Multiplayer Strategies

What to expect playing online:
The majority of games you play against other people online will involve rushing tactics. One of the most popular, other than the infamous tank rush in the original Red Alert, was the Engineer rush. And with Red Alert2 it hasn't changed. There are many ways to carry out the Engineer rush in RA2. Here's a few of them along with some other great tips that will make your online playing experience more enjoyable:

Early Engineer Rush: To be effective this one must be done as early in the game as possible. This tactic won't work on everyone, but if implemented correctly will work on many of the players you encounter online. Build up your base as quickly as possible. You will need a troop transport and four or five engineers. Load up the Engineers in the transport, send them to the enemy camp, unload them, and take over whatever your can. If its early enough in the game and your opponent is unprepared, go for the Construction Yard first, then the Power Plants. If you get his Construction Yard you will severely cripple him because he will no longer have the ability to construct any more buildings. Basically the battle will have been won at this point. Just a matter of mopping up =)

Engineer/Infantry Rush: The idea here is to sacrifice your Infantry to get your Engineers into your opponents base and take over the buildings. Infantry units are relatively cheap to produce and are great for drawing fire from enemy defenses while your Engineers make a dash to take over buildings. Again, if you can do this early in the game, it will be easier. Also, if your Allied, use IFVs to transport your Engineer to the enemy base. If your soviet, use your Flak Track. 

Combating the Engineer Rush: Just as you may be planning to use an Engineer rush against your opponent, he is likely to be planning the same thing against you. Several things you can do to defend against it. First, place walls around your Construction Yard since this is by far your most important building. Second, place infantry inside and outside your base and put them on guard mode. And use sentry guns or pill boxes as additional defenses.

Garrisoning Infantry: This not so much a strategy, but rather a rule of thumb. Any time your playing on maps that have civilian buildings on them, try to build your base near a group of buildings. Then garrison all the buildings you can with your Infantry. A group of just five garrisoned infantry can cut a tank to shreds in seconds with little damage to the building or infantry. This is one of the best defenses you can get in the game. Keep a couple Engineers around so they can repair your garrisoned Infantry in the event the building becomes damaged. And keep in mind, if the buildings damage gets into the red, your infantry will abandon the building.

Chronosphere Tricks: Of allthe special weapons, the Chronosphere has a few more fun possibilities than the others, and can be used offensively in a couple more ways. Many people think of the Chronosphere as a way to take their own units and put them somewhere else on the map. But there are some interesting possibilities if you use the Chronosphere on an enemy. Try the following:

-Grab attacking enemy tanks and drop them into water, destroying them instantly.

-Or grab an enemy navy unit and drop it on land. Again, this destroys the units instantly.

-When playing a free for all, grab one player’s units and deposit them in the middle of another player’s base. You’ve created a mini war and weakened two enemies at the same time!

-And, as a last-ditch defense, infantry units affected by the Chronosphere are killed instantly. You can use this to break up a rush of enemy infantry.

NOTE: There is a way to chrono infantry safely. Any infantry unit can be safely chronoed if it’s inside a vehicle. So, a Spy in an IFV or a group of GIs in a transport can be chronoed across the map without damage. This is a great way to move lots of infantry from place to place.

Using the Iron Curtain: The Iron Curtain makes whatever it affects invulnerable for roughly 25 seconds. This is very useful, not to mention it’s a great way to start off an attack since it gives you a good chance to whittle down the enemy defenses or blast through some of their units without taking any damage yourself. Here's some other inventive ways to use the Iron Curtain:

-Did you know you can Iron Curtain buildings as well as units? If a certain building is coming under attack for example, you can protect it with the Iron Curtain while moving in units to destroy the threat.

-Same as the Chronosphere, the Iron Curtain instantly kills any infantry unit in its area of effect. It can be used to destroy enemy infantry if need be.

-You can also use the Iron Curtain on enemy vehicles. Naturally, you wouldn’t want to do this when they’re attacking you, but you may find it useful to use the Iron Curtain on the vehicles of one player attacking a second player.

-How about using the Iron Curtain on Terror Drones? You’ll give them a good 25 seconds or so to tear up enemy vehicles, and they’ll come out just as strong as they were when they went in.

-Consider using the Iron Curtain on Rhino Tanks instead of Apocalypse Tanks. And yes, an invulnerable Apocalypse Tank is a mighty force to be reckoned with, but Rhino Tanks are still plenty powerful, and are much faster, which allows you to reach more targets.

Using the Spy: When playing a 2v2 game on multiplayer, an effective spy tactic is to disguise your spy as one enemy, and send him ( make a bunch) into the OTHER opponents base so that opponent thinks that his ally is just scouting his base. Here's some other stuff to do with Spies:

Spies have the ability to sneak into many enemy structures. One of the most useful is the Battle Lab. When you get a Spy into an enemy Battle Lab, you gain the ability to create a new infantry unit. There are four possibilities.

The most basic tactic is sneaking an Allied Spy into a Soviet Battle Lab. Do this, and you will be able to build Psi-Corps Troopers. These are effectively Allied Yuris, and behave exactly the same way. They’re nice to have, particularly if the enemy is using Yuris against you.

Get an Allied Spy into the Battle Lab of an enemy Allied army and you get the ability to create Chrono Commandos. These units are loads of fun and extremely useful. They move across the map like Chrono Legionnaires, but otherwise act like Navy SEALs. They can use C4 on any nearby structures and kill infantry instantly.

A slightly more esoteric unit comes about when a Soviet player gains the ability to create Spies and gets one into an Allied Battle Lab. The new unit is the Chrono Ivan, a combination of a Chrono Legionnaire and a Crazy Ivan. This unit has all of the abilities of Crazy Ivan, but also can chrono across the map.

The rarest unit is gained by getting a Soviet Spy into a Soviet Battle Lab. The result is Yuri Prime, a super-powered Yuri unit so deadly you can only have one at a time. Yuri Prime is really no different from a normal Yuri unit, but his range is much farther; he’s effective at about the range of a British Sniper, or almost a full screen away.

Squid vrs. Squid: If you are playing as the soviets and the map demands that you fight by sea, you must have squids to defeat other soviet squids. Send your squids in before you send any subs or ships. If there are enemy squids in the area then squids will fight squids while your ships make their way to the enemy base. If squids get to your ships then they're going to Titanic (deep six) unless you can somehow magically gain the ability to make dolphins. They are one of the few units that can effectively deal with the squids. Bottom line, if you're a Soviet don't head out into battle against a Soviet enemy without taking along some squids.

The TANK rush - Building mass units: In the original Red Alert, tank rushing was the main strategy used in the game. And although in Red Alert2 there are ways to combat this, building lots of tanks still works. The idea is to take your group of tanks and concentrate all the firepower on one target at a time. But no matter what you build, weather it be Tanks, Air units, Naval units, whatever...build lots of them and attack with all of them. Build as much as you can. Never stop building. You can never have too much! The object of the game is to overwhelm your opponent. 

Defense against the tank rush: In multiplayer online games, don't concentrate so much on building base defenses. It's better to build a War Factory and crank out tanks, etc. They serve two purposes. They can be used first for base defense while your building up your base. Then once you get your base going good, you use them for offensive measures for attacking. The idea is when he uses the tank rush against you, you in turn use your tanks for defense. If you defeat his rush and have lots of tanks left over, go after his base before he can recoup from his losses. In other words, don't give him the chance to rebuild his army. 

Also, use your Infantry for added defenses. They are cheap to make, and when grouped or garrisoned into civilian buildings are deadly against enemy tanks. Just target one unit at a time with your group to be more effective. If you like to play with the Allies, choose America. That way you'll get the paradrops that deliver eight GIs. 

Special Tip for Allied Players: Don't use prism towers early for defense. Why? They are expensive, take a lot of time to build, use substantial energy (Power), have a slow shooting rate, are mainly effective in numbers and are a passive weapon! Which means that you don't have a proper counter attack force if you heavily invest in Prism towers early in the game. Remember, the threat of a counter attack is everything to hold off experienced rushers. It's better to use the cheap, fast building pill boxes and GI's to distract tank fire while Prism tanks with Grizzly tanks in front do the real damage and get promoted fast.

Getting an Online Partner: One of the more entertaining things about multiplayer games is that you can ally yourself with other players for the length of the mission. The ability to use troops from both armies and combine your tactics allows for some truly interesting and esoteric possibilities, as well as some really dirty tricks.

Tricks with an allied partner range from the simple to the extremely complex. For instance, in most games, you can place your structures next to the structures of your allies. Early in the mission, ally with another player who's using the opposite army (if you're playing Allied, ally yourself with a Soviet player). Each of you builds an additional Barracks and places it in the center of the other player's base. Then, break the alliance and capture each other's Barracks. When you have both done this, re-create the alliance. Now both of you can produce both types of infantry. You can do the same with a War Factory, and even a Construction Yard, when both of you have created MCVs. This allows both of you to create such interesting possibilities as Tesla IFVs.

Once you've used the tactic above, break the alliance again and allow Spies to infiltrate each other's Battle Lab. This gives both of you an additional powerful unit (specifically, a Yuri and a Chrono Ivan).

The ability to build structures near allied structures allows for some additional interesting possibilities, as well. You can agree to place all of your special weapons in the same base, allowing both of you to group your base defenses to keep all of your special weapons protected by a mass of firepower. This does make them more vulnerable to a powerful attack, but the ability to group defensive structures from both armies together makes for a very powerful set of defenses to crack.

You should know by now how difficult it is to deal with units that have been Iron Curtained. You should also know that chronoed units can cause a headache, as well. So why not combine these actions? One player uses the Chronosphere to transport a group of units into an enemy base. Once inside, the other player should use the Iron Curtain on the Chrono team and they'll have at least a little time to cause some real havoc before the effects of the Iron Curtain wear off.

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