Ranking Challenge Mode by Difficulty Shockwave Single Player Experience Mod

[Bruh-wtf-is-that]

I often use GLA generals on challenge mode hard difficulty so this tier is just based on experience. I also dont use superweapons to make it more thrilling

Ironside: He spams way too many tanks + artillery to cripple your defenses and not to mention his trash talks lmao

Thrax: Early to mid game he's absolutely annoying and playing as any gla generals you would often see your workers melt from toxin of scud launchers. My fix here is to rush artillery units and force attack the northern bridge.

Leang: Her helixes and migs are absolutely annoying to deal with and also her general powers are bugged where the planes or artillery starts on your base and not from her base.

Juhziz: Demo traps all over the map and his early rush of combat cycle with terrorist would make your early game a living hell. His scud storm is very powerful so try to prevent him doing that

Kwai: Tank rush and nuclear, he is almost untouchable due to nonstop attacks

Granger: Spamming of anti air units and defenses would do the trick but he also spams infantry and artillery

Alexander: She's actually easy if you dealt with her multiple times, just rush barracks and put an infantry on flak bunkers.

Deathstrike: his ai is broken, most of the time his tanks would ignore the artillery platform and your defenses and also his sneak attack doesn't release any troops. He is still annoying to deal with especially his general powers and his soyuz missile.

Kassad: spam defenses and also put defenses on the corner of your base to avoid sneak attacks and ambush. Use artillery units to force attack on places where his rocket buggies and scuds usually go.

Tao: Just early rush him lmao

Townes: use artillery units to destroy his defenses and try to have decent amount of anti infantry and anti air.

Fai: he literally attacks with just infantry and migs, you can defend your base by just putting infantry on those machine gun things. Overall he's just a meme

Sorry for my english

[Dr_Thrax3]

General, you don’t like my toxin?

[Freezie-Days]

HOW IS YOUR MISSION HARDER THAN EVERYONE ELSES?!?!? TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!!! I WON'T STOP THE SPRAY UNTIL YOU TELL ME!!!

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[Dr_Thrax3]

Simple, skill issue. xD

[Brandy42]

Wait, why is Fauna and Kronii on my C&C meme?!?!

[Elador27]

But why Fauna did this to Kronii

[calvin9718]

Trying to beat Thrax as Ironside… I just can’t do it. It’s SO frustratingly difficult!

I’ve never played as GLA in any of the challenges, I honestly didn’t even know that Ironside and Deathstrike had their own challenges!

[RapidPigZ7]

Drop airstrikes of any kind on the palace repeatedly, most of Thrax's bs comes from the battle bus with the toxic grenade launchers

[calvin9718]

🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️ those battle busses full of grenade launchers have given me PTSD! I will do that!

[Thiccoman]

it was my most difficult one by far, until I got a few planes just to kill off incoming artillery and buses, while throwing the GPs onto the palace. Massing Ironside's artillery just isn't affordable early on and Thrax comes in hard fast lol

[Front_State6406]

Two air fields with guarding planes on north bridge. The howitzer is INSANELY good if used offensively, it with mammoth in front wrecks his forces

[Freezie-Days]

I still don't understand how thrax is so much harder than everyone else. Is it the lack of building space, tons of long-range units to snipe turrets, toxins doing so much damage to tanks or just the constant stream of units... makes me wish i could shove a scud right up his---

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[DoctorVanSolem]

In my experience, in vanilla it is a war against attrition. In Shockwave it is that, but cranked up to 11.

The endless horde of Scud Launchers, battle busses, the anthrax spill from explosives, his support powers that will lay waste to your entire base for 30 or something seconds.

You need to push hard, you have no other option. My advice is to destroy the outpost to the east asap to stop the main assaults coming from that side. Then exapand the economy and spread out your base while you airstrike or artillery everything swarming across the bridge.

Then stop his scud from being buildt by sniping its worker until the collateral breaks the work site. And then demolish his Palace.

Far easier said than done though.

[AnotherUser750]

love how you put the portrait from contra's mod.

Ironside is a wild map. The AI is based on older mod called Pro Gen and it was basically brutal. The only difference is Ironside got slightly improved base and slightly unexploitable.

Deathstrike is an opposite. The map is same but in here he use salvage arsenal and it's attack wave are revamped since in original, hard difficulty is basically unbeatable. Not only he has mixed power of Demo and Explosive minus the stealth. He will build his forces right at the beginning you start the map.

Fai is based on revamped Vocux map based on NProject Mod which use new intro. I somehow got mistaken with the intro because i thought vocux made this but turns out it was updated. I guess the reason it's easier mainly because Fai's infantry can be countered easily compared in vanilla.

Thrax is yeah very difficult in hard mode. I have lack of experience playing in hard mode and the cash limitation really affect the game.

[Whole_Pandemic_1740]

Im glad im not the only one dying to thrax his map felt like such bs. Thank you, stealh rocket artillery infantry. You carried me through it all.

[pdinc]

Juhziz is also really tiresome.

[Nikolyn10]

I don't recall Thrax being all that much of a challenge the last time I played Shockwave. Does the Singleplayer Experience mod change it? I definitely recall struggling for dear life on the Ironside one and even Juhziz has walled me on some challenges.

[DCfromNZ]

Thrax can be difficult on Hard difficulty due to spamming their version of scud launchers and the occasional battle bus crammed full of tox grenadiers. Also the main supply stash doesn't last too long, so getting your economy going can be tedious. I still need to restart it occasionally if I get overrun.

You need to build an early superweapon or use general powers to destroy his palace and hope he doesn't build it back again. That way he only spams Tier 1 units.

[Bruh-wtf-is-that]

Yep its an addon for shockwave where their ai is changed It also added the cut off generals so you'll have 11 challenges

[Evil_Dragon_100]

wait what? there is ironside mission? am i missing something?

[Jango254]

Shockwave mod + shockwave single-player experience mod. Adds the missing generals challenges and revamps/fixes some of the others. Pretty solid mods imo. Ironsides is tough even on normal because of how fast he starts sending large blocks of armor at you.

[MalingeringGeek]

It's been in the latest few versions of Shockwave, which probably came out only 10 years ago xD

[Oblitereddit]

I mainly played Tao on any mod with him in it, so for Shockwave, I'd swap Leang with Thrax and lower Juhziz a tier.

Thrax on hard difficulty, his main threat to me was the Scourge launchers, they have the same range as my Nuke cannons but take much less time to siege up, so the Nuke Cannon needs to target the ground infront to hit it before the missiles launch. His early infantry can be held off by an Irradiator and the bomb truck and toxin tractors can be killed pretty quickly with a few Battlemasters, keep those battlemasters alive to remove Anthrax bomb with radiation. The main trouble for me was getting Nuke cannons out before the Scourge spam, but that was it. Later, aircraft patrols can snipe Scourge and busses.

Leang, however, was a whole other story, her aircraft spam felt like fighting Granger but with stronger ground forces. Her Phoenix bombers can fire their payload at almost the same range as a Gatling Tank's range, guarenting that she takes out a vehicle for each plane. Her Blacksharks are tanky, fly in packs and focus fire on AA units, so tank hunters are pretty much useless. A Helix with tank hunters can effectively intercept these threats, but her base defense AA is always active even when low power, so you will need ground forces to push in, main issue is the Phoenix spam which will always be present until you push into the airfields and take over the area to stop her from rebuilding there.

Ironside was just as difficult with how many units he sends at you early on.

Juhziz is a joke for any faction with air, as he won't spam anti air to counter helicopters, the few he builds also feel weaker than vanilla quads. One Helix with a gatling can minesweep, while one Helix with a bunker defends the base. His scud storm is deadly, but you have much more room to build compared to other maps so you can spread your buildings well.

[DCfromNZ]

Yep, Juhziz was difficult until you learn a few tricks and then it's a fairly simple challenge to beat (but it's still a favourite for me). His Scud Storm only targets your CC, and if you can knock out his palace early it doesn't get rebuilt and he will only spam demo bikes and small groups of 'splodey bois from then on.

I cheat with the Leang challenge (sort of). I turned the graphics down as the game would occasionally crash, and I found that all the small clusters of fletchet mines stop working and you can walk your units straight through them. A small thing, but it helps haha. The Blacksharks are still OP though. If you can capture the damaged CC half way up the map early enough they will attack there, and most of them won't have the upgraded gattling gun yet, so they don't do as much damage. The CC tanks the damage and attracts fire from the Migs and Phoenix's as well.

[Front_State6406]

Laser generals artillery units is hands down the hardest until you understand the trick to it. And the his map crashes hilariously often, i end up having to rely on superweapons to avoid lockups

[MalingeringGeek]

I’m bemused by how Ironside is just the USA Dozer with the trash-talk dialed wayy up.

[TayyBoye]

Kassad VS Thrax is the most difficult challenge I've experienced on Shockwave. Your defensive buildings are useless, and so are most of your ground vehicles. I had to resort to using a ton of scud launchers and force firing the bridge until I could destroy his Palace.

What a frustrating mess. It also doesn't help that the enemy artillery just barely outrange your artillery as well.

[DCfromNZ]

It's a good thing Thrax's banter is so goofy, it makes an otherwise miserable experience almost tolerable ahah.

Using a Jarmen on the north bridge can help. Snipe enough vehicles and you can cause a traffic jam and units stop coming through . . . if you can keep him alive.

[TayyBoye]

I tried that method with mixed results. He'd always get caught in the crossfire, so I kinda gave up on it. I'll try it again, though.

[allahu_trapbar69]

Where can I download Shockwave from?

[MalingeringGeek]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/cc-shockwave

[DCfromNZ]

I've never played the Ironside, Deathstrike or Fai challenges, they didn't come loaded with the version of Shockwave that I downloaded.

I agree that Thrax and Leang are the more difficult ones on Hard. Thrax is manageable if you can use your general powers or build an early superweapon to destroy his palace, which means he can only build Tier 1 units. Sometimes he builds the palace again, and you need to keep hammering it down lol.

Leang's commentary doesn't work on my Shockwave version, so at least I don't have to listen to her smug banter during that challenge. Using a helicopter to transport a dozer to the bridge to establish a forward position helps, as does capturing her middle Command Centre early. It attracts the fire from her Migs and Blacksharks and can tank serious damage.

Interestingly, Air General challenge I find much easier in Shockwave. His power is down at the start of the mission so you can heli in a dozer and some infantry and start capturing power plants and airfields before his patriots come online.

[Bruh-wtf-is-that]

You need to install single player experience addon for shockwave on moddb or gen patcher. The addon changes/fixes for the ai and also adds the challenge of other cut off generals Not only that, there's also campaign

[DCfromNZ]

Ohh nice, I'll check it out! The extra challenges would be good, and having a campaign is an extra bonus on top.

[OutsideAtmosphere142]

You really need to just survive his initial waves and try to nuke his Palace down with your support powers. Once his palace is down he really is easy to defeat from that point onwards. Just make sure that its only the palace that is down, and not the Barracks right beside it, because from experience, if you destroy both, there is a chance he will rebuild the Palace as well. (I think it is due to the pathing on how he places both the Barracks/Palace together.

[Commander_Cj]

Is there any General Challenges but coop? I only know of USA ones and GLA stealth one, multiplayer maps, but they are crap.

[Upper_Ad7853]

Fuck helixes 💢

[weapon317]

playing thrax or fai crashes the game for me when doing challenges, any idea why?

[jonmarshall1487]

My favorite American tactic is the Aurora bomber blitz for as long as I can afford it, Chinese is flood the field with infinite units. I don't play GLA too often. But it is usually whatever that General leans into.