If you need help with any aspect of Red Alert, whether you can't finish a particular mission or get stomped every game when your opponent does something email me. For missions, please provide is a rough description of the map, the objectives and the level number. Please don't ask questions which have their answers in the manual (i.e. how does an MCV work?).

If you ever use Westwood Chat, then you'll occassionally see requests from people who want to play a game where both players agree to omit a tactic. Usually this is due to one (or both) player's inability to counter the tactic. I personally prefer the idea of working out counter tactics, which is the main idea beind this page.

Tank rushing is what happens when you're opponent sends a large number of tanks at you, usually 20 or more. A wall of tanks seems to scare most players and there's a good reason why: if you are unprepared for a tank rush, you can be killed very easily.

My key defence to a tank rush is a 'roving band' of about 10-15 of my own tanks. Group the tanks together (ie CTRL 1) but preferably not in formation. This group should be in addition to other forces, depending on your resources. In order to be effective, the group must be reasonably fast, have good armour and adequate fire power. The means either medium (allied) or heavy (soviet) tanks.

Once your opponent sends his tanks at you, send the roving band right back. Time is of the essence so hit them as soon as is possible, concentrating the group's fire on one enemy tank at a time. Now you need to decide what to do next. You can either bring in more of your own tanks and attempt to overwhelm the tank rushing force, mount a counter strike or both.

A group of 10 V2s in formation (or 2 groups of 5 in a 2x5 formation) or 5-10 artillery as a back up can be handy, but they will need an escort of about five tanks to prevent slaughter. A pair of cruisers acting as support to your roving band may also help turn the tide. If you keep it up, you will hopefully break your enemy. Since tanks in a rush are often almost the entire enemy force, moving into attack immediately having disrupted the tank rush may lead to you finding the enemy base almost undefended. If you decide to counter strike, there are a number of options available. You could mount your own tank rush at the enemy. Again, enemy defences may be at a low, so charging right back at the enemy has its advantages. It's best to take an different route than that chosen by your enemy if possible. If you're Soviet, then send in a strike force of MiGs or Yaks and take out a building. Even if you lose some air craft, seeing his/her own base go up in smoke may provoke your opponent's rushing force to return to base to defend. Allies can send in Longbows to support the roving band, or to mount a separate attack. Naturally there are other ways you can attack an enemy (Tanya for example), so take this as a guide only.

If you don't have enough time to build the units as described, then you could always use some of my maps which are available for download from my main page. The maps are designed to inhibit mass troops movements while at the same time promoting quick combat through limited resources or space.

The Aftermath now restricts build times to twice that of normal so more than two war factories (for example) do not increase build time. This has been done as a direct attempt to counter/eliminate tank rushing. Of course the Roving Band strategies as outlined here still work :-)

After some experimenting with the Roving Band technique as described above, I started to devote my entire armoured unit production to establishing roving bands. There are many advantages in using such a formation both in offence and defence.

When you start a mission, group all your tanks together into one roving band. They need not be near each other since at this early stage establishing from where the enemy will come is not usually easy. Once you begin vehicle production, add extra heavy or medium tanks to the roving band until their numbers are up to the recommended 15. After this is done, start the production of a second roving band and so on. The key advantage of multiple roving bands is in casualty minimising. When one group is starting to lose heavy nnumbers, send them into repair while bringing another group up to continue the combat.

If you've seen the Star Wars trilogy, you'll know that the Rebel Alliance were using hit and run attacks since they had inferior numbers. By using the roving band strategy, such hit and run tactics are easily achieved. For example, if a Telsa coil is providing problems in infiltrating a base, send in one roving band while keeping a second not too far away. The first group eliminates the target regardless of casualties and then runs for it to repairs leaving the second band to come in and intercept any counter strike the enemy has planned. If you fear being attacked on multiple fronts (and can't afford to leave any unguarded), you can keep one active band per front plus one in reserve to either replace or assist any other band.

If you ever played Dune II, then you'll know that whoever controls the spice, controls Dune. A slight alteration makes this applicable to Red Alert too. Fortunately, however, there are no Sand Worms in Red Alert to swallow up your harvesters...

If you want to halt your enemy, kill his/her ore trucks. No income means no production. A group of around 4 MiGs will reduce an ore truck to half health. In particular, Longbows make excellent ore truck killers. As backup to this, or as a main ore truck killer, bring about five light/medium (allied) or heavy tanks (soviet). The initial strike by your airforce (if you have one) will certainly help you kill the ore trucks even if they are defended.

Unfortunately, your enemy is quite likely to use the same tactics to kill your harvesters. To defend against losing your ore trucks, you'll have to be prepared. One offensive not mentioned above, is to tank rush a harvester (or group thereof). It's best to counter such a tank rush with the same roving band that you already established for general tank rush defence. To prevent air strikes, you need rocket troops. Allies are at an advantage here since they have medics to heal injured soldiers plus APCs to assist in troop movement. I usually use about 10-15 rocket soliders grouped together in addition to any medics or other infantry. It's possible that you're opponent may send in infantry to attack yours. To defend against this, allies should keep their APCs nearby while soviets will need to provide an infantry escort group of about 5-10 ground assault infantry. Since tanks are great at running down infantry, about five medium or heavy tanks acting as a screen for the rocket troops will help stop most ground attacks. The infantry escort may not be necesary in this situation. The main problem with this tactic, is that it relies on a fairly predictable ore supply. If you have to move around to find ore, then you could be in trouble.

Mobile escorts are very useful, but offer no defence against air attacks. It is possible to ignore air attacks by using the partial defence of escorts. If I give my ore trucks escorts, I usually do so in the form of no more than two medium or heavy tanks per ore truck. More than this number and they just get in the way too much especially if space is tight. Remember, select your tanks, then ALT+CTRL and click on the ore truck to order an escort.

Another defence is to have lots of them! If (when) your opponent decides to start attacking your ore trucks, you'll have enough in service such that if you lose one or two, you'll still be mining at a good rate. I usually have 3 ore trucks per refinery. This means that you can lose one third of your trucks and still run at near full capacity.

The new field mechanics in The Aftermath are, as suggested in the readme.txt on the CD, excellent when placed near an ore refinery. Just place one mechanic in range of each ore refinery and you'll hardly have to worry about your ore trucks for the remainder of the game. I've found this useful for helicopters too though you'll usually have to move the mechanic to each unit requiring repairs.

One of the great functions of Red Alert is the ability to group units together such that they are easy to recall. You can store up to 10 different groups into memory by selecting them and assigning them somewhere between CTRL 1-0. I usually only group units when I have a specific purpose in mind for them i.e. I don't group units unless I want them to be together in offence, defence or both.

By assigning various unit types to similar numbers every game, you can get used to the particular numbers and hence be able to recall units very quickly. As slight an advantage as this offers, it may amount to a turning point in a battle. I almost always assign air units descending from CTRL 0 to 7. Since its rare to have more than four, it never interferes with any other unit group. From CTRL 1 to 4 I group land or sea units depending on what I'm doing. I usually keep these free for any group that won't be together for long or are together only to serve a particular purpose. CTRL 5 and 6 are kept for 'special forces'. My roving band of tanks as described under Tank Rushing, are usually CTRL 5 leaving CTRL 6 for whatever I'm doing at a particular time. If I make an air force, I usually have just two flight groups (each of which consists of either at least four MiGs for Soviets, or five Longbows for Allies, since I don't ever use any other aircraft), limiting any more for when I have lots of space, time or resources (i.e. rarely). So taking that into account, you have CTRL 1 to 4 free for general purpose units, CTRL 5 up to 8 for special purpose units and CTRL 9 and 0 for air support. While I'm not suggesting that you copy my grouping format, consistency is all that is required to make the most of the group storage function.

Formations can be very powerful when used correctly. I usually put three or four groups together each acting as a rank and in formation. The first two (or three) ranks are tanks with the last row, artillery or V2s. By forming the ranks, anything that comes into range, gets crushed and the formations allow the units to move forward without breaking formation. If all goes well, you can march straight into an enemy base.

Most players underestimate the versatility of infantry units, opting instead for purely armoured forces.

Rocket soldiers are brilliant in their unique ability to act as Anti-Aircraft in addition to lending ground support. Unfortunately they are vulnerable to Yaks if they aren't deployed in enough numbers. I recommend at least 15 soliders for the group to be able to survive Yak attacks.

Rifle soliders are also not used to their full extent. If you're a soviet player, then you get free rifle soldiers periodically as soon as you build an airfield. 10 of them can kill a heavy tank quickly and in greater numbers they become a real problem for opposition forces. Be wary, though, for there are plenty of anti infantry defences once you enter a base.

One interesting way to quickly kill infantry who aren't accompanying armoured units, is to group four or five APCs side by side and in formation and march forward. Since there are five of them, few infantry can get out of the way in time without being crushed. By filling up the APCs with your own infantry beforehand, the enemy could be in for a surprise.

You never get to use these, but you will certainly come across them in numbers in Counter Strike. Remember to SHIFT-click on the speaker (to the top right) in the main menu to access the hidden missions.

There are essentially two types of ant that you'll come across: ants which bite and fire ants. Fire ants aren't too hard to kill with armoured vehicles (whether Rangers or tanks) as long as you keep moving. Infantry, as usual, get fried by these guys so don't bother. Also, static defences such as camouflage pillboxes (don't bother with anything else) are vulnerable if they are left without support. One method is to build another pillbox in anticipation ready to place it between any approaching ants once they start attacking or you can use a mine layer to surround your pillbox (beyond the pillbox's range of course) such that most onslaughts will be killed before they get too far. A third option (when it is available) is to surround the pillboxes with concrete walls at one square distance since most ants seem to be able to directly attack anything on the direct opposite side of a wall. This might work with sandbags too, but I was too worried about the consequences of failure to experiment. Ideally, your static defences will direct ants into range of a previously gassed nest since all ants die once they get within range of a gassed nest.

Other ants present less of a problem to pillboxes unless they are in numbers. If there is more than one ant attacking then set up 3 pillboxes surrounded by concrete walls as described above. Make sure you build camouflaged pillboxes since non-camo. boxes won't survive at all if the ants get through. By rebuilding walls as ants get through, this defence should hold perpetually.

Since you'll need to attack too, you need to work out the best way to spend your money on offence. Infantry serve as a useful anti-ant weapon since there are often so many of them compared to ants. Add a pair of medics to a group of 10 to 20 infantry and the group should last exceptionally well. The only problem with infantry groups is in their lack of speed so infantry are best reserved as either support to other units or base defence. At $1600 for two medics, cost may be a negative factor here, but if the medics work well, you won't ever need to get repairs or new units. Rocket soldiers are excellent against ants.

If Rangers had more than token armour, then they might be more useful, but the fact that decent numbers of them can accurately clean up ants give you the option of using them for support of other units. However, once you get the option of other vehicles, the $600 price tag seems excessive.

My preferred option to Rangers is to use medium tanks. Don't consider an offensive group of less than 7 tanks since the ants will destroy them all too quickly thanks to tanks' innacuracy when shooting at moving units. An ideal group would be of size 10 such that you can easily kill at least ten ants without any losses (assuming full health). While the additional armour of Mammoth tanks is helpful, their rate of fire is far too slow to serve any real use.

Other units of note are V2 rocket launchers and APCs. V2s are too innacurate with moving targets to be useful, but APCs can serve an exceptional role in assisting infantry movements. One APC filled with scientists can be called in once a nest's defences have been eliminated. The speed of the APC will allow you to quickly gas a nest before more ants can make it out.

Once I thought of the roving band method, I thought static defences would be made redundant, but in practice, I started building heavy defensive points. Ideally, these defences should be effectively invulnerable to attack such that you have a sufficient number of everything to prevent both air and ground attacks. You'll have to contend with naval units with other means.

Soviets seem to have the advantage in the power of Tesla coils to which there is little comparison. This assumes you have plenty of cash though. Build at least two tesla coils diagonally adjacent each other and move five rocket soldiers to each 'corner' to form a square. If you then completely surround this with concrete walls, the enemy will have problems beating it. Units like V2 rockets will need to be intercepted by your mobile units since a hit will be highly dangerous. Otherwise, the combination of rocket soldiers with Tesla coils with bring a halt to any attack or at least soften the blow.

Allies can combine camouflage pillboxes with turrets, but turrets can't be surrounded by concrete. A better method would be to combine three pillboxes (forming a v pointing in the direction of the anticipated attack) with rocket soliders to form a 3x2 rectangle. By then surrounding this by concrete walls, enemy units will have a hard time. Unfortunately this defence probably won't pack the punch of Tesla coils, but they also don't consume nearly as much power (nor are they vulnerable to power outages).

Finally, it is often the case that you need to 'direct' static defences to target a different unit than it is already attacking. To do this, click on the static defence and simply target the enemy unit once it's in range. Unfortunately, you can't select a group of static defences and so have to select one at a time.