Command and Conquer 4

Welcome back commander, anyone missed me? Either way, this time around we will discuss about Tiberium Collecting in early-game, mid-game and even late-game. This is a very important aspect in C&C 4. Most Players stop the harvesting process after they reach Tier 3, that is understandable but it should never stop, Kane would never allow this to happen!

For starters you might want to check out some older articles about Tiberium itself and very basic collecting, you can find those articles here:

• Tiberium Collection
• Tip of the Week #1
• Advanced Tiberium Guide

We will start off after those articles, what is the first unit that comes to mind when thinking about collecting Tiberium? The Harvester of course! However, that unit is not in C&C 4, instead every single ground unit in the whole game acts like a Harvester. This makes Tiberium Collecting actually skill-based, it takes lots of practice and knowledge to know which unit should be used for Tiberium Collecting at any time during the heat of battle.

If you face 15 Bulldogs guarding a Tiberium Launch Pad then your unit of choice is obviously not an Engineer, instead you could use a fast Medium tank such as Avenger Tank. Because Bulldogs do extra damage versus Light Units such as Engineers, and will do minimum amount of damage versus a Medium ground unit.

Read about the Counter System here!

Early-game

If you go for the strategy to tech up as fast as possible then it's advised to spawn as the Offense Crawler, both factions Offense Crawler will provide you with fast-light units and also relatively fast-medium ground units.

Keep in mind that every second is important here, this means you have to Spawn as soon as possible and also rotate your Crawler to deploy facing the Tiberium Platforms, if you still remain inside the Spawn for these early seconds you will produce your first units much faster. Even though, after your first two or three units you will want to walk your Crawler out of the Spawn towards the contested areas around the battlefield. Each Crawler will gain weapons when reaching Tier 2 and Tier 3, and even as early as Tier 1 every Crawler will have a healing radius when Deployed. The healing radius of your Crawler can be useful protecting the Tiberium Carriers.



Games fastest ground units are the Bulldog (for GDI) and the Bike (for Nod). Bulldog has a shotgun as the main weapon which is good versus other similar sized units, the Bike on the other hand shoots Rockets which are somewhat good versus light units but mainly aimed towards air arsenals. However, if you go for pure speed then the Bike has a good chance of snatching the Tiberium if microed correctly.

Tip 1

Build-order for units. For Nod in this situation it's advised to train one Bike to go hunt the first Tiberium instantly, hopefully capturing it and instantly heading back home, however do not spam Bikes. Train one Bike for the first Tiberium and then spam Buggies, Buggies shoot bullets which are great versus enemy fast-light units. Now, what we ahve here is one fast Tiberium carrier escorted by a bunch of Buggies. If your opponent counters with mass Bulldog spam then try to fight off using your mass Buggies, just try to micro your Bike back home. If your Bike dies then quickly pick up the Tiberium with one of your Buggies.

For GDI the Bulldog is the fastest unit and also good versus other light units, this means it's pretty common for the GDI Offense to mass Bulldogs as the first unit of choice.

Tip 2

If you want some flesh and skin over your tiny bones then another strategy is to train one Bike/Bulldog just for the quick Tiberium snatching, and then follow-up with the Main Battle Tank. For GDI you queue up one Bulldog and follow up with a mass of Hunter tanks. For Nod you start with the Bike and follow up with Avenger Tanks.


Shell shooting tanks aren't very effective versus fast moving light units but their armor protect them from the enemies puny guns, so they both are bad versus each other.

Keep in mind that tanks and Bulldogs can reverse move, while Bikes have to manually turn, slightly further giving GDI the slight advantage. Though, you have to be perfectly aiming the reverse move, exactly when you capture the Tiberium.


Other Crawlers also have potential Tiberium Carriers but they are more limited, GDI Support has the Sheppard tank, it's a fast Medium Ground tank and has a dodge bonus (enemy fire will miss sometimes), Nod has the Marauder tank which is also a medium tank with a pepper-spray gun. Light units have the additional advantage of costing only 3CP, all these stronger medium tank units all cost 6CP. This means you can afford two light units or one medium unit. It is up to you which you find more useful.

The usefulness of the very first Tiberium

Each map have two or more contested Tiberium Landing Pads, memorize each and one for every map, these are the main spots you want to run towards at the start of each game. The first Tiberium is probably the most useful Tiberium of all, however all is not lost if you miss it.

The point I'm telling you that there are two Landing Pads on each map is that one is slightly more towards the GDI spawn while the other is towards the Nod spawn, this means it's easier to secure one of these for each specific faction. A normal approach is to sprint towards the opponents Tiberium Pad, capture it, and BLOW it up. While you fight and try to capture the other Tiberium. This brings team-spirit and multitasking into good use.



What you can acquire with your first won Tiberium crystal is one Upgrade point. This point is useful because it makes all your Tier 1 units better. You can choose from four different Upgrades, Speed will make your microing easier and also will bring in all future Tiberium points slightly faster. Accuraccy boost will make your Nod units not miss the GDI Shephard tanks, and will easier kill the enemy Tiberium carriers. Range boost will be useful for all shooting units, those units at the back of your army can also shoot at the enemy Tiberium carrier. Refire boost will make all Gun and Laser units shoot faster, this upgrade might be more useful later on when you start pumping out laser units, however the faster gun shooting will make Bulldogs win head to head battles with those unupgraded enemy Buggies.

Choose the upgrade that suits your units best, because each upgrade have their own benefits and it's impossible to say which should be purchased first because each battle in C&C 4 is different.

You can also skip Tier 1 Upgrades and simply wait for Tier 2, you will need five upgrade points for Tier 2, you might suffer at the early stages if your opponent picks the Tier 1 upgrades but if you can fight with slight disadvantage it might be worth it because you will be pumping out Tier 2 units faster then your opponent.

Mid-game

Now at this point GDI is guarding half of the Nodes and half the map while Nod is doing the same on the other side of the map. Now you can mostly harvest without being totally massacred at the same time, Players will be concentrating more on Map awareness and Node control, this means that one or two heavily microed units can be utilized for Tiberium Harvesting.





GDI Defense Crawlers zone infantry units have a Sprint ability, you can active the sprint a millisecond before capturing a Tiberium crystal and then run it back to your Spawn or a nearby Uplink Center. Nod Offense Crawler has a similar ability for the Flame tank, if you have upgraded the Flame tank then you can capture a Tiberium crystal and burn your tires back to home.





Keep in mind that abilities have to be used before you lift up the Tiberium. While carrying a Tiberium your units can't use secondary abilities, gets 50 % armor penalty and moves slower. Units such as Stealth Tank/Engineer also lose their secondary passive ability which is stealth/cliff-jumping ability.

Late-game

There are some Tier 3 units that are able to capture Tiberium but this is really not recommended. You can capture a Tiberium Crystal with a GDI Mastodont but it will be slower then a snail with asthma. This specific gameplay mechanism makes the early Tier 1 units still useful throughout the game. You can have your Tier 3 DPS (damage-per-second) deathball rolling around the map killing stuff while you have one dedicated Bulldog/Bike capturing Tiberium.

Even after you have purchased all your upgrade points each Tiberium crystal still gives you Victory Points; Green Tiberium gives 10 VP and Blue Tiberium gives 20VP respectively.

Nod Tier 2 Hijackers are impressively fast units, their main goal in the game is to capture enemy expensive toys but if you find yourself out-numbered then you can always use that Hijacker to steal an enemy Tiberium which is uncontested and give your team that extra 10/20 VP.

Late-game Tiberium Gathering uses lots of Support Power action, but this will be discussed a bit later.

Escorting your Tiberium Carrier

This strategy is especially critical at early game, your very first fragile units trying to steal the Tiberium Crystals should always be escorted by a bigger army. Your fast light unit drops half it's speed and armor while carrying that Tiberium, so be sure to protect it with other units that have better DPS.

I talked about combat units only earlier in the article, but the escorting progress can actually be done in many different ways. You can spam only fast units and re-capture the Tiberium each time your fragile unit dies, and hope it finally gets home. You can do what I wrote earlier, to have a handful of fast units dedicated for the Tiberium hunt while other big brothers protect them. The third type of Tiberium escorting I have not mentioned is having healers around the Carrier. Each Crawler has a healer unit, Engineer or Spanner/Scalpel. One Player can spam for example Bulldogs for the Tiberium while another Support Player spams Spanners (healers), and the Spanners hover over the Tiberium Carriers and heal them and makes them almost invulnerable. However, watch out for Gun and Rocket units which will make short work of healers. Early game healers are super fragile.

Helpful Support Powers

GDI Support Crawler has a very useful Support Power, called Tech Support. It sounds like little, but you can summon a Heroic Engineer anywhere on the map. How can this be useful you may think? Well, hunt down an uncontested Tiberium Drop and summon down an instant Engineer, now you can suddenly harvest it for free, you don't even have to worry about having enough CP.

Nod has a similar type of power but it costs more, they can unburrow a heroic Hijacker, this can be used late-game for capturing those special Blue Tiberiums for easy 20VP. Well worth it!

I also mentioned that mid-game and late-game it's common that Players use single units for capturing Tiberium as their other CP is used for the bigger army. Tech Support and Hand of Legion is excellent at killing off single units, the Engineer drop pod does 200 damage on enemy units, while the Hijacker can hijack almost all vehicles in the game, additionally if the Hijacker is upgraded he can infect a virus-worm on the enemy Tiberium Carriers; effectively killing them.

Mutants

We almost forgot something, The Forgotten. There are only a few specific Maps that have Mutant Hovels scattered around the battlefield, those are Afflicted Arena, Jaded Peaks and Lost Valley. The good thing with Mutants are that they come almost instantly, they are ready to fight, ready to harvest. If you have a few spare Command Points left and you see a lonely Tiberium Crystal lying around, you can easily summon a quick Visceroid or Ironback to pick that up.

Useful info about the Mutants here!