Gen. D. MacArthur, Letter to Joseph W. Martin (March 1951)
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Overview[]
The player controls U.S. Army infantryman Corporal Ben Kerry. NATO units continue to advance further east, successfully carving a hole in the AAF's supply lines and splitting the bulk of their forces in two.
The town of Kalochori has been identified as a key bridgepoint for the AAF's north-eastern elements; seizing the town will inflict yet another severe blow to the Altian regime and trap their remaining forces.
(*) Any weapons, ammo, gear and/or backpacks salvaged from previous missions will carry on to this mission and can be equipped through the briefing equipment menu.
(**) This is the default loadout assuming that the player has not customised or collected different items from the previous mission.
Objectives[]
Primary[]
(1) Secure Gamma
(2) Regroup forces
(3) Secure Kalochori
(4) Defend Kalochori
Optional[]
(5) Board Vehicle
Mandatory[]
Kerry must survive
Once seized, the town must not be overrun by enemy forces
Avoid collateral damage/friendly fire
Do not leave the combat zone
Walkthrough[]
Primary 1: Secure Gamma[]
LEGEND Red: AAF positions (may change once alerted) Green: Your initial Landing Zone
You start off inside a helicopter being transported straight to the AO. After a dakka-filled intro landing sequence, you'll disembark and will need to retake the solar farm directly in front of your LZ.
You'll most likely be coming under fire the moment you land, so get set to engage as soon as the helicopter lands. Order your group to follow in a Vee formation and begin moving through the solar farm. The majority of enemy troopers are concentrated at the base of the spires where there's camouflage netting. Mop up each site one by one until the objective is complete.
Primary 2: Regroup forces[]
With the solar farm secured, you can now move onto the main objective itself: the town of Kalochori just further north-east.
Before that can happen however, you need to regroup with the other members of the NATO attack force. Once you're ready, meet up with Delta-3-4 (the friendly IFV) at the assembly point and move in.
Primary 3: Secure Kalochori[]
You can either push in on the ground or coordinate the attack from the tower's vantage point.
Kalochori is heavily defended by a mixture of enemy IFVs and numerous rifle/weapons squads.
Thankfully, you now have access to fire support in the form of an artillery battery. Open your map and begin marking the centre of town (where the supply depot is located) and call for one cluster shell. Mark another one, but this time on the buildings to the left of the town centre. Enjoy the fireworks.
Two cluster shells should be sufficient in taking out most of the depot's defenders and immobilise/disable the enemy IFV. If that isn't enough, call in a few more high-explosive (HE) barrages using 2-3 shell volleys. Either you or your allies can then move in to clear anything left over by hand.
Do be careful to avoid friendly fire, however. If you see allied troops moving into the town and your own squad isn't already there, cease calling in fire missions immediately or you'll be detected causing friendly fire and fail the mission instantly.
Primary 4: Defend Kalochori[]
NOTE:
Do not attempt to defend Kalochori without using your fire support assets!
Your regular anti-tank weaponsare not sufficient for use against the enemy's armour. Use the Greyhawk's Skalpel ATGMs for the armoured vehicles and artillery for the infantry. Call in the gunship only if you run out of missiles or don't have any artillery shells left.
LEGEND Red: Counterattack routes (variable; depends on AI) Blue: Recommended fire mission location #1 Violet: Recommended fire mission location #2 Orange: Recommended fire mission location #3 Green: Defensive battlements
The AAF have launched an all-out counterattack against the town. You must hold at all costs to prevent them from overrunning your position. The enemy force will consist of one tank, one IFV and one motorised rifle squad approaching from the east and north-east.
First, you need to get to the defensive barricades on the north-eastern side of the town. You should see a checkpoint fortified with sandbag walls and a static heavy machine gun. Order one member of your squad to man the HMG, while the rest of your soldiers take up positions along the sandbags (order them to go into Crouch stance if they do not crouch automatically).
You also have multiple fire support assets on standby to help you drive off the attack:
Lock onto the incoming vehicles using the targeting pod. Don't forget: the orange cone on the Sensors panel represents the drone's IR sensor and is needed for Skalpels to lock-on properly.
Taking manual control of the Greyhawk and switching to Manual Fire mode as the AI's "pilot" will allow you to make short work of all incoming vehicles. Alternatively, you can mark the vehicles with a laser designator and order the drone to engage them with a Search and Destroy waypoint. The latter is ill-advised due to the response time of UCAVs, so manually controlling is the more reliable method.
Only thing left after that is the rifle squad. There are three ideal locations to mark for a fire mission (as displayed on the above diagram):
If you are fast enough, calling a strike on Position #1 can instantly wipe out the entire squad and knock out the MRAP within 18 seconds of the attack being initially announced.
At the approximate 1 minute and 2 second mark, you can direct a strike at Position #2 to achieve similar effects. You may miss the MRAP however, as it will have most likely outpaced the infantry squad (or lag behind depending on AI pathing in the current playthrough).
Position #3 is the last ideal location, though by this point in time you will have seen the incoming squad visually which means they'll be opening fire on the battlements anyway.
Regardless, if you are uncertain about what path they're taking to reach the town, just shower the entire eastern side of the town with one fire mission after another. They do not have to be cluster shells - you only need one HE shell to kill the entire squad and burst the tyres on the squad's MRAP. Any stragglers can be mopped up by your troops or your allies.
To not fail this objective, you only need to make sure that none of the AAF's vehicles get inside the place and that Delta-3-4's IFV/friendly gunship are not destroyed simultaneously. While the gunship's pilot has a tendency to get shot down or crash into the terrain, Delta-3-4's destruction will only happen if you deliberately allow the enemy tank to get within firing range.
Focus on neutralising all vehicles as soon as possible to prevent this from happening. You can ignore the IFV if you don't have enough firepower to tackle it since Delta-3-4 will quickly gun it down anyway. Allied AT gunners will similarly attempt the same thing if they survived the initial attack.
Once all vehicles have been destroyed and the enemy troopers annihilated, the objective and mission will be completed.
Optional 5: Board Vehicle[]
When the commander warns you of the AAF's counterattack, you have the option of being ferried straight to the north-eastern barricades via Delta-3-4's IFV.
Since AI pathfinding and navigation in vehicles is...less than desirable, you can safely ignore this objective and just have you and your squad run there straight away. It takes less time and you don't have to risk getting trapped inside Delta-3-4's vehicle just as the enemy vehicles thunder into the town.
This objective is automatically cancelled when you either reach the barricades on foot or take too long boarding Delta-3-4's vehicle.
Tips[]
Just after clearing Gamma, you can climb to the top of either of the solar farm's spires. A deceased AAF trooper has a GM6 Lynx sniper rifle stashed on his corpse.
With the spire itself providing a good vantage point overlooking the entire area, you can snipe the enemy troopers inside the town before moving in to clear it yourself. Alternately, you can also direct fire missions straight onto the supply depot itself.
Be wary of the enemy IFV inside Kalochori, however. On occasion, the IFV will open fire on your position with its HE shells and since you're in such tight quarters with nowhere to run but down the ladder, you will almost certainly get killed.
If you decide to shell the supply depot with cluster shells, be mindful when you move in to secure the town as either you or your squad members might accidentally step onto and detonate stray Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) pieces.
DO NOT attempt to stop the counterattack without utilising your fire support assets!
Not only are you wasting their potential and your own time, but you risk failing the mission if the enemy vehicles get within firing range of your allies. You don't get penalised for calling in any of the assets, so why exactly are you holding back?
Seriously...the AAF's counterattack becomes a joke to tackle with all the fire support you're provided. Should you absolutely insist on not utilising their potential, then you only have yourself to blame for failing the mission.
Trivia[]
On release, early versions of Preventive Diplomacy took place under poor weather conditions with heavy rainfall and overcast blanketing the sky. For unknown reasons, it was changed in subsequent patches so that weather conditions would be sunny with clear skies.
A scripting error in the mission also resulted in the player instantly failing the mission if either of their supporting assets (friendly gunship/IFV) were destroyed during the counterattack. It was later fixed so that players would only fail the mission if they lost both units and enemy vehicles were inside the town.
Prior to Game Update 1.56, the mission was significantly more difficult as there were multiple armoured vehicles and tanks that had to be fought off in the defence sequence. This was changed after the patch's release so that the number of hostile vehicles was signficantly reduced.[2]
Additional balance changes were made after Game Update 1.84 to further reduce the difficulty of the final defence sequence. The final sequence now only involves three vehicles as opposed to the original five that had to be fought.[3]
