Commentary Fire Emblem 6 LTC Playthrough - Will be streaming it Sunday 6/19 at 11am PST

[Lord Raven]

Hey everyone,

I don't think it's been a secret that I've been working on an LTC playthrough. I am adding commentary to it, either by myself or alongside someone who is free and able to talk about LTC playthroughs (I have a mental list of people who can help) My first video I'm going solo because it's 3 and a half minutes long and there's barely any time for me to say everything I want in it so I can't imagine someone else being able to help me out.

Here's the playlist with the videos, and once I'm done what I want to finish with the stream archive I'll post that here too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGwvZZVTdx4

Just a few links to tutorials and some minor details I'd like to point out before I start.

RNG ABUSING

As many of you know, random numbers are not entirely random. They are generated depending on the previous couple numbers, and the initial numbers used to generate more random numbers are known as a seed.

If you are interested in computer science, then they follow a Linear feedback shift register which actually has a massive cycle rate so you won't see many of the same set of random numbers repeating. However, you will see that sometimes small numbers follow after small numbers, and these are a result of this idea.

I can view these random numbers as a result of lua scripts which allow me to view the random numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqbn183W8E4

This video gives a basic tutorial of how to use it, but it helps me save A LOT of time in burning random numbers because I can see them. It is largely useless on enemy phase, because enemy phase burns random numbers to determine enemy movements path and enemy AI. You can actually use it to manipulate the first action or so but beyond that it becomes extremely difficult.

The process of manipulating the RNG requires what's known as path retracing. You might notice me selecting a unit, wiggling them around, and they don't move or do any actions at all (and sometimes they do); this actually burns random numbers, because what happens is that the unit goes to a square with multiple paths. The way the game determines which path you traverse is through the RNG. This FAQ on IGN brings it up in more detail and also talks about how to manipulate it, however the IGN FAQ describes how to burn one random number at a time because the game has only two paths to choose from; if you notice from this picture:

Florina actually has some squares she can traverse all the way to the left. One way of burning a bunch of random numbers at a time is going 6 spaces left and one space down, then from there I go one space down, one space right in order to burn anywhere from 1 to 7 RNs at a time. If I need to burn a single random number then I will apply the single random number tricks, however burning multiple RNs at a time speeds up the time it takes for me to hit the random number I desire.

There is some fancy nonsense going on in the lua script, but I don't tend to make use of them because they make things more complicated. I am good at eyeballing the RN string because I'm not going to spend more time than I need manipulating the RNG.

You often see weird things like Alan and Lance next to each other and Marcus on the other end of the map, but I attack with Alan first, Marcus second, and Lance third. This is because an RN string that benefits Marcus shows up before one that benefits Lance. (You'll see it in action in Chapter 1).

I don't manipulate much of anything (outside of dodges, level ups, certain hits) on enemy phase unless I absolutely need a critical. There are very few instances where I will absolutely need a critical on EP, otherwise criticals on EP are extra and I just work around them if they happen. I do have to manipulate more than usual on EP due to the low survival rates I face sometimes. In general, I really have no remorse with criticals, and if I want or need one then I'll manipulate it. I try to avoid casually rigging a 1% critical, but if I need it to OHKO a boss then I'm going to go for it.

RECORDING

I use the movie tool in VBA to record my inputs, then I play the movie from the start and have vba record the .avi from it. In the process of recording the movie, I do a "dry run" of sorts where I record every single input I do down to the letter, I also do some testing to see which order they should happen in to ensure it looks smooth, and then I run it. I often use save states if I mess up an action, and other times I slow the game down so it takes me less time to RNG abuse. You may notice some weirdness in my first couple runs with menu commands, certain cursor movements, menu commands going fast, and certain RN burns a little too slow and whatnot, but they get largely better as the playthrough progresses.

DISCLAIMER

I view this as a tool assisted run (but it's not a tool assisted speed run) and I see no shame in that considering the fact that these tools just save me a lot of time instead of having to spend time doing a bunch of single RN burns, attacking, then repeating. It also makes it visually more appealing because I can do things to burn more RNs quickly, instead of doing a bunch of single RN burns.

SELF-IMPOSED CONDITIONS

- All units kept alive

- All units recruited (51 characters)

- Lowest turncount I can get to the best of my ability

You guys will not like some of my strategies due to the risk involved, and that's okay with me. My purpose is to get low turn counts through mostly any means possible, and I end up RNG abusing a lot to keep units alive and other times to make up for random positioning errors. I could fix these up a little bit more, but as it stands I think my runthrough is fairly optimized for what it is and I could maybe save a few turns here and there early on. Many of these chapters will be the lowest possible turncount given the conditions I state.

With that said, I will update this OP with a link to each of my chapter posts, and I will post any level ups I gained as well as a quick description of each unit I obtain in that chapter. Feel free to let me know if there is anything I can improve in my commentary, and also keep in mind that the majority of Chapters will be with me and another user (it'll vary a bit but I will do it with a select few people).

OTHER INTERESTING LINKS

Irysa's LTC playthrough - this one is interesting because Irysa spends a lot of time figuring out to what extent he can play this game. His EXP is far more optimized than mine is and he gets 7 stat level ups to see what ends up happening. Thus far he has saved 3 turns on my run because of major level ups (notably: Thany/Shanna having a significant amount more defense). Having that said, I do have a feeling that certain chapters could be done in x turns so everytime I have a feeling I could shave a turn from my run (with more durability and etc) I let him know. Often times he's able to achieve it.

dondon151's 0% Growths LTC - much better commentary than I can provide, and he pioneered 0% growths playthroughs which changed the way we discussed the game. A must watch and Irysa and I are definitely drawing quite a bit of inspiration from this playthrough. He's given us some fundamentals for each chapter and I utilize a few of his strategies to some extent. Unfortunately they don't solely apply to my playthrough and I do A LOT of different things, but ultimately a lot of the same idea is there.,

Espinosa's FE6 Reverse Recruitment LTC - What if Marcus and Yodel switched spots? What about the Cavs and Juno/Dayan? What if you had a Dancer AND a Bard? Fear not, because there's a hack for that! Espinosa's doing an LTC run of it with minimal RNG abuse (but she is "fixing" the RNG so to speak, performing actions in a certain order to manipulate where the numbers go), and it's really interesting to watch because of all the weird stuff that happens in Reverse Recruitment.

EDIT: I have decided to do a twitch stream of the whole thing and commentate in real time as opposed to make videos. It is much easier for me and suits my style more. I will be streaming it Sunday, 6/19 at 11am PST. Feel free to come by, my twitch is twitch.tv/lraven17!

Edited June 20, 2016 by Lord Raven

[Lord Raven]

Here's chapter 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dL_XRCBeyg

Name    Level  HP Str Skl Spd Lck Def Res
Lance   03.03  22  07  08  10  02  07  00
Roy     01.20  Base
Marcus  01.38+ Base
Alan    01.50  Base
Wolt    01.00  Base
Bors    01.00  Base

Roy is the main character so his death gives us a game over. He's a pretty mediocre combat unit overall but he is required to get some levels in this playthrough otherwise he won't be able to survive some of the later chapters. He won't be getting any in this chapter but you'll see as time goes on.

Marcus is our Jagen character, he's a crutch character that takes a long time to drop off. Even during his drop off, he just stops being as effective as a combat unit and becomes a much better ferry unit, because he has a massive 8 movement. He has access to the primary 3 weapon types so he never has weapon triangle disadvantage, but he is generally our strongest unit until we recruit Zealot and Lance/Thany promote.

Lance and Alan are both interchangeable for the purposes of this playthrough, I went with Lance but you may have noticed that Irysa went with Alan. I started this playthrough a bit earlier and using Alan is pretty beneficial for various reasons (however I don't believe he needs to be built up in order for use in Chapter 3 for a 5-turn). It's mostly a wash between both of these units but Alan benefits from stronger starting position unless Wolt dies.

Bors and Wolt are largely useless in this playthrough, and even for chip damage they don't really do much of anything. Bors is inaccurate due to Weapon Triangle Disadvantage and he is doubled by fighters for a while, but I guess he can toss a Javelin at some point later on to get some levels. Wolt starts with an Iron Bow and around 10 attack, and does barely anything to enemies. He also can't be taken to the front lines especially when we have as few units as we currently have, due to his lack of 1-range weaponry - enemies target characters they can kill and characters that do not counter attack and Wolt will receive quite a bit of attention from enemies for both reasons, especially because he drops off so quickly. Don't expect many contributions from these two, although Wolt is very good at sticking back and burning some random numbers.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Lord Raven

[Ownagepuffs]

Following.

[Jedi]

Following and maybe I can help theory craft with ya on Skype.

[Yojinbo]

Solid commentary and good exp optimization for Lance. Looking forward to this run!

[Belf]

Are you competing with Irysa's run, or just doing a LP? You mentioned Irysa saved a turn over one the chapters you completed, so I wouldn't really consider it an LTC if someone else is already beating your turn counts.

[Lord Raven]

So I started my playthrough like a week before Irysa and I'm actually much further than him (I have actually constructed a plan for Chapter 13 and I'm finishing that up, while Irysa is finishing up Chapter 7). Having that said, I'm functioning as a bit of a resource for Irysa given that he can beat my TCs in a couple chapters here and there, but also bear in mind that Irysa is doing things like 7 stat rigs instead of my "try to get str/spd at best" type of stuff, so ultimately a lot of things between our playthroughs are going to be quite different logistically. Having that said,

so I wouldn't really consider it an LTC if someone else is already beating your turn counts.

Doesn't even make sense. Are my turn counts not low? It's not a lowest turn count playthrough anymore in that case, it's "just" a low turn count playthrough. And if we're gonna be harping on people for not giving lowest turn counts, then we should probably stop calling 0% growths an LTC because he didn't 4 turn Chapter 1 which he is perfectly capable of doing. Except for the fact that I was on Chapter 7-8 or so when Irysa finished up Chapter 3, and I wasn't going to go back to Chapter 3 to shave a single turn when I already had put a bunch of work into other chapters. This just means I actually haven't achieved the lowest turn count possible.

In the same vein, dondon was already far into his playthrough when he figured out the 4-turn, but the amount of shit you have to change around afterwards simply makes it not worth it.

There's also the fact that I can't really get a 5 turn of Chapter 7 without doing some stat rigging along the same lines as Irysa is doing. For all intents and purposes, you can consider my playthrough a straight-up LTC, and Irysa's playthrough an exploration of all possibilities. There's no competition here.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Lord Raven

[dondon151]

but since you're starting from chapter 1 again anyway, you can definitely shave the turn that irysa shaved...

[Lord Raven]

that was an already recorded video..

EDIT: I re-recorded that one recently, but I'm not willing to go through and re-transcribe and re-record the other 13 or so chapters i've finished, especially since recording a chapter takes me forever.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Lord Raven

[Belf]

So I started my playthrough like a week before Irysa and I'm actually much further than him (I have actually constructed a plan for Chapter 13 and I'm finishing that up, while Irysa is finishing up Chapter 7). Having that said, I'm functioning as a bit of a resource for Irysa given that he can beat my TCs in a couple chapters here and there, but also bear in mind that Irysa is doing things like 7 stat rigs instead of my "try to get str/spd at best" type of stuff, so ultimately a lot of things between our playthroughs are going to be quite different logistically. Having that said,

Doesn't even make sense. Are my turn counts not low? It's not a lowest turn count playthrough anymore in that case, it's "just" a low turn count playthrough. And if we're gonna be harping on people for not giving lowest turn counts, then we should probably stop calling 0% growths an LTC because he didn't 4 turn Chapter 1 which he is perfectly capable of doing. Except for the fact that I was on Chapter 7-8 or so when Irysa finished up Chapter 3, and I wasn't going to go back to Chapter 3 to shave a single turn when I already had put a bunch of work into other chapters. This just means I actually haven't achieved the lowest turn count possible.

In the same vein, dondon was already far into his playthrough when he figured out the 4-turn, but the amount of shit you have to change around afterwards simply makes it not worth it.

There's also the fact that I can't really get a 5 turn of Chapter 7 without doing some stat rigging along the same lines as Irysa is doing. For all intents and purposes, you can consider my playthrough a straight-up LTC, and Irysa's playthrough an exploration of all possibilities. There's no competition here.

I didn't know that LTC stood for low turn count, i thought it stood for lowest turn count. I also thought you were recording chapters as you were completing them, I didn't think the whole run was already finished.

anyways, I didn't mean to insult your run or anything. chill out man

[dondon151]

if you start an LTC playthrough and someone finds an easy strategic change that saves a turn, then you might as well do it. you've already thrown in your marbles to begin with, so it really doesn't make sense to not toss in an extra one, especially since you're in the perfect position to make the correction.

[Lord Raven]

It's not so much that it's an easy strategic change as much as it changes up a lot of things, especially when it comes to exp management, that I wasn't willing to go through, especially since I was pretty far into Chapter 7 when he had finished up Chapter 3.

It may also require a stronger Alan than I had (but I'm not sure, I suspect it doesn't) so I'd also run the risk of redoing everything up until that point from scratch if it did require me to build up Alan, especially since just about everything after Chapter 3 is a wash between them. I did think about going back to Chapter 3 but using Alan to boost Marcus and moving Alan forward a good amount takes away quite a bit of EXP from Lance which messes everything up from that point forward (i went through and it ends up being a solid level and a half difference). That's why I didn't go for it.

I didn't know that LTC stood for low turn count, i thought it stood for lowest turn count. I also thought you were recording chapters as you were completing them, I didn't think the whole run was already finished.

anyways, I didn't mean to insult your run or anything. chill out man

It's not but it's around halfway finished. It'll be finished by the time I post Chapter 8 or so...

[dondon151]

this really just sounds like johns to me.

it's like if someone proofread a paper that you wrote, gave you feedback on corrections, and then your response is "nah i'm too lazy to fix it."

[Lord Raven]

Except it takes me like 3-4 hours to actually write and record each chapter and it ends up being an extra 30 hours to do everything. It's not a simple revision when you have to change just about everything in later chapters, definitely is not comparable to taking 3-4 minutes to fix one single thing at the end of a previous chapter.

You're really convinced that it's just a simple revision and literally everything else ends up the same? I can try and go through it real quick when I get home but I highly doubt that's the case if there's a massive exp difference like Irysas run shows. If it requires a much stronger Alan than I've got then it requires restarting an entire run.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Lord Raven

[dondon151]

dude you're talking to me as if i don't know what's up

i restarted my FE6 run twice, once just to polish strategies and once just to save a turn in chapter 24. if you're going to put a bunch of effort (way more than 30 hours initially) into this endeavor, then what's an extra 30 hours to make sure that it's the highest quality possible?

[Lord Raven]

Because I don't feel, at this moment, fixing one single turn early on is a good use of my time to ensure what amounts to a small increase in quality.

30 hours might be putting it lightly, considering how long early chapters take. If it were back in Chapter 10 sure, even if it were later in the run because post chapter 11 is short (and Chapter 11) is a lot of fun. I'd rather finish up rather than start from close to scratch. Especially if it's really not that simple then I have to rework it from scratch which I am not willing to do. Maybe in the future but early game chapters are extremely taxing in terms of reconfiguring exp management and I definitely don't want to do it unless I must fix something extremely early on to fix something later.

[dondon151]

Because I don't feel, at this moment, fixing one single turn early on is a good use of my time to ensure what amounts to a small increase in quality.

but the whole point of this playthrough is to get a low turncount

i'm not interested in splitting hairs between a "low turncount" and a "lowest turncount," but the fact is that you set this as a goal for yourself when you started this playthrough, and discarding that goal for the sake of convenience cheapens the end product. it would be like if i routed a speedrun, you found a big timesaver that i missed, and my response was "fuck it, i'm too lazy to update the route." i understand that people are subject to peaks and troughs in their motivational states, and i wouldn't fault anyway for being reluctant to make a small change that ends up requiring a lot of work, but if you're going to put in the effort for commentary, you could at least go the extra mile for the gameplay.

Edited March 15, 2015 by dondon151

[Lord Raven]

I should add "lowest possible TCs to the best of my ability" instead just so we're not arguing over semantics. This was, for me, a bit of a side project to do so I'm not burning myself out on school. It's irritating at times but I'm enjoying it, and hence I'm not actually willing to redo about 12 chapters worth of stuff (and it also includes Chapter 2 because I have to rig a point of HP and Defense onto Thany to actually make the strategy work).

As it stands, I've been contemplating and messing around with some of these and it is actually beyond a simple tactical thing, and ultimately it's something that I'm just not bothered to do. I don't have that much time and I'm pretty far ahead in my playthrough now achieving the lowest possible counts in just about everything post Chapter 7, and I don't even think short of rigging a ton of HP/Def I can do much better in Chapter 7 myself. It's way more than an extra mile, at any rate. A mile's easy.

[dondon151]

you're blowing through this game faster than irysa and you're complaining that you don't have that much time to play it?

[Lord Raven]

Not to play it twice, no

[Yojinbo]

Rename this to "Let's play FE6 at high level" or something, I still wanna watch this.

[dondon151]

Not to play it twice, no

but you mention quite often on skype what your next FE project will be.

[Lord Raven]

dondon, stop posting in this thread and talk to me in private if it's such a big issue (which it honestly is not - I don't see anyone else voicing a concern over this, whether or not it's due to lack of views or lack of care). The only project I am/was even talking about seriously is FE9 0% growths, and I've stated that will be a summer project because I will have much more time AND energy (the latter is more important here) to plan that out in more detail, compared to FE6 which I am playing mostly by ear. I also won't have to spend a bunch of time figuring out stat rigging either. Other projects I half heartedly mentioned and then like two minutes later I take it back almost immediately.

I also tried out Chapter 3 because I contemplated looking through it and it's far from a simple tactical adjustment. You know I have to rig +2 HP/Def (1 of those rigs will be on EP due to how Thany actually has to acquire her EXP in Chapter 2) to make that happen right? Otherwise an Archer up there will go after Thany and block the path, because +2 HP/Def is what prevents Thany from an OHKO. The idea is to weaken Merlinus for the Archer to go after him, but I playtested it repeatedly and that Archer doesn't go after a 1 HP Merlinus if Thany is in the way, and Thany is the only person that can make this possible due the fact that she can be rescue dropped/boosted by Chad/Wolt. My fault for saying I could've done it without investigating it.

Alan/Lance don't matter in terms of that path, in conclusion. Point is that it took me around 42 sets of burns to get a set of good level ups and Thany surviving an EP in that particular instance, and whatever I need to make a 5 turn possible is far more than I initially believed. It will require much, much more than that in order to get her the stats I need, and I'm not willing to do Irysa levels of stat rigging.

Edited March 16, 2015 by Lord Raven

[Irysa]

Well you could technically adjust Chapter 2 to my strat as well if you want for Shanna's EXP, just subbing Alan for Lance. I can give you the scripts I used to burn RNs.

Ultimately I don't think it's that big a deal though, if you're eager to see the LOWEST possible TC I will probably get it, but Raven's run has been a big help in helping me get better estimates of EXP distribution and the like.

Edited March 16, 2015 by Irysa

[Belf]

FE9 0% growths

Maniac mode?