Vykan12

Base Pelleas with forged thunder 3HKOes most enemies with 80-90 display hit. Cool, but are we so short on quality units that this has any meaningful impact? For instance, Tibarn's army has Ranulf. At base level he has 36 atk and doubles everything besides SMs. This is good enough for a 2RKO on most enemies. A --/13 Zihark can do the same with a silver sword, let alone a quality weapon. Base level Lucia with a forge can also pull 2RKOes. And pretty much any reject unit can pull 3HKOes. I mean base Calill with a spirit dust can pull off what Pelleas is doing. Hell, Base Nealuchi can 3RKO warriors and SMs in this map. And there's plenty of rejects that can do >= Pelleas' chip so long as they're not neglected the entirety of the game. I suppose Pelleas does come for free, but otherwise he's extremely useless. If you have so much as 2-3 filler units (and you will- Tauroneo, Ranulf, Lucia, DONE), Pelleas isn't saving turns with regards to taking out reinforcements. In 4-5 now he's taking a slot we could've used for something useful like more Reyson shovers, and now we have even better combat fillers in Bastian and Volke. In 4-E he's worse than Oliver as a staffbot, and that's assuming we throw him a promotion item that carries a large opp. cost. Even if we don't count his deployment against him there he's next to useless. I see Kurthnaga's a tier below him. I'd take 5 def in 4-E-5 over Pelleas' contributions any day, even if it involves Kurth being sacrificed to an AOE.

Since C28 keeps getting brought up, here's a 2 turn I found: It's by no means 100% reliable- Untransformed Reyson gets attacked twice and the flier in question gets attacked by 2 dragons. But it is possible. 2/.375 = 5.3333.... (see dondon's post about FE6 HM Efficiency, because it's just about the same reason why you need to do a bunch of risky strategies in FE6; the alternatives take too many turns.) On top of the fact that you don't necessarily need to train Elincia to pull it off, she can use Rescue at base and you can shove the shit out of everyone. I’m not sure where you’re coming up with this 37.5% value. I looked through some draft logs and found this: There’s also that achieves a 2 turn. I’m going to be using these as reference.First we must account for Ike’s chances of dying on turn 1. In Leopold’s vid, Ike has 23 hp after the Ashnard hit, and with 103 avo/28 def, the enemies he faces are pulling 0-6 real hit and taking multiple hits to kill him. The only real threats are a dragon, who attacks Elincia instead, and Bryce (16 damage at 49 hit). Basically, his odds of dying are negligible. On turn 2 I’m going to assume Ashnard attacks Ike before any other enemy, which means a fully healed Ike will survive the hit and go into resolve hp every single time. I guess Ashnard could miss, but he has 84 display hit (95 true). All that’s left to consider is Ike’s odds of killing Ashnard with wrath + resolve. According to my HM enemy stats, Ashnard has 0 luck while Berserk Ashnard has 10 luck. Max skill Ike has 13 crit, and his crit bonus from Ragnell is cancelled out by Ashnard’s daunt skill. Factoring in wrath, we have: Display crit on Ashnard: 63 crit Display crit on Berserk Ashnard: 53 crit On both forms, Ike only needs to land 1 crit out of 2. Odds of killing Ashnard: 86.31% Odds of killing Berserk Ashnard: 77.91% Cumulatively, the odds of 2 turning are then 0.8631*0.7791 ~= 67%. That’s almost twice as likely as the probability you listed. Now, if we 3 turn, that gives us 2 turns to handle Berserk Ashnard, which increases the odds of success to ~86%. I’ll assume a 4 turn is 100% reliable. Using a probability weighted average, our turn count comes out as follows: 2(0.67) + 3(0.33*0.86) + 4*(0.33*0.14) = 1.34 + 0.85 + 0.18 = 2.37 turns. Again, this is a far cry from the 5.33 turns from the N/P approach. Well, with the new probability of 2 turning it would come out to 2/0.67 ~= 2.99 turns, which is still over-represented.

It was fun duking it out with you Aku Chi, but I've spent like 10 straight hours writing enormous posts, so I'm clearly getting derailed from life again. I need to stay away from this place for at least another month.

Aright, after watching a video from Elincia's HM PT, I'm a believer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my6JrrER7kY&feature=player_embedded From her approach though, the bishop is safe without rescue-dropping of any kind. And, since the enemies are so quickly contained, the bishop is free to heal every other turn. It wouldn't be wise to rescue-drop any playable units anyway, since that makes 2 units lose their player phase (the rescuee and the dropper) when enemies are clearly in range. So, I'm still pretty convinced Fiona's 3-6 value is quite literally nothing. I'd still put her above Astrid for guarding a ledge in 3-13. That is, unless this 2-3 Devdan drop is somehow significant. Honestly who cares?

I only see 1 chokepoint, namely the blue circle to the north. You can block that area with 2 units, but they'll get assaulted from behind, so they need to move forward into the swamp to benefit from enemies losing most of their movement. I suppose you could use the NPCs as shields too, but that falls apart as soon as one of the NPCs guarding Fiona dies, leaving her open for a 1RKO. Please enlighten me as to what strategic marvel would protect Fiona without it being a burden to the team.

Not in my experiences. Micaiah and Laura have the advantage of being able to enter the swamp, which reduces 9 move enemies to 1-2. Fiona, on the other hand, is stuck on the island you start on, open to ambush from all directions. Unless I'm proven otherwise, I'm certain there's no reasonable way to keep her alive. And even if there was, she's causing such a strategic inflexibility that it's bound to outweigh whatever minuscule value she offers in rescue-dropping. Does she even have her full movement in 3-6?

Jesus, haven't posted here in forever. You mind linking to these posts? I couldn't find them from viewing your profile. Rescue dropping in 3-6? How do you prevent Fiona from getting attacked? I guess she could do a sacrifice drop, but then she's gone forever. Not that anyone would miss her I honestly have no idea how you could get Fiona to survive 3-6. Someone make a video of it

Oh hell yeah. C10: Mordy saves you from waiting through an entire enemy movement cycle, which is like 5 turns. C11: Saves a turn C12: Nothing C13: Allows for 1st turn Astrid recruitment C14: Saves a turn C15: Saves a turn C16: Saves a turn C17-1: Facilitates the 2 turn C17-2: Saves a turn C17-3: Nothing C17-4: Saves a turn C18: ? C19: Saves a turn C20: Facilitates a 2-3 turn C21: ? C22: Nothing C23: Saves a turn C24: Saves a turn C25: ? C26: ? C27: ? C28: Saves a turn C29: Saves a turn Wherever I put a ? mark, he’s either saving a turn or greatly facilitating the strategy for the min. turn count. So, smiting saves us anywhere from 16-21+ turns. Efficiency isn’t all about turn count, though, right? Well, smiting is 100% reliable, the only contingency is whether the smitten unit can hold their end of the bargain. If anything, Mordecai should be higher than where he currently is. I can’t imagine any form of efficient PT that doesn’t use Mordecai. I mean, for nothing other than a unit slot, he’s giving people like Marcia and Reyson +2 move on turn 1, sometimes +2 on turn 2 as well (such as in C29). Some things to consider though: If Mordecai’s smite can be replaced by multiple shoves for the same effect, then his contribution is pretty nil. This is rarely the case though, since only laguz (and maybe generals?) can shove Marcia. Also, the more shoves a strategy requires, the less credit Mordecai gets. And, the rescue staff goes a long way towards diminishing smite usefulness in lategame.

Most of what I wrote was for personal reference, I was sick of trudging through pages upon pages of posts trying to figure out how exactly Marcia was assumed to be used optimally. Some of my conclusions may be off, but that’s for others to point out I guess. Regardless, I don’t see how it’s not particularly relevant when I assert that Marcia doesn’t need an energy drop, dracoshield(s), or full guard use beyond bypassing ballistae. Also, the ability to build a team around Marcia is paramount in determining her opp. cost. The faster a team can build around her, the lower her opp. cost becomes. I can’t really prove that you can quickly build a team around Marcia through theorycrafting (well I probably could but it would take forever to prove exp gains), but I can point to Mercenary Raven, Radiant Dawn, and Gergeshwan’s efficiency PTs as evidence. Looking at Mercenary Raven’s log: C25: Level HP Str Mag Skl Spd Lck Def Res [b]Ike 11.70+ 52 25 9 24 26 17 21 14 Marcia 13.79+ 42 23 10 25 26 17 14 20 Oscar 06.55+ 40 23 4 18 21 8 18 7 Jill 11.35+ 42 27 7 25 23 9 22 6 Tormod 08.20+ 36 6 23 22 20 15 13 19[/b] Reyson 06.01+ 24 2 11 12 16 18 2 22 [b]Kieran 04.58+ 40 22 5 19 21 10 19 6 Boyd 04.50+ 48 23 1 16 19 8 10 10 Soren 02.58+ 32 4 21 23 20 11 6 23[/b] Muarim 09.26+ 45 23 4 17 18 11 15 8 [b]Makalov 03.75+ 38 20 4 16 21 12 19 7 Astrid 10.61+ 39 20 8 24 27 17 20 13[/b] That’s a core of 10 trained units, or 8 non-fliers. I can’t vouch for how efficient Merc Raven’s play is, but comparing his log to Gergeshwan’s at the end of C17, he’s behind by 13 turns. However, 3 turns are lost recruiting Jill, 1 lost from an unoptimal strategy in 17-2, and 6 lost stealthing C10. The other places where he loses turns are also a result of unoptimal strategy, not collateral damage from having an underdeveloped team. All to say, I see clear evidence that a team can be quickly built around Marcia to account for the instances where Marcia (+ Reyson/shovers) alone isn’t enough. Another thing to consider is the sheer amount of low maintenance units the game provides. Titania, Tanith, Muarim and Geoffrey are ready-made combat units that reduce the need for BEXPing people like Makalov into glory. And, as I said before, earlygame units like Ike, Oscar and Boyd have access to enough CEXP to be low maintenance in their own right. My point being, you already have a huge pool of useful units that don’t require extensive BEXP to achieve combat ownage. Think of the progression for a second. Marcia eats up 1600 BEXP in order to save 6 turns in C12. Initially she’s using 100% of your BEXP, which seems like a huge investment. However, by the time you reach C18, you’ve gained 3310 BEXP. After only 6 chapters, that 100% investment has been reduced to 32%, and Marcia’s been saving us numerous turns on the way (particularly C12, 15 and 17). That remaining 64% of BEXP goes a long way towards developing new frontliners. On top of that, chapters 13 and 17-3 are 17 turns worth of free CEXP for your developing team. The idea is, Marcia’s strain on resources over the long term is actually quite low. Initially her investment is extremely high, but she immediately reaps a worthy reward (6 turns in C12). As she continues to match or improve turn counts for subsequent chapters, your resource pool is also building, to the point where the only distinguishable difference between Marcia’s team and Oscar’s team is the raw advantages of Marcia’s flight. It would be another matter entirely if BEXP were scare (it only is in the short term), units were difficult to raise (they really aren’t, especially if you use an optimal core of 6-8 units), or if Oscar’s team were actually saving turns at certain points compared to Marcia’s team (never the case). Ballistae aren’t that dangerous with the full guard equipped. They vary from 18-22 atk, but Marcia is already 20/8-20/10 when they start showing up, and thus has 44hp/16 def with a seraph. She laughs at that 2-6 damage. Which bosses are particularly dangerous for her? C21: She won’t be facing Kasatai (the brave lance dude), and Ena’s only doing 9-10 damage if Marcia equips the laguzguard (no real opp. cost since there are no other laguz in the map). C22: Marcia’s not attacking Schaeffer. C23: Marcia’s actually ideal against Petrine since her flame lance targets res. Only taking 12 damage. C24: Arrive chapter, Marcia’s not facing any bosses. C25: Gromell does even less damage to Marcia than Petrine (10 damage). C26: Bertram has 34 atk targeting res, he gives everyone problems. However, Marcia’s got options. With spirit water, she can reduce his damage from 17 to 10 (3HKO to a 5HKO). Probably a more ideal solution is a Tanith support, which reduces his hitrate to ~14 real. C27: By now Marcia’s probably maxed out her level, giving her 50 hp/18.5 def with a robe. She’s only 3RKOed by Hafedd, more if any of his brave lance hits miss. C28: The dragons and other laguz are more threatening than the boss himself. C29: Ashnard is Ike’s problem. In addition, 95% of bosses don’t move, and you’ll likely have cleared the enemies near the throne the enemy phase before Marcia is in range of the boss. She can take an elixir and ORKO bosses on enemy phase. She can drop Ike besides the boss, and clean up next phase so Ike can seize same-turn. If Mist is in physic range, Marcia can get healed enough to survive a boss hit, which is all she needs to do if Ike is ready to seize. Really, only C28 seems to be a major issue for Marcia. But, if she plays a crucial role in the chapter (eg/ ferrying Ike directly to the boss), she’ll be the ideal recipient for the laguzguard. Tiger hits are reduced from 12 damage to 6 (a scratch on her 50 hp), while lesser enemies like cats and hawks are basically tinking her. Dragons are a huge problem for everyone (45 atk 2-3 HKOes your entire army more or less), so you have to exercise caution no matter who’s involved in your strategy. I’ll grant that being able to take an extra dragon hit creates some huge tactical flexibility. Having laguz scattered around other lategame chapters just means Marcia has to be more cautious. This is very similar to how FE10 Haar has to be weary of thunder mages, this doesn’t stop him from being arguably the best unit in the game. And Marcia’s laguz flaw is minor in comparison (doesn’t face crit rates, can take more hits, has more avoid, laguzguard > nullify since Haar wants to be using other skills like celerity). And, just as an interesting aside, let’s look at how Marcia’s “fragile” durability compares to other revered units. 20/15 Marcia: 47 hp/17 def/72 avo (+ seraph robe) 20/10 Kieran: 43 hp/19 def/54 avo 20/10 Boyd: 53 hp/14 def/ 51 avo 20/15 Astrid: 40 hp/18 def/66 avo 20/18 Titania: 47 hp/18 def/63 avo 20/8 Ike: 43 hp/18 def/61 avo 20/10 Oscar: 43 hp/19 def/55 avo 20/15 Tanith: 35 hp/16 def/72 avo Vs Kieran: 4 hp and 18 avo vs 2 def. Granted, Kieran has better WTC with axes (Marcia rarely wants to use swords b/c of lowered atk) and the possibility of sol, but otherwise I’d argue Marcia is more durable. Vs 100 hit, Kieran faces 43 real hit, whereas Marcia faces 16 real hit. If we take supports into account, this favors Marcia more than Kieran because of the 2 RN system. Doing a simple N/P argument, if Marcia is 4HKOed, she can take 4/0.16 = 25 hits on average. Kieran is at best taking an extra hit, but 5/0.43 ~= 12 hits. I know durability doesn’t work this way, the worst case scenario carries more weight than best case, but this should illustrate the impact of her avoid lead. An alternative argument is to look at chance of death. Dying in 4 hits Kieran: 0% Marcia: 0.07% Dying in 5 hits Kieran: 1.47% Marcia: 0.3% Dying in 6 hits Kieran: 5.6% Marcia: 0.7% Vs Boyd: Aside from a 4 hp deficit, Marcia wrecks him in terms of durability. Vs Astrid: Even without the robe Marcia has superior durability. Vs Titania: Pretty evenly matched. Vs Ike: Also evenly matched. With A Oscar, he pretty much ties Marcia’s avo with A Tanith. Vs Oscar: Identical case to Kieran, except Oscar has ways to skyrocket his avo. Though, even with A Ike, he only has 13 more avo than unsupported Marcia, and she can cover that deficit with as little as B Tanith. Also, Tanith’s more realistically going to be in range of her support partner. Vs Tanith: More durable even without a robe. Really, the only units who stomp Marcia from a concrete durability standpoint are Jill, Makalov and maybe Muarim. Generals are too slow to matter, Mordecai is a smite bot in a LTC, Haar doesn’t have the offence to support his durability, people like Zihark/Neph/Stefan certainly aren’t more durable, and that pretty much covers every meaningful unit in the game. So, with only a seraph robe and an inflated level from bosskills/excess CEXP, she only decisively loses durability against 3 units, 2 if Jill isn’t recruited. So, either 90% of the high/top units are fragile as glass, or Marcia’s durability is pretty w1n. If an enemy is causing her problems, it’s causing pretty much everyone problems. All this isn’t even taking into account Marcia’s impressive res (18 res at 20/15). This is a 5-10 point advantage against most viable frontline units. While mages are not as common, they are problematic in their own right (1-2 range, high hit, effective vs laguz, etc). Actually, they’re often more common than laguz even in lategame maps (C28 being an exception). So yeah, Marcia doesn’t need dracoshields to pull off LTC stunts. I’d send them her way anyway because IMO it’s a very worthwhile investment (reducing risk factors for your MVP), but I’m trying to reduce the opp. costs involved since you’re highly fixated on that. You’re missing the point. You’re still looking at Marcia = Jill as their usage with favoritism cancelling out due to opportunity cost. Then, making the net benefit of each character based on their differences. Let me try and put this as clearly as possible. Dondon’s arguing that if we have Marcia = Marsha, the net benefit of favoring 1 of the 2 fliers isn’t 0. Sure, the presence of Marsha will reduce both characters’ ranks on the tier list, but not to the point where the advantage of favoring one of the fliers is rendered to nil. There’s still some hard to define value X that both units carry in being able to trivialize the 2nd half of the game. Same thing for Jill vs Marcia, but now we have to account for their differences. Jill’s usefulness: X + (a-b) Marcia’s usefulness: X + (c-d) Where (a-b) = Jill’s relative advantage to Marcia, and (c-d) is Marcia’s relative advantage to Jill. From your description, you’re still regarding X=0, which gives: Jill’s usefulness: (a-b) Marcia’s usefulness: (c-d) The difference is very important when comparing the fliers to other units. Cool idea. Now, once the boots come into play, whoever has 10 move is far and away the ideal recipient for other resources (full guard, seraph robe, forges, etc). Let’s assume we give Jill the boots in this example. From this point onwards, there’s a net benefit to plowing Jill with resources, even if we attribute the cost directly to how 8 move Marcia would improve. I think this actually goes a long way to making this value X tangible. Jill takes the boots: 0 net benefit because of Marcia’s existence. Jill takes further resources: Net benefit, even if Marcia is considered the opportunity cost. And, as Jill takes more resources, the next resource she takes will have a higher net benefit because Marcia has less resources available to her to become ridiculous. For example, if Jill has the boots and the full guard, the net benefit of Jill taking a forge on top of that is increased, since Marcia is already relegated to 8 movement and has to avoid ballistae. Under those conditions, the benefit of giving Marcia a forge is pretty minimal. If we follow this to its logical end, once Jill has all the resources she needs, Marcia doesn’t have any resources at her disposal to emulate Jill’s performance. She’s simply going to be an 8 move flier with reasonable combat. Jill’s net benefit is going to be significant, because the alternative is a non-favored Marcia trying to pull Jill’s crazy stunts, which is going to cost turns. It’s kind of like time-based opportunity cost. At the time Jill takes the boots, her net benefit is 0 b/c of Marcia. But, once that decision is made it’s as though the boots don’t exist and Jill started the game with 10 move all along. It no longer weighs against her when factoring future opportunity costs. Each new chapter is a snapshot where only the resources currently present are considered. What Oscar can do in C28 with the boots is irrelevant because our decision branch gave it to Jill a long time ago, and we’ve already factored the cost by considering what Marcia can do with the boots for the remainder of the game. My point wasn’t about deployment, I think Narga was more clear with expressing what I was trying to say: Consider the compromise of using Oscar in earlygame but dropping him around C11-15. Obviously it would be a stupid decision, albeit one with minimal cost. Not only is Kieran making up for what we’re missing out on with Oscar, so is Titania, Makalov and Astrid, in whatever combination you want to use them. # of possible paladin teams without Oscar: 5 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 = 31 You don’t even remotely have this kind of freedom with flier utility. For a large portion of the game, you have 2 choices: Marcia or Marcia + Jill. Adding Tanith and Haar doesn’t change much since all the important resources have already been distributed (the opp. cost is way too steep to be saving stat boosters until the 2nd half of the game), meaning they can’t emulate what Marcia or Marcia + Jill are doing. Whatever way you want to spin it (dynamic resource allocation, favoritism inertia, intuition, etc), the fact that less units can satisfy a pivotal role (super flier) than a lesser role (high move frontliner) bodes in their favor.

Here's a monster post theorizing Marcia's turn count savings vs the optimal alternative. I tried to be as non-lazy as possible, watching videos, looking at maps and thinking at length to derive conclusions. Note: I’m assuming Jill isn’t recruited to avoid all “Jill = Marcia clone” type argumentation. C11: Without Marcia, the most efficient strategy is to have Titania charge for the arrive square. This costs a turn, possibly 2 if the enemies to the west get too congested. C12: Without a flier the boss won’t even reach your boat until turn 8. Right off the bat Marcia’s saving you 5-6 turns. C13: Using fliers increases tactical flexibility, but doesn’t really impact the turn count. C14: You lose 1 turn by replacing Marcia with a paladin. And, I question the reliability of the Marcia 2 turn to begin with. Let’s not throw Marcia an energy drop, a forge, and god knows what else to save 1 turn when opportunity cost is at the forefront of this debate. C15: Marcia basically has to be used here if you want a single digit turn count. This gives us the option of having an untrained Marcia ferry some powerhouse unit to Muarim. Perhaps 20/-- Ike with a laguzslayer? I think Soren could pull an efficient kill too, for what it’s worth. This is less ideal than Marcia attacking directly since the dropped unit loses their player phase attack. So while Marcia can 2RKO for a 2 turn clear, the dropped unit must 1RKO to do the same. And if said unit fails to 1RKO, we not only lose a turn, but other laguz might die as well, costing us BEXP. C16: I’d say this is the first chapter where Marcia is completely replaceable. Her only unique benefit here is in being able to get shoved/smited, which might save a turn if she ferries Ike or something. C17-1: At least 1 turn is lost without Marcia. C17-2: Unless a non-flier can be smitten through the swamp area, you’ll have to make your way around. Even with a 10 move paladin, it takes 5 turns just to reach the arrive square, unless I miscounted. (See map here) So, that’s 3 turns saved. C17-3: Set turn count. C17-4: I guess Marcia could ferry a unit to kill Oliver. However, this untrained Marcia would lose 3 movement (-1 for no promo, -2 for no boots) so at least 1 turn is lost. C18: Since this map is mostly indoors, it’s plausible that Marcia doesn’t really affect the turn count. C19: Because of Marcia’s potential to be shoved/smitten, it’s possible to 1 turn this map reliably so long as she can 1RKO Homasa with a 1-2 range weapon. She needs to be 20/8 or higher to double, but at that level she cleanly 1RKOes with a forged javelin. I’m pretty sure there must be a way to 2 turn with a non-flier without getting attacked by Naesala. If you advance all your units on turn 1, on turn 2 a juiced up 10 move Oscar + Reyson should be able to manage a 1-range attack on Homasa. C20: Counting squares, it takes 4 turns for a 10 move non-flier to reach the boss. With Reyson, it might take 3 if you’re lucky (enemies getting in the way, etc). Having an untrained Marcia ferry someone through the mountains is too dangerous with all those wyverns protecting it. C21: Non-flier path -> 65 spaces. Flier path -> 51 spaces. That’s a minimum of 2 turns saved. C22: Flying is literally useless here. C23: While an untrained Marcia can get units past traps, having her charge for the throne must save at least 2 turns. C24: While the optimal path to the arrive square doesn’t require any flying, Marcia still probably saves a turn by shoves/smites. Also, for what it’s worth Mist saves a turn by using the rescue staff. Has the rescue staff been discussed at all? You can get 9 uses out of it thanks to the hammerne. C25: This map is so flier friendly even Haar’s getting deployed here. The fact that pallies have their movement gimped makes every flier count even more. I suppose if Haar and Tanith ferried uber units before going into serious combat, you could cover most of the map pretty quickly. C26: Flying isn’t very special here. C27: Flying is useless here. C28: Bypassing that forest in the middle of the map saves a lot of time. C29: Flying doesn’t affect the 2 turn strategy. =============================================================== With the exception of ~5 chapters, having some form of flying juggernaut will save you at least 1 turn compared to the next ideal choice, and in some cases saves a tremendous amount of turns (C12 and 17 come to mind). You have to admit it’s rather incredible that Marcia’s saving 10-15 turns in her first 7 chapters (disregarding C9-10). Is Oscar saving 10-15 turns in the entirety of his earlygame? I highly doubt it. From C18 onwards Tanith is available, but she’s already losing significant value from not having the boots. The cost of saving the boots for her is incredibly high, I mean you’re losing minimum 4 turns by doing that (C16, C17-1, C17-2, C17-4). That’s a bigger cost than recruiting Jill for pete’s sake. And, as Mercenary Raven said, there won’t be many stat boosters for her since saving stat boosters carries a hefty opp. cost. Even overlooking that, Tanith’s going to need a seraph robe to cover an hp deficit (I believe Merc Raven covered that), and she only has 16-20 str, depending on her level. In comparison, Marcia has 16 str at 20/1, possibly 17 thanks to a str boosting band. And, if we push for Marcia to have 20 str for the fancy C14 bosskill, she’ll have capped str by the time Tanith joins. 16 str vs 23, that’s a 14 damage difference per double. If Marcia needs forges all the time, Tanith’s offence must be screwed. P.S. She does have reinforce, but she can make use of that without being trained :) Well, I’m already sick of this topic so that’s all I have to say. I’d be more interested talking about Mist/Elincia’s placement since I have a feeling the rescue staff hasn’t been discussed.

The root of our disagreement is in the weight of the opportunity cost of raising Marcia, so I’m going to focus on that. I'll start with a detailed breakdown of how I'd expect Marcia to be used in a LTC run, and what resources that entails. ===================================================================================== It seems the most efficient way to beat POR is to powerhouse Marcia as soon as you possibly can (namely C11 since C10 is stealth), then build the rest of your team from there. After this initial surge of resources, Marcia’s not touching BEXP ever again. This means from C12 onwards the rest of the team is free to use BEXP as they please. Just to be thorough, let’s look at Marcia’s combat in C11. Marcia 20/1 (steel lance): 32 hp/26 atk/20 AS/14 def/13 res/50 avo She does 68% damage to knights, but otherwise ORKOes the rest of the map. Defensively, the most atk she’ll face is ~20, which is a 6HKO. Even more impressive, Mackoya only 3HKOes her with an iron bow. As for hitrates, she’s seeing around 35-50 display, though the enemies with higher hitrates tend to do 0-2 damage to her. Overall, that is pretty dominant. In C12, Marcia gets around 30 exp per crow kill, and ORKOes them. The bosskill is also basically hers. Following Gergeshwan’s LTC video, she gets around 1.5 levels here. What’s even better is that a less efficient clear will only net Marcia more CEXP since she’s the only person who can intercept crows before they land ship. In C13, Marcia’s still ORKOing the entire map, except for halberdiers. Average enemy atk has also decreased, so she’s even more durable here than she was in C11. Since this chapter has a set turn count, this chapter is a perfect opportunity to build the other members of your team. Available BEXP: ~500 (C11) + 300 (C12) = 800 This amounts to roughly 7-8 levels for any unpromoted unit you want to develop. Note that units like Ike, Oscar and Boyd are already reasonably well trained from earlygame CEXP. Even with the intent of developing your team in this chapter, I’d say Marcia can still get a fair share of exp from crowkills, particularly the ones on the last turns that spawn in an area non-fliers cannot reach. Gergeshwan already has her at 20/4, so I’ll go with that. C14, the boss has 50 crit so I’m not sure what would be considered a reliable LTC strategy. My first guess is that Marcia will use an iron sword, at which point she faces 28 display hit (16 real hit). That’s a 16-30% chance of death, depending on whether she takes 1 round or two. IMO those odds are pretty ****y so I’d probably have Titania and another paladin hit the boss with a hand axe first. This means there’s enough turns to train the remainder of your army a bit. C15, Marcia easily ORKOes Muarim with the laguz lance. She should easily be 20/5 now. C16, I can see Gergeshwan has a promoted Oscar and Kieran, Ike’s level is maxed out, Titania is --/8, that’s already 4 quality units besides Marcia that have been raised off the BEXP we’ve accrued since C12. I’ll stop here, but I don’t really see why Marcia needs all the stat boosters you mentioned. For instance, Marcia’s benefits more from a forge than an energy drop, giving her both is redundant and therefore a waste. Forges are also way more plentiful (there’s like 20 forges vs a couple energy drops), so the opp. cost is much lower. Since Marcia’s paramount to LTCing, she’ll almost always get bosskills, which means even though she’s overlevelled, she’ll be gaining around a level/chapter. By C18 Gergeshwan already has Marcia at 20/8, I believe I’ve had her as high as 20/10 at this point in previous PTs (probably because I killed more crows in C12). Sure, sending bosskills and such her way is still a form of opp. cost, though not a very big one (*points at earlygame Titania*). I’ll agree that a seraph robe is a worthwhile investment on her, but adding dracoshields on top of that is overkill. By the time Marcia starts to face anything threatening, she’ll have maxed out her natural avoid at 72 avo. Vs 90 hit: 7 real hit Vs 100 hit: 16 real hit Vs 110 hit: 29 real hit Enemies don’t generally exceed 110 hit unless they are laguz, or SMs (who have weak atk anyway). On top of that, A Tanith support adds up to 22 avo. Vs 90 hit: invincible Vs 100 hit: 0.78 real hit (lol) Vs 110 hit: 5 real hit Vs 120 hit: 14 real hit Vs 130 hit: 26 real hit 120-130s is only common among laguz, and the only enemies who go higher than that are dragons, who are a threat to everyone. Basically, she’s such an avo tank that she only needs enough concrete durability to survive freak occurrences (eg/ two 5% hits landing in a row). With the robe she has 44 hp/16 def, it would take 27 atk to 4HKO her. Only lategame warriors and laguz achieve this type of atk. To 3HKO you need 31 atk, which is basically tiger-only territory. That gives plenty of leeway to heal her in case an attack or two make it past her monstrous avoid. Hell, even bows aren’t much of a threat to her. A C25 sniper has 31 effective atk with a steel bow (3HKO), and only 109 hit (5-29 real hit, depending on supports). My point being, if you want to get finicky with full guard usage, Marcia can use it exclusively for ballista survival. Also remember that you can TRADE the full guard in-chapter. ===================================================================================== I obviously wrote a lot, so I’ll just summarize quickly. -If we give Marcia all of our available BEXP in C11, she will never need BEXP for the rest of the game. This means that after 1 serious resource strain, she’s low maintenance for the rest of the game. -She doesn’t require as many resources as you previously claimed to achieve god-like performance. -It’s perfectly reasonable to build a core of 4-5 units to supplement Marcia’s dominant role in a LTC. Moving on: The recurring theme here is that if one unit can act as the clone of another, then there’s no net benefit to favoring one of the units because of opp. cost. Look, I understand where you’re coming from, but this logic just doesn’t seem to apply properly here. It’s like you’re negating an advantage that clearly must exist. Yes, we have this hypothetical that if I don’t use Marcia, Jill will take over and produce pretty much the same output towards LTCing. But, we could apply this same kind of reasoning to invalidate Oscar’s role to the team. If we drop Oscar in C20, we already have such a well established team that you might not lose a turn for the remainder of the game. If you’ve raised 6 paladins and 2 fliers, do you really think dropping Oscar from the team’s going to affect efficiency in any significant way? Nope, Kieran, Astrid, Makalov, Titania, etc. have him covered. You have to look at things from an angle of “uniqueness”. Being a competent flier is more unique than being a competent paladin, because there are only 1-3 fliers for most of the game, compared to 3-5 paladins. If you remove a flier from the equation, you have more to lose than dropping a paladin. Let’s suppose you have an active team of Ike/Oscar/Titania/Kieran/Astrid/Makalov/Marcia/Jill/Reyson. Also suppose each unit is promoted by C17, so they’re all quite competent in combat. What will cause a greater blow in efficiency? Dropping Oscar or dropping Jill? The answer should be obvious. Even if 1 flier is doing 70% of the work, that 2nd combat proficient flier is still providing all sorts of tactical flexibility. As you add fliers to the team the value of that flexibility starts to decrease, but not to the point where you’re completely disregarding it. Your attitude seems to be that 1 flier can literally do everything, thus rendering the tactical advantage of a 2nd flier completely nil. Actually, if you are of that opinion, then the logical conclusion is to only recruit 1 flier, at which point their usefulness is unrivalled until Tanith shows up. Reading Mercenary Raven’s post, there’s some contention as to whether Tanith can be turned into Marcia 2.0, so at no point in the game would you have a clone of your super flier. I think it would be interesting if someone were to try an efficient non-flier playlog, as this would give a more concrete way of measuring the true benefit of flier utility towards LTCs. It would basically be an entire PT determining the opportunity cost of neglecting Marcia/Jill.

Read my post more carefully. “You mention opportunity cost, but BEXPing fliers > BEXPing basically anything else, so it's a net positive until the fliers have what they need to 1RKO and survive reliably.” I’ll argue that the opportunity cost of plowing resources into Marcia is much lower than you give it credit for. If you don’t BEXP Marcia sufficiently, you’re throwing away turns that can’t be recovered no matter how you distribute the remaining BEXP. In those cases the opportunity cost is effectively 0. For instance, what use is it having all your paladins promoted in the desert chapter if you don’t have anyone who can slay Muarim quickly? This is also why your Marcia2 example doesn’t hold water here. It would be one thing if the team’s overall offence suffered tremendously from raising Marcia, but it’s quite the opposite. Most of the BEXP you’d neglect giving Marcia would ultimately contribute to overkill for units like Oscar and Titania. The only unit in high/top tier besides your fliers that needs significant BEXP for combat proficiency is Makalov, and to a lesser extent, Astrid. But, aside from rout maps, I can’t see a 4th and 5th string paladin shaving turns when you’ve already established an awesome team by now. Put another way, let’s say Marcia receiving n resources saves x turns compared to regular Marcia. However, factoring in opportunity costs we have to look at how many turns are saved by distributing n resources optimally amongst other units. IMO, the savings are negligible, say epsilon (e). So, factoring in opp. cost Marcia’s actually saving us x-e turns, which is very close to the original value x. Probably a slightly cumbersome way to put it, but I think it gets the point across. You have to look at each resource individually. Who’s the next best recipient for a seraph robe or a dracoshield? Certainly not your paladins; Only Titania and Astrid have noticeable concrete durability problems, which is easily compensated for with things like sol, knight’s ward, and supports. As for the speedwing, what unit has speed problems that can simultaneously keep up with the frontlines? Haar? 4 avo and minimal doubling advantages (eg/ vs SMs, bosses) don’t even remotely compare to the h4x of getting Jill to double ASAP. The full guard is a resource exclusive to fliers, so I don’t know why you mentioned it. If Marcia doesn’t use the FG, then Jill will since their roles are interchangeable. Pretty much ditto for the boots unless you can prove Reyson makes the best use of it. Now it seems you’ve argued that Marcia’s boots benefit is effectively 0 since Jill can clone its effect. Again, this is predicated on Marcia and Jill being interchangeable. The problem is, Oscar is even more interchangeable, he has 4-5 other units who can mirror his contributions. From a pragmatic standpoint, you know that Marcia will have 8-10 movement, depending on what role she’s relegated to. Whereas, Oscar is pretty much guaranteed to have 8 movement. That amounts to an advantage in some form. Again, I don’t disagree with you, I simply don’t think the opportunity cost is very high at all. If you don’t favor your fliers, re-distributing those resources elsewhere aren’t going to make up that many turns compared to the super flier scenario. I’ll probably have to defend that point in great detail, but I’ll save that for future posts. It was only a minor consideration. All I meant was that the turns Oscar save in earlygame have slightly less value because of the whole circumstance of being forced in low-deployment scenarios. To imply that I'd discount Titania's earlygame contributions is extreme to say the least.

For Oscar vs Jill/Marcia, I’d put him below either flier even when both are in play, because I really think flying is just that broken. 1RKO level combat + reliable durability + bypassing terrain is about as efficient as it gets. I read Aku Chi’s posts and his main points are that: 1) Oscar requires less resources than the fliers 2) He saves turns in earlygame For 1, this would be a valid point if Marcia + Jill weren’t the most worthy recipients of BEXP/other resources. You mention opportunity cost, but BEXPing fliers > BEXPing basically anything else, so it’s a net positive until the fliers have what they need to 1RKO and survive reliably. And honestly the amount of resources both fliers require for this purpose is pretty minimal. In Marcia’s case, if you BEXP her enough in C12’s base, you can get her to ORKO crows. OK, that requires a large amount of BEXP initially, but now she’s gaining an absurd amount of CEXP from crow kills, while simultaneously shaving off quite a few turns (nobody else can target crows until they reach the boat). Combine this with the crowkills in C13 and Marcia’s already promoted for C14. She no longer needs BEXP other than pulling off tight bosskill strategies that fall into the questionable % reliability category. So, to raise Marcia you need a large initial investment that reaps an immediate and long term reward. What’s the alternative? Put that C12 BEXP into any other unit, or combination of units, and not only do you lose a significant number of turns on C12, you also reduce Marcia’s CEXP gains because she’s 2-3RKOing crows. So basically, not BEXPing Marcia not only costs turns, it also hampers Marcia’s development. I’m not breathing hot air here, either. Gergeshwan’s efficient PT is basically a low turn count run, and he has Marcia promoted at chapter 11, even earlier than I indicated. In fact, he has Marcia overtake Oscar in levels. Look at his turncounts: Prologue- 4 Chapter 1- 2 Chapter 2- 4 Chapter 3- 3 Chapter 4- 2 Chapter 5- 6 Chapter 6- 5 Chapter 7- 6 Chapter 8- 8 Chapter 9- 7 Chapter 10- 3 Chapter 11- 3 Chapter 12- 2 Chapter 13- 7 Chapter 14- 2 Chapter 15- 2 Chapter 16- 4 Chapter 17- 2, 2, 10, 1 Do you see any of these turn counts being lowered by reducing Marcia’s resource allotment and distributing it to other units? After chapter 17 it’s pretty indisputable that fliers > Oscar as well. My own experience with efficient FE9 play largely coincides with Gergeshwan’s results, for what it’s worth. 2’s a more compelling reason, but there’s a few issues with that. First, since there are so few units in earlygame, a lot of Oscar’s utility is based on that alone. It’s very similar to FE10 Edward’s utility in early part 1 chapters. 1-P would take an eternity if we only used Micaiah, much the same way FE9 earlygame chapters would take much longer if we neglect to use any of Ike/Boyd/Oscar/Titania. Well, that’s not even really true because Titania carries so much of the earlygame load herself. Which brings me to my next argument: I’m not so convinced Oscar saves that many turns in earlygame (even though that’s an iffy metric because of the low unit forced deployment scenario). Chapters 1-2: I’d say 2-4 turns Chapters 3-4: Unused Chapter 5: Defend chapter, who cares Chapter 6: 1 or 2 Chapter 7: 1? Chapter 8: See chapter 5 Chapter 9: Marcia’s now on the team Jill takes a bit longer, but by then we have more deployment slots, more developed units, etc so Oscar’s turn count shavings are dropping radically.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm sure this has been considered, but if we don't guarantee that Jill is being used, would we automatically assume we skip her recruitment to save turns in C12? See, I know recruitment costs aren't supposed to be held against a unit (otherwise Stefan's rank would plummet), but is it right to assume a unit like Stefan is never used unless we make a comparison of him vs someone else? The only way around this is to assume 100% recruitment regardless of what units you choose to raise. I only mention this because if "Marcia's team" skips Jill, I would claim Marcia > Jill. However, if Marcia's team does lose turns to recruit Jill (w/o it counting against her), I'd just as easily say Jill > Marcia.

I see all this talk that raising 1 flier makes raising the other one redundant... I disagree with this almost entirely. See, if I choose to make Jill my MVP and plow her with resources, who's going to be my next recipient for resource funneling? It will be Marcia. 2 fliers >>> 1 flier + 1 paladin, even if one of the fliers carries most of the efficiency load. It's not like there's a great shortage of resources in the game. There's enough BEXP in the game to easily raise all your paladins and fliers on a highly efficient PT. I'm not sure for a max efficient PT, but I'd probably focus on trimming down on my paladins (eg/ no Makalov or Astrid) if BEXP distribution is an issue. The only difference between Jill and Marcia in this case is that Jill has +2 move, and becomes 1337 slightly sooner. The fact that their roles are basically interchangeable is irrelevant because they work best in tandem.

Since I barely come here anymore, I'd be fine if other people wanted to update the OP.

I took the time to read through the rest of the topic without skimming, and while I stand by my previous post, it seems the same contentious issues keep popping up. -Do we assume optimal deployment or is the player free to choose any team he wants to raise? -If a character starts strong but dwindles over time, should said character eventually be dropped from the line-up? -Do we look at everything in terms of net positives and opportunity cost, or are we free to allocate resources more liberally? -Are we strictly aiming for low turn count, or is there an agreeable compromise between efficiency and reliability? -Should a terrible character with some forced deployment be better than a mediocre character with no forced deployment? -How do we compensate for usefulness that is skyrocketed by circumstance (i.e. 1-P Edward type stuff)? Having a difference in opinion in just one of these many areas can lead to a serious argumentative impasse. Now just imagine debating with someone who differs in philosophy on multiple points. You might as well try drowning a fish. What's worse is that you probably don't know your "opponent's" specific philosophies, but rather have to infer them from his/her posts. Not that this is a solution, but if we could get the community as a whole to take a certain stance on all these issues (and ones I may have forgotten), and stick with their decisions, we might actually get somewhere. Perhaps a poll could be useful for that? Some might argue the majority stance would be flawed since the people partaking in a tier debate can be counted on 1 or 2 hands. Ionno. Maybe it's best that people have differing philosophies, and we should embrace that instead of trying to come up with some unified standard of character comparison. I agree that the paradigm shift from 20/20 stats to more recent ideas was pretty awesome, but now we're at a point where pretty much all arguments eventually devolve into tiering philosophy, which I think is just as responsible for tier "recession" as the series losing out in popularity and long arguments running their course. Edit: To further reinforce my point, I want to draw attention to a post Cynthia made. I actually think this is a pretty cool idea, but that's beside the point. IMO Cynthia's philosophy is very unique, I'd be surprised if any of the serious FE debaters shared this exact viewpoint. This is just to illustrate the potential for vastly different philosphies that can be produced from the few issues I've presented.

Been checking the forums once in a while for the past few months, finally an interesting topic! Well, at least for the first 10-20 posts, then the arguments just go in circles with ridiculous walls of text. Tier debating was so much more amusing in the dark ages where most people would use fanboyism as their main argument for moving a character up/down in a tier list. Then you could rip their argument to shreds. Now we spend more time arguing about some almighty tiering standard than we do actually arguing about character placement. The reality is, FE tiering is ultimately subjective, and it's a vain effort trying to objectify something that is subjective at heart. Besides, true objectivity would take all the fun out of it, in fact I'd argue that it already has. Debating your favorite character loses a lot of its appeal to most people when it turns into a statistics and optimization problem. It's more of a math exercise than a battle of clashing wits. Believe it or not, I'd say the biggest problem with FE tiering is that it's simply being taken too seriously. People are recording entire "efficiency playthroughs" dedicated to helping the tiering process. People will spend hours making huge write-ups about instances that would never happen in normal play (that is, play that doesn't require exceptional dondon-level planning) to prove one character > another. People will get so emotionally attached to their tiering views that they will argue endlessly with an opposing viewpoint, no matter how many circular arguments and rationalizations are involved. And, above all, esoteric questions are constantly being raised. How do we measure efficiency? What makes one character better than another? Might as well be asking, "what is the meaning of life?" "are we real, or are a product of the matrix?". Tiering was a fun little concept that exploded in the FE community, but the well has really run dry. Every game except maybe FE12 has been discussed to death. The increasing intensity of discussion is alienating more and more people from the process that aren't already on the hardcore bandwagon. And again, the arguments have gotten so intense in nature that we spend most of our energy focusing on the core structure of tiering, but said structure is always going to be shaky because of the game's intensely statistical nature. A character could get slightly blessed in an important stat, which produces a butterfly effect that makes the unit awesome. The team you uses will affect the performance of the character you're trying to evaluate. One player might reset much more than another, and therefore accept bigger risks in his/her playstyle. Personal biases will affect who you chose to give exp to, and how you allocate your resources. I could go on forever. I say, **** efficiency up a horsie's anus. Stop debating tier criteria and just compare characters based on your own arbitrary standards. It would probably be a ****storm at first, but the reduced rigor would do it some good as an argumentative construct. I say this half jokingly, I honestly think tiering is a lost cause at this point. Now watch as someone takes the time to address every point in my post and tell me at length that I'm wrong. Could be entertaining. Though, not as entertaining as BOOBIES.

Coolness, perhaps you might want to share some details about your run? Was it particularly challenging at any points?

How did you get the VBM for that run? Are there any other movie files available for these TASes?

Played through to chapter 15, for the most part I'm quite impressed, but it's clear the hack still needs a bit more debugging and polish. Some evil unmentioned trolls: [spoiler=Chapter 14] FOW, and some of your undeployed characters will become enemies that you have to recruit. Rennac is also a PC right away, but is basically doomed unless you rush and use the dummy wisely. [spoiler=Chapter 15] FOW again, Saleh can only use staves, and Innes has a Nidhogg he can't use. Can't seem to have Eirika survive on a fort I warped her to because there's too many damn pegasi shooting at her from long range. [spoiler=Balance issue] Franz is just too powerful, even in normal play. His only issue whatsoever is durability, which I largely fixed with 2 dragonshields and a seraph robe, all available early on. The photos seen here are him in chapter 10. With a bit of care, he can basically solo every map in the game from C9 onwards.

Google translate: I'll try Girls FE0967 and see what it has to offer.

This topic deserves to be bumped, surely the hack must be finished after 2 years? I highly doubt anyone would abandon a project like that when it appears to be >90% done. Edit: Can't seem to find the patch at http://febin.so.land.to/ With google translate for every page, it should turn up eventually.

Consider this my parting gift to the Serenes Forest community. About a month ago I took on the challenge of TASing Sacred Stones on hard mode, and recently the run got published on TASVideos. For more details on the run, please read my submission comments, which are very detailed (let's just say it took up almost 20 pages in word :P) Since there's already an official encode, I decided to make 2 encodes of my own: one with enemy phases sped up by 8x, and one with enemy phases cut out altogether. Also, in both cases loading times and cutscenes are cut out. Essentially, I've edited out all the boring stuff so you guys can see 20 minutes of non-stop action: lightning fast cursor movements and trades, constant critical hits, and delicious amounts of cursor wobbling. In addition to these videos I made an encode of the final chapter alone, and even the Fomortiis 1HKO by itself. This totals 6 videos for your viewing pleasure. Playlist Or, if you prefer: Sped-up Enemy Phase (1/2) Sped-up Enemy Phase (2/2) No Enemy Phase (1/2) No Enemy Phase (2/2) Final Chapter Only Fomortiis Battle Only I'd embed the videos but the site has this strange restriction of one embedded video per post :/ As an added bonus, here's another playlist, which features 29 amazing Fire Emblem videos by LeopoldStotch711 and Rolanmen1. I hope this effort helps a bit in restoring my channel to its former glory, even though that's far out of reach.

Sorry to necropost, but I re-uploaded the run, now with loading times cut out and enemy phases sped up. I edited the links into the OP, so there's no more broken links.