Plot[]

Kane praises LEGION for his performance in South Africa and reveals to him his plan to destroy the Philadelphia while all of GDI's leaders are on-board attending the Annual Energy Summit.

However, that would be a task for a different Nod commander - to finish his final preparations, he asked LEGION to delay Redmond Boyle, the GDI Treasurer, a greedy and vainglorious politician who will play right into his hands. In order to do this, he asked LEGION to attack the GDI Treasury, which would force Boyle to delay his trip to the Philadelphia. After he left, Alexa Kovacs revealed her suspicion of LEGION, saying that she knew the AI was always watching her.

Leading a stealth strike team, LEGION attacked the GDI Treasury complex, cutting off the power to its defenses and disconnecting it from the ion cannon network before destroying the Treasury building. The attack was a complete success, dealing billions of credits worth of damage to GDI and successfully delaying Boyle. Meanwhile, GDI had no idea that Nod was behind the attack, and assumed it was perpetrated by the a Forgotten separatist faction called the Sons of Umagon instead.^[2]

New units[]

• Specter

Walkthrough[]

(This walkthrough assumes Hard difficulty.)

This mission mostly serves as an introduction to the new Specter artillery and how it can work in conjunction with Shadow teams, so it is relatively straightforward and easy, even on Hard difficulty.

You start with two Shadow teams. Do not activate their gliders, there are too many stealth-detecting AA batteries around. Avoid the Hammerhead with searchlights (which can reveal stealth units) and GDI infantry and head north. Tag each power plant with a beacon as the Nod EVA instructed. After you are finished, be sure to move your Shadow Teams away from the beacons, as the Specters' splash damage can also affect allies. The power plants will be destroyed by off-field Specters, shutting down all of GDI's static defenses in the treasury complex.

At this point, your reinforcements - four stealth tanks and four Specters - will enter the treasury complex through the entrance. These reinforcements will be your main focus for the rest of the mission, but any surviving Shadow Teams can act as spotters for the Specters or as close-range anti-infantry.

To prevent any Hammerhead patrols from being rebuilt, destroy the Airfield. It is located on the top-middle plateau of the complex, though your Shadow Teams likely passed by it during the first stage of the mission, which makes targeting them easier. If you wish to prioritize the destruction of the complex's other installations, have the Shadow Teams tag the Airfield with a beacon and use the Specters to bombard it from wherever they are on the map.

The rest of the patrols, however, are resupplied by production structures within the base that they guard and cannot be so easily permanently destroyed. Aside from the occasional missile squad, which can be run over or blasted with Specters (though admittedly that is rather overkill), the path to the eastern base (where the communications center is located) should be relatively clear. The neighboring base to the comms center is resupplied by two War Factories and guarded by some Pitbulls, which can be destroyed by Specters from the base of the plateau. It is within this base that there are some money crates defended by two now-inactive Watchtowers. Grab them all as part of the bonus objective.

The ion cannon network communications center is patrolled by Hammerheads and Pitbulls in addition to a few infantry squads. Destroy them with your stealth tanks. To reduce the damage sustained by the Stealth Tanks, you can use the Specters to force-fire on the ground on locations where the Pitbull patrols temporarily pause. Note that while the foxholes at the plateau entrance are empty, the two at the entrance to the inner perimeter are not, so destroy them with your Specters. The production structures may produce Pitbulls and infantry to replace lost ones, so destroying them is a greater priority. Finally, destroy the communications center, then heal any damaged units with the two heal crates nearby.

After the communications center is gone, the treasury building will be undefended. But first, move to the Tiberium spike directly west of your objective marker. You will find a number of money crates scattered around the Tiberium spike. Picking them up completes the "steal gold bullions" bonus objective.

The treasury building itself is also defended by Hammerheads and Pitbulls. You may also encounter Shatterers, which can be deadly to your vehicles, but you can simply destroy them with your Specters from a safe range. To do so, you can take advantage of the shroud cleared by the nearby Hammerhead patrols. Destroy the treasury building with your Specters and finish the mission.

Trivia[]

• The missions title is a reference to the saying, "All that glitters is not gold", a commonly used quote from the play, The Merchant of Venice.
• It is possible to destroy the Treasury building before the communications center. Doing so causes an ion cannon blast to fire once the Treasury building is destroyed. However, the ion cannon blast will most likely miss your unit completely, and the mission can continue as normal afterwards. Though the communications center will still need to be destroyed to complete the mission.
• There is an unused main objective for this mission in the game's csf file, "Avoid Hammerhead Spotlights", which says "GDI have mounted spotlights on their aerial Hammerhead patrols. Avoid them, or our cover will be blown." Presumably, this objective was cut because having to complete the mission while avoiding all Hammerheads would be too frustrating.
• All Hammerheads in the mission are modified with mounted spotlights, which allow them to detect stealthed units. This special variant is not seen in any other campaign mission, and cannot be built by any GDI faction or subfaction.
• The Shatterers seen guarding the entrance to the Treasury disappear once the Nod reinforcements arrive, and groups of Missile Squads are spawned in.
• Some of the Hammerheads have Missile Squads garrisoned within.

Videos[]

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