Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is a 2007 science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts for Windows, Mac OS X and Xbox 360 platforms, and released internationally in March 2007.

The game brought about several changes in gameplay, some introduced in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, including garrisonable structures, neutral tech buildings, unit upgrades and veteran levels, and special powers unique for each playable faction.

The game received favorable reviews, and proved a commercial success following its launch, with a stand-alone expansion pack released a year later on March 24, 2008, titled Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath.

The crystals are gathered by harvester vehicles which unload their cargo into refineries, supplying the player with credits which are then automatically used when training units and building structures.

The Global Defense Initiative fights with conventional modern weapons and tactics, utilizing both technologically advanced armor and firepower, making them typically more destructive in open confrontations, but more cumbersome.

The Brotherhood of Nod features flexible guerrilla warfare forces, using stealth and Tiberium-based weaponry, though they are typically weaker.

The third faction, the alien Scrin, features units and structures that are Tiberium based, including the ability to promote the growth of the substance and to store infinite amounts of it.

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars supports multiplayer games over LAN, and online play, originally over GameSpy servers.

[8] Electronic Arts was making an attempt through Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars to market "RTS as a sport",[7] through a project entitled "BattleCast".

Although the substance creates crystals containing precious metals leached from the surrounding soils, the process also transforms all plant life into alien flora that produces fatally toxic gas.

Since its arrival, Tiberium has become of interest to two factions – the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), who seek to combat the spread and eradicate its presence; and the Brotherhood of Nod, who believes the substance heralds the next step of evolution for humanity, based on the prophecies and lessons by its enigmatic leader Kane.

The game's story takes place in 2047, when Kane, having been presumed dead after the Second Tiberium War, returns and leads Nod into attacking Blue Zones after bringing down GDI's orbital command station, the GDSS Philadelphia, forcing GDI to engage them in return, and triggering the Third Tiberium War.

The events of the campaigns for GDI, Nod, and the Scrin, are closely interwoven together in the same timeline, as with the Firestorm expansion pack for Tiberian Sun.

Once there, GDI discovers that Nod was not only preparing to deploy their full nuclear arsenal on them, but that they were also in the process of manufacturing a liquid Tiberium bomb of unprecedented destructive power.

When the Ion Cannon is fired over Granger's strenuous objections, it detonates either the liquid Tiberium bomb inside the temple (Nod campaign) or nearby naturally occurring liquid Tiberium deposits (GDI campaign), creating a cataclysmic explosion that reaches out into space and kills millions of people in Eastern Europe's Yellow Zones.

Shortly after these disastrous events, GDI's deep space surveillance network suddenly begins to detect multiple large unidentified objects rapidly closing in on Earth.

The alien forces, known only as the Scrin, begin construction of several "Threshold" towers where Tiberium is most concentrated, while launching massive assaults on all major cities across the globe.

GDI realizes these attacks are meant to divert their attention away from the construction of massive tower structures in the world's Red Zones.

He reveals to the Nod player commander that he never had any intention of winning the war with GDI, and instead started it in order to provoke the Ion Cannon attack on Temple Prime.

Kane hopes to seize one of the Threshold towers the Scrin are building, which are interstellar teleportation devices they use to ship Tiberium off-world, but which he believes are gateways to humanity's "ascension".

In the GDI campaign, a control node in the former Tiber riverbed is destroyed, resulting in the total annihilation of the remnants of the Scrin harvesting operation, rendering Threshold 19 completely inert, and preventing the Brotherhood's ascension.

Work on such a sequel was believed to have been started at Westwood Studios in 2001, but Electronic Arts decided to shift the focus of the would-be successor to Tiberian Sun from a science fiction theme to a modern theme based on contemporary conflicts, the result being the title of Command & Conquer: Generals and other SAGE engine based games.

Developers still retained the Command & Conquer 3 idea (tentatively named 'Incursion'), intending it to be an update of the original C&C game in terms of gameplay and setting.

This merger split the original Westwood team, with some of its members not being willing to relocate and quitting to form the company Petroglyph Games, with the remainder moving to Los Angeles to work at the newly consolidated studio.

[12] Shortly thereafter, Mark Skaggs left EA for unspecified reasons and ideas for the Red Alert 3 title were mothballed.

On April 18, 2006, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars was prematurely announced, then few days later the official press release was made,[13] and EA Los Angeles would begin to host several fan summits for previews, feedback and discussions on the new title.

SAGE technology had been used in the RTS series Generals and The Battle For Middle-Earth games, and the engine's features subsequently are present in C&C 3.

[22] The cutscenes of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars were directed by EA in-house cinematic director Richard Taylor.

During "BattleCast Primetime"'s pilot episode, the expansion pack to Tiberium Wars, entitled Kane's Wrath, was officially announced.

[33] GamePro gave Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars its "Editor's Choice" rating at 4.5 out of 5, designating it as "Game of the Month" in its June 2007 issue.