Croatia (GDI mission)

"GDI has a forward operating base in Croatia, but it's been cut off from supply lines and is under heavy attack by Nod forces. Their power is low, their construction yard has been destroyed, and they don't have much in the way of firepower. You need to take command of that base and hold out long enough for us to send in a reinforcement convoy."

- Mission briefing

Croatia is the first mission in Act III of the GDI campaign in Tiberium Wars and the ninth GDI mission overall.

Background
As news of Nod's usage of WMDs and GDI's covert raids in Egypt to eliminate the threat became public, Director Redmond Boyle was left to fend off media questions concerning speculation about Nod's new Temple in Sarajevo. The press conference was later hijacked by Kane's taunting broadcast. This only goaded Boyle in ordering a mission to destroy Temple Prime.

Although General Granger considered such a mission to be ill-advised, given the number of casualties suffered by GDI during their attempts to attack the Temple, Director Boyle demanded a decisive victory, both in military and propaganda terms, to show the world that GDI is victorious. The General had no choice but to obey such a drastic pulling of rank and ordered his best commander to assemble a strike force to be deployed into the area.

The first step to taking out Temple Prime is establishing a foothold in the region. GDI still has an old forward base in the area, dating back to the Second Tiberium War, codenamed Echo-2. However GDI's previous attack on Temple Prime caused Nod forces to converge on the Balkans, with vicious retaliation against all Initiative forces in the region. Echo-2 was hit particularly hard, losing its power plants and construction yard. The Commander is sent to rescue the base and gain the aforementioned foothold in the area.

Walkthrough
(Note: This walkthrough assumes Hard difficulty.)

The key to this mission is to take the pressure off of your base defenses with vehicles. Start by immediately auto-repair all of your base defenses except the AA batteries. Build two harvesters, then queue up seven APCs and six Predator tanks. Power up one of each base defenses on all four sides of the base, leave the AA batteries unpowered for now.

Nod will quickly begin assaulting your base with infantry and vehicles, so keep an eye on the minimap at all time to tell which direction they are coming from. It is important to power down the base defenses on one side after a wave is finished, in order to save the power for other defenses.

The western and southern entrances will be attacked by militant squads, militant rocket squads, and fanatics. The latter two are the most deadly, since they can destroy your Watchtowers very quickly. Also, Watchtowers will not fire on rocket squads at the very edge of their range, requiring manual targeting. Move the two starting rifleman squads to these entrances, to prevent any fanatics from getting through.

The northern and eastern entrances will be assaulted by attack bikes, raider buggies, and Scorpion tanks. Only one cannon is necessary for buggies, but you will need both cannons powered to deal with attack bikes and Scorpion tanks. Note that these entrances may still be overwhelmed even with both cannons active, so you may need to reinforce them with the Predator tanks when necessary. Try to keep your tanks alive, and move them back to the war factory for repairs when they become too damaged. Be sure to use Reverse Move when doing so.

Occasionally, you will be harassed by a single Venom. Simply power up the closest AA battery and shoot it down, or you can down it with your starting Pitbull or your APCs.

As the APCs are completed, move them to the western and southern entrances, in front of the Watchtowers. Load them with rifleman squads if you have spare money. Two APCs for each entrance should be enough to take the pressure off of the Watchtowers. Keep three of the APCs in reserve and load them up with engineers. You will need them for the next part of the plan. When the Predator tanks are completed, do the same to them, move two of them to the northern entrance and another two to the eastern entrance. Keep the rest in reserve.

At around the one minute mark, all of your APCs and Predator should be complete. Leave two to three Predator tanks at the northern entrance, then drove the rest through the eastern entrance toward the Nod base to the northeast. Destroy everything in your way with the Predators and have the APCs with engineers follow behind. At the Nod base, quickly destroy the laser turret hub and any Nod vehicles, capture the Nod construction yard, one of the war factories, and a power plant. Destroy the other war factory quickly.

With this done, you can safely power down all of the Guardian cannons, giving you ample power to turn on all other defenses. At the Nod base, build a refinery to take advantage of the nearby Tiberium field, then build a Hand of Nod and train some saboteurs to capture the other Nod structures in the base. You can also build some Shredder turrets to complement your Watchtowers.

Begin building flame tanks as soon as possible. You may want to build a Nod war factory at your main base to speed up the process. Once you have around ten flame tanks, move them across the bridge, burn down any Nod infantry you encounter, and demolish the southwestern Nod base. Once you are done, repair any damaged Flame tanks and replace your losses, then move them north to rescue the ambushed MCV.

Once the MCV is under your control, Nod will attempt to block your way with rocket squads hidden inside civilian structures. Simply burn them out with the flame tanks. Make sure to move the reinforcement APCs and Pitbulls to the front of the MCV, as even a single Venom can damage the MCV and ruin the bonus objective for escorting the MCV back to base unharmed.

Once you escort the MCV back and deploy it, quickly build a command post, then an airfield and a tech center. Purchase the Railgun upgrade. Build up a force of Pitbulls and Predator tanks, then airlift them to the southeastern Nod base. The Tiberium field should serve as a safe landing spot. Destroy the marke Nod structures to finish the mission.

Aftermath
With all Nod bases surrounding Echo-2 destroyed, GDI now had a strong foothold in Yellow Zone Y-1. The base would act as the staging ground for the final assault on Temple Prime but before that, GDI needed to destroy Nod's supply depot in Albania.