Star Wars: Empire at War - Kashyyyk

Star Wars: Empire at War - Kashyyyk
This is a hint / walkthrough for a planet in Star Wars: Empire at War. The index of all our guides for Empire at War is here.

Imperial Campaign
Available in Mission 7 (Trouble on Kashyyyk) / Tech Level 2.

Space Battle
You can move into Kashyyyk immediately with no resistance, but but you cannot land anything other than a stealth unit (Smuggler or Bounty Hunter) on the planet without triggering the special land combat against Han Solo. Curiously, you can start build queues once you put a Smuggler or Bounty Hunter on the planet. However, even if everything has completed building, ground buildings vanish after the land mission.

Land Battle
You can prevent Han Solo from planting any charges and destroying a prison by attacking him. He will stop to fight back, and only head back to a prison when enemies have retreated. You can therefore use the Scout Trooper/Speeder Bike's incredible speed to save ALL the prisons if you are fast enough:
Before you start your ground invasion, put various land units in orbit, and make sure you have several units of Speeder Bikes. To initiate the land invasion, use only one Speeder Bike. This will force your first unit on the ground to be a Speeder Bike.
Immediately start bringing in more Speeder Bikes -- about 4-6. As they come in, run them to find Han Solo and start shooting at him. (Even if you don't immediately know where he is, the Speeder Bikes are so fast that you can split them up to go solo and zip by the prisons quickly until you find him.
Once you find Han Solo, be careful: You only have two bikes per squad and they go down very quickly when under fire.
As you call down more Speeder Bikes, group your bikes into two or three groups as they come available. Each time Han Solo turns to attack one group, move that group out. When he chooses another group, move it back in to attack him. Once Han Solo is practically dead, he with retreat and the cutscene will play.

Using Speeder Bikes to harrass Han Solo requires a lot of by-the-second micromanagement as you flip back and forth between Han Solo in the northeast and watching for your reinforcements to land in the southwest. So you may want to play this mission in a less frantic way:

When the mission starts, you already know where the prisons are, and so when another falls, you have an idea of where Han Solo is located. Notice the east side has two exits. Cover both to make sure you catch Han Solo coming out (usually the north side). Once he is hurt enough (but you do not have to "kill" him by reducing his health to zero), he withdraws from the battle.

At the river crossings, if you wait on one side, you can sometimes quickly march a unit of AT-ST Walkers or TIE Maulers across to squish Wookies that advance onto the ford as it is quite narrow. You can take down a lot of wookies this way and it is much faster than shooting them, but those at the edge of the path will typically evade certain death this way.

Rebellion Campaign

Land Battle

Your units do not automatically attack the prisons, but you can do so if you wish. However, a destroyed prison does not release any Wookie prisoners. Only Han Solo can do this.

When Han Solo is brought near a prison, he needs some time to release the Wookies. During this time, you cannot select and control him or manually abort the sequence.
You can clear out all the Imperials before sending Han Solo in to do anything.