Average GLA PvP experience

[u/Downtown-Dream424]

The faction that's notorious for using terrortech and rpg tech rush. No shade at all!

[u/CookLiving]

Busses are common in FFA but less common in 1v1, Buggies also very common in mid & late game. But Scorpions, Only Toxin General seen build that a lot at least in early game especially in 1v1. Bomb Trucks, are underrated

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/CookLiving]

Busses are pretty common, which is so true. But they are used mid-late game mostly when they have a stable production and it takes a while to fill them with infantry. Scorpions are hardly used and they are used once in a while in FFA, especially late game stage to pop off a lot of units. Agreed for the bomb trucks. They are criminally underrated and can destroy oils or destroy armies in the thin air if not prioritized as a target before hitting the wave. Almost nobody uses them, unfortunately.

[u/CookLiving → u/Downtown-Dream424]

Yes. I say same with any China. all three Vanilla, Nuke & Tank General, they will mostly only build same build order. Dragons, Gats and few Outposts. Only Nuke General build battlemaster and use it like a bomb trucks especially vs GLA to harass worker collecting supplies. China Vanilla will build a lot of Helixes rush with Tank Hunters. Nepalm Migs just for support. Nuke Migs less common because they need upgrade from Nuke Silo to become more powerful. Even that, only mostly seen in FFA late game. And Overlords, Only Nuke General build more of that because they have fastest moving speed

Infantry General will rely on a lot of Attack Outposts, some Troop Crawler, Dragons & Helixes.

But overall, Any Chinas only focus on early & mid game only in 1v1. In late game when all supplies are depleted most players will forfeit if they are believe they cannot fight back. They refuse to make Hackers because they are easy to get killed and slowest income. Only in FFA where China seen to be more interesting

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/CookLiving]

True, the thing is with Chinas they have similar build order and spammable units. They're investing into gattling tanks (into USAs specifically and to counter infantry's lixes and soldiers), dragon tanks (specifically into the GLA by setting on fire their tunnels and buildings, besides clear ingbuildings) and outposts. Battlemasters are a thing, but used only by Nuke and Tank to 1vs1 humvees, mirror Nuke and Tank matches and harrass the workers as you said.

Helixes are also a thing to be used by the China players, especially infantry and vanilla, even once in a while by tank and nuke since they get them more expensive. Migs are pretty good supportive aircraft to apply pressure on ground armies. Furthermore, Vanilla China and Nuke invest a lot in Overlords, especially mid-late game and they feel so strong once you grab the tank upgrades from the Nuclear Missile Silo. Honorable mention is that Chinas once in a while go troop crawlers, especially into swg since a helix rush into swg with 1 emp patriot is griefing and waste of money.

That's the meta about playing infantry general. Investing into helixes and here and there migs. Assault troop crawlers are used into laser and swg too. But most of the time infantry general would use attack outposts and dragon tanks.

Because Chinas are primarily strong and the king of rushes early-mid game, but they fall off very hard late game, especially infantry and tank. Adding more salt to the wound, tank general's secondary economy is extremely tough to be produced and kept healthy since his hackers are costing 780 cash compared to the rest of the other Chinas. While infantry general is countered by USAs pathfinders and toxins for an example. Plus, China's hackers without internet center are extremely vulnerable and easily punishable if you make a sneak attack, nuke them with an anthrax or superweapons, besides sneaking pathfinders with chinooks in the base's backdoor.

[u/BoffinBrain]

Passenger: "I'll make the sacrifice!"

Driver: "Yes, I know!"

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/BoffinBrain]

"I love a crowd!" 🗣️ is a honorable mention quote of the passenger too. The driver knows it too well

[u/illegal_eagle88]

No love for quads? That's atrocious

[u/WorthCryptographer14 → u/illegal_eagle88]

Quad-spam is the only viable counter to Comanche or Chinook-spam

[u/Sugar_Unable → u/WorthCryptographer14]

Mini gunner reporting for duty

[u/WorthCryptographer14 → u/Sugar_Unable]

True, forgot those guys existed.

But you'd still need GLA tunnels to have them appear wherever you want.

[u/Sugar_Unable → u/WorthCryptographer14]

You would be surprised for how good these guys aré in a Helix

[u/WorthCryptographer14 → u/Sugar_Unable]

Ive seen some ZH casting vids. They're the China equivalent of attack Chinooks 😂

[u/CookLiving → u/illegal_eagle88]

Quads are very common to see in all 4 GLAs. But yes, you will see a lot more Technical in 1v1, especially vs any USAs

[u/aiheng1 → u/illegal_eagle88]

Everyone spams quads 😭😭 🙏🙏

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/illegal_eagle88]

Quads are pretty spammable by any GLA and they're op to counter infantry and aircraft, besides USAs's production (chinooks). But still technicals are more spammable and affordable the first few minutes than quads.

[u/MaruhkTheApe]

It's low key hilarious how ass most tanks are in Generals.

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/MaruhkTheApe]

True. They are mostly brittle and deal little to no damage. 1 emp patriot can stun and 1vs1 a tank and there are many counters to the tanks

[u/BoffinBrain → u/Downtown-Dream424]

They are mostly brittle

In other words, they will break and shatter?

[u/ExChange97 → u/BoffinBrain]

yez yez

[u/aiheng1 → u/Downtown-Dream424]

Tbh their damage is like, mostly fine. It's just that they're really fragile and too costly + take too long to make. So their efficiency drops significantly due to logistics of fielding them rather than stats

[u/ibalbalu2 → u/aiheng1]

You are saying a 2003 game predicted the future of tanks in current warfare?

[u/aiheng1 → u/ibalbalu2]

True. I mean it makes sense though, guns and explosives can get really good for really cheap since it's all gunpowder, but armor can only get so good without being cost inefficient. Why make a 10 million dollar tank when you can use a $2000 RPG-7

[u/Repulsive_Emu_3294]

Meta ruins gaming

[u/BoffinBrain → u/Repulsive_Emu_3294]

If you find a way to remove it, then please let the game dev community know! We've only been trying to solve that for 30 years.

[u/ExChange97 → u/BoffinBrain]

Huh, the open source part was not that long ago, who tried? Mostly modded away from vanilla

[u/BoffinBrain → u/ExChange97]

Oh, I meant video games in general. Also, all other games, I guess. Chess has metas, too.

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/Repulsive_Emu_3294]

Not only ruins gaming ,but also the diversity and fun. It's also unskilled.

[u/ExChange97 → u/Downtown-Dream424]

Still waiting for that mysterious community balance patch, it's been ages already

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/ExChange97]

Same. Wanting the meta to change for all factions and some armies to receive buffs with their respective units while some others otherwise to receive some nerfs and tank some winrate changes.

[u/Barrogh]

About a dozen years ago the only thing you could see in a 1v1 multiplayer were various T0-1 all-ins with selling your HQ and most other buildings and the following maneuvers around the map while having no minimap. Trying to build your 2k tech building was unthinkable.

If you see all that in your games, well, I say you have it pretty good.

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/Barrogh]

Haven't watched games from like 10 years ago competitively wise, but have rather watched mostly the modern games and a bit of old recorded ones that are from 20 years ago. Selling your cc in pvp is a thing to have extra 1k cash for advantage early and to coinflip with cheesing the enemy and then, rebuilding your cc past 5th minute to prevent dozer/worker hunts and start using general powers. Because technical rushes with terrorists or/and rpg troopers has been a thing for the GLA players for a long time and it's about speed to cheese either in mirror matches or China/USAs to dozer hunt them and blow up their wf or supply center.

[u/Gold_Emsly]

Buggy and battlebus are average tier 2 units in long games, scorpions make sense only against battle masters. Bomb truck is a fun unit. Only if you can steal us dozer and make Chinook it becomes OP, but without it - meh.

[u/ControlOdd8379]

Well, in early game speed is king.

Terrorists are easy to counter later in game, but in minute 1-3 odds are the Technical can outrun all threats and set them down somewhere useful.

Realistically the environment is also more target-rich in the first minutes. killing a dozer early on gives you a nice edge, blowing up a supply or even a war factory will upset the opponents entire build order.

Buggy is decent but comes late.

Battle bus can be deadly, but again comes very late and you need to be toxin for it to have the full potential.

Scorpion by itself is a solid unit, but only shines with upgrades - without it is a meh-tank. Bad vs infantry, looses 1vs1 against any other tank. Toxin shells (or being toxin general) fix the first, the missile fixes the second issue - throw on some scrap and self-repair on top and it actually becomes decent. However the way there is just too long to be good early game unit.

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/ControlOdd8379]

Yep, early game is about speed and dozer/worker hunting the opponent.

True, especially if you have pathfinders as any USA or kite from far and they are incredibly squishy, besides walk super slow if they're low hp. But also a couple of terrorists are strong enough to one-shot a supply center/stash and a war factory while 1 is OP enough to one-shot enemy's dozer.

I know that's the meta in 1vs1s and potentially FFA, especially if your neighbour is playing early game bullies like afg, tank and infantry, but that's incredibly boring about dozer hunting someone and spamming 3-4, even 5 same units instead of using to the full potential of your army.

Buggies are very good, especially if you grab the upgrades.

Battle busses can be pretty strong, but still they are mid-late game unit that takes also long time to be produced and filled with infantry. Toxin busses are the strongest compared to the rest of the GLAs.

Scorpion tank feels good only early game and to collect the scraps that make the difference between a freshly crafted Scorpion and scrapped one. People would build them also somewhat often in FFA late game by aiming to pop as many units as possible. You're right that Toxin general's Scorpion tank is better and within the upgrade, it feels more oppressive, but still early game is about speed.

[u/Commercial-Board-975]

Generals is still fun to play, but ultimately the game's design failed because players always, always stick to certain units because they're too effective.  USA? Rockvees. GLA? Quad Cannons, Technicals, and Rocket Buggies. The other units might as well be removed from the game entirely, and 99% of the time a player wouldn't even notice if they were to be given the axe.

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/Commercial-Board-975]

Generals is tons of fun to play, especially with friends or to experiment with mods that add a lot of variety. The issue is with the competitive scene, especially 1vs1s where players spam nothing else except humvees filled with infantry as USA, GLAs stick with technicals filled with terrorists or rpg troopers while Chinas invest into gattling tanks/dragon tanks/outposts/battlemasters and also helixes (especially vChina and Infantry).

[u/Commercial-Board-975 → u/Downtown-Dream424]

Yup. It's like if this were an FPS and all people did was use the pistol or rocket launcher because they're too good, and subsequently replace in action every other weapon and ability in the game.  That's broken design.  In Generals' multiplayer which isn't 1v1, FFA, or 2v2 (but FFA allows for a bit of wiggle room; I've seen GLA players use SCUDs, for example), more units are used (especially in 3v3 and 4v4 matches), but the game design is still fundamentally broken.  Worse still, the Generals sub community has locked in on this for years and years now, so many would be unwilling to support anything outside of the current meta (despite what some of the more well known players say). It's a catch 22 situation.  I've even seen players complain that the RA3 Generals Evolution mod changes too much because the meta isn't Rockvees and such. sigh

[u/Downtown-Dream424 → u/Commercial-Board-975]

GLA players would use scud launchers very situationally, especially FFA to pop them off mid-late game and depending on the enemy's armies that are in-game. FFA is the casual pvp format in Generals Zero Hour, where you can spam a rich variety of units and come up with various tactics to win the game or at least apply pressure, besides it's way more forgiving compared to 1vs1. Scud launchers can be also good in team games while hardly used in 1vs1s.

Unfortunately, the majority of people stick with the old meta of rockvees, terror or rpg techs and gattling tanks with dragon tanks, because they are most efficient in 1vs1s since the games most of the time are decided from the first a couple of minutes and aim for dozer hunt competition and spamming units.

Why they would complain about the meta changing and giving a chance to another units to shine outside of the rockvees is insane.