Part 24: Arctic

My office is closed till noon, so enjoy this update 12 hours or so before I was going to write it.



Things are looking bad in the Arctic. Looks like in this timeline the LC-UCS treaty won't be able to be signed. Let's hope this doesn't have negative consequences down the road.

We're running a delaying option here so we're not going to be able to bring the full force of our army down on the Dynasty. In fact, we won't be able to bring in any units from HQ.





I'm going to give it to you straight, our base is not at all defended at this point. A bunch of Tiger I 20mms and small towers are not a defensive front. To make matters worse, I don't see a Vehicle Production Center at our base. We'll need to work on that, but at least we have enough civilian units to get our base started between the 2 Condor transports, 3 Harvesters and 2 Mammoths.



Just because we can't send units over doesn't mean we can't do research to help out. I'm starting with the Double Chaingun since it's automatically applied to any towers we build after the research is finished. Since I know I'm going to be doing a lot of tower construction, it makes sense.



Bad news everyone! Our Mammoths can only build objects that are on the Defense tab. You won't be able to build a Vehicle Production Center or replace any structures that may be destroyed. This is why this mission is quite tricky.



The Mammoth/Gruz can do rapid building using the record action interface, to the right of the regular unit commands. I've ordered this Mammoth to build all the towers you see on the screen. He'll work on building those once I hit the execute commands button. I'm happy the game gives the construction units a way to keep even with the LC's rapid building, otherwise it would be a real chore to build your base.



My other Mammoth is going to work on lowering the terrain, to make an approach from the east more difficult.




Our defensive construction is going along quite nicely. The Mammoth digging ditches hasn't even gotten itself stuck yet!



Shit. Looks like the ED are going to use this little pass to attack this defensive line. All my clever tower construction and ditch digging is completely pointless here.



I cancel the tower construction and have the tower-building Mammoth head over to the other defensive outpost to build towers there.



Time to test out our towers. I hope they hold



They don't look like they're holding...



Our base sits completely exposed. Quick, build more towers other Mammoth!



Good thing I decided to build more of those towers, the ED have trashed our defensive line and are working on taking out the last few mobile defenders. I think I just need to block off that ramp and hope units go elsewhere.



At least we've got the Double Chaingun now.



Time to start working on the Grenade Launcher. I think Tigers are the only chance we've got here and we'll need to give them a weapon that lets them go toe-to-toe with the Dynasty.



Now they're attacking the western defenses and slipping through the cracks. This is frustrating.



I've finished blocking off the southern approach but in doing so I accidentally locked my Mammoth outside the base. I hope he makes it home without being vaporized.



Even more towers are getting built at the western approach. With the southern passage blocked off this now seems to be the preferred attack route.



6 Tigers versus 1 Pamir is a bit lopsided, I think they can handle it.



The Mammoth made it! You can see his tread tracks in the snow in that valley. Unfortunately this means we have yet another undefended flank. But if blocking the southern path worked, maybe we can block this path too and focus on defending just one path.



The upgraded Grenade Launcher is done, although the Construction Center gives no clue in the text that this one is upgraded from the first model.



Let's finish off today's research by upgrading the Tiger to its best model.




Our wall in the east and tower wall in the west are both done. I think we can finally stand tall against an ED incursion.



And look at that, the Tiger is finally at model III. The Tiger III now has enough HP, armor and firepower to go up against a Pamir and not get shredded.




The ED attacks fail miserably between the chokepoints I've created and the strength of the new Tiger IIIs. I think we might have enough strength to go on the offensive now.



I send out a scout who attracts the attention of an attacking Pamir. I'm not complaining about that, this scout's going to be very dead in a few seconds, might as well pull some attackers off with him.



We've found the base! And it's not well-defended at all. Seems perfect for a surpirse UCS attack



March my robots! March and bring death to the Eurasian invaders!



Those Pamirs didn't have a prayer. I think we're bringing the death pretty good right now.



The ED are panicking and trying to build more defensive structures before we show up. We're not going to let them do that.



We're also not letting them keep their old defensive structures.



Or power plants.

The bottom Weapons Production Center keeps spitting out Cossack helicopters so I'd really like to shut it down since only some of my units can shoot down choppers.




But first we need to destroy the last Gruz in the base and his futile attempt to rebuild the power grid.



I stop for a reload and breather in the now-dead northern part of the base. It looks like the weapons factories are powered down, so we just need to prevent the rebuilding of the power grid and we've stopped the ED attack.




Oh and blow up more small towers. Can't forget about that.




The power grid has been destroyed Mr. President



There's still the ED mining base to deal with, so we'll reload and prepare for the last push.



Those two Tiger Gs are enough to take out the mining base on their own, if you can believe that. The mines aren't shooting back because they ran out of ammo, and we just destroyed their Aerial Supply Depot so I doubt they'll be getting any resupplies soon.



However, since I don't want to be at this all day I move the rest of the army down. Plus it helps destroy these small towers before they can hurt my little Tigers.



The base is almost gone, we just need to take out the Vehicle Production Center.



Take that Eurasian Dynasty.




General Jan Moroz has 48 tanks waiting to attack you at the end of the mission. However, since we destroyed the ED base we were able to build an LZ and evacuate our troops before he could attack. Once again the robots outsmart the stupid humans.



We've finished exploiting the mineral field at our HQ. We've got 57k worth of resources to use now at HQ.



Despite our heorics in our holding operation the rest of the Arctic invasion is still ongoing. We need to deny the ED as much of the Arctic resource fields as we can, making their invasion for naught.



The first UCS nighttime theme sounds brooding and like something out of a slasher film. It's a pretty good song.