Destroyers must accompany the Carriers to defend them from Sub attacks. The Allies can produce Carriers that are very slow but can launch repeated attacks against distant enemy installations. Let's just take the sea units for example. And better than not having any of the units be totally worthless, the folks at Westwood have gone out of their way to make sure that each of the units has a particular role to play in your overall strategy. The units in RA2 are an amazing mix of land, sea and air forces. And when you've got three separate theaters in which to operate, unit balance becomes that much more difficult.

One of the most rewarding and hardest to quantify factors of RA2 is unit balance.

While it does add a few impressive gimmicks (garrisoning units in buildings and tech structures to name two), Red Alert 2 stands out because it's completely familiar to us while still being fresh. A large part of the success of Red Alert 2 comes from its smooth control system, comfortable menus and intuitive balancing. Granted, it's a formula but it's a formula because it works and only Starcraft and Age of Empires have done it as well. The game is still about harvesting resources to build structures to buy units, but what seems tired and worn-out in other games is inspired in this game. But what Red Alert 2 is, is one of the finest explorations of what can be done without taking the genre beyond its present limitations. This is not the 'next big thing' in strategy games and it certainly won't have the impact on the genre that early Westwood titles did. Having said that I should caution you that Red Alert 2 does not offer the same kind of revolution in basic game design that so many of us expected of Westwood's last sequel, Tiberian Sun. There's an amazing depth to the tactics of the game, a good range of missions in the single player campaign and a kind of slightly ridiculous aspect to the story that lets you now that the game is supposed to be fun. Red Alert 2 is one of the most polished, best-conceived, and downright enjoyable real-time strategy games in recent memory.

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