends on the mission]) the common RTT mission design problem, of missions always boiling down to a "stack the heavies hitters you have, just send everything at one point, overmatch everything, and repeat that while zig-zagging the map" meta.Having to hold three or four points on the map simultaneously is tense, and that's not even considering units you might want stationed near choke points or reinforcement paths, or just to hold in on-map reserve to patch holes.
>>2292180You're aware you're suppose to retreat to the forth base behind the river and turtle there until you read the bloody fountain? Like I wouldn't say it's an easy mission, might be one of the toughest in the base Warcraft 3, but by no means it's that hard. Unless they made it easier in latter patches.
