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YURI ARMORY

One of Yuri's main disadvantages was not having a cheap defense structure available.  Unfortunately, he has not only remedied that issue but also adjusted a lot of his existing technologies to specifically combat our modified armies and the Soviet Empire:

CITADEL WALL

After the Soviets and us both changed our Wall's prerequisite's and build distance, did you really think Yuri would not follow?  It is interesting that the man spends half his time gloating to us about his superior intellect, and then just outright copies the changes of his enemies.  Naturally you wouldn't catch him admitting that, but it does make you think.

In any case, with this change you had all better get used to seeing Walls being constructed earlier in battle and seeing wider perimeters thanks to the increased build distance.  The latter does serve to accommodate the use of the newly added Gates.

Graphical Enhancement: The Citadel Wall gains a modified identification cameo.
 

GATES

Yuri began to regularly use Gates around the same time we did, so it's hard to say the same thing here as we did about his Walls.  Needless to say, his reasoning behind introducing them must be similar to ours, and with these in place even structures that require units going in and out of them can be protected by Spies and Engineers.  Our Spies are not totally hindered too much in that we can wait for a friendly unit to pass through before moving in, but you will most likely need a different strategy when relying on the standard Engineer rush tactic.

An interesting thing to note on Yuri's part is that it would be quite impractical for him to ever wall up his Slave Miners (naturally, considering the Slaves slow travel speed), so even with the Gates his Miners are still quite vulnerable to our Spies on their own.  Be sure to take advantage of this.

Gameplay Enhancement: Unlike standard Walls, all units and structures are able to fire through Gates and they cannot be crushed by the Battle Fortress.
 

RIFT GUN

These rather unorthodox structures have been popping up quite a bit in Yuri's bases recently.  Cheap and available early in the tech tree, the Rift Gun is Yuri's new equivalent to our Pillbox and the Soviet Flame Turret.  Effectively it serves as a more powerful Initiate by being stationary and a much more capable anti-infantry defense.  Most likely done to ease the stress of their Gattling Cannons doing both ground and air defense work, it means that Yuri Commanders will need to spend more to get both a good air and ground defense up, but they aren't wasting their cash should either one of those attack methods be less common than the other.  Priced at 400, and with the ability to be placed further away from battle (6 cells increased from 4), it matches our Pillbox in those respects too.

We haven't had much of a chance to examine the inner workings of this structure, but we suspect that it is not a pure defense structure at all, but rather simply a 'shell' protecting a standard Initiate unit inside granting it a more favorable atmosphere to concentrate and thus be more effective in its attack.

Trivia: The Rift Gun is based on a rumored pre-release concept for Yuri's Revenge.
 

TANK BUNKER

For such a simple yet effective defense structure, we have seen no changes at how the Tank Bunker operates.  Unfortunately, it still makes up for Yuri's lesser power in conventional ground assault in a lethal manner; with Lasher/Gattling Tank defenses perfectly complementing their new Rift Guns to provide an effective defense perimeter.  Their new bonus of being able to be built further from their base (4 cells increased from 3) serves to match it up with all the other boosts given to defensive structures recently.

What we have seen though (and what you should have noticed by now), is that the Tank Bunker has been moved further down the tech tree: now requiring a War Factory and a Barracks to be built before any can be placed down.  While there was the benefit earlier of being able to plan out a line of defense with empty Tank Bunkers as soon as they deployed their MCV, Yuri must have deemed that too impractical now that they have a cheap self-contained defense structure they can have up and running at the same cost.  Having Walls buildable at the very beginning is a lot more beneficial anyway, so it was a smart change.
 

GATTLING CANNON

There have been a number of fundamental changes to the Gattling Cannon that we have seen over the past few weeks to complement the other changes made to Yuri's army at this point.  The most obvious ones you can see in the summary above is that it has been cheapened to 750 just like our Patriot Missile Launcher, and has been moved down the tech tree to require a Psychic Radar in place as well as a Barracks to build.  This is nothing you're unfamiliar with at this point in time anyway, having gone through two other sets of discussion on these changes earlier in the briefing.

What is not so evident at first glance is that the Gattling Cannon now appears to be restricted to firing at aircraft only.  This makes sense considering the Rift Gun is now in place - Yuri probably wants a dedicated air defense structure that is always available to fight off incursions, especially since the Soviets and we have both beefed up our airforce.

Not only that, but it also gains a slight armor boost giving it comparative strength to the other anti-air defense structures, and it's targeting system has also been improved allowing it to even fire at falling paratroopers like the Flak Cannon!  The boost to the build distance (6 cells increased from 4) is also there, and is expected by now.

Gameplay Enhancement: Now explicitly requires a Yuri Barracks to build.
 

PROPAGANDA TOWER

Finally we reach the last of Yuri's defensive structures, and this one has undergone its own set of drastic changes!  By drastic I mean he has completely changed the mechanism for how this structure behaves on the battlefield.  It now uses a mixture of propaganda and subliminal messaging to bend the will of targets as opposed to outright control over their minds.

The benefit of this change allows the Propaganda Tower to take control of a potentially infinite number of units!  The messages he sends out are similar to ones we have shown you in the past in Yuri's protests against his enemies, and it has an uncanny affect to put infantry and drivers of vehicles in a state of near hypnosis, vulnerable to outside suggestion.  As a result, the affected units are still behaving independently, and so there is no burden on the tower to do anything more than initially plant the suggestions.  Keep an eye out on its spires; when they turn yellow and the propaganda voices grow louder, that means it is targeting a unit.  There is no way of knowing which unit it is specifically targeting until it's too late.

Luckily, it does take some time for the propaganda to affect a unit, unlike standard mind control which is quite instantaneous.  This is their weakness; while it can bring any number of units under its control, it takes more time to do so, so faster moving units can even avoid the effect altogether if they don't stop within the area of effect, or retreat units out of the area before it hits.  Also, all units that are normally immune to Mind Control (Robot Tanks and hero units among others) are also immune to this effect.  Unfortunately, both its range and armor have been improved since the change as well, making it similar to our Prism Tower in those respects.

Finally, the Tower also gains the familiar adjacency boost allowing it to be built further away from the base (4 cells increased from 2), and is the first object in Yuri's army that can no longer detect our Spies or Agents as a result of this change of concept.

Graphical Enhancement: The Propaganda Tower gains a modified identification cameo.
Gameplay Enhancement: Structures can no longer be built off this structure.
 

PSYCHIC SENSOR

Once again reborn in the position the Soviet’s used to use, you should learn to exploit the longer time it now takes for Yuri Commanders to deploy these structures in their bases. When they are deployed, a single Psychic Sensor rarely covers an entire base. Even when there are multiple deployments a good strategy to counter its effects is first send your attacking force to just outside the nearest Sensor’s coverage, and then attack properly when they have all arrived at that rendezvous point (waypointing your troops is a good option here), thus the Commander will only detect their attack at the last minute unless of course they spot you on conventional radar.

The Psychic Sensor has also has its effectiveness reduced with both our Spies and the Soviet Agent’s training to mask their harmful intentions from these structure's psychic detection abilities.
 

GENETIC MUTATOR

Originally the Genetic Mutator had the privilege to gloat that it boasted the same heavy strength of the higher-level superweapons (i.e. the Weather Control Device, Nuclear Missile Silo and Psychic Dominator) as opposed to our own lower-level superweapon structures.  Surprisingly, recent spying efforts have shown that this is no longer the case.  Naturally this came as a shock to us, as we were sure Yuri would not feel so confident as to halve the durability of his structure in a display of confidence; so this is most likely the result of his intense spending and rather unstable means of gathering income which have resulted in him making sacrifices here and there to maintain a suitable war effort.

Mutate: By being a product of design from one of our own respective companies, Massive Soft, this deadly effect was created to also be deadly efficient, so apparently there is really no desire or need to improve it according to Yuri.  For those unfamiliar to its operation, when fired it transforms any infantry, friend or foe, within its area of effect into Yuri's Brute infantry, all loyal to him.  The effect can be devastating against large clusters of infantry, and Yuri makes it a common habit to fire at his own Slaves in order to make them Brutes while the Slave Miners replace them, and even to simply send those Brutes into the Grinder for the extra cash.  Barbaric...
 

PSYCHIC DOMINATOR

Just a refresher course Commanders: According to a report from our future forces, when these structures began sprouting up around the world it was only through Einstein's Time Machine that they actually made it this far in an attempt to prevent the Dominator's own kind of mass destruction.  Now we must not only strive to defeat the Soviets, even though it is foretold by our future forces that they will lose, but also attempt to stop Yuri's growing dissident movement before these structures are fully completed.

The problem we face is, although the globally affecting Dominators have yet to be completed, smaller versions like this keep popping up in Yuri's mobile bases every time we try and drive him back.  This is nothing new from what most of you already know, and thankfully nothing has changed so far to make anything unfamiliar.

Dominate: Unlike the larger version our future forces witnessed, this Dominate effect only has the capability of permanently Mind Controlling a very small amount of units.  Its big advantage was its amazing destruction to structures in tandem with that other effect, and that it fired a lot quicker than our Lightning Storm and the Soviet's Nuclear Attack.  That made it very difficult for any of the victims to dodge the area of effect.  This has since changed however, and we have noticed a significantly larger delay before the Dominator goes off.  At first we were puzzled as to why this happened, but then we noticed that the energy discharge was significantly larger, consequently increasing the radius of effect for the Mind Control effect.  A larger number of units can be captured now, at the cost of it taking longer to activate.  It's time to put your quick reflexes to work.

Yuri's grunt forces have undergone a major restructuring process.  This is where he has most effectively demonstrated his terrorist-style adjustments to his army.  We must move onto his infantry.

Yuri Infantry »« Yuri Structures