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Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.


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37 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Alastor15243 If you hate FE16 so much (and you should), I wouldn't bother with maddening. What complaint of yours could more difficulty possibly fix?

Oh yeah, I forgot to answer Alastor's question about Maddening.

I basically agree with this. In my opinion, Maddening is just completely not fun. I am really bad at FE, but Maddening is just ridiculously boring in my opinion (since you either break the game or get broken, little in-between) and major segments of the game just weren't designed to enemies with such overwhelming stats-Many paralogues are completely unplayable, for example, and IMO it encourages doing things like grinding Prof. Exp, which I know you don't like. Furthermore, the ambush spawns in Maddening are the worst I've seen in FE, but I haven't played Thracia yet, so I don't know how they stack up.

Obviously, I'm not fond of TH to begin with, but Maddening doesn't fix the problems with map design or the class system. It just makes sections of the game really hard (and generally not in a good way,) and the rest stays about the same. The one thing I can give credit to Maddening for is making the units more diverse because not everyone functions in any role, but Maddening also doesn't allow much room for experimentation.

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44 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I was more so talking about his "supports" with Sanaki and such.

Yeah but Heroes gave us Bride Sanaki, so it's totally cool for her and Oliver to get together obvious /s.

46 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

If you hate FE16 so much (and you should), I wouldn't bother with maddening. What complaint of yours could more difficulty possibly fix?

That's probably good advice, actually. At least take a break in another game beforehand, so you could come in without fatigue. If Hard Mode is coming across as too easy, though, then the heightened difficulty could (at least in theory) make for a more enjoyable experience. But if you never wanna do it, that's fine by me too.

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Yeah, TH is a lot like Awakening where the differences between difficulties is so wide that it can be hard to find a satisfying one, and is especially annoying if you played enough to grow bored of one difficulty and want to move up to the next one...

It's frustrating, because Cindered Shadows Hard felt like a really solid difficulty level. The main game should've offered something like that. Keep certain Maddening elements (extra skills on enemies by class, reduced EXP and skill rank gains), get rid of others (same-turn reinforcements), and make some game-wide changes (no Intermediate generics in the first few maps, wider vision in fog), and I think we'd be at a great place.

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22 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Keep certain Maddening elements (extra skills on enemies by class, reduced EXP and skill rank gains)

Bolded: y tho?

It´s literally the one big problem with Maddening - the enemies outscale your units so hard until you manage to scrounge up some intermediate skills to make up for the lack in stats. More levels, more stats, faster skills, easier time.

Delete Poision Strike Archers in chapter 2 and going forward. Worse than Iago with his staff rank.

 

I´ll take the sadistic route and because it´s been talked about in some fashion before, but I suggest a full-monastery-skip Maddening (only allowed armory and shop) run of... what´s gonna be better, Church route or Deer? Just to really, truly and thouroughly experience the pure gameplay of TH as the creators intended.

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Removing any chance that I'm not giving the gameplay a fair shake, I suppose.

Dude you played it like four times. Anyone who says you have to do absolutely everything in a game to judge it (or watch every episode in a TV show or anything like that) should be ignored immediately.

2 hours ago, Benice said:

I basically agree with this.

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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah but Heroes gave us Bride Sanaki, so it's totally cool for her and Oliver to get together obvious /s.

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1 hour ago, Imuabicus said:

Bolded: y tho?

It´s literally the one big problem with Maddening - the enemies outscale your units so hard until you manage to scrounge up some intermediate skills to make up for the lack in stats. More levels, more stats, faster skills, easier time.

I generally disagree. Enemies are much stronger than in Hard, sure, but that forces the player to change how they play. Combat arts that were previously costly overkill are now essential for securing the kill. Defense-stacking armored units are much more valuable, since even moderately tanky units can't take more than a few hits. As are dodgetanks, since the best way to take less damage is to not get hit. On a similar note, support gambits (like Impregnable Wall, Retribution, amd Blessing) become even more valuable when you can't out-stat the enemies. As does taking advantage of linked attack boosts (particularly with power-boosting allies).

Bottom-line, Maddening enemies outperforming your own units in stats is a feature, not a bug. It puts the onus on the player to take advantage of their many more tools (weapons, skills, combat arts, gambits) available in order to overcome these barriers.

1 hour ago, Imuabicus said:

Delete Poision Strike Archers in chapter 2 and going forward. Worse than Iago with his staff rank.

Re: chapter 2, this would be fixed by demoting them to Fighters with Bows. I previously advocated for devolving early-game Intermediate enemies. Beyond that, I don't see Poison Strike Archers as a serious problem - you know they have it, so you can plan around that. Rather than facetanking Archers and Snipers, find a forest to dodgetank them on, then take 'em out up-close.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Removing any chance that I'm not giving the gameplay a fair shake, I suppose.

Well it's up to you. I think Maddening plays a lot differently from Hard in a few ways (some good, some bad), and on the whole I'd say it's more enjoyable. That said, I wouldn't blame you for stepping back from Three Houses for a good long while.

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I'm... not sure what to think about Maddening. Mostly because I haven't beaten 3H enough to feel ready for it, but at a glance, it feels more fair than Lunatic in Awakening did, as Lunatic Awakening pretty much made it such that if you didn't cheese it (primarily by pretty much soloing with Robin), you had no chance.

2 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

It´s literally the one big problem with Maddening - the enemies outscale your units so hard until you manage to scrounge up some intermediate skills to make up for the lack in stats. More levels, more stats, faster skills, easier time.

I'd agree that the way Maddening is designed makes it such that to succeed, you have to use aspects of the game that you could get away with overlooking in hard mode. Like combat arts, for example. With enemies usually being fast to the point that you weren't doubling them anyway, something like Wrath Strike or Tempest Lance is a lot more inviting to use. It also encourages frequent use of bows so you can get hits in on melee enemies without presenting yourself as a target in the process - well, even more so than it already did, considering hand axes and javelins are at their nadir. All this being said, I do think it has its fair share of bullcrap. Like chapter 5, where you have to beware of accidentally aggroing pretty much the whole map. Or Hunting by Daybreak, aka softlock central.

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I'll note that if a maddening playthrough of Three Houses is done then it would take significantly less time to play log, as the entirety of part 1's story could be skipped. And if going Crimson Flower for the only really different story content in part 2, then thats only a handful of chapters that actually require story analysis (and a lot less actually happen in them then one might expect).

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On 11/17/2021 at 8:22 PM, Jotari said:

You haven't played Thracia then, I take it?

I am one who is without SNES etc. pp.

11 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I generally disagree. Enemies are much stronger than in Hard, sure, but that forces the player to change how they play. Combat arts that were previously costly overkill are now essential for securing the kill. Defense-stacking armored units are much more valuable, since even moderately tanky units can't take more than a few hits. As are dodgetanks, since the best way to take less damage is to not get hit. On a similar note, support gambits (like Impregnable Wall, Retribution, amd Blessing) become even more valuable when you can't out-stat the enemies. As does taking advantage of linked attack boosts (particularly with power-boosting allies).

Bottom-line, Maddening enemies outperforming your own units in stats is a feature, not a bug. It puts the onus on the player to take advantage of their many more tools (weapons, skills, combat arts, gambits) available in order to overcome these barriers.

All of these suggestions are good ideas for making Maddening harder for yourself. Re: Combat Arts: yeah in the beginning, because your units will be to weak to even finish off chipped enemies without CA extra might. After that, it´s all about them Brave CA´s - Sniper won´t kill without Hunters Volley (unless they are called Felix) - and the same would go for Swift Strikes I presume - as I´ve never and won´t ever use Ferdinand/Sylvain/Seteth in any Maddening attempt, but the fact that people discuss putting these dudes into Paladin for Lancefaire alone, seems telling. Re: Def stacking & Avoid: Defense stacking sounds nice, until you realize you are stacking defense and not avoid, but you have mentioned that already - as of the acquisition of Alert Stance the game crumbles into tiny little pieces and regular tanking becomes a liability, because now your mage is healing and not attacking. Until then it´s "lure 1 enemy and hope you don´t get crit often enough that you have to reset the map." I don´t even know these gambits you mentioned, that´s how irrelevant they were for me to get through Maddening. Linked attack boosts - I assume these are the TH support bonuses? The things that are there passively anyway and you´ll get practically inevitably regardless of difficulty?

Alert Stance, Snipers and Physic. That´s all you need to trivialize Maddening and they do that regardless of level - or well, a level difference of ~10levels.

If you want Maddening to be good I´d say rework the maps and enemy formations - I agree or say that CS had way better maps than the entirety of TH main game. 

11 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Re: chapter 2, this would be fixed by demoting them to Fighters with Bows. I previously advocated for devolving early-game Intermediate enemies. Beyond that, I don't see Poison Strike Archers as a serious problem - you know they have it, so you can plan around that. Rather than facetanking Archers and Snipers, find a forest to dodgetank them on, then take 'em out up-close.

So they have more strength and can 1RKO your units instead of being just annoying?

Yeah, especially in chapter 2 where there is practically no terrain to take advantage of, except the what, three bushes strewn about that you´d actively have to retreat back to, or chapter 3 where you can´t see the enemies that outrange and outmove you or chapter 5 where there´s no terrain at all, or what´s the labyrinth chapter? Good idea, but it dies on failed map design. Dodgetanking doesn´t work without skills - Alert Stance, or I guess wasting a slot for Breakerskills - and lower stats than the enemies.

Note, the reason why I find them so annyoing is that they are a thing at a time where you explicitly don´t have many tools to deal with them - the early game. Who cares about enemy Archers when you have your own, or have fliers - i certainly don´t. 

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'd agree that the way Maddening is designed makes it such that to succeed, you have to use aspects of the game that you could get away with overlooking in hard mode. Like combat arts, for example. With enemies usually being fast to the point that you weren't doubling them anyway, something like Wrath Strike or Tempest Lance is a lot more inviting to use. It also encourages frequent use of bows so you can get hits in on melee enemies without presenting yourself as a target in the process - well, even more so than it already did, considering hand axes and javelins are at their nadir. All this being said, I do think it has its fair share of bullcrap. Like chapter 5, where you have to beware of accidentally aggroing pretty much the whole map. Or Hunting by Daybreak, aka softlock central.

And if your units had higher stats because the exp curve wasnt screwed into oblivion you wouldn´t need to have every dude come with a knife and 4 more bows. Maybe a vulnerary for good measure. You could replace a units inventory with the Mini Bow and an Iron Bow and that´d be a better loadout than pretty much anything else, barring some relics. 

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9 minutes ago, Imuabicus said:

Until then it´s "lure 1 enemy and hope you don´t get crit often enough that you have to reset the map." I don´t even know these gambits you mentioned, that´s how irrelevant they were for me to get through Maddening. Linked attack boosts - I assume these are the TH support bonuses? The things that are there passively anyway and you´ll get practically inevitably regardless of difficulty?

If your approach to maddening maps is to ignore support gambits and try to turtle by luring in one enemy at a time, then that kind of explains why you have so many problems with it. Because that is not a smart way to play Maddening.

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36 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If your approach to maddening maps is to ignore support gambits and try to turtle by luring in one enemy at a time, then that kind of explains why you have so many problems with it. Because that is not a smart way to play Maddening.

Re: Smort: It´s a smarter way than havin to gain addditional skill ranks on player units. I also only included it as a sort of safety, because I know people will be like "But what until you have Alert Stance?" Additionally TH enemies seem to trigger as a groups often enough - luring at minimum one enemy will lure more than one, but I´m sure you knew that and chose to ignore it for an entirely justified reason. 

One unit with Alert Stance will acomplish more on EP than any other setup will on any difficulty on any phase. 

Also, I made an entire thread about my experience with BL and how tivial it was - but even then you don´t get to politely imply I´m stupid. 

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2 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Re: Smort: It´s a smarter way than havin to gain addditional skill ranks on player units. I also only included it as a sort of safety, because I know people will be like "But what until you have Alert Stance?" Additionally TH enemies seem to trigger as a groups often enough - luring at minimum one enemy will lure more than one, but I´m sure you knew that and chose to ignore it for an entirely justified reason. 

One unit with Alert Stance will acomplish more on EP than any other setup will on any difficulty on any phase. 

Also, I made an entire thread about my experience with BL and how tivial it was - but even then you don´t get to politely imply I´m stupid. 

I didn't say you're stupid. I said that if your strategy for Three Houses Maddening is to lure in one enemy at a time then you're not playing the game in a smart way. I would have said you're playing the game wrong, but such comments always get responses along the lines of "who says I can't play the game however I want" which sort of misses the point, I see people are also touchy if you say the way they are playing is not smart, projecting their tactics onto their own metal faculties. So I'll try to phrase it in a third way. Luring in one enemy at a time on Maddening Three Houses will generally lead to frustration with the mode as it is not an effective strategy for clearing the maps in a timely or reliable way. It works in most other Fire Emblem hard modes, but Three Houses' Maddening design was built entirely around not letting the player do that.

15 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'm... not sure what to think about Maddening. Mostly because I haven't beaten 3H enough to feel ready for it, but at a glance, it feels more fair than Lunatic in Awakening did, as Lunatic Awakening pretty much made it such that if you didn't cheese it (primarily by pretty much soloing with Robin), you had no chance.

Who are you and what have you done with Mir?

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6 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

All of these suggestions are good ideas for making Maddening harder for yourself. Re: Combat Arts: yeah in the beginning, because your units will be to weak to even finish off chipped enemies without CA extra might. After that, it´s all about them Brave CA´s - Sniper won´t kill without Hunters Volley (unless they are called Felix) - and the same would go for Swift Strikes I presume - as I´ve never and won´t ever use Ferdinand/Sylvain/Seteth in any Maddening attempt, but the fact that people discuss putting these dudes into Paladin for Lancefaire alone, seems telling.

So... you agree that Combat Arts are critical for beating Maddening Mode? I never said "non-Brave combat arts", of course ones like Hunter's Volley and Fierce Iron Fist are very powerful. In the right hands, though, so are magical arts like Soulblade and Frozen Lance.

7 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

as of the acquisition of Alert Stance the game crumbles into tiny little pieces and regular tanking becomes a liability, because now your mage is healing and not attacking.

You don't necessarily need to dedicate your offensive mage to healing your defensive tank between turns. Certain items (like the Ochain Shield and Blessed Lance) will grant passive healing, or you can have them self-heal on player phase (as defensive lures, they need not do much on player phase, aside from get into position). Or you could just have your resident Bishop Physic them up.

Anyway, I'd agree that dodgetanking is stronger than defense-tanking in the lategame (when Alert Stance+ and Avoid-boosting flying classes become available), albeit not quite as reliable. That said, in the early-to-midgame, you'll want either a highly defensive lure, and/or generous use of Impregnable Wall, to draw in foes safely.

7 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Note, the reason why I find them so annyoing is that they are a thing at a time where you explicitly don´t have many tools to deal with them - the early game. Who cares about enemy Archers when you have your own, or have fliers - i certainly don´t. 

That's basically what I'm saying. The problem is, they can attack from 3 spaces away (which you can't counter). Changed to Fighters, they get 1 more point of Strength (but lose Poison Strike), and also lose movement and range. I don't see them one-rounding any but your squishiest units.

7 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Alert Stance, Snipers and Physic. That´s all you need to trivialize Maddening and they do that regardless of level - or well, a level difference of ~10levels.

So... you agree that enemies having too high stats isn't a problem, because the player gets tools to deal with them? Making enemies weaker won't reduce the ability of such techniques to "trivialize" the game. If anything  it'd enhance it - units who could previously survive a Hunter's Volley now falling to one, or those with 30% Hit on your dodgetank now dropping down to 25%.

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9 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So... you agree that enemies having too high stats isn't a problem, because the player gets tools to deal with them?

Wait, I thought @Imuabicus's comment was about Maddening crippling the exp curve, not enemy stats per se (although levels help with that as well), but more reducing the amount of time you lack the means of dealing with enemies...

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7 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Wait, I thought @Imuabicus's comment was about Maddening crippling the exp curve, not enemy stats per se (although levels help with that as well), but more reducing the amount of time you lack the means of dealing with enemies...

I interpreted it as "crippling the EXP curve means enemies are perpetually at a higher level than your own units, meaning you're always outmatched in stats". To which my argument is, yeah, that's the point. I didn't consider whether they were talking about it taking longer to get into higher-rank classes (which it does, albeit by not as big a margin as the curve would suggest, because again, enemy levels are through-theroof). Keeping high-level enemies with the Hard mode EXP curve would give you earlier (!) access to promotions than on lower difficulties, while also diminishing the enemy-player stat discrepancy. 

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On 11/24/2021 at 6:43 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah but Heroes gave us Bride Sanaki, so it's totally cool for her and Oliver to get together obvious /s.

 

We all know Oliver has FEH Pass and married all the Bride Alts.

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Three Houses Day 66: Chapter 19 Mission

I literally forgot what we were doing today until I saw the text at the bottom of last entry on my OpenOffice document.

Alright, mission time. Sorry for the week off.

...So the capital of the Alliance is obscenely close to Kingdom territory, on the seaside. That... is that wise? My instincts tell me that isn't wise. Way too easily invaded and vulnerable if they went to war with the Kingdom, which if I understand correctly, they seceded from. You want to put more between your capital and your enemies, don't you?

...Two sentences of narration.

Anyone who's played Radiant Dawn, let that sink in for a bit.

That is pathetic.

A soldier questions Claude's decision to evacuate the civilians out to sea, saying that if Derdriu falls those ships won't have enough resources to... well then she gets cut off, but I'm not sure what the wiser alternative would be here. She doesn't say.

...Question...

...So gunpowder is a thing in this setting, judging by those gambits that let you use exploding barrels. How recently was that shit invented? Do ships have cannons yet? Because if so, why the flying fuck would a big country whose capital is on the fucking shoreline not have a powerful navy?

God damn it, Judith reminds me about Gronder Field, and I'm like... the fact that we wind up saving them anyway after fighting them kinda makes that supposedly heart-rending battle feel more in hindsight like one of those stupid fucking “play wars” that happened in Advance Wars 1 and Dual Strike.

...Dimitri seems to think that Claude... deliberately let his country get this thoroughly invaded... so that Dimitri's forces could pincer attack them from behind.

...That, uh...

...Either he allowed tons of Alliance soldiers to die for this plan...

...Or they just repeatedly ran away and the Empire didn't get suspicious at all.

Either way this feels like a really dumb way to show off Claude's “strategic mind”.

Especially since in order for this to be a “pincer attack”... the entirety of the troops the Empire set out would have to fit into this one city.

Right, so now we've got the battlefield, and...

...I just realized that “up” on this map... isn't aligned with geographic north.

The water is to the north and west... when the opening map scene clearly showed that the water is supposed to be to the north and east. So either they've got the entire map fucking spatially inverted for some reason... or this map's east is what's actual geographic north.

...But the latter would mean... that we entered the city... from the opposite entrance from the direction we came here from...?

...I switched the map angle around a bit to make sense of it, and oh goodie! Changing the camera angle of the map doesn't actually change the alignment of the super-zoomed-out map when you press minus!

...Fuck it, let's just rush this bastard.

Some enemies to the east all have some equipment for us. The Axe of Zoltan might see some use. But for now, we stride.

Arundel's here. So did they not march in? They just teleported in, maybe? If so, why didn't they send someone to assassinate Claude in his sleep with that tech?

Hilda: Claude's nuts. Asking me to protect the bridge! That's so much responsibility.

This just does not suit the dramatic stakes and music at all. This second part, however, I did admittedly find kinda cute:

Hilda: But the guy's so helpless, I feel sorry for him. So, I'll do what I can to protect him.

...I think Claude just pulled Hilda's own schtick off against her.

But yeah, Hilda's... pretty overwhelmingly surrounded. I'm not sure how long she'll last against a determined assault.

Judith being alone is a pretty ridiculous image, until I remember that she has a battalion. Still, why didn't her group evacuate to the same spot as Hilda and Claude?

Also holy shit is she garbage what the fuck. She's doing worse damage than the generic swordfighter she's fighting, and she's not even doubling. If this is how bad she is on Hard, how the fuck swiftly is she gonna get her ass handed to her on Maddening?

But anyway, a few turns of player-phase swarming, some strides, and then the boss decides to come charging in, and Arundel falls. And I'm treated to a truly bizarre line reading, where Arundel says “Do our hopes end here...?” in a sort of snarl.

And hilariously, Gilbert levels up and gets a point of speed for the first time!

...And Dimitri... seems to have decided to believe Cornelia, as he demands from Arundel “What did Cornelia... No. What did my stepmother do!?”

But Arundel refuses to say anything, with a line that's such a hilariously childish attempt at being edgy that I'd have expected to see it in a teenager's Kingdom Hearts fan-fiction.

You are not qualified to look into the darkness.”

And as if to hammer the comparison home, his dying words are “There it is... the light...”

And I got a giant shell and goddess icon for keeping Hilda and Judith alive!

So Claude just-

...No, fuck it, holy shit this music is awesome. I'm loving the xylophone and drum beats of this song. Killer. I'll have to look through the soundtrack to find what song this is. I don't remember ever hearing it before.

But yeah, Claude apparently heavily banked on Dimitri coming to our aid.

Claude: And of course, I've always been fond of taking dangerous risks. After all, I sent that express messenger before you had even recaptured the Kingdom capital.

Thank fucking god they acknowledged that was intentional.

...Wait... he's giving us Failnaught?

...And... dissolving the Leicester alliance?

...Please tell me this isn't another prelude to the avatar becoming unquestioned ruler of the continent.

But yeah, he's giving us his bow, with the combat art we can't use, but... he's not joining us himself.

So he's going back to Almyra, like at the end of Golden Deer. I don't get why he's rushing things forward in this timeline and doing it before the crisis is averted, however.

So, uh... are the Golden Deer alumni coming with us? Because he didn't say anything about them coming with him, and, uh... it'd be nice to have them on our side.

...Wha...?

...Dimitri... and Edelgard... being stepsiblings... wasn't common knowledge? Everyone's acting like this is some big secret he's kept from them.

...So... they casually establish that it was a secret all along... ages after we learned about it. Real classy storytelling, game.

...And the reveal that she's family... has got people suggesting that even after all she's done, maybe she could be talked to and redeemed, like this is fucking My Little Pony or Steven Universe. I mean, I don't even think Edelgard's an irredeemable monster or anything, but this still comes across as childishly absurd.

...Cut to Hubert and Edelgard talking vaguely and ominously about something she plans to do... and I think I have a pretty good idea what that might be, from what I've been spoiled about regarding the Azure Moon final boss.

...I... I think they're building this up as the final time we'll be at the Monastery.

Christ I hope so.

Dimitri says that if they try to avoid Fort Merceus, they'll just be pincer attacked later. Honestly though, from what I understand of warfare, attempting a siege on a powerful fortress and getting pincer attacked are both really undesirable outcomes. There might actually be a genuine debate as to which one is worse.

...But the game isn't interested in that. Siege it is.

...A month from now.

Tomorrow we'll start getting ready.

Stay safe, everyone.

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28 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So the capital of the Alliance is obscenely close to Kingdom territory, on the seaside. That... is that wise? My instincts tell me that isn't wise. Way too easily invaded and vulnerable if they went to war with the Kingdom, which if I understand correctly, they seceded from. You want to put more between your capital and your enemies, don't you?

I think there's something else that's odd about Derdriu. Its supposed to be a trading town ala Venice or Amsterdam but....who are they trading with? To their west is the Kingdom which is repeatedly stated to be kinda poor, to its north is Streng which is a land of barbarian tribes, and to their east is Almyra which is Leicester's traditional enemy. The Empire seems the obvious business partner due to being more wealthy and not being as traditionally hostile as the Kingdom or Almyra, but Derdriu doesn't have a sea route to the Empire. 

Its strange because the geography of Fodlan more often makes a lot of sense. 

The weirdest thing about this battle is that Thales, leader of the slitherers and the man behind everything gets defeated....by accident. Dimitri doesn't even know its Thales and twarts his plans entirely by accident. Its part of the reason I consider the slitherers so uniquely inept. 

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On 11/25/2021 at 7:07 AM, Jotari said:

Who are you and what have you done with Mir?

I am in fact the dread being known as GRAVITY CAT! And I bring this:

5b7.png

Because Flayn's love for fish needs to be a bigger meme than it already is. With bonus Morgana! Also, I think this is a perfect excuse for me to bring up that I can't help but think Flayn might be part cat.

Back to on-topic discussion, I don't know what to think of Seteth as a unit; he looks amazing on paper, but several aspects of 3H's design knock him down imo, especially the part where he joins rather late.

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On 11/25/2021 at 2:07 PM, Jotari said:

So I'll try to phrase it in a third way. Luring in one enemy at a time on Maddening Three Houses will generally lead to frustration with the mode as it is not an effective strategy for clearing the maps in a timely or reliable way. It works in most other Fire Emblem hard modes, but Three Houses' Maddening design was built entirely around not letting the player do that.

It is the safest and with that I daresay most reliable way to play and that is the only thing I care about. It took me ~60 turns to get through AM final chapter, but I did so in one attempt and with rewinds to spare.

In what way is TH built around that on any difficulty - because I did just that with decreasing diffculty. The only game that actively punishes you for bait and switch turtle tactics - in my mind - is CQ and even that depends on the map.

On 11/25/2021 at 5:34 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So... you agree that Combat Arts are critical for beating Maddening Mode? I never said "non-Brave combat arts", of course ones like Hunter's Volley and Fierce Iron Fist are very powerful. In the right hands, though, so are magical arts like Soulblade and Frozen Lance.

Yes, they are absolutely nessecary to overcome enemies that are 5-10 levels above you and to compensate for the stats that you didn´t get in the level ups you were denied by virtue of the exp curve being all kinds of messed up.

On 11/25/2021 at 5:34 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

That's basically what I'm saying. The problem is, they can attack from 3 spaces away (which you can't counter). Changed to Fighters, they get 1 more point of Strength (but lose Poison Strike), and also lose movement and range. I don't see them one-rounding any but your squishiest units.

I mean that is what you would do, but would you have greenlit Maddening as is either? They shouldn´t have had Poison Strike to begin with.

On 11/25/2021 at 5:34 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So... you agree that enemies having too high stats isn't a problem, because the player gets tools to deal with them? Making enemies weaker won't reduce the ability of such techniques to "trivialize" the game. If anything  it'd enhance it - units who could previously survive a Hunter's Volley now falling to one, or those with 30% Hit on your dodgetank now dropping down to 25%.

Dude. If something survives a Snipers Hunters Volley, with a full and completed build, and it´s not the final boss (or armored tbf), then whatever it is, it is overtuned. That is an attack worth 5 durability with practically every type of enhancement the game offers. You built that Sniper with the explicit intent to kill one enemy on Player Phase and that Sniper can´t deliver on that. Because I had a Shamir who couldn´t kill without Hunters Volley landing a crit, which hey, happens often enough, but I still say that´s pretty fucking ridiculous, but at what point would you say "that´s too much?"

If I build a unit a certain way, then the last thing I want to see is them failing at that one thing, especially with optimal builds.

 

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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So the capital of the Alliance is obscenely close to Kingdom territory, on the seaside. That... is that wise? My instincts tell me that isn't wise. Way too easily invaded and vulnerable if they went to war with the Kingdom, which if I understand correctly, they seceded from. You want to put more between your capital and your enemies, don't you?

Although Lycia nominally has no capital b/c aristocratic alliance, it's worth noting Ostia the leading power of the time -and seemingly most direct heir to Roland- is right on the Etruria border. And Pherae happens to be right on the border with Bern, in both cases, the term "march" in the fiefdom/territory sense would actually apply. 

In this Lycian case, I pin it all on the choice of the writers, it makes a straightforward east to west journey across Lycia from 1-8x. Perhaps the same is true with 3H? Throw the capital on the border for the sake of simplifying things?

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So gunpowder is a thing in this setting, judging by those gambits that let you use exploding barrels. How recently was that shit invented? Do ships have cannons yet? Because if so, why the flying fuck would a big country whose capital is on the fucking shoreline not have a powerful navy?

You think that if they invented cannons, they would be put to land use first, considering most warfare happens there.

Also, from what I'm aware, a seaside city, while best defended by an excellent navy, could for a long time do fine with strong seaside fortifications. There is a popular, if misattributed, saying that goes "A ship's a fool to fight a fort", said line is placed in the mouth of Horatio Nelson, so late 1700s-early 1800s. However, it would've applied for centuries before that. A navy alone could not under usual circumstances ever shoot enough cannonballs at a well-maintained coastal fortress to destroy it, and would pay the price in a few needlessly sunk vessels from the fortress's cannons. Blockading the enemy into starvation or a land assault would often be necessary to take a seawater stronghold.

Not sure how versed you are in the history gunpowder and firearms, but FYI cannons preceded guns. People tend to think the small shooting things came before the big ones, but no, it's the opposite. Well, fire lances, incendiary arrows, and bombs came first, but then cannons, and lastly guns.

While cannons can kill people, and scare the heck out of them, their primary purpose was siege warfare.

With regards to the invention of gunpowder, Europe had learned of it from China -possibly through an Arab intermediary- by the mid-1200s AD. Europe wrote down its own first recipe (cheaper than importing from the East) around 1275-1300. An account of the Siege of Tournai in 1340 refers to "kanons" being used by the French defenders, which unlike some other terms of the period, must unmistakably mean gunpowder weapons. 

Now, Europe didn't invent gunpowder, China did. And for the gap between them inventing gunpowder and inventing cannons... I'd have to consult my book on the topic presently in the basement, if you were so curious.

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2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Not sure how versed you are in the history gunpowder and firearms, but FYI cannons preceded guns.

That was in fact my instinct. Technology often gets smaller as it advances.

3 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I'd have to consult my book on the topic presently in the basement, if you were so curious.

I'd love to hear it!

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