So, as a bit of thanks, I've got some Tips From The Pros ™ to perhaps make your gaming experience a bit better.
First off: Play online! There are often several people online with Blitz II:TFH R2.5 just waiting for a game. If noone's online, hop onto the forum and look up some IM addresses, leave your own, and schedule some games. The experience is so radically better when playing with real people than when playing with the currently broken AI that it's hard to believe.
Second: If you play online and have access to a microphone, get something like Ventrilo or TeamSpeak. Most voicechat-enabled players currently use TeamSpeak. In team games, which are very frequent, voice chat ability makes for deadly tactical cohesion and immensely fun games.
Third: Some people have complained that the Shellmap either lags them, or, in some cases, actually makes them motion sick. If you would rather have the static image than the shellmap, there is an easy fix available! Go to your Blitz II launcher shortcut, usually on your desktop. (If you don't have a shortcut, make one). Find the "Target:" tag and add -quickstart to the end, outside the quotation marks, like so...
This should cause the game to skip the preload and use a static image as the backdrop instead of the shellmap.
Fourth: For playing against the AI, the only AIs that work are the German and Russian Hard and Brutal. Allies have an AI, but it is utterly broken and almost never works. For the others, they're also rather moronic, and often require you to "sacrifice" men to them before they'll tech up and offer a fight. Release 3 should feature a working AI. Until then, play online!
Fifth and last: If, for some reason, you can't or really really don't want to play online, I've got a gift for you. Since it's very difficult to tech up versus the incompetent AI, here's a tiny patch (roughly 1kb) that will allow you to have 15 tech points from the start, allowing you to get all the sciences for your subside. Teching up sometimes also causes the German AI to spring into high gear. This patch can NOT be used online, and must be removed before online play is attempted.
To install: go to the main Zero Hour install directory (C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour\) and place the .zipped folder titled INI in the "Data" folder. To remove, simply delete the INI folder.
http://biohazard.rag...Debug Patch.zip
Good hunting! Enjoy the game!
