ZERO HOUR
WALKTHROUGH

China - Mission 5 'Hamburg, Germany'

Background
The China is now destroying scattered GLA forces in the homeland, causing neither civilian casualties nor collateral damage. The Chinese army reports one last stronghold in Hamburg, Germany. Your mission, is to destroy this last stronghold of the GLA.

Mission
OK, the GLA is now rather desperate now. They have launched an attack on a USA base near Hamburg, Germany, and have captured it completely. You begin with a rather pre-built base. But still, you should defend it well with Gattling Cannons and Bunkers. Just remember to leave room for expansion in your base.

The combined attacks from the USA base will begin very soon, so make sure you also have Helices above your Gattling Cannons and Bunkers for adequate support. Build a Nuclear Missile as soon as possible. Scatter ECM Tanks next to your base defense structures. They can really reflect some of the missiles fired at your base, preventing direct hits, and give more time for the Gattling Cannons to shoot them down.

Magnetic Tip! The referee blows the whistle, Roberto Carlos lines up for the kick, he shoots... over the crossbar!

The Easy-M Tank (Funny accent here) is rather effective at causing missiles to miss their targets, as long as the missile passes through the magnetic field. This is really helpful. For instance, I once went face to face with 2 Tomahawk Missiles, they fired their missiles at my tank. However, just before they hit, they sort of bended away and missed! Then, I was able to disable them while my tanks come over to destroy it. In multiplayer games, always have an ECM or 2 with your attack hoard, it can make all the difference when the enemy uses their SCUD Launchers and so on at you. However, the ECM cannot deflect shells, so watch out.

Now, also build an Internet Center and Satellite Hack! You can easily see the enemies' command center and the surrounding areas, and of course, you can easily see what the enemies' up to.

As you see, both the USA base and GLA base will build their superweapons, and they are heavily defended. The USA base is in the northeast, while the GLA one is in the southeast. Instead of attacking their base with impunity, I have a better idea. As it is far too risky to send in the Helices, I advocate attacking the superweapon first with the Nuclear Missile, then with your Artillery Barrage. This is guaranteed to wipe them out. Once they stop rebuilding, you can fight on a more even basis. To minimize resistance, consider nuking an area of their base with a lot of units and defensive structures before sending your Helixes in!
The rest is pure destruction, enjoy! By the way, this mission is the perfect mission to have fun with Artillery! Simply back your artillery units in the front with Overlord Tanks a plenty, and let her rip!

Super Duper Hot Tip! How to start a fire
Now, one important type of unit in the Chinese Army are the flame units, they all attack with fire-based weaponry. They include the Dragon Tank, the Inferno Cannon, the MiG and the Helix. All of these are capable of causing Firestorms except the Dragon Tank, when used in large quantities. The Firestorm is a very lethal and can decimate large numbers of units, both Tanks and Infantry. Now you know what it means by Strength in Numbers!

I will list each type of unit and the corresponding number needed to start a Firestorm:
Inferno Cannon: 4 Inferno Cannons firing sequentially or 6 Inferno Cannons firing in unison.
MiG: 4 MiGs, provided that all 8 missiles hit the target within short intervals of each other.
Helix: 1 Napalm Bomb and a Firestorm will begin

Another thing to note is that when 4 MiGs fire at an enemy air unit like a Chinook, the flames will not only damage the unit, it will also burn anything on the ground below the air unit! So, if your opponent has Chinooks over his Supply Center, sending enough MiGs to hit it will often result in sufficient damage to destroy the Supply Center as well! For best results, always pay $2000 to upgrade all Flame Units to make use of Black Napalm. The resulting blue flame is much hotter than the golden yellow flame, and causes 25% more damage!

Submitter's Tip! Nat Ng's Tip
Again with the Helixes - there's a fairly easy way to beat this one.
Make sure you tech up to nuke silo fast, and deploy a bunch of Helixes. Use them to inch forward and take the artillery platforms to the West. For your General Powers, select carpet bombing, L2 artillery barrage, and mine drop. Defend until you have all these powers (it shouldn't take too long). You may have to endure a couple of Particle Cannon blasts; be sure to move your units whenever a particle beam is nearby.

Be sure you have an Internet Center with the Satellite Hack 1.

Send a scouting Helix into the USA base with no upgrades. It will almost certainly die, but the info it gathers will be worth it.

Now hit the USA base with all your General Powers! Aim for the powerplants. Here is how I did it: first, I dropped an artillery barrage on one group of plants. Then, I sent the Mine Drop in aimed at the enemy's largest concentration of AA troops (that would be Missile Defenders), closely followed by the Carpet Bomber aimed for more powerplants, and immediately followed by the Helixes. The idea here was that the Mine Bomber and the Carpet Bomber would draw enemy AA fire, allowing the Helices to pass through the first line of enemy defenses. Finally, just before my massive attack hit the enemy, I launched a Nuclear Missile targeted at another large group of powerplants.

If you do it right, your Helixes should arrive just in time to destroy the last couple of plants, thus powering down the USA base and rendering those nasty Patriot Missiles and the Particle Cannon inoperative.

At this point, it's a matter of mopping up the US base. KO the enemy's antiair troops ASAP, and destroy all their dozers and their Command Center.
Now, with your Helicxs, clear out the remaining enemy troops. Drop Red Guards into the base and begin capturing the US structures. I don't need to tell you which structure to capture first, right? ;)

If you did it right, all your superweapons will be back on line before the GLA Scud Storm is ready. As usual, use an artillery drop or mine drop to scout the GLA base and find the Storm. (It's in the southwest corner.) Drop the Nuke and Particle Cannon on it simultaneously to level it.

After that, just keep hitting the GLA base with General Powers and your Helices. They have heavy SAM defenses on the perimeter, but if you blast through with the Powers, your Helices can enter the base with minimal losses and destroy it from the inside out. Its defenses in the centre are pitiful.

Finally, there is a small GLA base to the southeast: your Helixes should be able to flatten it with no trouble at all.