Empire Earth - April 26, 2014

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2014-04-26 05:00:48 pm

2014-04-12 12:10:09 pm

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Empire Earth (Any %) (Segmented) [Campaign: German]

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Maik 'Onin' Biekart!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2014-04-12 12:10:10 pm

Run Information

Empire Earth (Any %) (Segmented) [Campaign: German]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/eegerman/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by April 26, 2014.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-04-12 01:14:32 pm

Onin: 2014-04-12 01:14:24 pm

2014-04-12 01:14:14 pm

Youtube playlist:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=siNE8hxGKjE&list=PLOjj6J-b5LkTxytOJEd9pxaGw2_ocavdU

cortez

2014-04-18 11:48:48 am

Stalker!

Accept.

everything is quiet well planned and executed.

one small thing the sea lion video seem to be broken for me with vlc media player.
after 2:08 the video stops for me.

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2014-04-21 02:19:28 pm

Crow!: 2014-04-21 01:55:58 pm

2014-04-21 01:51:33 pm

What's that gemma?

A/V:
The Sea Lion video is corrupted past a certain point. Make sure the original video is alright and if so, troubleshoot your encoding.

Overall Gameplay:
As a rule, the routing is great while the execution is merely alright. When armies split, only one side gets microed and macro slips. Civilians sometimes spend time idle, when they could be constructing a variety of useful buildings; there's a few missions where constructing extra civilians to get another factory and then killing off the civilians seems particularly useful.

Mission-by-mission notes:

Cavalry of the Sky:
Do the heroes's stats get affected by any of the civilization bonus options? If so, giving them +Speed would be a big deal on this mission.

Supply and Demand:
You might want to check if the transports behave better if there are enemies nearby. That you have to nudge them to get going suggests to me that their spawn points aren't actually on their movement paths, and something needs to inspire them to get going; it could be that the game designers expected the transports to begin each route running away from an enemy. Or it could just be buggy.

The Red Baron:
There's a lot of time in this mission where the runner stops doing stuff, when there are clearly opportunities to accomplish things. There could be a few more citizens made so an additional airport could be constructed, for instance. Barracks could make units to assist the Howitzers so that the attack on the western base can commence without having to wait for so many Howitzers to be constructed. Couldn't more buildings be neutralized via being surrounded by unbuilt houses, too, or does that only work for artillery?

The Somme:
This mission could be several minutes faster. He refuses to move out until he has constructed a humongous army, when he clearly could have won with a far smaller one. Forgetting to leave a ground unit near his airport denied him the use of 4 bombers. He doesn't start moving his civilians toward the western base until more than a minute after he could have, even given his slow army progression.

Blitzkrieg:
There's a AoE damage upgrade which seems perfect for the strategy the runner employs here, but he doesn't pick it up. Making one Howitzer to send to France would probably have sped up the mission's completion by almost a minute.

Preparations for invasion:
The U-Boat fleet spends a lot of time idle, while the airports don't get up and running nearly as soon as they could and should. Most notably, one of the two airports doesn't actually manufacture planes for quite some time.

Operation Sea Lion:
The gameplay seems solid for the potion of the video that I can see. But the video needs to be fixed.

For the moment, REJECT. Operation: Sea Lion needs its video fixed, and The Somme needs serious work. I'd also like to see an improvement to Preparations for Invasion, but it's not a deal breaker to me.

A/V:
The Sea Lion video is corrupted past a certain point.  Make sure the original video is alright and if so, troubleshoot your encoding.

Overall Gameplay:
As a rule, the routing is great while the execution is merely alright.  When armies split, only one side gets microed and macro slips.  Civilians sometimes spend time idle, when they could be constructing a variety of useful buildings; there's a few missions where constructing extra civilians to get another factory and then killing off the civilians seems particularly useful.

Mission-by-mission notes:
[spoiler]Cavalry of the Sky:
Do the heroes's stats get affected by any of the civilization bonus options?  If so, giving them +Speed would be a big deal on this mission.

Supply and Demand:
You might want to check if the transports behave better if there are enemies nearby.  That you have to nudge them to get going suggests to me that their spawn points aren't actually on their movement paths, and something needs to inspire them to get going; it could be that the game designers expected the transports to begin each route running away from an enemy.  Or it could just be buggy.

The Red Baron:
There's a lot of time in this mission where the runner stops doing stuff, when there are clearly opportunities to accomplish things.  There could be a few more citizens made so an additional airport could be constructed, for instance.  Barracks could make units to assist the Howitzers so that the attack on the western base can commence without having to wait for so many Howitzers to be constructed.  Couldn't more buildings be neutralized via being surrounded by unbuilt houses, too, or does that only work for artillery?

The Somme:
This mission could be several minutes faster.  He refuses to move out until he has constructed a humongous army, when he clearly could have won with a far smaller one.  Forgetting to leave a ground unit near his airport denied him the use of 4 bombers.  He doesn't start moving his civilians toward the western base until more than a minute after he could have, even given his slow army progression.

Blitzkrieg:
There's a AoE damage upgrade which seems perfect for the strategy the runner employs here, but he doesn't pick it up. Making one Howitzer to send to France would probably have sped up the mission's completion by almost a minute.

Preparations for invasion:
The U-Boat fleet spends a lot of time idle, while the airports don't get up and running nearly as soon as they could and should.  Most notably, one of the two airports doesn't actually manufacture planes for quite some time.

Operation Sea Lion:
The gameplay seems solid for the potion of the video that I can see.  But the video needs to be fixed.[/spoiler]

For the moment, REJECT.  Operation: Sea Lion needs its video fixed, and The Somme needs serious work.  I'd also like to see an improvement to Preparations for Invasion, but it's not a deal breaker to me.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-04-21 03:36:19 pm

2014-04-21 02:26:10 pm

To respond to the notes:

Cavalry:
Heroes don't benefit from anything.

Supply:
It's not exactly buggy, it's just triggered rather haphazardly. I'm pretty sure the delay between their spawn and their first movement is part of the trigger for whatever reason.

Baron:
An additional airport would achieve little, perhaps a second or two saved at the final part; there's plenty planes to wreck the flock once I find them. I guess building some mortars would help a little, but they're really all minor speed increases for a mission that takes dozens of runs for the enemy AI to even cooperate slightly.
Neutralizing the barracks is pointless, I don't think the AI ever builds from them (as seen in the other fort where not a single unit is made). Artillery are the only dangerous unit, so I want to prevent those.

Somme:
This map took me a week to get a single successful completion on. Going for faster strats is significantly riskier and would take months to complete. It is the weakest map because of that, sure.

Blitzkrieg:
Increasing splash AoE will only be slightly helpful killing the Polish army, due to their weird positioning. Sending more units to France means having to wait for them to be built, which means being able to start destroying France a lot later, so I'm not entirely convinced there.

Preparations:
The reason the u-boats are idle is because discovering the home fleet too early means engaging them in a really bad angle, where their frigates simply wreck my u-boats (1v1, a frigate beats a u-boat, so I need to have as few attacking me as possible while still being efficient).
Airplanes are just icing on the cake, I only need enough to destroy the docks that the battleships can't easily reach, and I only need them simultaneous with the home fleet destruction.

Considering the youtube upload of Sea Lion works fine, I'm not sure what'd be wrong with the encoded file, but the source file should be fine hopefully. Edit: Source file plays perfectly fine in VLC, so it should be fixable.

To respond to the notes:

Cavalry:
Heroes don't benefit from anything.

Supply:
It's not exactly buggy, it's just triggered rather haphazardly. I'm pretty sure the delay between their spawn and their first movement is part of the trigger for whatever reason.

Baron:
An additional airport would achieve little, perhaps a second or two saved at the final part; there's plenty planes to wreck the flock once I find them. I guess building some mortars would help a little, but they're really all minor speed increases for a mission that takes dozens of runs for the enemy AI to even cooperate slightly.
Neutralizing the barracks is pointless, I don't think the AI ever builds from them (as seen in the other fort where not a single unit is made). Artillery are the only dangerous unit, so I want to prevent those.

Somme:
This map took me a week to get a single successful completion on. Going for faster strats is significantly riskier and would take months to complete. It is the weakest map because of that, sure.

Blitzkrieg:
Increasing splash AoE will only be slightly helpful killing the Polish army, due to their weird positioning. Sending more units to France means having to wait for them to be built, which means being able to start destroying France a lot later, so I'm not entirely convinced there.

Preparations:
The reason the u-boats are idle is because discovering the home fleet too early means engaging them in a really bad angle, where their frigates simply wreck my u-boats (1v1, a frigate beats a u-boat, so I need to have as few attacking me as possible while still being efficient).
Airplanes are just icing on the cake, I only need enough to destroy the docks that the battleships can't easily reach, and I only need them simultaneous with the home fleet destruction.

Considering the youtube upload of Sea Lion works fine, I'm not sure what'd be wrong with the encoded file, but the source file should be fine hopefully. Edit: Source file plays perfectly fine in VLC, so it should be fixable.

Elipsis

2014-04-22 01:27:16 pm

I'd like to preface this by saying that my many many hours of Empire Earth gameplay were done in LAN multiplayer games, not campaigns. I have only ever done one campaign all the way through and it is not this one. I am by no means an expert on the triggers and RNG that takes place throughout the German campaign. Everything I learned about the glitches that improve the single-player speedrunning of this game came from videos that turned out to be made by Onin... so I've got to go with his judgment on how to best use those exploits.

Cavalry of the Sky:

This seems like a straight shot as far as the path through the map. From what I could tell, the submission takes that route with little to no hesitation.

Supply and Demand:

I echo Crow's concerns about the transports idling for a bit longer than might be desired, but assuming Onin is correct about the sloppiness of the triggers and the delay of the movement of the ships... I don't have any major complaints about the amount of time lost to massaging the pathing here.

The Red Baron:

I really didn't see any significant pauses in the gameplay that suggests more production units were really needed. I do wonder if you could have rolled the Howitzers in earlier than you did, but once the assault got started it was micro'd pretty well.

The Somme:

A little bit of stalling at the 7 minute mark. I suppose that that's the huge army gathering that Crow was talking about. This probably could have been initiated earlier and then reenforced later on to about the same result. Particularly the single AP tank that you waited for to take its own transport seemed a bit silly. It definitely looks like the runner played this level safer than was needed.

Blitzkrieg:

This strategy looks pretty solid to me so I'm not going to try to theorize too much on how it could be improved. I guess if you have the resources to spare for the AoE upgrade you could have grabbed it, but it's hardly a showstopper.

Preparations for Invasion:

Again, I don't know the triggers. The idle U-boats seemed like they were just camping the Britain Home Fleet. If there is a way to trigger it earlier maybe that's worth exploring, but if Onin knows the best time to start that battle I don't really know enough to argue otherwise.

Operation Sea Lion:

HQ version is definitely fucked and needs to be reencoded. I was able to finish watching via the standard quality version and was surprised at how close to the end we were. This is some pretty serious back door action.

Conclusion

The runner obviously put a lot of time and research into this campaign. There are some places where it seems improvable, but overall I think the play quality is pretty high and enjoyable to watch. I would say that the run should be accepted assuming Sea Lion HQ can be reencoded.

I'd like to preface this by saying that my many many hours of Empire Earth gameplay were done in LAN multiplayer games, not campaigns.  I have only ever done one campaign all the way through and it is not this one.  I am by no means an expert on the triggers and RNG that takes place throughout the German campaign.  Everything I learned about the glitches that improve the single-player speedrunning of this game came from videos that turned out to be made by Onin... so I've got to go with his judgment on how to best use those exploits.

[b]Cavalry of the Sky:[/b]

This seems like a straight shot as far as the path through the map.  From what I could tell, the submission takes that route with little to no hesitation.

[b]Supply and Demand:[/b]

I echo Crow's concerns about the transports idling for a bit longer than might be desired, but assuming Onin is correct about the sloppiness of the triggers and the delay of the movement of the ships... I don't have any major complaints about the amount of time lost to massaging the pathing here.

[b]The Red Baron:[/b]

I really didn't see any significant pauses in the gameplay that suggests more production units were really needed.  I do wonder if you could have rolled the Howitzers in earlier than you did, but once the assault got started it was micro'd pretty well.

[b]The Somme:[/b]

A little bit of stalling at the 7 minute mark.  I suppose that that's the huge army gathering that Crow was talking about.  This probably could have been initiated earlier and then reenforced later on to about the same result.  Particularly the single AP tank that you waited for to take its own transport seemed a bit silly.  It definitely looks like the runner played this level safer than was needed.

[b]Blitzkrieg:[/b]

This strategy looks pretty solid to me so I'm not going to try to theorize too much on how it could be improved.  I guess if you have the resources to spare for the AoE upgrade you could have grabbed it, but it's hardly a showstopper.

[b]Preparations for Invasion:[/b]

Again, I don't know the triggers.  The idle U-boats seemed like they were just camping the Britain Home Fleet.  If there is a way to trigger it earlier maybe that's worth exploring, but if Onin knows the best time to start that battle I don't really know enough to argue otherwise.

[b]Operation Sea Lion[/b]:

HQ version is definitely fucked and needs to be reencoded.  I was able to finish watching via the standard quality version and was surprised at how close to the end we were.  This is some pretty serious back door action.

[b]Conclusion[/b]

The runner obviously put a lot of time and research into this campaign.  There are some places where it seems improvable, but overall I think the play quality is pretty high and enjoyable to watch.  I would say that the run should be [b]accepted[/b] assuming Sea Lion HQ can be reencoded.

Crow!

2014-04-23 11:52:06 am

What's that gemma?

After having spent some time working on The Somme myself, I retract my demand for it to be improved. I still think it can be ~2.5 minutes faster, but getting a completion at all requires a lot of luck regarding elements which aren't obvious in the submitted run (since, in that run, everything that could go wrong doesn't). For example, by the end of my sessions I was making 2 Docks so I could get 4 transports because sometimes the transport pathing sends them into water mines that are designed specifically to prevent the amphibious invasion employed here.

In case anyone cares, the last of my sessions trying to beat it can be found here: http://www.twitch.tv/iicrowii/b/522376484

Also, in case the runner does come back to this at some point, the Red Baron can clear out the artillery easier / faster than sending and microing a howitzer.

Onin

2014-04-23 01:41:43 pm

Well, my civilians still got bombed forcing me to rebuild the barracks, but they barely survived so it worked out anyway :>. I thought I made adequately clear in the run notes how hard that mission really is, but I'm glad someone got to share my pain >:)

SDAVerification

2014-04-26 05:00:50 pm

Decision posted.

Elipsis

2014-04-27 04:15:11 pm

Congrats Onin, I think this run is pretty legit.

So I have a general question to SDA about situations like this. If someone beats one of your levels - but doesn't do any others... what happens to it? Will there be an IL table for this now that the first run is up, or will it be treated as a segmented time only and one must complete all of them in order to obsolete any of them?

Onin

2014-04-27 04:27:25 pm

Sadly because the civ upgrades transition between levels SDA treats it as a segmented run, so you'd have to improve the entire run to obsolete it.

Doesn't mean you can't improve my individual times if you're willing to grind it out for bragging rights. I'd totally be jelly.

UraniumAnchor

2014-04-27 05:27:58 pm

Not a walrus

What Onin said is mostly accurate. Since stuff carries over we can't treat these campaigns as ILs, but strictly speaking if the bits that carry over match up (or, at least, the beginning of the subsequent segment isn't better off than it should be) you could replace just that segment.

moooh

2014-04-28 12:15:09 pm

Exoray

The Russian campaign is marked as still missing the LQ files. Was that ever resolved Onin?

Onin

2014-04-28 12:42:05 pm

Erh. No one ever told me any files would be missing, so I wouldn't know anything about that.

moooh

2014-04-28 01:11:46 pm

Exoray

Looks like that run had been stuck in pre-release check for quite some time and the file issue was reported only last week, which would explain why you hadn't yet been notified. Lemme know if you can send in new LQ files for that one. If it's too much of a hassle we can have nate encode new LQs from one of the higher qualities.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-04-28 02:47:00 pm

2014-04-28 02:46:51 pm

I have the original files on my old laptop, so Nate encoding new ones would be less of a hassle.