Age Of Empires 2 Speed Run

Hugo123

Edit history:

Hugo123: 2010-08-25 09:49:17 pm

2010-08-25 08:56:00 pm

Nice improvement. Smiley

Can you use the patrol command to make your life easier?

EDIT: Oh I think patrol makes it attack the tower. Nevermind. Smiley

Stacking commands like in Starcraft isn't possible right?

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-08-26 02:02:56 am

Gombill: 2010-08-26 02:02:45 am

Gombill: 2010-08-26 01:58:41 am

Gombill: 2010-08-26 01:50:26 am

2010-08-25 10:37:47 pm

It's possible to stack any number of "move" commands and then put any final action on the end of the queue. Stacking other commands is not possible. I would probably be better off stacking moves for the distraction boat so I can focus attention on other things.

You are correct, the patrol command makes them attack the tower. Otherwise, I would use it. I probably can use patrol in other missions to make things easier, though, that I haven't though about yet.

I now have a 13:37 but am starting to think that maybe even closer to 12 will be possible for Saladin 2.

EDIT: Completed run for Barbarossa 1 at last, the time is 10:12. This was with a big mistake, though. Namely, one of the monks got killed and I had to send a replacement monk. My new strategy is faster than the old one AND works more often (it's nice when that happens!) I think if I execute it perfectly I can achieve about 8:00. If such a run happens you will see it here.

Gombill

2010-08-27 12:28:45 am

I put about 2 hours in today on Barbarossa 1 with no successful attempts. There were several attempts capturing 3 of the relics, most of these failing to get yellow's relic because the monk dies somewhere. The best of these attempts would have resulted in a time of about 8:50.

I also tried a few times with just focusing on two of the four relics. I can pick just yellow and light blue's relics and end in a time of about 7:10, or I can pick just orange and purple and end in about 7:00, so technically a time of 7:10 should be possible here. I think I will just keep practicing the two "sides" separately for now, getting them consistently in the times I listed above, then try to put it all back together in a single run. Getting very close to 7:10 would be nice, but I anticipate probably losing 20-30 seconds from having to do it all at once.

To be more specific, the relics take about this much time each to capture, so some of them have a little bit of room for error:
Orange: about 6:00
Purple: 6:40
Yellow: 6:50
Light blue: 6:50

Then the victory takes about 13 seconds to flash.

Currently my strategy is
- send 2 knights to orange, kill the monk then send them and the three men-at-arms to purple
- 3 teutonic knights to destroy orange monastery
- send 1 knight to yellow, attack a wall piece to distract his archers while monk picks the relic
- send scout to the "mongols", pay them the 200 gold tribute, and use the 3 siege onagers to destroy light blue's monastery
- build a monastery near light blue's town. The yellow relic and light blue relic are brought here.
- monastery order: monk to yellow, monk to orange, monk to purple, fervor.

I put about 2 hours in today on Barbarossa 1 with no successful attempts.  There were several attempts capturing 3 of the relics, most of these failing to get yellow's relic because the monk dies somewhere.  The best of these attempts would have resulted in a time of about 8:50.

I also tried a few times with just focusing on two of the four relics.  I can pick just yellow and light blue's relics and end in a time of about 7:10, or I can pick just orange and purple and end in about 7:00, so technically a time of 7:10 should be possible here.  I think I will just keep practicing the two "sides" separately for now, getting them consistently in the times I listed above, then try to put it all back together in a single run.  Getting very close to 7:10 would be nice, but I anticipate probably losing 20-30 seconds from having to do it all at once.

To be more specific, the relics take about this much time each to capture, so some of them have a little bit of room for error:
Orange:  about 6:00
Purple:  6:40
Yellow:  6:50
Light blue:  6:50

Then the victory takes about 13 seconds to flash.

Currently my strategy is 
- send 2 knights to orange, kill the monk then send them and the three men-at-arms to purple
- 3 teutonic knights to destroy orange monastery
- send 1 knight to yellow, attack a wall piece to distract his archers while monk picks the relic
- send scout to the "mongols", pay them the 200 gold tribute, and use the 3 siege onagers to destroy light blue's monastery
- build a monastery near light blue's town.  The yellow relic and light blue relic are brought here.
- monastery order:  monk to yellow, monk to orange, monk to purple, fervor.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-11-13 03:18:15 am

Gombill: 2010-10-08 12:18:19 am

2010-08-29 11:30:27 pm

I completed a run of Barbarossa 1 in 8:04 yesterday, but expected that I should still be able to get close to 7:10 so I didn't post it right away. However, since then I haven't completed another attempt and it looks unlikely that I'll be doing any running for the next few days, so I'll post the 8:04 for now and you can comment on it as you wish.

3 of the 4 relics (orange, purple, yellow) were collected in almost exactly the times I quoted in the previous post, so that was perfect. I botched the light blue relic, however. My strategy calls for sending the villagers over at about 2:45 on the game clock to build the monastery near light blue. I not only waited until almost 4 minutes, I took too many villagers and forgot I still had to have the resources to build a monk from it to collect the light blue relic. Thus I had to waste time waiting for the yellow relic monk to return so he could do double duty.

This run illustrates a nice little trick I learned from my numerous attempts at Joan of Arc 5. I found out that if an enemy monk converts one of your units that is in No Attack Stance, he keeps it in No Attack Stance once it gets converted. Thus the setting of all my units for purple and orange in this stance (one of my knights actually gets converted in this run, and it stands there the whole game)

I also attach here "Joan of Arc 1 in 1:05" as a curiosity - enjoy.

EDIT: Videos Removed

I completed a run of Barbarossa 1 in 8:04 yesterday, but expected that I should still be able to get close to 7:10 so I didn't post it right away.  However, since then I haven't completed another attempt and it looks unlikely that I'll be doing any running for the next few days, so I'll post the 8:04 for now and you can comment on it as you wish.

3 of the 4 relics (orange, purple, yellow) were collected in almost exactly the times I quoted in the previous post, so that was perfect.  I botched the light blue relic, however.  My strategy calls for sending the villagers over at about 2:45 on the game clock to build the monastery near light blue.  I not only waited until almost 4 minutes, I took too many villagers and forgot I still had to have the resources to build a monk from it to collect the light blue relic.  Thus I had to waste time waiting for the yellow relic monk to return so he could do double duty.

This run illustrates a nice little trick I learned from my numerous attempts at Joan of Arc 5.  I found out that if an enemy monk converts one of your units that is in No Attack Stance, he keeps it in No Attack Stance once it gets converted.  Thus the setting of all my units for purple and orange in this stance (one of my knights actually gets converted in this run, and it stands there the whole game)

I also attach here "Joan of Arc 1 in 1:05" as a curiosity - enjoy.

EDIT:  Videos Removed

gia

Edit history:

gia: 2010-08-30 02:00:41 pm

gia: 2010-08-30 01:53:25 pm

2010-08-30 01:51:30 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

You were moving really fast, I'm not sure any of this is actually helpful but:

I still noticed you were clicking too many orders that can be done with shortcuts. Maybe if you research/try harder on that regard you will save on enough "concentration" that you will be able not to forget about something in your plan because your mind will be thinking about less things at the critical moment. Thinking "Ill press Ctrl+whatever" takes less processing than "ill locate and select the monastery", or ill visually locate and click a button or whatever.

Did you send the mangonel to suicide?, why dont you bring it to light blue and attack the monastery from the north (from the south the villagers attack it). Scouts kill monks with ease, the light cavalry that gets the onagers can go to LB and kill their monk on its own (or the mangonel can do then the Scout goes to orange instead of the knights, whatever), or should AFAIK.

You dont need the monks right away so you could research fervor first.

Have you tried to put a knight or two on guard protecting the monk for yellow? I played on normal, but I recall the monk could survive that way, it was luck though, if they were attacked close to yellow's town center then the villagers ended up killing them.

Also I couldn't see the timer+difficulty on the corner, maybe you reinstalled, or mispressed while trying to start Fraps.

You were moving really fast, I'm not sure any of this is actually helpful but:

I still noticed you were clicking too many orders that can be done with shortcuts. Maybe if you research/try harder on that regard you will save on enough "concentration" that you will be able not to forget about something in your plan because your mind will be thinking about less things at the critical moment. Thinking "Ill press Ctrl+whatever" takes less processing than "ill locate and select the monastery", or ill visually locate and click a button or whatever.

Did you send the mangonel to suicide?, why dont you bring it to light blue and attack the monastery from the north (from the south the villagers attack it). Scouts kill monks with ease, the light cavalry that gets the onagers can go to LB and kill their monk on its own (or the mangonel can do then the Scout goes to orange instead of the knights, whatever), or should AFAIK.

You dont need the monks right away so you could research fervor first.

Have you tried to put a knight or two on guard protecting the monk for yellow? I played on normal, but I recall the monk could survive that way, it was luck though, if they were attacked close to yellow's town center then the villagers ended up killing them.

Also I couldn't see the timer+difficulty on the corner, maybe you reinstalled, or mispressed while trying to start Fraps.

Gombill

2010-08-30 05:43:37 pm

These are good things to think about. Some of them are not relevant, however.

Shortcuts: I had the market set to a hotkey, I guess under the pressure I just forgot to use the hotkey. I've been uniformly using 3 for the market across all of my missions to try to beat it into my head that 3 will always give me the market, but it always takes more practice. In this particular run I forgot to assign the yellow relic monk a hotkey (I usually give him 4) and I didn't use the scout hotkey (5), once again just from lack of practice. After enough practice runs these will be better. Maybe the men-at-arms to send to purple should have a hotkey as well.

Yes, the mangonel was sent to suicide to allow the yellow-relic monk safe passage through the towers. Probably the mangonel can both make it safely and allow the monk passage, but the mangonel is not good for much anyways. He takes 6:20 to destroy the LB monastery with perfect execution (including attacking from the south), which is pretty much what the onagers destroyed it in for this run (and I wasted 20 seconds even). Maybe the mangonel would be better used for going to orange.

"Scouts kill monks with ease" is false in AOK. The scout bonus damage and monk resistance came in the Conquerors expansion, in AOK they have no such resistance.

Probably the best order would actually be monk, fervor, monk, monk. The yellow relic takes the longest so that monk needs to get moving right away, but you're right, the orange and purple relic monks can wait until after fervor.

I don't know what your comment on the knights guarding for yellow are about. I already have a knight distracting yellow's forces so my monk can get through unharmed.

I didn't start the timer until a minute in, but it was definitely going after that. In AOK the timer has to be started manually at the start of every level, whereas in Conquerors it has it up if you had it in the previous game you played.

These are good things to think about.  Some of them are not relevant, however.

Shortcuts:  I had the market set to a hotkey, I guess under the pressure I just forgot to use the hotkey.  I've been uniformly using 3 for the market across all of my missions to try to beat it into my head that 3 will always give me the market, but it always takes more practice.  In this particular run I forgot to assign the yellow relic monk a hotkey (I usually give him 4) and I didn't use the scout hotkey (5), once again just from lack of practice.  After enough practice runs these will be better.  Maybe the men-at-arms to send to purple should have a hotkey as well.

Yes, the mangonel was sent to suicide to allow the yellow-relic monk safe passage through the towers.  Probably the mangonel can both make it safely and allow the monk passage, but the mangonel is not good for much anyways.  He takes 6:20 to destroy the LB monastery with perfect execution (including attacking from the south), which is pretty much what the onagers destroyed it in for this run (and I wasted 20 seconds even).  Maybe the mangonel would be better used for going to orange.

"Scouts kill monks with ease" is false in AOK.  The scout bonus damage and monk resistance came in the Conquerors expansion, in AOK they have no such resistance.

Probably the best order would actually be monk, fervor, monk, monk.  The yellow relic takes the longest so that monk needs to get moving right away, but you're right, the orange and purple relic monks can wait until after fervor.

I don't know what your comment on the knights guarding for yellow are about.  I already have a knight distracting yellow's forces so my monk can get through unharmed.

I didn't start the timer until a minute in, but it was definitely going after that.  In AOK the timer has to be started manually at the start of every level, whereas in Conquerors it has it up if you had it in the previous game you played.

gia

2010-08-31 01:46:30 pm

Ah I am used to the expansion not AOK, cool, so Ctrl+M is expansion only and doesn't bring you to the Market? I mean why use "3".

My comments about the knights guarding were about possible different approaches to the level that may or may not require more focus on several spots of your execution.

Gombill

2010-08-31 05:18:04 pm

Ctrl + M gets you the market, but it also centers your view on the market. Most of the time I want the market I just want to do some quick trading in the middle of some other action, so I'd rather use Ctrl + 3 (which does not center the view on the market and allows me to continue focusing on what I'm doing).

Why it's 3, not some other number, just because on some of the early missions I played I was using 3 (kind of randomly) and thought it would take too much unlearning to switch to a different number.

Gombill

2010-09-05 03:04:43 am

After many, many failures, I finally got close to my goal on Barbarossa 1 and achieved a 7:15 < 8:04. The main deviation from the previous attempts is that I only send 2 teutonic knights to orange instead of 3, which saves me the 80 food, 40 gold, plus the market trading fees to get the extra food (plus market trading fees back to gold for another monk later). Overall, it made the orange relic a little harder to deal with, but allowed me to get the monastery up much quicker and train the light blue monk right away.

I think if I executed everything absolutely perfectly I could get around 6:50 or 6:55, but my new goal will be 7:00. Another day or two worth of tries on this and I'll give it a rest for the time being. Then it will be on to Barbarossa 2 for the finale! I think I will first play it to try to get a good time with the patch (in case Mike doesn't like a run that has different versions for different levels). Then I will try to get the early surrender glitch to work without the patch.

The relic collection times for this one were about as follows:
Yellow 6:20
Light blue 6:35
Orange 6:55
Purple 7:00

After many, many failures, I finally got close to my goal on Barbarossa 1 and achieved a 7:15 < 8:04.  The main deviation from the previous attempts is that I only send 2 teutonic knights to orange instead of 3, which saves me the 80 food, 40 gold, plus the market trading fees to get the extra food (plus market trading fees back to gold for another monk later).  Overall, it made the orange relic a little harder to deal with, but allowed me to get the monastery up much quicker and train the light blue monk right away.

I think if I executed everything absolutely perfectly I could get around 6:50 or 6:55, but my new goal will be 7:00.  Another day or two worth of tries on this and I'll give it a rest for the time being.  Then it will be on to Barbarossa 2 for the finale!  I think I will first play it to try to get a good time with the patch (in case Mike doesn't like a run that has different versions for different levels).  Then I will try to get the early surrender glitch to work without the patch.

The relic collection times for this one were about as follows:
Yellow 6:20
Light blue 6:35
Orange 6:55
Purple 7:00

Attachment:

BARB1_715.mp4

Gombill

2010-09-26 05:14:35 pm

So, I got Starcraft 2 at about the start of the month, and you can sort of see what effect that has had here...

I'm about done playing the heck out of that game now though, and should be ready to return to AOK soon. I'm hoping to do some more runs this week, and at least get a completed run for Barbarossa 2 so I have a complete run of AOK.

My question for anyone reading this is: At what point will it be acceptable to submit? If I complete Barbarossa 2 and submit what I have I will be about 35 (game) minutes off of my goal totals from the first page. This seems like an awful lot of time that is possible to make up. At the same time I don't know whether I will have the patience or the time to improve every one of the missions to my stated goal. It will help a lot to improve GK3, which is 19 minutes off of my goal, so represents about 50% of the total improvement I think I can make in one mission alone.

Thoughts on this? Anyone else interested in helping me out with some of the levels?

So, I got Starcraft 2 at about the start of the month, and you can sort of see what effect that has had here...

I'm about done playing the heck out of that game now though, and should be ready to return to AOK soon.  I'm hoping to do some more runs this week, and at least get a completed run for Barbarossa 2 so I have a complete run of AOK.

My question for anyone reading this is:  At what point will it be acceptable to submit?  If I complete Barbarossa 2 and submit what I have I will be about 35 (game) minutes off of my goal totals from the first page.  This seems like an awful lot of time that is possible to make up.  At the same time I don't know whether I will have the patience or the time to improve every one of the missions to my stated goal.  It will help a lot to improve GK3, which is 19 minutes off of my goal, so represents about 50% of the total improvement I think I can make in one mission alone.

Thoughts on this?  Anyone else interested in helping me out with some of the levels?

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-11-13 03:20:10 am

Gombill: 2010-09-28 02:39:48 am

2010-09-28 02:17:50 am

Got a first completed run of Barbarossa 2 (with patch) in 20:00 exactly. (In fact, it was my first recorded attempt at a run). There were errors galore, so this time is in no way optimized, but it feels great to finally have at least SOME time for every AOK level!

My strategy was to first kill Henry myself with setting him to neutral (takes about 5 min), and then attack the opponent's forces in this order:

- Transport 5 rams and some knights to attack the far right castle. These forces continue on to destroy the nearby siege workshop and the middle castle
- All knights and light cavalry to destroy the upper siege workshop.
- Train 3 or 4 more rams to destroy the castle closest to your town.

My 20:00 had the 5 rams in the first bullet point die from opposing huskarls shortly after destroying the first castle, so I had to bring the second force of rams to destroy the middle castle, wasting a lot of time.

I am almost certain there are faster ways to do this, so I will look at a couple other methods.

I also was fooling around some more on 5x speed (see JOA1 in 1:05 above). I found out that the game has some pretty fundamental issues when the speed is set that fast... I think! I will toy around with this more to see if it's just the 5x that caused it or if it's possible on normal speeds too. Abusable glitch?

EDIT: Did another run of Barbarossa 2, and Poland resigned early! I can't figure out what caused it, but they resigned suddenly and seemingly without any reason at 15:00. This is even with the patched version. I'm very confused, but I'll take it...

Got a first completed run of Barbarossa 2 (with patch) in 20:00 exactly.  (In fact, it was my first recorded attempt at a run).  There were errors galore, so this time is in no way optimized, but it feels great to finally have at least SOME time for every AOK level!

My strategy was to first kill Henry myself with setting him to neutral (takes about 5 min), and then attack the opponent's forces in this order:

- Transport 5 rams and some knights to attack the far right castle.  These forces continue on to destroy the nearby siege workshop and the middle castle
 - All knights and light cavalry to destroy the upper siege workshop.
 - Train 3 or 4 more rams to destroy the castle closest to your town.

My 20:00 had the 5 rams in the first bullet point die from opposing huskarls shortly after destroying the first castle, so I had to bring the second force of rams to destroy the middle castle, wasting a lot of time.

I am almost certain there are faster ways to do this, so I will look at a couple other methods.

I also was fooling around some more on 5x speed (see JOA1 in 1:05 above).  I found out that the game has some pretty fundamental issues when the speed is set that fast... I think!  I will toy around with this more to see if it's just the 5x that caused it or if it's possible on normal speeds too.  Abusable glitch?

EDIT:  Did another run of Barbarossa 2, and Poland resigned early!  I can't figure out what caused it, but they resigned suddenly and seemingly without any reason at 15:00.  This is even with the patched version.  I'm very confused, but I'll take it...

Beenman500

Edit history:

Beenman500: 2010-09-29 02:03:42 am

2010-09-29 02:03:28 am

Joke of all trades

lol at starcraft 2 :P, looking good, not much else to add mind Roll Eyes

Liderharen

2010-09-29 06:05:12 am

Will this be posted as IL runs?

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-09-29 11:42:36 pm

2010-09-29 06:58:31 pm

Yes, I envision it being something like Starcraft with an individual level table that people can improve level by level. In Age of Empires 2 there is no continuity from mission to mission so they are all independent tasks.

EDIT: My focus is on GK3 now, since as I mentioned before this mission has the greatest prospects for improvement. I've refined my mainland strategy since my last video of this mission, and now I can destroy the 3 mainland chinese in about 24 minutes segmented / 27 minutes in one go. Combined with the ~24 minutes I can destroy the island chinese in, this should be in the 25 minute range if I get some decent luck on the mainland in a single segment. (Compared to my current 49 minutes, an almost 50% improvement!)

LeWoVoc

2010-09-29 11:54:42 pm

You've really proven yourself to be a wizard with this game, Gombill. Please, by all means, keep it up.

Gombill

2010-10-01 02:06:53 am

There is turning out to be a lot more luck in GK3 than I anticipated, and execution of some of the parts has turned out to be very difficult. In particular the towering of yellow is turning out to be about a 10% success rate and is about 5 minutes into the run. So this means about 1 successful tower of yellow every 50 minutes. In addition my ram keeps dying against green, recently it has only been destroying the town center about 25% of the time. So between the two of these almost all of my runs end in failure without even speaking of light blue and red.

Fortunately light blue I have been destroying nearly every time, I would put this at about a 90% success rate. I can usually destroy red eventually, but it's just a matter of how long it takes. So assuming yellow and green get destroyed I should have a success, but this has not happened in 1 run yet.

I have some ideas for increasing the success rate of those enemies, in particular yellow. I've done a few preliminary tests getting both of the blacksmith archer upgrades and it decreases the difficulty of destroying yellow significantly. I'm still testing different things for making green easier.

If I focus on one enemy and ignore the other ones (but still allocate troops/resources as they should be), I can achieve the following destruction times:

Light blue 12:00
Green 21:00
Yellow 22:00
Red 23:00

So 23:00 is technically possible, but considering how difficult some of these parts are this is a long shot. I still estimate 25-26 minutes for a pretty good run.

I will post a video as soon as I have something decent to show.

There is turning out to be a lot more luck in GK3 than I anticipated, and execution of some of the parts has turned out to be very difficult.  In particular the towering of yellow is turning out to be about a 10% success rate and is about 5 minutes into the run.  So this means about 1 successful tower of yellow every 50 minutes.  In addition my ram keeps dying against green, recently it has only been destroying the town center about 25% of the time.  So between the two of these almost all of my runs end in failure without even speaking of light blue and red.

Fortunately light blue I have been destroying nearly every time, I would put this at about a 90% success rate.  I can usually destroy red eventually, but it's just a matter of how long it takes.  So assuming yellow and green get destroyed I should have a success, but this has not happened in 1 run yet.

I have some ideas for increasing the success rate of those enemies, in particular yellow.  I've done a few preliminary tests getting both of the blacksmith archer upgrades and it decreases the difficulty of destroying yellow significantly.  I'm still testing different things for making green easier.

If I focus on one enemy and ignore the other ones (but still allocate troops/resources as they should be), I can achieve the following destruction times:

Light blue 12:00
Green 21:00
Yellow 22:00
Red 23:00

So 23:00 is technically possible, but considering how difficult some of these parts are this is a long shot.  I still estimate 25-26 minutes for a pretty good run.

I will post a video as soon as I have something decent to show.

Gombill

2010-10-02 01:14:57 am

Just had a pair of depressing GK3 runs end in failure right at the very end. I'm posting one of them up here so you can see what I'm working on.

The one I'm posting was going almost flawlessly until about the 22 minute mark, when my mangonel for yellow died, and the run crashed and burned. It continued to spiral out of control as I sent all of my cavalry to yellow in a last ditch effort to destroy the TC and it failed. As one final mockery the red chinese decided not to have the decency to give up once I'd destroyed most of their town, instead running off with a handful of villagers and standing next to some deer that they can't gather without a mill. Without these two mistakes the run should have been in the 24-25 minute range. I cut this video off at 25 minutes as the bulk of my strategy is revealed by that time (and in fact the game should have been over by that time).

Any comments/suggestions?

ExplodingCabbage

2010-10-02 05:05:38 am

Fuck, that was awesome. You defeated 4 enemies with sprawling bases without building a base yourself.

What exactly are the conditions for each enemy to resign?

I don't have anything particularly helpful or insightful to say, but was there any reason not to send in your horse archers along with the mangonel against the yellow town center? Even if they would've done no worthwhile damage they could maybe at least distract enemy troops from the mangonel? Or if you just stood them there on Defensive or Stand Ground stance, would they prioritise firing at enemy troops over enemy buildings, and save the mangonel without needing to be microed?

Gombill

2010-10-02 05:46:33 pm

I will definitely bring the horse archers with the mangonel next time - it caught me off guard this time because once yellow has sacrificed most of his villagers into my tower, he doesn't have any resources to make military units. I don't know how he afforded that chu ko nu, but such a scenario will be accounted for next time.

The resign conditions are roughly the same for every enemy:

Engineers - kill all but 1 or 2 villagers (don't need to destroy TC)
Light blue - Kill most villagers, TC, and wait for 20 minutes (he won't give up before 20 minutes for some reason)
Green - Kill most villagers and TC
Red - Kill most villagers and TC
Yellow - Kill most villagers and TC

xeen

2010-10-04 02:07:53 pm

Quote from Gombill:

I don't know how he afforded that chu ko nu.

He can't. The AI cheats itself resources on higher settings (I believe starting from moderate). I'll watch the run in a few minutes, but I doubt I can give any good hints. It's been too long, and I've only played multiplayer games Smiley

Gombill

2010-10-05 02:29:41 am

Just finished a run of GK3 in 28:54, which is about 4-5 minutes behind what I'm shooting for, but it's decent (and my fastest completion to date).

There were two major mistakes in the run, and they were both costly, but not run-killing. First is that I completely forgot about the ram to destroy green's TC for too long. This part of the run (along with many others) is very time-sensitive because if green trains too many villagers he will have enough TC arrows to kill the ram before the TC goes down, which is what happened. If there are 4 or less TC arrows the ram lives but 5 or more TC arrows and the ram dies. So I had to bring some bombards to finish off the TC, and then since the TC stayed up so long I needed more mop-up time with villagers than usual.

The other mistake was letting my yellow tower get destroyed. I still got their TC, but the tower being gone meant that their villagers could be scattered anywhere (instead of sacrificing themselves into the tower). I checked a couple known villager camps and got lucky that they had enough villagers for me to kill to get them to resign.

Another minor mistake is I towered red about 20 seconds too early and the rams beat my bombards back to my towers, almost destroying them.

(All of this should make more sense in the context of watching my previously posted run)

Still nice to have a time better than 49:XX. *groans*

I will postpone further video evidence until I have a run closer to the 24-25 minute range.

Just finished a run of GK3 in 28:54, which is about 4-5 minutes behind what I'm shooting for, but it's decent (and my fastest completion to date).

There were two major mistakes in the run, and they were both costly, but not run-killing.  First is that I completely forgot about the ram to destroy green's TC for too long.  This part of the run (along with many others) is very time-sensitive because if green trains too many villagers he will have enough TC arrows to kill the ram before the TC goes down, which is what happened.  If there are 4 or less TC arrows the ram lives but 5 or more TC arrows and the ram dies.  So I had to bring some bombards to finish off the TC, and then since the TC stayed up so long I needed more mop-up time with villagers than usual.

The other mistake was letting my yellow tower get destroyed.  I still got their TC, but the tower being gone meant that their villagers could be scattered anywhere (instead of sacrificing themselves into the tower).  I checked a couple known villager camps and got lucky that they had enough villagers for me to kill to get them to resign.

Another minor mistake is I towered red about 20 seconds too early and the rams beat my bombards back to my towers, almost destroying them.

(All of this should make more sense in the context of watching my previously posted run)

Still nice to have a time better than 49:XX.  *groans*

I will postpone further video evidence until I have a run closer to the 24-25 minute range.

Gombill

2010-10-08 12:16:41 am

OK, GK3 in 24:15 < 28:54. Now that's what I'm talking about.

I used a new strategy - namely, the old one but bringing the ram along to destroy the yellow TC and break his wall open faster, and destroying green's TC with a few bombards instead. This makes both green and yellow MUCH easier to kill, bringing them both up to about a 90% success rate. I also focus on getting the light cavalry transported over as quickly as possible because my entire attack on that side of the map has to wait for them. The result is blistering fast times for red and yellow (about 22 minutes each), but a slightly slower time for green. Three of the four opponents had resigned by 22 minutes, and green resigned with not too much more trouble (I just needed to kill 1 or 2 more villagers).

Unfortunately, although I basically attained my previous goal, the bar is once again raised as I believe with the new strategy I could start pushing 22 or even 21 minutes, far below what I ever thought possible before. The key is just to get green to resign a little quicker, probably 1 extra light cavalry harassing them would do the trick, and hope that the quick destruction of red wasn't a fluke.

This one will be put up for scrutiny here. I'm loving the 162:9 Kill ratio. I haven't decided which mission I'm heading on to next after this one is finished. Probably one of the other GK missions, since they have the most room for improvement. I'm interested to see how GK4 will go, since it was one of the first missions I tried and I've learned a lot since then about running in general.

OK, GK3 in 24:15 < 28:54.  Now that's what I'm talking about.

I used a new strategy - namely, the old one but bringing the ram along to destroy the yellow TC and break his wall open faster, and destroying green's TC with a few bombards instead.  This makes both green and yellow MUCH easier to kill, bringing them both up to about a 90% success rate.  I also focus on getting the light cavalry transported over as quickly as possible because my entire attack on that side of the map has to wait for them.  The result is blistering fast times for red and yellow (about 22 minutes each), but a slightly slower time for green.  Three of the four opponents had resigned by 22 minutes, and green resigned with not too much more trouble (I just needed to kill 1 or 2 more villagers).

Unfortunately, although I basically attained my previous goal, the bar is once again raised as I believe with the new strategy I could start pushing 22 or even 21 minutes, far below what I ever thought possible before.  The key is just to get green to resign a little quicker, probably 1 extra light cavalry harassing them would do the trick, and hope that the quick destruction of red wasn't a fluke.

This one will be put up for scrutiny here.  I'm loving the 162:9 Kill ratio.  I haven't decided which mission I'm heading on to next after this one is finished.  Probably one of the other GK missions, since they have the most room for improvement.  I'm interested to see how GK4 will go, since it was one of the first missions I tried and I've learned a lot since then about running in general.

Attachment:

GK3_2415_LQ.mp4

Hugo123

2010-10-08 05:16:06 pm

Just nice. Keep going. Cheesy

I remember playing hours each mission and you do the whole campaign in a few hours. *g*

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-10-12 12:16:49 am

Gombill: 2010-10-11 11:59:16 pm

2010-10-11 10:55:51 pm

I reinstalled the game without any patches to beat Barbarossa 2 using Poland's early resign glitch. However, I'm having a hard time getting it to work. I did get it to work once off-video out of 10 tries, resulting in a final time of 6:40 (I have no idea whether faster than this is possible as well), but since then I've been unable to replicate it. I don't know what I did different that one time to get it to work, or whether it's possibly just up to luck when it decides to work. In either case, it would be appreciated to have help in this effort if anyone is up to it. I just want to know:

1) Is there something special you have to do to get Poland to resign early? What are the exact conditions?
2) If they do resign early, is it always at the same game time or is it possible to manipulate for when the resignation happens? (in other words, is there any interesting speed-runnable aspect to it?)

EDIT: I've now gotten Poland to resign at a couple different times, and these times seemed to correspond exactly to the times when I'm supposed to get a tribute from Bavaria (which are fixed times in the scenario). So I got the idea that maybe Poland resigns if Bavaria is unable to send me a tribute when they're supposed to... why it would be like this I don't know. Anyways, if I set Bavaria to neutral and kill them before 6:40, then Poland resigns every time. The time 6:40 doesn't seem to be improvable.

Just checked my 15:00 that I got with the patch. Bavaria happened to resign early in that one, so I'm almost certain that is the cause of Poland's early resignation. So apparently Poland can resign early WITH the patch as well...

As long as there's no way to improve it I might as well make it entertaining, so maybe I'll try to kill all 3 of my allies in the 6:40 that I have before the mission ends.

I reinstalled the game without any patches to beat Barbarossa 2 using Poland's early resign glitch.  However, I'm having a hard time getting it to work.  I did get it to work once off-video out of 10 tries, resulting in a final time of 6:40 (I have no idea whether faster than this is possible as well), but since then I've been unable to replicate it.  I don't know what I did different that one time to get it to work, or whether it's possibly just up to luck when it decides to work.  In either case, it would be appreciated to have help in this effort if anyone is up to it.  I just want to know:

1)  Is there something special you have to do to get Poland to resign early?  What are the exact conditions?
2)  If they do resign early, is it always at the same game time or is it possible to manipulate for when the resignation happens?  (in other words, is there any interesting speed-runnable aspect to it?)

EDIT:  I've now gotten Poland to resign at a couple different times, and these times seemed to correspond exactly to the times when I'm supposed to get a tribute from Bavaria (which are fixed times in the scenario).  So I got the idea that maybe Poland resigns if Bavaria is unable to send me a tribute when they're supposed to... why it would be like this I don't know.  Anyways, if I set Bavaria to neutral and kill them before 6:40, then Poland resigns every time.  The time 6:40 doesn't seem to be improvable.

Just checked my 15:00 that I got with the patch.  Bavaria happened to resign early in that one, so I'm almost certain that is the cause of Poland's early resignation.  So apparently Poland can resign early WITH the patch as well...

As long as there's no way to improve it I might as well make it entertaining, so maybe I'll try to kill all 3 of my allies in the 6:40 that I have before the mission ends.

ExplodingCabbage

2010-10-12 06:12:34 am

Cool, always good to get a grasp on why a mystery glitch works.

As for GK3, it looked like by the end you didn't need your horse archers any more for yellow? Couldn't you transport them across to have them take out green's villagers while your scout cavalry work on red? Or would this not help for some reason I'm missing?