Empire Earth

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-01 05:50:21 pm

2013-10-01 11:38:18 am

I can't believe no one has considered speedrunning this game yet. Sure, the gameplay isn't the fastest, but this game is riddled with pretty major glitches, so it should really be a good one.

For a compilation of the most useful glitches, see this video:

I've started looking into the English campaign, as it seems like the most interesting at first glance. Both the Greek and German campaigns start off really slow, and German has some really tough missions that'd be a pain to route. The Russian campaign would probably be pretty cool too, there are some really weird glitches with some of the cybers.

To start things off, here's a proof of concept for the first English mission:

(Recording this game can be a pain but Fraps works fine, just gotta turn off that FPS tracker :/)

Thread title:

chairbender

2013-10-02 03:07:15 pm

TwitchTV: chairbendr

This does look like it would be pretty interesting to see a run of, since the game has so much complexity from all of the different units and structures and everything. How long do you think a full run might be?

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-02 03:36:33 pm

Onin: 2013-10-02 03:34:52 pm

2013-10-02 03:30:40 pm

Every campaign has 8 missions, and it seems the ballpark for most missions is between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on complexity. The free units glitch saves a lot of time, alongside build time decrease upgrades.

I wouldn't approach this game as single-segment, IL tables seems more feasible.

chairbender

2013-10-02 04:00:49 pm

TwitchTV: chairbendr

I've created a KB page for it. Feel free to fill in details as you find stuff out!

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-02 06:01:20 pm

2013-10-02 05:58:59 pm

Some more routing!

English 2:
There are few quest triggers you can skip. You don't have to pick up the sword from the chest, just trigger the "Oh, it was a wolf" speech. You also don't have to pray in the church nor eavesdrop on the riders, but not doing so will spawn a large group of crossbowmen en route. William won't die to them, but chances are his jester will; keeping him alive is pretty important.

Most important for this mission is that you can spam-click to override triggered motion. This means you can keep all 3 sons alive, just charging through the bandits, and more importantly, you can start the battle without getting any supporters. There's one group en route that costs no time to get, so get only those.

To win the battle, station your army at the south of the battlefield, so that they only attack yellow's cavalry. This way you can easily whittle down their army and kill Guy, until you win.

English 3:
Very simple thanks to free units. Upgrade lower build time on spear cavalry, sword infantry, archers, and transport ships, then spam the fuck out of them, sail em to England, and win.

English 4:
I've had some major difficulty routing this, and I'm not satisfied with what I've got. But it works with decent speed, so meh.
To start off, send the fleet you have to the south end of yellow's fleet. Build free frigates, waypoint them to the north end. Sneak the demolisher through asap, then make your battleships pick off as many frigates as possible. You'll overrun them soon enough.

On the second part, you'll want to immediately research +2 range on the trebouchets, as well as +2 damage. While your army engages the units at the gate, your trebouchets have to sneak through together with your hero, all three of em, and focus down the four buildings. They should only run into at most a single infantryman, who can be gotten rid of easily. After the buildings are down your army can take care of the remaining units.

Make the civs build a settlement as close as possible. Start moving your army into the direction of Calais, taking care of the cavalry group on the way. Now, the best way I found to finish the mission is to build a dock (not sure if you grab the civ along before or after the stone has been mined, probably before?), build a transport, put the civ, 3 trebouchets, and Black on it, sail them to Calais's shores, park them up against the forest, and have the civ build a wall around them. This because Calais's soldiers always, always focus trebouchets first.

Waiting for the stone collection part to finish, though, takes ages, and I hate having to wait that long. But their constant production is just too much to keep up with, without having any production available myself. :/

Some more routing!

English 2: 
There are  few quest triggers you can skip. You don't have to pick up the sword from the chest, just trigger the "Oh, it was a wolf" speech. You also don't have to pray in the church nor eavesdrop on the riders, but not doing so will spawn a large group of crossbowmen en route. William won't die to them, but chances are his jester will; keeping him alive is pretty important.

Most important for this mission is that you can spam-click to override triggered motion. This means you can keep all 3 sons alive, just charging through the bandits, and more importantly, you can start the battle without getting any supporters. There's one group en route that costs no time to get, so get only those.

To win the battle, station your army at the south of the battlefield, so that they only attack yellow's cavalry. This way you can easily whittle down their army and kill Guy, until you win.

English 3:
Very simple thanks to free units. Upgrade lower build time on spear cavalry, sword infantry, archers, and transport ships, then spam the fuck out of them, sail em to England, and win.

English 4:
I've had some major difficulty routing this, and I'm not satisfied with what I've got. But it works with decent speed, so meh.
To start off, send the fleet you have to the south end of yellow's fleet. Build free frigates, waypoint them to the north end. Sneak the demolisher through asap, then make your battleships pick off as many frigates as possible. You'll overrun them soon enough.

On the second part, you'll want to immediately research +2 range on the trebouchets, as well as +2 damage. While your army engages the units at the gate, your trebouchets have to sneak through together with your hero, all three of em, and focus down the four buildings. They should only run into at most a single infantryman, who can be gotten rid of easily. After the buildings are down your army can take care of the remaining units.

Make the civs build a settlement as close as possible. Start moving your army into the direction of Calais, taking care of the cavalry group on the way. Now, the best way I found to finish the mission is to build a dock (not sure if you grab the civ along before or after the stone has been mined, probably before?), build a transport, put the civ, 3 trebouchets, and Black on it, sail them to Calais's shores, park them up against the forest, and have the civ build a wall around them. This because Calais's soldiers always, always focus trebouchets first.

Waiting for the stone collection part to finish, though, takes ages, and I hate having to wait that long. But their constant production is just too much to keep up with, without having any production available myself. :/

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-04 09:04:22 am

Onin: 2013-10-04 09:03:24 am

2013-10-04 09:02:47 am

Welp, this is pretty annoying. I have no idea how to beat mission 7. Even casually. All you get is 3 cannons, 4 cavalry, and a group of riflemen, with whom you have to literally kill hundreds of enemies. You can upgrade the cavalry to be pretty much immune to gunfire, but there are still at least 20 enemy cavalrymen against whom you don't have a single good unit. Unless I'm missing some trigger that's supposed to give me more units, I just can't beat this mission.

Either way. More routes.
English 5:
Gather the first three treasures as usual. Always escort them with at least one unit to prevent more French spawning. After the fourth treasure chest, you can dodge the ambush in the deserted village by moving past the north edge. Run the cavalry ahead so they can kill the bandits early. Far as I can see there's no way to stop the landslide, any units that are in the way are immediately teleported aside.

Research siege weapon range. Run your army to the gates, then have one unit run onto the ridge and then straight off, this confuses the enemy AI so you can easily win the battle. Meanwhile, move your trebouchets up to the far top corner by the wall; they can just barely reach the castle from that point, so you can start killing it early.

English 6:
I still have to experiment a bit with this one as its triggers are a bit weird. I'd prefer to have the betrayer guy spawn at the temple by the docks, to keep everyone close to that point, but when I manipulated that to happen he instead spawned at the north-east temple, oddly enough.

Either way, send your first units out to the temples in proper order, while Black goes to the south-west temples (infantrymen die en route, so it's a waste of time to send them there). Meanwhile, start building 5 Cataphracts, as few Trebouchets, and as many Cavalry Archers as you can fit in the food count. Have them all run to the dock, while Black runs back to London.

As soon as you're near 60 food, activate the last temple, kill the betrayer, skip through the triggers board all your units. B-line to the east, destroy all the buildings. Then, before engaging the army, first send Black and the cataphracts to the sides to kill the canons. Then just micro according to weaknesses.

If I can't find a way to pass English 7, I'll start routing Russian instead, I guess.

Welp, this is pretty annoying. I have no idea how to beat mission 7. Even casually. All you get is 3 cannons, 4 cavalry, and a group of riflemen, with whom you have to literally kill hundreds of enemies. You can upgrade the cavalry to be pretty much immune to gunfire, but there are still at least 20 enemy cavalrymen against whom you don't have a single good unit. Unless I'm missing some trigger that's supposed to give me more units, I just can't beat this mission.

Either way. More routes.
English 5: 
Gather the first three treasures as usual. Always escort them with at least one unit to prevent more French spawning. After the fourth treasure chest, you can dodge the ambush in the deserted village by moving past the north edge. Run the cavalry ahead so they can kill the bandits early. Far as I can see there's no way to stop the landslide, any units that are in the way are immediately teleported aside.

Research siege weapon range. Run your army to the gates, then have one unit run onto the ridge and then straight off, this confuses the enemy AI so you can easily win the battle. Meanwhile, move your trebouchets up to the far top corner by the wall; they can just barely reach the castle from that point, so you can start killing it early.

English 6:
I still have to experiment a bit with this one as its triggers are a bit weird. I'd prefer to have the betrayer guy spawn at the temple by the docks, to keep everyone close to that point, but when I manipulated that to happen he instead spawned at the north-east temple, oddly enough.

Either way, send your first units out to the temples in proper order, while Black goes to the south-west temples (infantrymen die en route, so it's a waste of time to send them there). Meanwhile, start building 5 Cataphracts, as few Trebouchets, and as many Cavalry Archers as you can fit in the food count. Have them all run to the dock, while Black runs back to London.

As soon as you're near 60 food, activate the last temple, kill the betrayer, skip through the triggers board all your units. B-line to the east, destroy all the buildings. Then, before engaging the army, first send Black and the cataphracts to the sides to kill the canons. Then just micro according to weaknesses.

If I can't find a way to pass English 7, I'll start routing Russian instead, I guess.

chairbender

2013-10-04 10:11:24 am

TwitchTV: chairbendr

After you are unloaded at Lisbon's docks and defeat all the enemies there, you go north east and kill most of the infantry, then Junot surrenders. Then you get control of the city and can start getting resources and build an army.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-05 06:23:02 am

Onin: 2013-10-05 06:20:04 am

Onin: 2013-10-05 06:17:18 am

Onin: 2013-10-05 05:51:05 am

Onin: 2013-10-05 05:48:14 am

2013-10-04 11:42:44 am

I didn't even see that. I'll check it out again later. Massing an army of cavalry would then be the route there, they just counter every unit.

Edit: Cavalry alone won't do the trick, cause the Serpentines in the final battle shred through them. E: Scratch that, Dragoons are amazing, make those alongside some cavalry to tank. Maybe bombards would help make quick work of the huge group of riflemen. Can easily get rid of your bronze cannons from the getgo, they're utterly useless for the whole mission.

I guess the route would be something like this:

English 7:
Upgrade cavalry armor before boarding the transports. Let the frigates tank. After unloading, destroy your cannons and let the cavalry deal with everything, then head north and have Wellesley tank some of their cavalry so your don't all die.

Build a few extra stables start massing dragoons and cavalry (an maybe bombards), hotkey the buildings so you can keep shifting waypoints. You shouldn't have to wait for any to spawn before freeing all the villages; the first battle is pretty hard but you can pull the cavalry individually to make it trivial. Afterward, send the infantry you start with up to salamanca to kill the dragoons up there while the cavalry frees everything else (might as well since you have to wait or a popcap army). Then charge past the Pyrenees and win.

English 8:
Cavalry and Dragoons. All you need. May be worth seeing whether the armies spawn earlier than the game suggests so you can win even faster.

I didn't even see that. I'll check it out again later. Massing an army of cavalry would then be the route there, they just counter every unit.

Edit: Cavalry alone won't do the trick, cause the Serpentines in the final battle shred through them. E: Scratch that, Dragoons are amazing, make those alongside some cavalry to tank. Maybe bombards would help make quick work of the huge group of riflemen. Can easily get rid of your bronze cannons from the getgo, they're utterly useless for the whole mission.

I guess the route would be something like this:

English 7:
Upgrade cavalry armor before boarding the transports. Let the frigates tank. After unloading, destroy your cannons and let the cavalry deal with everything, then head north and have Wellesley tank some of their cavalry so your don't all die.

Build a few extra stables start massing dragoons and cavalry (an maybe bombards), hotkey the buildings so you can keep shifting waypoints. You shouldn't have to wait for any to spawn before freeing all the villages; the first battle is pretty hard but you can pull the cavalry individually to make it trivial. Afterward, send the infantry you start with up to salamanca to kill the dragoons up there while the cavalry frees everything else (might as well since you have to wait or a popcap army). Then charge past the Pyrenees and win.

English 8:
Cavalry and Dragoons. All you need. May be worth seeing whether the armies spawn earlier than the game suggests so you can win even faster.

cortez

2013-10-05 02:26:37 pm

Stalker!

this looks promissing

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-06 06:08:09 pm

Onin: 2013-10-06 05:56:47 pm

2013-10-06 11:34:32 am

Mission 2 in action:

Would be faster with some better micro, pulling fewer enemies, and Gollet not being an idiot.

In addition: More routing!

Russian 1:
Grab your whole army, send them to just north-east of the main gate while you queue up a few artillery. Make them start killing towers while your civilians build 3 segments of wall, enough to place a gate and delete it. Then build mass siege factories, spam unlimited artillery, kill the towers that stand in your way, and then the capitol. Keep Grigor back to get rid of any infantry.

Russian 2:
This one is a bit RNG dependent, but I got a pretty consistent and very fast strat.
Send your heroes and black robes north to discover St Petersburg. Queue two artillery up to the north. Queue 5 tanks. Build a second siege factory. Queue 5 artillery there too.
Build a transport ship. Send your Sea Kings to purple's airports for now. Upgrade range, then damage on the artillery.
Put the heroes and black robes on the transport and send them across. Destroy yellow's two tanks, then start destroying their capitol. Meanwhile send the transport back to pick up the artillery.
On the other side, send the tanks and artillery south. Let the tanks scout and, well, tank, while the artillery destroy green's capitol.
Scout out purple's capitol with the sea kings and set your two artillery to destroy it.

If no units interfere, you'll win sub-8 minutes game time (pretty crazy for this mission <3)

Mission 2 in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixYPlafVviU

Would be faster with some better micro, pulling fewer enemies, and Gollet not being an idiot.

In addition: More routing!

Russian 1:
Grab your whole army, send them to just north-east of the main gate while you queue up a few artillery. Make them start killing towers while your civilians build 3 segments of wall, enough to place a gate and delete it. Then build mass siege factories, spam unlimited artillery, kill the towers that stand in your way, and then the capitol. Keep Grigor back to get rid of any infantry.

Russian 2:
This one is a bit RNG dependent, but I got a pretty consistent and very fast strat.
Send your heroes and  black robes north to discover St Petersburg. Queue two artillery up to the north. Queue 5 tanks. Build a second siege factory. Queue 5 artillery there too.
Build a transport ship. Send your Sea Kings to purple's airports for now. Upgrade range, then damage on the artillery.
Put the heroes and black robes on the transport and send them across. Destroy yellow's two tanks, then start destroying their capitol. Meanwhile send the transport back to pick up the artillery.
On the other side, send the tanks and artillery south. Let the tanks scout and, well, tank, while the artillery destroy green's capitol.
Scout out purple's capitol with the sea kings and set your two artillery to destroy it.

If no units interfere, you'll win sub-8 minutes game time (pretty crazy for this mission <3)

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-08 11:25:41 am

2013-10-08 11:25:33 am

English 3:

I finished routing the Russian campaign, and I gotta say I find it a lot more interesting (also faster) so I'll probably perfect that campaign before coming back to English.

Russian 3:
Take only the closest barracks and the one to the south-west (it has a Strategic hero, hence). Try to spam-click Molotov and Grigor II on yellow's gate to keep them attacking it while Grigor gets that other group of units, though it's not very consistent. Once the gate goes down, do somewhat of a stutter-step into the base, picking off some units until you reach the fortress; then just focus it down while the officer heals. Pray Grigor doesn't die.

Russian 4:
A very RNG-heavy mission to get done speedily. Rush your units to the first town, killing the army asap so you get both temples immediately. Queue a bunch of priests while researching Laser armor on all units. Kill all the barracks and universities, then send all your units to the south-east city. Waypoint the second wave of priests and onward there as well. Let the Ares destroy a segment of wall on the western city, while the rest of the army takes down the two closest towers followed by all four universities; rely on the damage shield to tank the towers to prevent casualties. Then, while the priests covert the cyber buildings, run Molotov up to the time machine while shielded.

Russian 5:
Build 3 (maybe more) cyber factories, a dock and an airport, while sending your army (except for Molotov) off to the orange base (don't attack yet). Build around 15 Ares, one Helicopter transport, a few gunships, then queue and cancel transports until your Wood is back up to ~3000. Once the Ares are almost done, start attacking Orange with your army, slip them through the gate, and focus down all the anti-air. Then slip your army of Ares and the helicopters through to the west, then north-west to the capitol. They should be enough to eliminate all the AA, the towers, then the capitol, and then some docks to make room for the buildings.
Since you barely made any buildings and barely have units left, the next phase is easy. Build a transport, then cancel a few until you have ~2500 wood. Build the time machine a little east of where your base used to be, then throw some random anti-air and towers around, transport Molly and Molotov over, and wait until you win.

Russian 6:
Build 3 free atomic bombers. Build a bunch of bazookas, AR tanks, and artillery. Waypoint the bombers to the south-east base, having one destroy the gate, one the two towers just aside it, and one the gate to the bunker. Meanwhile send your army there and finish off those buildings and kill Grigor II. Surprisingly easy.

English 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ8GvaqSE4A

I finished routing the Russian campaign, and I gotta say I find it a lot more interesting (also faster) so I'll probably perfect that campaign before coming back to English.

Russian 3:
Take only the closest barracks and the one to the south-west (it has a Strategic hero, hence). Try to spam-click Molotov and Grigor II on yellow's gate to keep them attacking it while Grigor gets that other group of units, though it's not very consistent. Once the gate goes down, do somewhat of a stutter-step into the base, picking off some units until you reach the fortress; then just focus it down while the officer heals. Pray Grigor doesn't die.

Russian 4:
A very RNG-heavy mission to get done speedily. Rush your units to the first town, killing the army asap so you get both temples immediately. Queue a bunch of priests while researching Laser armor on all units. Kill all the barracks and universities, then send all your units to the south-east city. Waypoint the second wave of priests and onward there as well. Let the Ares destroy a segment of wall on the western city, while the rest of the army takes down the two closest towers followed by all four universities; rely on the damage shield to tank the towers to prevent casualties. Then, while the priests covert the cyber buildings, run Molotov up to the time machine while shielded.

Russian 5:
Build 3 (maybe more) cyber factories, a dock and an airport, while sending your army (except for Molotov) off to the orange base (don't attack yet). Build around 15 Ares, one Helicopter transport, a few gunships, then queue and cancel transports until your Wood is back up to ~3000. Once the Ares are almost done, start attacking Orange with your army, slip them through the gate, and focus down all the anti-air. Then slip your army of Ares and the helicopters through to the west, then north-west to the capitol. They should be enough to eliminate all the AA, the towers, then the capitol, and then some docks to make room for the buildings.
Since you barely made any buildings and barely have units left, the next phase is easy. Build a transport, then cancel a few until you have ~2500 wood. Build the time machine a little east of where your base used to be, then throw some random anti-air and towers around, transport Molly and Molotov over, and wait until you win.

Russian 6:
Build 3 free atomic bombers. Build a bunch of bazookas, AR tanks, and artillery. Waypoint the bombers to the south-east base, having one destroy the gate, one the two towers just aside it, and one the gate to the bunker. Meanwhile send your army there and finish off those buildings and kill Grigor II. Surprisingly easy.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-10-15 01:47:02 pm

2013-10-15 01:43:11 pm

Russian campaign is finished. Playlist of all missions here:

Unless there's any major time savers to be found still, I'll be submitting it in this form to SDA. And then to see whether it's English or German next.
Total game time: 63:59

cortez

2013-10-20 03:54:02 am

Stalker!

wow really cool. especially the 2nd level. which sucked pretty hard

Onin

2013-10-22 12:48:08 pm

Considering the English campaign is both annoying and less easily broken, I decided to aim for the German campaign next. But I'm hitting a bit of a roadblock :/

German 1:
I think the fastest way to go through it is to photograph the first base, then the one north-west, further west, and then south of that one. This puts you in a good position to just run straight past enemy lines via the south, while your army causes as much distraction as possible.

German 2:
Make submarines. Send them to his ports. Win automatically. Really long and boring mission :|

German 3:
Build a mass of artillery, along with 2 additional siege factories, and some extra distraction units (tanks and prussian cavalry of some sort). Send the first few units you have to the stronghold directly south, kill the tower just in front of the entrance, and then every building. Send the spotter balloon to the fortress furthest away from you for another free kill.
For the last fortress, block off the siege factories with houses to prevent him from making any artillery there. Then I just gotta see how large my army needs to be to survive assaulting that fortress. And meanwhile spam a bunch of fighters so that richhofen squad dies faster (though I don't think anything is faster than just leading them into my AA guns)

German 4: (The roadblock)
Build bombers, artillery, tanks, and partisans(?), while your civs go south to build a dock. Transport your divs, escorted by the first non-artillery units, to the other side and then south-west. There's a perfect spot in between the trees where you can build an airport. Send all bombers you have done to this location.

The bombers can destroy the south-west capitol. A very small army can destroy the closest one. But I have no idea how to get past the 'frontline' to reach the third. The combo of massive amounts of artillery and a variety of infantry/AT guns means any army I have kinda just dies. And if it doesn't, for some reason there are HUNDREDS of bombers that will fuck your shit up any time of day. The worst part is, I HAVE to clear this area because there's no way to get my civs to the ruins of the capitols otherwise. Killing them is not too difficult, I could just make another airport on the east side and do the same trick. But how am I gonna get my civs to safely build the required barracks? :/

Considering the English campaign is both annoying and less easily broken, I decided to aim for the German campaign next. But I'm hitting a bit of a roadblock :/

German 1:
I think the fastest way to go through it is to photograph the first base, then the one north-west, further west, and then south of that one. This puts you in a good position to just run straight past enemy lines via the south, while your army causes as much distraction as possible.

German 2:
Make submarines. Send them to his ports. Win automatically. Really long and boring mission :|

German 3:
Build a mass of artillery, along with 2 additional siege factories, and some extra distraction units (tanks and prussian cavalry of some sort). Send the first few units you have to the stronghold directly south, kill the tower just in front of the entrance, and then every building. Send the spotter balloon to the fortress furthest away from you for another free kill.
For the last fortress, block off the siege factories with houses to prevent him from making any artillery there. Then I just gotta see how large my army needs to be to survive assaulting that fortress. And meanwhile spam a bunch of fighters so that richhofen squad dies faster (though I don't think anything is faster than just leading them into my AA guns)

German 4: (The roadblock)
Build bombers, artillery, tanks, and partisans(?), while your civs go south to build a dock. Transport your divs, escorted by the first non-artillery units, to the other side and then south-west. There's a perfect spot in between the trees where you can build an airport. Send all bombers you have done to this location.

The bombers can destroy the south-west capitol. A very small army can destroy the closest one. But I have no idea how to get past the 'frontline' to reach the third. The combo of massive amounts of artillery and a variety of infantry/AT guns means any army I have kinda just dies. And if it doesn't, for some reason there are HUNDREDS of bombers that will fuck your shit up any time of day. The worst part is, I HAVE to clear this area because there's no way to get my civs to the ruins of the capitols otherwise. Killing them is not too difficult, I could just make another airport on the east side and do the same trick. But how am I gonna get my civs to safely build the required barracks? :/

Onin

2013-11-02 02:48:15 pm

With pressure from a certain verifier, I've made some improvements to the last two Russian missions.

Change of Heart: I'm not sure why I never tried siege weapons on this mission. I guess I just knew artillery would die before they were able to do much damage, and didn't trust Pegasus canons. Turns out they're actually really strong, and unlike artillery, they have higher sight radius than towers, making them optimal for this mission. Destroying the Cuba base goes a lot faster, and you can start leaving faster as well (optimally with only 4 Ares instead of 6 from the first factory). New time is now 24:09, and it's a lot more tense at the end as well Cheesy

Bad Case of Deja Vu: I have no excuse, I'm just bad. Rerouted the civ upgrades to get more units, added a howitzer canon as failsafe to when the bombers somehow don't manage to destroy a gate, and just made HE tanks instead so I get cheaper upgrades. New time is 4:15.

Still no progress on German 4. :/

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2013-12-07 12:37:37 pm

2013-12-07 12:37:16 pm

Update time.

I got pretty much the whole German campaign routed. Only the 6th mission needs optimization, but my theory should work fine.

German 4:
Civs build a dock. Mass howitzers and tanks, build 2 medics and 6 bombers. 2 transports send it all over. The first 2 howitzers and 1 tank can destroy the first capitol, while the civs build an airfield somewhere south-west. Transfer the bombers to the new airfield, keep transporting stuff. Send the first two howitzers over to destroy a few artillery. Medics are to keep civs healthy and to 'occupy' buildings.
Once I have a good army, start building the first barracks and bombing the third capitol while marching through the middle of the map. While the tanks and howitzers clear out the second city, send all but one civ to the third, moving them north past the cliffs. Build the first and third barracks, then once EVERYTHING at the second base is dead, build a barracks there.

German 5:
Build one siege factory, queue up a bunch of civilians, then 5 artillery at each factory. Build a dock, make two transports. Resource-glitch 5 more artillery at both factories, upgrade speed and attack. Also on transports.
Send 5 civs and 4 artillery over to Poland, position them at the capitol. Artillery kills tanks with ground-target, civs build some random tanks and antiair guns. Send 6 civs to Denmark, build tanks and AA there too. Send 5/6 civs and 4 artillery to France (via Denmark), position them near the capitol, build some random towers. Send every other artillery up to Denmark. Ground-target any units anywhere else that get in the way.
As soon as the AA at Denmark is ready, send the civs to the north of the capitol, and if the coast is clear, declare war on Poland and France and destroy their capitols. If civs die, reset. Once enough (about 10+) artillery are ready at Denmark, declare war and destroy their capitol. Immediately replace every capitol with a settlement and populate it.

German 6:
Build a second airfield. Abuse the hell out of resource glitch to build (in order of importance):
Shitloads of submarines
Shitloads of bombers
A few battleships
Send the submarines to the western waters, primarily destroying convoys until you get enough (how much is enough?) to destroy the home fleet. Once you have enough, send bombers to destroy docks, and battleships to destroy naval yards (do you even have to destroy those?). Boring and annoying mission.

German 7:
Mass civilians. Build one transport. Send the closest battleship to the north-east to scout the Thames. Send some spare fighters to scout out Buckingham. (Upgrade bombers? Not sure if necessary,) send one airfield full of bombers to destroy a segment of wall by the palace, then the other airfield full to destroy the palace itself. Load up ~10 civs (pretty high mortality rate, 5 won't cut it), send them over the thames, unload them just next to the palace, build a settlement on the edge and populate it. Totally conquered England.

If anyone has any suggestions for Ger6, I'm glad to hear em. Destroying the fleet is mandatory to win the mission, and nothing really cheeses naval combat. Subs seem the best idea because they trade even with frigates and can't be attacked by planes or battleships. But it's not fast. :/

Update time.

I got pretty much the whole German campaign routed. Only the 6th mission needs optimization, but my theory should work fine.

German 4:
Civs build a dock. Mass howitzers and tanks, build 2 medics and 6 bombers. 2 transports send it all over. The first 2 howitzers and 1 tank can destroy the first capitol, while the civs build an airfield somewhere south-west. Transfer the bombers to the new airfield, keep transporting stuff. Send the first two howitzers over to destroy a few artillery. Medics are to keep civs healthy and to 'occupy' buildings.
Once I have a good army, start building the first barracks and bombing the third capitol while marching through the middle of the map. While the tanks and howitzers clear out the second city, send all but one civ to the third, moving them north past the cliffs. Build the first and third barracks, then once EVERYTHING at the second base is dead, build a barracks there.

German 5:
Build one siege factory, queue up a bunch of civilians, then 5 artillery at each factory. Build a dock, make two transports. Resource-glitch 5 more artillery at both factories, upgrade speed and attack. Also on transports.
Send 5 civs and 4 artillery over to Poland, position them at the capitol. Artillery kills tanks with ground-target, civs build some random tanks and antiair guns. Send 6 civs to Denmark, build tanks and AA there too. Send 5/6 civs and 4 artillery to France (via Denmark), position them near the capitol, build some random towers. Send every other artillery up to Denmark. Ground-target any units anywhere else that get in the way.
As soon as the AA at Denmark is ready, send the civs to the north of the capitol, and if the coast is clear, declare war on Poland and France and destroy their capitols. If civs die, reset. Once enough (about 10+) artillery are ready at Denmark, declare war and destroy their capitol. Immediately replace every capitol with a settlement and populate it.

German 6:
Build a second airfield. Abuse the hell out of resource glitch to build (in order of importance):
Shitloads of submarines
Shitloads of bombers
A few battleships
Send the submarines to the western waters, primarily destroying convoys until you get enough (how much is enough?) to destroy the home fleet. Once you have enough, send bombers to destroy docks, and battleships to destroy naval yards (do you even have to destroy those?). Boring and annoying mission.

German 7:
Mass civilians. Build one transport. Send the closest battleship to the north-east to scout the Thames. Send some spare fighters to scout out Buckingham. (Upgrade bombers? Not sure if necessary,) send one airfield full of bombers to destroy a segment of wall by the palace, then the other airfield full to destroy the palace itself. Load up ~10 civs (pretty high mortality rate, 5 won't cut it), send them over the thames, unload them just next to the palace, build a settlement on the edge and populate it. Totally conquered England.

If anyone has any suggestions for Ger6, I'm glad to hear em. Destroying the fleet is mandatory to win the mission, and nothing really cheeses naval combat. Subs seem the best idea because they trade even with frigates and can't be attacked by planes or battleships. But it's not fast. :/

Onin

2014-01-11 06:38:40 pm

Small update:

I found a way to load campaign maps into the scenario editor, allowing full knowledge of the game's triggers and victory conditions. Simply go into a campaign, save the game, drag that save into the Scenarios map and rename it to a .scn, then load it in the editor, easy as pie.

It's not really helping my German routing much yet, as the game doesn't seem too prone to weirdness in its triggers, but there's some potential for small improvements.

Onin

2014-02-10 08:29:54 am

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOjj6J-b5LkTxytOJEd9pxaGw2_ocavdU

Playlist of the full German campaign.

If anyone has suggestions for (significant) optimizations to any of these levels, throw 'em at me. Would hate to run into the same issue as the previous run, where only a verifier bothered pointing out better strats. If nothing, then I'll be submitting this soon.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-06-26 02:26:58 pm

2014-06-26 02:26:26 pm

So I've been pretty quiet in here, but I came back to the remaining two campaigns. Found a few better optimizations to the English campaign so far, but more important is the Greek campaign.

Cause I finished that one.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOjj6J-b5LkRQgXg35GAvVo5zINvFB7Xs

Zergreenone

2015-10-11 04:49:57 am

Made for the fastest controller down thread:

Empire Earth Russian Mission 1 "The Crocodile" last input 1:20 after loading. Victory is 26:25 after loading (39:16 ingame time).

For some reason the video is slightly flickery, possibly because I had to use screen capture as opposed to window capture or game capture. Also I suck at typing.

Uses a very different strategy to the one used in the actual route

I think that you could possibly sneak a citizen (pyotr) into the enemy base using this strategy in an ordinary speedrun.

- Getting a temple would be useless, because you cannot convert capitols, they have a university in their base, and you cannot build prophets in this part of the campaign.

- Building an airport would be useless, because you can build an airport outside of the enemy base (in the northeast, so that it faces southwest) (I think this strategy is faster than the current sda route).

- However, getting a siege factory or 3 may be beneficial. According to EE heaven, from one citizen, you can build an airport and an a-bomber in 220 in-game seconds. According to EE heaven, siege factories take 55 seconds to build, as do howitzer cannons, so you can build 3 seige factories and from them 6 howitzer cannons in the time it would take to build 1 a-bomber from a single citizen. There is convenient space for 2 of them in the enemy base, but if they are attacked while under construction they only finish when they reach full hp, slowing it down slightly.

- Building towers may also be useful.

Also, note that the potato truck has 60 gun armor, providing a useful shield for a building citizen, and the citizen can enter and leave it at will.

Made for the fastest controller down thread:

Empire Earth Russian Mission 1 "The Crocodile" last input 1:20 after loading. Victory is 26:25 after loading (39:16 ingame time).

[hidden]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIZKm57qU0&feature=youtu.be[/hidden]
For some reason the video is slightly flickery, possibly because I had to use screen capture as opposed to window capture or game capture. Also I suck at typing.

Uses a very different strategy to the one used in the actual route

I think that you could possibly sneak a citizen (pyotr) into the enemy base using this strategy in an ordinary speedrun.

- Getting a temple would be useless, because you cannot convert capitols, they have a university in their base, and you cannot build prophets in this part of the campaign.

- Building an airport would be useless, because you can build an airport outside of the enemy base (in the northeast, so that it faces southwest) (I think this strategy is faster than the current sda route).

- However, getting a siege factory or 3 may be beneficial. According to EE heaven, from one citizen, you can build an airport and an a-bomber in 220 in-game seconds. According to EE heaven, siege factories take 55 seconds to build, as do howitzer cannons, so you can build 3 seige factories and from them 6 howitzer cannons in the time it would take to build 1 a-bomber from a single citizen. There is convenient space for 2 of them in the enemy base, but if they are attacked while under construction they only finish when they reach full hp, slowing it down slightly.

- Building towers may also be useful.

Also, note that the potato truck has 60 gun armor, providing a useful shield for a building citizen, and the citizen can enter and leave it at will.

Onin

2015-10-11 05:16:27 am

That's pretty cool.

Zergreenone

2015-10-16 04:19:04 pm

Empire Earth Russian Mission 1 "The Crocodile" in 7:10 IGT (1:20 less than current sda record)

I will probably have to get fraps sometime to record without the flicker.

I sneak pyotr into the enemy base and build some siege weapons to kill the capitol quickly.

Also gets the bonus civ points you receive from allying with all 3 cities, which can be used in later missions.

Zergreenone

Edit history:

Zergreenone: 2015-10-16 09:29:17 pm

2015-10-16 08:45:31 pm

Empire Earth Russian Mission 2 "Novaya Russia" in 5:31 IGT (1:36 less than current sda record)

I get nuclear subs to take out the top-left base with vision granted from sea-kings, spam heavy mortars to take out the top base, and nuke the rebels into the ground.