samthedigital

FE9 Easy mode is the least challenging thing in Fire Emblem as far as I am aware. It is possible to have Titania kill 90% of the enemies while rushing through every chapter and still get a second unit that is comparable to Titania by chapter 9, and then it can be done four or five more times before Ike even promotes.

Using bonus experience in FE9/10 is nothing like using the tower. It takes a lot of time to level in the tower versus using bonus experience, and time is more important than turn counts. People generally use turn counts because it is the easier of the two to measure, but that doesn't mean that the element of time doesn't exist in efficiency runs.

Not only is BEXP halved, but in MM characters gain 5 less exp per battle. This is sort of compensated for by having a higher enemy density, but there are more enemies, they are of higher levels, and they start promoting earlier (by about 8 chapters). I wouldn't claim that maniac mode is one of the hardest Fire Emblem challenges, especially since I haven't played it, but that at least should make it more difficult than Sacred Stones.

I think this is the only game where they removed the hardest difficulty level and gave us an even more simple easy mode when translating the game or whatever. That's what makes the game less challenging than it could be, and it's a shame.

Bulbasaur gets Vine Whip at level 13, so grinding is required to make Bulbasaur beat Brock. Technically Bulbasaur can use Tackle and Leech Seed, but it still takes a long time, and it makes Bulbasaur actually worse than the other two starters for Brock. Charmander is often criticized for its Brock fight in Red and Blue, but what they forget is that Potions exist, and outside of that Charmander has the best STAB out of the starters earlier on due to the bugs. I think in a speedrun without glitches picking Charmander as a starter is only 7 minutes or so slower than picking Squirtle, but Bulbasaur is a lot worse because of the lack of coverage that Grass brings. I would only give Bulbasaur a 7 in Red and Blue. It's a clear 5 in Yellow.

Some of the difficulty in this game comes from enemy reinforcements attacking before you can see them coming, but that being said HHM is a little easier than the hard mode in this game. The difficulty is more even and spread out through the chapters though versus this game where it is sporadic. Getting S rank in HHM is more difficult, but I don't think you care about that.

How do you manipulate it so that the closest gate is the correct one?

Juliet, chapter 15 should be 8 turns since the game counts an extra turn for a defense chapter no matter what you do.

Mankey and Pikachu both have the regular growth curve. Starting at level 6 Nidoran has only a small amount more of exp to gain than Mankey to level 9 even though he needs to be raised to 12, but he doesn't need to be babied as much. Pikachu suffers the same sort of problem. You need to abuse it for it to score quick kills, and even then it takes a while with its growth rate. I don't think that any of the glitches are difficult to manipulate. It's frustrating to manipulate the trainer fly glitch early on to get Pokemon with fading growths because you need to get lucky with random Pokemon, but come Cerulean you can reliably glitch a level 100 Mew without fail. After reaching Vermilion it is possible to immediately reach Lavender, and it's not a difficult glitch to do either. The only glitch that's kind of 'difficult' to do is the walk through walls glitch since getting the last step exactly to be falling off of a ledge is sort of tricky in a way I guess.

The only luck you need is to catch a level 6 Nidoran. Outside of that you need to use Pikachu to weaken the first Nidoran F from the trainer to the left, let it die, then Nidoran can fight everything effectively. It's the strategy I use in single segment runs and in segmented ones, and it's very effective and reliable. Vagabond does not do this in his speedrun because he did not know about it. That's not to say that Nidoran should always be assumed to be used or whatever, but to fight Brock efficiently in Yellow there aren't that many options. If you don't get Mankey/Butterfree/NidoranM/F you need to have Pikachu at level 11 or something and use a lot of Tail Whips and Potions. They appear about as often as a level 4 Nidoran, but the advantage in Nidoran is in the fact that at level 6 it is superior to other options, and it is even at level 4 with Mankey probably, but that means that Nidoran's advantage at level 6 breaks the tie. I am quite positive the boost exists. Try fighting a Pokemon that you are slower than by a little bit with all badges and then pump X-Specials into the Pokemon. Eventually you will be faster than the Pokemon. I think my original post could be misleading though, 9/8 is a multiplier, so if Nidoking has 100 speed then his speed becomes 112 without any stat boosting items, but then after using x-special or whatever the stats are multiplied by 9/8 again. You save time by not getting Fissure and skipping some text by having a full inventory beforehand. That and Nidoking gets Surf which means you don't need Lapras.

Alright, so assuming that rule, you have some Pokemon that are too low and some that are too high. Firstly, Nidoking should get a 10 while Nidoqueen gets 9.75 to separate the two. Nidoking's better base speed is immediately more useful along with his better attacking stats, and it has Horn Attack. Later on in the game the speed stat still matters, and Nidoking can outspeed more. Nidoqueen is better defensively, but it's not useful at all. Nidoking can die later on in the game, but X items fix the problem entirely (Nidoqueen can die too anyway). The most efficient thing to do is to box Pikachu as soon as you catch other Pokemon because you avoid special animations, and Pikachu isn't even useful at killing off flying Pokemon. It's not efficient to even touch Pikachu until after you beat Brock because most of the exp resources are going to be used on the Pokemon needed to beat Brock. At that point Pikachu is probably not going to be higher than 8, but even then that requires training which is inefficient in the first place. In any case, Pikachu has a level growth that doesn't really favor it. It's going to level slowly for the first half of the game. Even if you give it all of your resources in exp (while fighting only required trainers) it still doesn't OHKO very often, and it has troubles even against Misty. It should get a 3 or a 4 I think. It's not really the best option against Brock. Nidoran can be caught at level 6, so the level difference to get their move to beat Brock isn't that large, but Mankey takes more time babying. The best method for training Nidoran has him being fed exp from one single Pokemon, and other than that he's better than any other Pokemon for the forest, so "Levels 2-12 are the only bad points for these two" isn't true. Nidoran Male at least is better than any other Pokemon in the early game, so calling its levels 4 or 6 (the levels you can catch it at in the patch of grass right before the forest) a bad point is like saying there's a Pokemon that's actually better at it. It's roughly 50/50 for Nidoking with Thrash if it's the only Pokemon you trained, but if it's not then Nidoking has a little trouble beating them. Pikachu doesn't do much better though since it really is noticeable early on how much Nidoking's fading growth and being fully evolved helps it. Every enemy trainer Pokemon has no stat exp. and a 7DV in every stat except for Attack which is 8. I am not sure if X-Accuracy increases every stat by 9/8 by the way, but getting the badges that increase stats increases them by 9/8 invisibly, and using an item to boost stats increases them again by 9/8, so Nidoking has a larger buffer again to outspeed Jynx. You can get a total of 4 Elixers that are more or less on route in the game, so PP (which is only an issue against the Elite 4) isn't really a problem if you give one Pokemon Fissure without giving it Horn Drill. Bruno is still worthless anyway. Vagabond didn't know where two of them are, but your point still stands regardless. The best way to take on the game now by the way in terms of speedrunning is to skip Fissure and instead only use Horn Drill as Nidoking has a lot of Elixers he can use. Clefairy is one of the better Pokemon. Since you are required to use a team by your rules Nidoking isn't going to be getting many resources aside from spending money on it for X-Items (You get Horn Drill free in the hideout, and you have to go there if you aren't using glitches). This isn't really a problem or anything because Nidoking is great anyway, and he isn't getting them so he can help out the team rather than it not being fair to give them to him or anything, but Clefable should get Water Gun so it can help out against rocks at the very least. Going by your rules means mostly that when using Nidoking the other two Pokemon are tagging along to get exp while Nidoking is doing the bulk of the hard work, so Clefable is really worthwile to use since it can use a lot of TMs and nail super effective hits. STAB isn't really important when playing, but leveling up fast and getting super effective hits on important things is, and Clefairy does both. In Red and Blue Bulbasaur is the worst of the three starters for an 'efficient completion' of the game. In Yellow it's main problems are still there. It can't score quick KOs, can't hit for super effective damage very often, has to be babied to become even somewhat useful, and to hit anything resistant to grass it needs Body Slam. It gets Razor Leaf at level 30, but that's far too late, and while Razor Leaf is a good move it's not going to help Bulbasaur actually be useful. Plus it's not getting many boss kills mid game because it is poor against them. You should probably mention that Charmander is a free HM slave which is its main utility. Bellsprout can be caught in hoards, so if you have nothing better you can spam Misty with Bellsprout. This is something that makes it better than Bulbasaur because early game utility is far more important than late game utility as there are a lot of great no resource Pokemon later on. Oddish can also do the same thing Bellsprout can early on. You can't get Abra in the same place as you could in Red and Blue. You have to wait until you get out of Cerulean City to catch it. There should be a rule against trading because allowing trades to other games means that you can get any other Pokemon from trades too. Lastly, I disagree with your first and 5th ruling. There is no benefit to going to the game corner, but it's a glitch to skip it, so I would ban it from being used. Banning glitches based on how game breaking they are is the same as banning Pokemon by how good they are. I am pretty sure they fixed the safari zone glitch anyway in Yellow. I don't know though, making a tier list assuming more Pokemon are used is fine and all, but it's hard to draw the line on how much you are allowed to use one Pokemon.

What's the point in caring about turn count though if it's not the minimum? Since time isn't an obstacle then achieving the best possible turn count should be the main objective, but characters can still be ranked based on how much better they contribute when used than others. Suppose we ask whether Wil or Canas is the better character. Canas isn't as efficient because when he is used you can only reach say 300 max turns instead of 299 turns. However let's say Bartre when used loses out on more turns when used, so he is objectively not as good as Canas is, and that's not exactly simple to argue in practice as you would suggest. However, that doesn't really tell you what is more core consistent since it has to do with the turn count and not time. If you want to cover more ground by saying that the tier list ranks characters based on average turn completion that only matters when time is taken into equation else it doesn't matter if you take 1000 tries to get one chapter done.

I don't see the merit in discussing tier lists that have no value. I never suggested that, so again, I don't know where that's coming from. In any case, a tier list is just that. In the end there is a definite tier list within any sort of parameters you want to make, and discussion won't change the tier list. Within the context, yes, Wil would be better than Canas assuming Wil contributes more. I never said that this is the proper way to tier though, and I don't know why this has gone on this tangent in the first place. I was only asking whether the tier lists were based on having the best turn count or having a good average time to complete the games.

That's the point though. If turn counts take precedence over time then consistency isn't an issue, and Wil>Canas isn't ridiculous. I am also not assuming that the player is going to do the same thing every game, so I am not sure where that came from.

That doesn't really have much to do with what I am saying though. I don't really care that it has been done, only that that method isn't really justified in any way.

Not assuming the fastest strategy to make characters look artificially better doesn't really make a good tier list. That doesn't happen. Characters are ranked based on how well they perform assuming they are being used. Even if the character is detrimental to the turn count they will still be better than a character who is even worse for the turn count.

Yeah, that is why I said that it was generally the case. I don't believe that the fastest strategy is always inefficient, but I would say that it is usually so, but maybe I could be mistaken about that, I don't know. Anyway, if the fastest possible strategies are given up because they require too much RNG manipulation and death manipulation, then one of the two possible ways of not factoring them into the tier list would not to account for RNG manipulation and death manipulation, but then you're adding additional rules just because you don't like using death manipulation and RNG manipulation as they are only tools used to get a better turn count. The other possibility is that tier lists are actually representative of strategies that are efficient in regard to average time spent playing, but that doesn't seem to be the case; I don't know, I haven't really gotten a straight answer.

When efficiency is applied to time the fastest possible strategies can not usually be used as they generally require too much luck to be worthwhile, that is to say, they are inefficient strategies.

Can you provide an example of how this would make some characters better than they would otherwise be? I'm not entirely convinced that enough would be changed to warrant having a different tier list. On an unrelated note, in what context is efficient play used? Is it efficiency with regards to turn count or efficiency with regards to time? Not that the two are drastically different, but I am guessing that there would be some significant differences in the two kinds of tiering methods.