Age Of Empires 2 Speed Run

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-10-12 03:39:11 pm

Gombill: 2010-10-12 01:35:42 pm

2010-10-12 01:30:54 pm

You're right, there's really no reason I keep the horse archers around after yellow is defeated. They were there until yellow resigned because after destroying the TC there's usually still a few villagers lurking around that need to be hunted down. But after that they could absolutely help with red. Probably it would take 3 or 4 minutes to get them there but it's worth it to have any extra villager-killing help for red I can get.

I also tried having some fun with Barbarossa 2, and I successfully killed all 3 of my allies with a minute to spare before 6:40, but for some reason if I set one or both of the "feeder" allies to enemy (which is nice since they don't reciprocate and set me to enemy, plus my units auto-attack them), then Poland waits an extra second until 6:41 to resign. So to have the most fun but achieve the best time I think I would have to kill both of them when set to neutral, which is much harder. Annoying. I do have a 6:40 recorded with just destroying green (Bavaria). I'm interested now to patch the game again and see if this whole thing works with the patch I've used for the rest of the game (which I suspect it will).

You're right, there's really no reason I keep the horse archers around after yellow is defeated.  They were there until yellow resigned because after destroying the TC there's usually still a few villagers lurking around that need to be hunted down.  But after that they could absolutely help with red.  Probably it would take 3 or 4 minutes to get them there but it's worth it to have any extra villager-killing help for red I can get.

I also tried having some fun with Barbarossa 2, and I successfully killed all 3 of my allies with a minute to spare before 6:40, but for some reason if I set one or both of the "feeder" allies to enemy (which is nice since they don't reciprocate and set me to enemy, plus my units auto-attack them), then Poland waits an extra second until 6:41 to resign.  So to have the most fun but achieve the best time I think I would have to kill both of them when set to neutral, which is much harder.  Annoying.  I do have a 6:40 recorded with just destroying green (Bavaria).  I'm interested now to patch the game again and see if this whole thing works with the patch I've used for the rest of the game (which I suspect it will).

13013

(user is banned)

2010-10-12 01:57:25 pm

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

can you upload them to youtube?

Gombill

2010-10-14 01:27:36 am

Patched the game again, in Barbarossa 2 Poland still resigns at 6:40 if I kill green (Bavaria), my ally. So there's no reason to switch to the other patch just for that.

I was reading over some of the patch notes, though, and some things may actually be useful for playing on the unpatched version. TCs take less time to build in unpatched, which would help on the few levels I have to build up from scratch, but they have longer range, which would hurt in any level that I'm trying to destroy a TC. The two biggest things in the unpatched versions are the following two tricks:

In unpatched, you can 'delete' trees by chopping them down and then building a wall on top of them, then deleting the wall. This would provide a faster way to get through walls in, for example, WW5 and BARB6.

Also the patch notes mention something about fishing ships being able to build things other than fish traps. Depending on how this works, if fishing ships are allowed to help construct wonders, it would speed up SAL6 and BARB4. Anyone know anything about this glitch?

I'm not sure how much these two would help, but my guess is not enough to warrant me going back to play the whole game again unpatched. There are probably other things (like the TC thing) that would hurt me anyways and bring the time back up. As an example, the TC having less range is huge in SAL2, when the pirates' TC having just 1 more range would drastically increase the difficulty of the mission (by allowing the TC to outrange my galleys), adding at least a few minutes of game time.

@13013: What is "them"? Which runs do you want uploaded to youtube? And why on youtube as opposed to attached to these posts?

Patched the game again, in Barbarossa 2 Poland still resigns at 6:40 if I kill green (Bavaria), my ally.  So there's no reason to switch to the other patch just for that.

I was reading over some of the patch notes, though, and some things may actually be useful for playing on the unpatched version.  TCs take less time to build in unpatched, which would help on the few levels I have to build up from scratch, but they have longer range, which would hurt in any level that I'm trying to destroy a TC.  The two biggest things in the unpatched versions are the following two tricks:

In unpatched, you can 'delete' trees by chopping them down and then building a wall on top of them, then deleting the wall.  This would provide a faster way to get through walls in, for example, WW5 and BARB6.

Also the patch notes mention something about fishing ships being able to build things other than fish traps.  Depending on how this works, if fishing ships are allowed to help construct wonders, it would speed up SAL6 and BARB4.  Anyone know anything about this glitch?

I'm not sure how much these two would help, but my guess is not enough to warrant me going back to play the whole game again unpatched.  There are probably other things (like the TC thing) that would hurt me anyways and bring the time back up.  As an example, the TC having less range is huge in SAL2, when the pirates' TC having just 1 more range would drastically increase the difficulty of the mission (by allowing the TC to outrange my galleys), adding at least a few minutes of game time.

@13013:  What is "them"?  Which runs do you want uploaded to youtube?  And why on youtube as opposed to attached to these posts?

xeen

2010-10-14 03:05:39 am

Fishing boat building is quite easy actually: http://ageofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_The_Age_of_Kings#Fishing_boat_bug

Gombill

2010-10-14 03:22:12 am

Thanks for the info on the fishing boats. If individual levels can be run on different patches, this is definitely exploitable for the 2 missions I mentioned before, SAL6 and BARB4. Maybe a few others.

On that note, the original message I got from Mike on this game's patches was "Use whatever patch is the fastest." His comment didn't really specify whether the whole game should be run using the same patch or not. It would make sense to use the same patch on the whole game, but the Starcraft IL tables used different patches per level, so there is a precedent that says otherwise.

At this point in time I'm just going to run it all on the patched version and if different patches for individual levels are later on confirmed to be allowed, a few levels will be improvable.

Got a 22:51 < 24:29 on GK5 after a little more optimization, but 22:00 should be possible with great execution. I will hold off on the video a little longer because for some reason Fraps has been dropping frames recently, making the video appear choppy. I found out after leaving the game that windows had been downloading an update, so this was probably the culprit (at least I hope that's all it was).

Thanks for the info on the fishing boats.  If individual levels can be run on different patches, this is definitely exploitable for the 2 missions I mentioned before, SAL6 and BARB4.  Maybe a few others.

On that note, the original message I got from Mike on this game's patches was "Use whatever patch is the fastest."  His comment didn't really specify whether the whole game should be run using the same patch or not.  It would make sense to use the same patch on the whole game, but the Starcraft IL tables used different patches per level, so there is a precedent that says otherwise.

At this point in time I'm just going to run it all on the patched version and if different patches for individual levels are later on confirmed to be allowed, a few levels will be improvable.

Got a 22:51 < 24:29  on GK5 after a little more optimization, but 22:00 should be possible with great execution.  I will hold off on the video a little longer because for some reason Fraps has been dropping frames recently, making the video appear choppy.  I found out after leaving the game that windows had been downloading an update, so this was probably the culprit (at least I hope that's all it was).

ExplodingCabbage

2010-10-14 04:59:10 am

Quote from Gombill:

On that note, the original message I got from Mike on this game's patches was "Use whatever patch is the fastest." His comment didn't really specify whether the whole game should be run using the same patch or not. It would make sense to use the same patch on the whole game, but the Starcraft IL tables used different patches per level, so there is a precedent that says otherwise.

Those Starcraft ILs happened way before Mike's time. In fact, he's since ruled (for Kane's Wrath, but I see no significant differences between that case and this one) that you can't use different patch versions for different levels in an IL run. The ability to use different versions is grandfathered for Starcraft because there's nothing we can do about it now.

From this post: http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/cc3_kanes_wrath34.html#cc3_kanes_wrath34

Quote from mikwuyma:

Use the version that's fastest for the majority of the levels. I assume for this game that would be 1.0.

I am not going to allow different versions for the same run or make different versions different categories because:

-It would be a pain to keep track of everything.

-Weird inconsistencies like unit costs and build times.

-We have enough categories already.

[quote="Gombill"]On that note, the original message I got from Mike on this game's patches was "Use whatever patch is the fastest."  His comment didn't really specify whether the whole game should be run using the same patch or not.  It would make sense to use the same patch on the whole game, but the Starcraft IL tables used different patches per level, so there is a precedent that says otherwise.[/quote]

Those Starcraft ILs happened way before Mike's time. In fact, he's since ruled (for Kane's Wrath, but I see no significant differences between that case and this one) that you can't use different patch versions for different levels in an IL run. The ability to use different versions is grandfathered for Starcraft because there's nothing we can do about it now.

From this post: http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/cc3_kanes_wrath34.html#cc3_kanes_wrath34
[quote="mikwuyma"]Use the version that's fastest for the majority of the levels. I assume for this game that would be 1.0.

I am not going to allow different versions for the same run or make different versions different categories because:

-It would be a pain to keep track of everything.

-Weird inconsistencies like unit costs and build times.

-We have enough categories already.[/quote]

13013

(user is banned)

2010-10-14 12:17:23 pm

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

Quote from Gombill:

@13013: What is "them"? Which runs do you want uploaded to youtube? And why on youtube as opposed to attached to these posts?

i cant download them all and i want all of your runs on youtube.

Gombill

2010-10-14 05:38:22 pm

I'll put them on youtube when I can get around to it.

Oh, cool! I just found out that Saladin 6 (the build a wonder and defend it level) can be shortened! Instead of building the wonder you can get the game to end by making all 5 enemies resign. This may sound like a pain, but in my opinion it can certainly be done in under 33 minutes (which is about the minimum for doing it the other way). There are two things which make this sound possible to me:
1) You start with a LOT of resources, enough to get a good army together quickly.
2) The enemies ALL behave much easier UNTIL you start building the wonder. Thus if you never start the wonder, most of them dink around not doing much and shouldn't be that hard to wipe out.

I will begin the testing on what the exact resign conditions are for the enemies and try to put together a plan to kill them all. Initially I'll shoot for something around 25 minutes, but we'll see how that changes once I've actually started making practice runs.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2013-06-26 12:18:46 am

2010-10-14 11:26:19 pm

GK5 in 20:59 < 22:51.

I've tried this a ton of times and finally got what I think is very close to the optimal strategy with good execution, barring what I have discussed earlier in this topic about possibly beating it without imperial age. The most annoying thing about running this mission is all of the tricky and low percentage parts are at the very end, which makes for a lot of heartbreaking 9 and 10 minute failures, unlike some other missions where most of the restarts are in the first 2 minutes.

The run is attached here, take a look.

As for the objectives, you have to "capture" all 3 enemy flags by standing a military unit next to them to win. Although it is not in your original mission objectives, you must also build 3 castles in the flagged area in the middle of the map, and they must all be standing at the same time. There is no way around this objective, it is necessary, so you have to get 2000 total stone stockpiled, making this mission quite long.

Almost everything executed flawlessly in this attempt. It sucked to have to pull a villager off of stone mining to repair the wall, about 50% of the time I can keep my wall intact using just the 2 mangudai and mangonel. It turns out this didn't matter as the 3rd castle made it up just barely in time. If it had taken 7 seconds longer to construct one of the other two castles would have died first. The other thing that really sucked big time was the enemy tower living near the end with 30 HP. It would have taken precious time to wait for the trebuchets to fire another volley so I took it down with the huskarls. I severely underestimated the damage they would take finishing off the tower, but fortunately 2 of them ended up being enough to storm the castle at the end.

EDIT: Video obsoleted, as imperial age is no longer necessary on GK5.

GK5 in 20:59 < 22:51.

I've tried this a ton of times and finally got what I think is very close to the optimal strategy with good execution, barring what I have discussed earlier in this topic about possibly beating it without imperial age.  The most annoying thing about running this mission is all of the tricky and low percentage parts are at the very end, which makes for a lot of heartbreaking 9 and 10 minute failures, unlike some other missions where most of the restarts are in the first 2 minutes.

The run is attached here, take a look.

As for the objectives, you have to "capture" all 3 enemy flags by standing a military unit next to them to win.  Although it is not in your original mission objectives, you must also build 3 castles in the flagged area in the middle of the map, and they must all be standing at the same time.  There is no way around this objective, it is necessary, so you have to get 2000 total stone stockpiled, making this mission quite long.

Almost everything executed flawlessly in this attempt.  It sucked to have to pull a villager off of stone mining to repair the wall, about 50% of the time I can keep my wall intact using just the 2 mangudai and mangonel.  It turns out this didn't matter as the 3rd castle made it up just barely in time.  If it had taken 7 seconds longer to construct one of the other two castles would have died first.  The other thing that really sucked big time was the enemy tower living near the end with 30 HP.  It would have taken precious time to wait for the trebuchets to fire another volley so I took it down with the huskarls.  I severely underestimated the damage they would take finishing off the tower, but fortunately 2 of them ended up being enough to storm the castle at the end.

EDIT:  Video obsoleted, as imperial age is no longer necessary on GK5.

13013

(user is banned)

2010-10-15 06:36:23 pm

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

Quote from Gombill:

I'll put them on youtube when I can get around to it.

Hope it wont be 5 years from now lol jk

xeen

Edit history:

xeen: 2010-10-15 07:09:33 pm

2010-10-15 07:08:49 pm

@13013: I really don't see your issue here. The runs are available, and every movie player, even the really, really crappy ones can stream HTTP. And there are half a dozen ways to get the video links in under 30 seconds.

@Gombill: Also, if you really upload them elsewhere, use Vimeo. At least they provide decent video quality Smiley

13013

(user is banned)

2010-10-15 07:50:23 pm

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

Quote from xeen:

@13013: I really don't see your issue here. The runs are available, and every movie player, even the really, really crappy ones can stream HTTP. And there are half a dozen ways to get the video links in under 30 seconds.

@Gombill: Also, if you really upload them elsewhere, use Vimeo. At least they provide decent video quality Smiley

to be more organized cause i don't want to half to download every single one when new ones come everyday and it just seems better

Gombill

2010-10-15 08:17:48 pm

I hope that this run will be completed and submitted within a couple of months, so probably the best thing to do is just to deal with the current situation for a while longer and be patient. Then everything will be easily downloadable from the SDA game page.

As a temporary solution I can make links on the first page to current run videos available, or put a note for which page in here the video is attached to. I'd rather not go and upload them all somewhere else if I can avoid it though.

13013

(user is banned)

13013

Edit history:

13013: 2010-10-16 05:36:38 pm

2010-10-16 05:36:19 pm

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

Quote from Gombill:

As a temporary solution I can make links on the first page to current run videos available, or put a note for which page in here the video is attached to. I'd rather not go and upload them all somewhere else if I can avoid it though.

ok do that as it helps thsnks

Gombill

2010-10-17 03:17:50 pm

OK, first page has links to the videos I've attached. The filefront links do not work so I did not link to them from the first page. If you want to see any of those particular times I can attach them to posts and link to them on a case-by-case basis. Also some of the video times do not agree with my best times, this is either because the improvement was small enough that I didn't think it warranted an extra video attachment, or because I expected to be able to beat the time again soon.

My main running focus is on SAL6 at the moment, because as I mentioned before, it has prospects of improving by 5 or more minutes because I can defeat all 5 enemies on the map instead of building the wonder and defending it.

Early on in my look at the level, it appears the best strategy is going to be what I call "Camp the camps". All of the enemies start with virtually no army. And 3 of the 5 start with or shortly build lumber camps at which I can post a small group of mamelukes or cavalry archers to pick off villagers. The enemy keeps sending villagers to their deaths because enemies in AOE2 have a preset "gathering ratio" of percentage of villagers gathering each resource. Usually the wood gathering ratio is around 30%, so if all of their wood choppers are viciously murdered, they use what villagers they have left to try to balance the ratios again. As this process continues, eventually all they have left is one food gatherer and maybe one gold gatherer (if the gold ratio is higher than the wood ratio). All the new food goes to making new villagers, so the economy is effectively hosed. Then trebs can finish the job.

All 5 opponents have the same resign condition, which is losing all villagers and having army size 3 or less.

There are 3 issues. #1, the camp-camping is very time sensitive, since allowing any opponent to get too strong is bad news. #2, the yellow opponent in particular is micro-intensive, because he creates some teutonic knights before his economy completely collapses, and they require special attention because they're so strong. All of them require some micro though. #3, red is difficult to gauge because unlike the other opponents who are very predictable, he tends to build his lumber camp in a random location. Some locations kill the run because there are too many towers nearby. So my idea is just to camp yellow, white, and blue, and attack red a little more conventionally. Light blue is a pansy and never gets any land military the whole mission, so I can leave him for last.

Practice runs will be up here as soon as any somewhat successful recorded ones happen. Probably the first order of business will be some marco-polo segmented runs to get some initial ideas for timing and nail down the locations.

OK, first page has links to the videos I've attached.  The filefront links do not work so I did not link to them from the first page.  If you want to see any of those particular times I can attach them to posts and link to them on a case-by-case basis.  Also some of the video times do not agree with my best times, this is either because the improvement was small enough that I didn't think it warranted an extra video attachment, or because I expected to be able to beat the time again soon.

My main running focus is on SAL6 at the moment, because as I mentioned before, it has prospects of improving by 5 or more minutes because I can defeat all 5 enemies on the map instead of building the wonder and defending it.

Early on in my look at the level, it appears the best strategy is going to be what I call "Camp the camps".  All of the enemies start with virtually no army.  And 3 of the 5 start with or shortly build lumber camps at which I can post a small group of mamelukes or cavalry archers to pick off villagers.  The enemy keeps sending villagers to their deaths because enemies in AOE2 have a preset "gathering ratio" of percentage of villagers gathering each resource.  Usually the wood gathering ratio is around 30%, so if all of their wood choppers are viciously murdered, they use what villagers they have left to try to balance the ratios again.  As this process continues, eventually all they have left is one food gatherer and maybe one gold gatherer (if the gold ratio is higher than the wood ratio).  All the new food goes to making new villagers, so the economy is effectively hosed.  Then trebs can finish the job.

All 5 opponents have the same resign condition, which is losing all villagers and having army size 3 or less.

There are 3 issues.  #1, the camp-camping is very time sensitive, since allowing any opponent to get too strong is bad news.  #2, the yellow opponent in particular is micro-intensive, because he creates some teutonic knights before his economy completely collapses, and they require special attention because they're so strong.  All of them require some micro though.  #3, red is difficult to gauge because unlike the other opponents who are very predictable, he tends to build his lumber camp in a random location.  Some locations kill the run because there are too many towers nearby.  So my idea is just to camp yellow, white, and blue, and attack red a little more conventionally.  Light blue is a pansy and never gets any land military the whole mission, so I can leave him for last.

Practice runs will be up here as soon as any somewhat successful recorded ones happen.  Probably the first order of business will be some marco-polo segmented runs to get some initial ideas for timing and nail down the locations.

13013

(user is banned)

2010-11-06 09:09:11 am

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

Can you also link/upload the filefront videos here as well and then post them for the missing videos if they fill in the missing levels, don't need to post the videos from filefront that where beaten and posted here or posted here already.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2010-11-08 12:42:35 am

2010-11-08 12:41:59 am

Sorry for the very long delay without any news, I've been extremely busy as of late. A couple of 5 and 6 AM homework sessions. Plus I've gotten addicted to Jiano's Ustream of Mario64 120-star attempts. Things have finally cleared up for what looks like a few days, so there will be some running.

The first thing on the menu is still to do some save/load practice runs on Saladin 6, with the idea of killing all the opponents instead of building the wonder. The goal will be 30 minutes initially for a single-segment run, but I will shoot for 25 in the save/load to see if this is possible. I will record while I'm saving/loading and trim/stitch together the ones that I end up keeping into a single video of successful segments. This will give an idea of what I'm up to (I acknowledge this cannot be submitted though).

Likely as far as submission, for a rough estimate I will be submitting as soon as the 10-min and under missions are within 15 seconds of my goal, the 10-20 min missions within 30 seconds of my goal, and the 20+ missions within a minute. Under this rule there are 14 missions out of 31 to improve before submission.

I will check out the filefront videos and take care of that tomorrow, 13013.

Sorry for the very long delay without any news, I've been extremely busy as of late.  A couple of 5 and 6 AM homework sessions.  Plus I've gotten addicted to Jiano's Ustream of Mario64 120-star attempts.  Things have finally cleared up for what looks like a few days, so there will be some running.

The first thing on the menu is still to do some save/load practice runs on Saladin 6, with the idea of killing all the opponents instead of building the wonder.  The goal will be 30 minutes initially for a single-segment run, but I will shoot for 25 in the save/load to see if this is possible.  I will record while I'm saving/loading and trim/stitch together the ones that I end up keeping into a single video of successful segments.  This will give an idea of what I'm up to (I acknowledge this cannot be submitted though).

Likely as far as submission, for a rough estimate I will be submitting as soon as the 10-min and under missions are within 15 seconds of my goal, the 10-20 min missions within 30 seconds of my goal, and the 20+ missions within a minute.  Under this rule there are 14 missions out of 31 to improve before submission.

I will check out the filefront videos and take care of that tomorrow, 13013.

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2011-12-08 09:41:22 pm

2010-11-08 09:17:51 pm

I'm just re-posting those filefront videos here. Only the AOK levels for now - I will post the 3 Conquerors videos I put on filefront once I start working on those campaigns. Several of the AOK times have been improved since I put them on filefront anyways.

File contents are self-explanatory from the names. Links will be made to the front page as well.

EDIT: Barbarossa 5 Obsoleted.

Attachments:

JOA4_1231_LQ.mp4

SAL3_604.mp4

Gombill

Edit history:

Gombill: 2011-12-08 09:42:00 pm

Gombill: 2010-11-09 02:46:15 am

2010-11-09 02:38:12 am

Slight digression from the plan of Saladin 6:

Spent some time today nailing down Barbarossa 3 pretty solidly. It should now be finalized in terms of the eventual submission.

Barbarossa 3 in 4:08 < 4:26

Really only 2 flaws in the run, both of them very minor. First flaw is that the knight got out of the transport in front instead of behind, so it blocked the transport for a fraction of a second. The other one is that the monks were standing there at the gate for a game second or two because the timing with the knight attack wasn't quite spot on. Everything else perfect, especially the quick conversion of the cathedral. Couldn't have asked for better there.

EDIT: Barbarossa 3 Obsoleted.

13013

(user is banned)

13013

Edit history:

13013: 2010-11-09 10:33:20 am

13013: 2010-11-09 10:33:19 am

13013: 2010-11-09 10:33:18 am

13013: 2010-11-09 10:33:17 am

2010-11-09 10:32:32 am

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

thank you gombill keep up the great work love the speed run

13013

(user is banned)

2010-11-09 10:37:18 am

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

WW7, JOAN2, SAL1, SAL4, SAL5, GK4 & BARB2 still need videos lol

Gombill

2010-11-09 04:37:28 pm

Most of the ones you listed there I have runs that I am not happy with and I want to improve them before posting a video. If you are impatient to see one in particular I can post it up, but otherwise I want to just wait until I have something I'm actually proud of (the SAL4 video I have right now, for example, was just a practice run that went decently but 45 seconds can easily be saved from it). My current times for WW7, JOAN2, and GK4 are just a disgrace and they are not worth posting.

13013

(user is banned)

2010-11-09 05:25:46 pm

Yes Mario Riding A Pole

yes im impatient lol

bmn

Edit history:

bmn: 2010-11-09 05:41:30 pm

2010-11-09 05:40:25 pm

Wat up Gombill. If I were any good at RTS games, or could even think of anything to improve that you haven't already seen yourself, then I'd have contributed some before now, but as it is I've been lurking this topic since you started it and it's all good stuff. You've destroyed missions I spent hours and hours scraping Easy mode completions of.

Very much looking forward to eventually having a full set of levels.

Gombill

2010-11-11 03:13:23 am

It suddenly struck me while I was thinking about something else that I never tried Rams on Barbarossa 6 instead of trebuchets to take down the final enemy's walls. After giving it some testing, I discovered that rams destroy walls at about the same rate as trebuchets, but they train 13 game seconds faster, and I can construct the siege workshops about 30 seconds faster than the castles. On top of that, 3 workshops is much easier to afford than 3 castles. So in theory there should be about 40 possible game seconds saved on this mission beyond my previous time of 8:40.

In a few quick practice runs I was already able to lower the time for this mission to 8:30, my original goal, but I am resetting the goal to 8:00.

One of the annoying things about Barbarossa 6 is that getting a great time is entirely up to luck. Namely, you are given 6 paladins, and in my strategy I use them to destroy a wall piece. It is theoretically possible to get all 6 of the paladins huddled around the wall piece hitting it at once, but most of the time it just doesn't happen. As few as 4 can end up saturating the area around it. Getting all 6 hitting the wall piece saves roughly 20 seconds, so it is substantial. Same goes for the rams attacking the wall piece near the end, many seconds can hinge on 3 rams all hitting a single wall piece in a timely manner, and this is much easier said than done because ram pathing in this game is just hideous.

EDIT: Got a pretty smooth run using rams and all 6 paladins hitting the first wall. Barbarossa 6 in 7:46! I believe I can still even cut off another 10-15 seconds because an allied unit got in the way of my rams and only let me attack the final wall with 2 rams instead of 3! I will post this run up anyways. I think nearly a minute of improvement is worth the extra look at it.

It suddenly struck me while I was thinking about something else that I never tried Rams on Barbarossa 6 instead of trebuchets to take down the final enemy's walls.  After giving it some testing, I discovered that rams destroy walls at about the same rate as trebuchets, but they train 13 game seconds faster, and I can construct the siege workshops about 30 seconds faster than the castles.  On top of that, 3 workshops is much easier to afford than 3 castles.  So in theory there should be about 40 possible game seconds saved on this mission beyond my previous time of 8:40.

In a few quick practice runs I was already able to lower the time for this mission to 8:30, my original goal, but I am resetting the goal to 8:00.

One of the annoying things about Barbarossa 6 is that getting a great time is entirely up to luck.  Namely, you are given 6 paladins, and in my strategy I use them to destroy a wall piece.  It is theoretically possible to get all 6 of the paladins huddled around the wall piece hitting it at once, but most of the time it just doesn't happen.  As few as 4 can end up saturating the area around it.  Getting all 6 hitting the wall piece saves roughly 20 seconds, so it is substantial.  Same goes for the rams attacking the wall piece near the end, many seconds can hinge on 3 rams all hitting a single wall piece in a timely manner, and this is much easier said than done because ram pathing in this game is just hideous.

EDIT:  Got a pretty smooth run using rams and all 6 paladins hitting the first wall.  Barbarossa 6 in 7:46!  I believe I can still even cut off another 10-15 seconds because an allied unit got in the way of my rams and only let me attack the final wall with 2 rams instead of 3!  I will post this run up anyways.  I think nearly a minute of improvement is worth the extra look at it.

Attachment:

BARB6_746_LQ.mp4