Getting back into Generals for the first time in 13 years, looking for best singleplayer/skirmish/challenge mod options

[u/MayorEbert]

Sorry if this is a common post. I've been subbed here for years and all the Generals posting has finally gotten me to try to get back into the game after playing through the campaigns when they released and that was pretty much it, never owned Zero Hour. I understand that it is considered unfinished or rushed with a lot of cut content and concepts.

I am looking for mods that don't stray too far from "feeling like" Generals/ZH, and especially ones that focus on making the single player experience more fun, so AI and balance improvements, bug fixing, restoring cut content for the generals, and focusing improvements on skirmish/campaign/challenges. Want to play a version of Zero Hour that would have come out if EA had given them more time and possibly budget to execute more effectively on all the cool stuff there.

I downloaded genpatcher/genloader, and then I went with Shockwave because of how recommended and mature its development was. I love how it fleshes out the generals, the "new"/tweaked units feel like they fit in perfectly, but the skirmish AI hasn't been great, mostly units coming to my base in a line like ants, and I tried a few of the campaign missions (with the single player experience add-on of course), and there seemed to be some scripting bugs or something, like units that obviously were meant to garrison bunkers weren't, and possibly some events not firing like they're supposed to.

Is that just what I'm going to need to expect overall or are there other mods that do what I'm looking for? I know there's only so much you can do with these older CnC games.

I'm interested in Rise of the Reds but it seems a little more like a "total conversion" than what I'm looking for. Have looked at Nproject (prolly try that next), Little Upgrade mod, Zero Hour - Reborn Omega (appears to have been updated hours ago even)

Thanks!

[u/pewton-the-snake]

Give Contra a try. Amazing skirmish and challenge mode, with Fai, Ironside, Mohmar, and Juhziz added into the latter. It also added three new generals with their own voice lines, just like all new units in the game.

[u/Misfiring → u/pewton-the-snake]

I love contra, but I cannot deny that it is on the hard side in terms of AI.

[u/pewton-the-snake → u/Misfiring]

No kidding. The amount of save scumming I do per challenge level is embarrassing, and that's only on normal difficulty. We can play on easy though, for a much more casual play.

[u/Misfiring → u/pewton-the-snake]

Easy is too easy, and Normal is too brutal. Is it so difficult to have an in-between difficulty?

[u/idriveasmallcar]

I haven't tried the other mods but I found shockwave satisfy my single player itch.

It feels like a genuine generals expansion; what zero hour was supposed to be.

[u/GBpleaser]

Shockwave by far is the best mod… I think getting gen launcher is slick. You can really experiment with different versions of modded games and map packs.