Video HHM Ranked LTC

[ruadath]

Florina without LHM transfers is already kinda useless as a combat unit EHM, I can't see her being worth promoting in HHM. Canas, Heath, Rath, Eliwood, Priscilla and two out of Sain, Kent and Lowen are the likliest candidates if you didn't play LHM and are looking out for funds.

Warping people is mostly Canas' job with Pent and Priscilla being back-up.

I doubt Canas is going to get recruited (his Gaiden Chapter is probably not going to be visited). I may spend an extra turn on 17 to get Lucius though.

[Yojinbo]

17x only takes like two turns and has a lot of treasure and exp. If you're going with the goal of S-Ranking the whole thing skipping 17x isn't the best idea imo.

[ruadath]

17x only takes like two turns and has a lot of treasure and exp. If you're going with the goal of S-Ranking the whole thing skipping 17x isn't the best idea imo.

The treasure you get and EXP (in a 2 turn clear) don't even make up for the Funds/EXP ranking for 17x, so you have a net loss from participating in that chapter.

Edited October 13, 2015 by ruadath

[Sniper Knight]

There isn't much of a point spending resources on getting Canas to Warp anyways, since there are already two Staffbots and Lucius, who starts with C Staves. His main utility is getting easier bosskills with Luna.

Heath should get priority, since Flor's flier utility comes at the cost of having to actually train her, which is pretty tedious on vanilla HHM.

[dondon151]

erk can function as warper. lucius's mag cap isn't high enough for chapter 32's 2-turn.

[ruadath]

Chapter 13 is now up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3S0jKIc4Zc

Chapter Totals:
715/750 EXP
1362/3600 G

Campaign Totals:
1623/1300 EXP
32698/15600 G

Everything worked out really well here, despite me having to account for a weaker/slower Eliwood and Lowen. Both villages visited, combat rank intact, and over 700 EXP means I also got all 4 possible stars so that Hector, Bartre, and Erk get a +1 to Hit, Avoid, and Dodge next chapter (if that matters at all). Other than that Serra got in 3 heals, and I save a couple of Wolf Beil uses, in addition to a killing Edge use compared to my previous run (although Eliwood did use his Rapier).

Let me know what you guys think!

[ruadath]

Strange; I just noticed that this video is in really bad quality for some reason, so I'm probably going to rerun and reupload.

[ruadath]

EDIT: Correct quality version now available:

Edited October 14, 2015 by ruadath

[Yojinbo]

I think 3-turn Ch.12 and 4-turn Ch.13 already puts you ahead +2 turns compared to Horace's run. Pretty impressive.

Wyrmslayer!Guy can ORKO Wyvern Riders in Ch.26 at base level in HHM btw. That'd be a pretty good opportunity to gain a shitload of exp in case that rank turns out to be sketchy.

[Irysa]

Is it really so important to critkill that one archer with Dorcas and that one Cavalier with Bartre? I realise this is ranked but I imagine Marcus could simply clear a path with the handaxe or whatnot and avoid such issues, and perhaps the EXP loss could be made up elsewhere?

[Yojinbo]

Exp loss will be increasingly hard to make up for in an LTC setting and if he actually goes for the lowest turncount possible in each chapter then he'll miss a shitload of exp in midgame chapers like 18, 21, 22, 24 [Lloyd] and 25 [Kenneth]. He'll probably have to maximize exp gain in the defensive lategame chapters at this rate anyway, I'm not sure if any further exp loss would be even manageable.

[ruadath]

Is it really so important to critkill that one archer with Dorcas and that one Cavalier with Bartre? I realise this is ranked but I imagine Marcus could simply clear a path with the handaxe or whatnot and avoid such issues, and perhaps the EXP loss could be made up elsewhere?

Marcus could have one-shotted the PKs with an Iron Axe (wouldn't really change anything except significantly less EXP), but he can't have anything equipped after dropping off Hector or all the enemies (and in particular, Guy) will run after Hector instead. Besides the fact that Guy will double and likely crit-kill Hector, the fact that he doesn't go after Marcus means that Matthew can't recruit him, and therefore the path to the boss gets clogged up and Marcus can't make it to the boss in time.

I think I mentioned this on some other thread, but for me at least, the reliability of a strategy in the GBA games is not so much based on the actual percentage chance of the strategies I have working but rather how reasonable it is in terms of not burning a large number of RNs (a notion which I think is similar to General Horace's). As you've probably noticed in both the Chapter 12 playthrough and this one, the number of RNs burned has been fairly minimal, with at most 2 at once in the former and at most 4 here on two or three occasions.

Edited October 14, 2015 by ruadath

[Irysa]

I think I mentioned this on some other thread, but for me at least, the reliability of a strategy in the GBA games is not so much based on the actual percentage chance of the strategies I have working but rather how reasonable it is in terms of not burning a large number of RN

That really doesn't make any sense, but your playthrough, your rules I suppose.

Marcus could equip a Hand Axe on Turn 1 to counter the Archers which would help with clearing that area. Matthew could also just move an extra tile West and use a Vulnerary on Turn 2 so he has enough Mov to cross the fort to talk to Guy, then the PK is counterkilled on EP, unless it flies to the fort or something. If that's the case I can see how there simply isn't enough manpower to kill the Cavalier in the way to clear Matt's path to Guy with your current strategy, but I think it should be possible to have Lowen assist with the south route to help with making sure the way is clear. Lowen could even give Hector to Marcus on Turn 2 which would let Marcus kill most of the enemies on Turn 1 EP easily. However, you will probably lose a PK kill at the top, or else Eliwood will have some shitty survival chances in order to reach the village in time, so I'm not sure about that. Perhaps Dorcas could go left instead since Marcus is killing most of the enemies anyway.

Edited October 14, 2015 by Irysa

[ruadath]

That really doesn't make any sense, but your playthrough, your rules I suppose.

I guess we can agree to disagree here. I like to think of the fixed RNG seed as an inherent part of the game mechanics that should shape a player's strategy in a highly optimized run, but I guess you're right: that's just my opinion.

Marcus could equip a Hand Axe on Turn 1 to counter the Archers which would help with clearing that area. Matthew could also just move an extra tile West and use a Vulnerary on Turn 2 so he has enough Mov to cross the fort to talk to Guy, then the PK is counterkilled on EP, unless it flies to the fort or something. If that's the case I can see how there simply isn't enough manpower to kill the Cavalier in the way to clear Matt's path to Guy with your current strategy, but I think it should be possible to have Lowen assist with the south route to help with making sure the way is clear. Lowen could even give Hector to Marcus on Turn 2 which would let Marcus kill all the enemies on Turn 1 EP easily. However, you will probably lose a PK kill at the top, or else Eliwood will have some shitty survival chances in order to reach the village in time, so I'm not sure about that. Perhaps Dorcas could go left instead since Marcus is killing most of the enemies anyway.

Serra could have just healed Matthew instead of 1 HP on Bartre, but because the archer ended up missing on EP2 in my run, I wanted to keep Matthew's HP low so that enemies would want to attack him and move into range to do so on EP3, which allowed Bartre and Dorcas to go after them on turn 4 (otherwise they would have crowded around Guy, and no one would have been able to reach them = missed EXP).

The thing with the cav can be avoided (at a medium loss of EXP, maybe around ~50 or so) by altering the playthrough so that Rebecca doesn't attack on the first turn. Then Matthew and Marcus get to move an extra step forward on the first turn which allows them to outmanuever the cav. He ends up being annoying though because his high Def (7, I think) means that even Bartre can't 2RKO him so he doesn't die on turn 3, and he assists whichever archer(s) is still alive in attacking Matthew/Rebecca, which makes it more annoying to make sure everything works out on the EPs.

Lowen starts too far back to really contribute anything to the southern team, and the fact that in your strat he has 2 turns of not doing anything (and no EP) really hurts his EXP gain (which is obviously vital in this playthrough). He needs to get a lot of EXP (especially without 13x) in order to have good enough stats to assist in the Chapter 14 (unless, again, you want to have Marcus clear the entire western half of the map), and possibly Chapter 16 if I go for the 4 turn clear (though this isn't as essential because there is plenty of training time in Chapter 15).

Edited October 14, 2015 by ruadath

[Mekkah]

Man, your LTCs look so messy mid-chapter, I always scratch my head and wonder how the hell you end up in a quick clear every time. There's always remnant enemies all over the place seemingly standing in the way.

[ruadath]

Man, your LTCs look so messy mid-chapter, I always scratch my head and wonder how the hell you end up in a quick clear every time. There's always remnant enemies all over the place seemingly standing in the way.

Lol, I'll take that as a compliment (I think?).

[Mekkah]

It was meant as a compliment!

[Alastor15243]

Wow, this is really impressive, but it's convinced me to never attempt an S ranking. And if the story or characters mock my skill in any way in the end? To hell with 'em.

"Excuse me, but I just led eleven soldiers and a flute-playing little boy in hot pants to victory against two city-states, an N.G.O. superpower terrorist organization backed by the most powerful dark wizard your world has ever seen, and a GODDAMNED DRAGON, with no casualties! From what bleak, wretched, hellfirey abyss do you summon the unmitigated entitled AUDACITY to expect anything more of your tacticians!?"

[ruadath]

Assuming my goals have change to no longer prioritize ranking over turncount (something I'm considering doing), then it makes more sense to modify this Chapter 13 strategy so that Lowen can pick up some weapons from the armory (in particular, a second Javelin might be essential for increasing reliability in Chapter 14, and an extra Hand Axe certainly wouldn't hurt either). The loss in EXP shouldn't be a big deal in a non-ranked context, since Lowen doesn't have any tasks to complete in Chapter 14 that depend on his stats, and I have all of Chapter 15 (defense chapter) to take the time to get him some levels.

[ruadath]

Given that my 3 turn clear of Chapter 14 obtained 830/850 EXP, I think I'm probably going to incorporate it into this playthrough.

Chapter Totals:
830/850 EXP
9558/10000 G

Campaign Totals:
2453/2150 EXP
42256/25600 G

So marginal losses on both fronts, but not really enough to bother us at all. It's a little bit sad that we miss out on our first (not forced missable) tactician star though.

Edited June 25, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

I'm currently uploading a new video of Chapter 15 for my rankless LTC run that feeds the boss kill to Hector, and with some modifications to the strat (which I may or may not record a new video for, depending on interest), I have a clear that I want to use for this playthrough.

Chapter Totals:
1314/0 EXP
9488/0 G

Campaign Totals:
3767/2150 EXP
51744/25600 G

Edited July 2, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Chapter 15 improved to yield even more EXP!

Marcus retreats after turn 5 to let Hector and Eliwood grab more EXP. Note that I could have gotten 17 extra EXP for Eliwood on the last turn if I equipped him with the Rapier, but this would have come at the cost of 420G, which I decided was slightly too pricey for me (in light of my recent analysis). EDIT: there is an update for the last turn that makes things better at almost no cost

Chapter Totals:
1390/0 EXP
9437/0 G

Campaign Totals:
3843/2150 EXP
51693/25600 G

Edited August 2, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

In case you guys have been wondering, one of the reasons I have been going back and making all of these optimizations to the Chapter 16-19 portion of the playthrough is that I anticipate using these same clears for the ranked playthrough (since I managed to 6-turn Chapter 18 without using the Dracoshield). The two playthroughs will definitely diverge at Chapter 20, since I most likely take an extra (5th) turn in order to grab all of the chests, and I don't want to use the Secret Book on Florina just yet.

So I won't be utilizing the modified Chapter 15 clear posted above, and instead this playthrough will follow the same route as the standard LTC through Chapter 19. Here are the relevant stats from the campaign so far.

Campaign Totals (post Chapter 19):
7155/6900 EXP
120862/99600 G

39 turns

Surprisingly, we still have a 5-star in all categories, though I expect that to drop after the next chapter, which has an EXP target of 2100...