CNC Zero Hour

THis is a Nuke vs Vanilla GLA rep for me

Darky

^
Perfect example that drugs do more harm than good!

Way to dig up a 2 month old replay

Ill give it a review as Im pretty decent with USA

Spalding
The Good
Spalding used the right opening BO here. Going dual supply against GLA is crucial. If you end up going single supply, and you get TTed, just fold and say gg. Often times you need to sell your WF to pay for a new supply, which could get TTed just as easily. So going dual supply is a must.

His micro was was very good for the most part, especially using the ambulance the way he did. He also had some well timed genpoint attacks and Aurora attacks. I also noticed his attempt to force fire in front of a BB with an Aurora to kill it. While the result was a miss, the attempt was noted

In general he did a good job of checking his flanks. It's definitely dackel's style to put a ton of early game pressure from multiple flanks, and on two occassions this paid off and he was able to get in there. But Spalding did the best he could given he had no radar. His late game mixing was pretty decent, but wasnt crucial. For the most part he was able to make due with humvees early game, and the occassional aurora to back him up late game. Not much esle for SW to build. $1800 comanches, no tanks, sentry drones (lol). Comanches are semi-useful for stomping buggies, but a good GLA player will always have quads near by. That's why raptors are better at buggy sniping, but who wants a raptor when they can have an Alpha for just one extra chinook load?

The Bad
Spalding's one crucial mistake here was getting into the "I need S&D" train of thought. Because he was able to crush all of dackel's early attacks and lose fewer humvees compared to dackel's quads + tech/rpgs, it caused dackel to fall behind the arms race. Normally USA operates having approximately 1 humvee to every 4 quads/gatts from his opponent. In this case, Spalding had MORE humvees than dackel had quads. On top of that he had TOW missiles, the ability to get Hell Fire drones, ambulance for support, and a few MDs in the TOWvees. That being said, there was no need for him to get S&D from his strat center. He outmatched dackel's quad production, and what he had also outmatched the firepower of the small attack groups dackel was sending at him. So he should have switched on to hold the line when his Strategy Center came under attack. Also note that dackel's quads were jammed into a tight space, where S&D would have been useless anyway, since the humvees had to get up close to actually shoot them. So HTL would have been the best option in that situation. Afterwards, since he knew he'd have alphas soon, he could have either kept it there and just kept making TOWvees (with the occasional hell fire drone mass purchase), or gone to bombardment. Granted S&Dvees do a good job of taking down BBs though.

The other thing I'd like to note was that the leaflet drop is simply useless. A-10s would have been 10 times better than the leaflet drop. They recharge faster, can do the same damage to an army coming out of a tunnel, and can be used to attack buildings. Spalding would have been able to limit Dackel's BB production with occasional A-10 attacks against his Arms Dealer.

Dackel
The Good
Excellent pressure in the beginning. This is exactly what GLA needs to do more often. He had solid control and USED his control to do multi point attacking. Notice he had his army in Spalding's base on TWO occasions because of this. Yes, humvees are strong, but they cant be everywhere at once the way a GLA attack force can with proper tunnel networks. Dackel also moved into the middle to gain map control as you need quite a bit of it to beat SWgen.

What I liked most was the very careful micro he applied to the game. Excellent tunnel usage with BBs, well timed ambushes, aggressive harrassment with Jarmen etc. Notice how he dealt with the garrison Spalding had on the left. He "peeled" his force away as it was getting damaged so that he never lost anything, but still managed to kill the bunker. This is very good quality micro. Even though he could have owned the bunker anyway, he still would have lost units. Given how far behind he was in staying on top of Spalding's MDvee production, this was a smart move.

The Bad
Dackel had the right strategy, macro, and micro, but what he didnt have was proper unit proportions in his attacks. Quads are simply the LAST unit you want to use vs any good USA player that has gone humvees. Quads work better against tanks ffs
As lame as it may be, constant tech/rpg harassment works very well. Driving two full technicals of RPGS right up next to MDvees and having your RPGs hotkeyed so they dont go nuts shooting down spy drones actually does a good job of taking out humvees. THe trick is to position your technicals to help block ambulances for as long as possible. In fact ambulances are the biggest problem with doing this. A good USA player will switch to ambulance spam if he sees you going tech/rpg too often. So it's a good idea to throw in an occasional tech/terror to kill the WF after he's made more ambulances. Then you can switch up and make quads and you should be ok.

The other problem that he had, and I've noticed this in most of his games, he sends lone BBs up to attack with. While they're powerful if you can sneak up on USA, they're not that good alone. They cost a lot, take a LONG time to assemble, and if they dont do anything you've lost a lot of time and money. Always use BBs in conjucntion with backup units. I think it would have done him more good to at least send two BBs up the sides at the same time, or at least from two different points at the same time, drop off a worker from each on the way, and re-gain map control. Then follow up with some quads/techs to help support the workers building tunnels. This works VERY well for the most part, but of course Alphas sort of nullify the strategy behind this. Once SW gets Alphas, it really really limits your options. Turtling up with a broad shell of stingers actually works well against Alphas because it prevents them from penetrating deep into your base (they'll make it in, but get raped on the way out). So it forces him to attack the outer perimeter, and nearby stingers can take Alphas out now and then. It effectively just slows him down while you get a better economy. The problem is that SW has $2500 PCs, so you're fucked either way

Overall
Pretty decent game. It's more of what I would consider to be a typical game between two good players than an outstandingly entertaining game. Spalding get's an 8/10 from me for playing SW more or less the way it's meant to be played, having good micro, and good map awareness. Dackel gets a 7/10 from me for having excellent micro, and a powerful early game. He loses points for having WEAKER late game attacks than his early game attacks

Overall I'd rate the game a 6/10. Fairly one sided once Dackel lost map control, and I think Spalding could have ended it sooner with a bit more aggression and better gen point selection. Alphas also made it a bit boring to watch. This is no fault of either player, it's simply the inherent dynamic of any matchup involving SW. While both players had good strategy and the right gameplan, Alphas made it too easy for Spalding, and too hard for Dackel. They effectively stopped what would have otherwise been a very effective strategy from Dackel. I just hate seeing potential like that go to waste by such automated ownage units

GG guys.

It was because someone asked for help with USA so I bumped it to make it easier to find

Btw I reviewed your game. Though I edited my post above so you probably didnt notice the update

hehe thanks, I think the vusa vs tank one will be more entertaining for you from the USA player's point of view

OK, it works on this computer, I was at a friends house and it was a Nuke vs GLA game there - ROFL.

Good game, but you always had the advantage . AGM has reviewed it thoroughly already

3 pirates

Darky