CATS vs Joker

[CATS]

Minerva is recruited too late to do much in Ch 10; the debaet really starts at the beginning of Ch 11.

What has Caesar accomplished up to this point? Don't feel like going into detail, though obviously I will if need be. For now I'll just say he's around L8 when Minerva reclasses to Sniper and has a D in Bows.

Base Sniper Minerva has 8 Str and 14 Spd. 8 Hunter Caesar has 9 Str and 10-11 Spd. lol, more Str than Minerva already. Minerva's C in Bows pushes her Atk up so that it's the same as Caesar's, though. So it looks like she's winning by a good bit. Same Atk, 3-4 more Spd. But how much does that extra Spd actually do for her? Not very much. Looking through AS values on Ch 11, it would appear that Minerva only doubles 4 enemies which Caesar doesn't, the 4 Cavaliers, out of 18 enemies total. Their Atk is the same, so against everything else which either both double or neither double, there's no significant difference. That's a pretty unimpressive win.

Let's talk Exp gains. Minerva gets ~15 Exp for defeating those L6 unpromoted enemies in Ch 11 (Exp formula gives 14.6 repeating). Caesar, meanwhile, gets 30. Likewise Caesar's Str and Spd growths are higher, by 5% and 10% respectively. Including the fact that he grows twice as fast, Caesar's Str and Spd are thus effectively growing over twice as fast as Minverva's.

Now let's talk promotion. The game gives you 11 Master Seals, not including the Ch 23 Secret Shop, and we're using perhaps 10 units who need Seals (Marth, Wolf and Zagaro don't need 'em). The first Seal comes in Ch 10, the last one in Ch 23--a 17 chapter gap, assuming you go to all the gaidens. It's safe to say that basically everyone wants a Seal. So when does Caesar get his turn? Since everyone wants the resource, even division of it would result in him promoting somewhere in the middle of this timespan, let's say around Ch 18. Sometimes you might give him a Seal earlier, sometimes later, w/e, he'll get one at some point. 18 seems like a good midpoint.

9-10 chapters from Ch 11 to Caesar's promotion, then. How many levels does Caesar get per chapter? I'll just say 1 as an arbitrary benchmark, and going by the Exp gains, Minerva thus gets 0.5 per chapter. Saying that it's 10 chapters until Caesar's promotion just for simplicity's sake, we thus get this right before he promotes:

6 Sniper Minerva: 9.75 Str, 16 Spd

18 Hunter Caesar: 13 Str, 15-16 Spd

Minerva's average Spd lead over this whole duration of time is 1-2 points; and Caesar's average Atk lead is about the same. So who's better overall before Caesar promotes? Who cares, it's pretty close either way, whereas it's not going to be so close after Caesar promotes.

6 Sniper Minerva: 9.75 Str, 16 Spd

18/1 Warrior Caesar: 14 Str, 17-18 Spd----40.5 Hp, 9.25 Def

18/1 General Caesar: 15 Str, 13-14 Spd----42.5 Hp, 19.25 Def

Does Caesar want Warrior, or General? Good question, but either way Caesar's beating Minerva by quite a bit, so it's all good. Minerva's borderline on doubling the Cavs' 12 AS in this chapter; she misses the double if she's just 1 point below average, and won't double anything else without her Spd going way above average (the next benchmark is 20 AS to double the chap's Paladins, 4 points above Minerva's average). Steel Bow Minerva doubling those Cavs does only 22-23 damage, while General Caesar does 16-17 with one shot and actually has enemy phase (liek, 4-5HKO'd), or Warrior Caesar doubles for ~31 damage.

Once again Caesar's growths are higher than Minerva's, and he's still on a lower level, so he'll just win by more and more as the game keeps going.

[Dat Nick]

What has Caesar accomplished up to this point? Don't feel like going into detail, though obviously I will if need be.

He has a base 7 str and lacks the AS to double, plus E bows.

....he isn't accomplishing much.

For now I'll just say he's around L8 when Minerva reclasses to Sniper and has a D in Bows.

wtf

How did he get five levels so quickly? I know he's underlevelled, but that still doesn't give him a free pass on levelling just because he has such a hard time killing anything with his 12 base atk.

Even if he WERE level 8, he's losing to Minerva in every single base stat. And he's losing str more than what it looks like due to Minerva's bow rank giving her 1 more pow. I'll go further than that, even.

though. So it looks like she's winning by a good bit. Same Atk, 3-4 more Spd. But how much does that extra Spd actually do for her? Not very much. Looking through AS values on Ch 11, it would appear that Minerva only doubles 4 enemies which Caesar doesn't, the 4 Cavaliers, out of 18 enemies total. Their Atk is the same, so against everything else which either both double or neither double, there's no significant difference. That's a pretty unimpressive win.

um yes

Let's totally skimp on the fact that cavs are very common enemies throughout this timeframe, they just aren't common here on this chapter. Like, they come as reinforcements in C12 and 12x has lots of them too.

Caesar, meanwhile, gets 30.

Unless Ceasar shrunk to level 6? He is not. Not quite sure how you got that number.

18 seems like a good midpoint.

k

9-10 chapters from Ch 11 to Caesar's promotion, then. How many levels does Caesar get per chapter? I'll just say 1 as an arbitrary benchmark, and going by the Exp gains, Minerva thus gets 0.5 per chapter.

Sorry Hans, wrong guess. As Ceasar's level goes up, his EXP gain goes down. Eventually he starts hovering around 20~ for a kill which is barely better than Minerva's 15~. You're giving him too many levels, too fast.

6 Sniper Minerva: 9.75 Str, 16 Spd

18 Hunter Caesar: 13 Str, 15-16 Spd

Why in heaven's name is Minerva only level SIX? She isn't restricted to just ~15 EXP on the player phase [And Ceasaer is too if you want to play that game] as there are quite a few promoted enemies throughout her existence [Those wyverns in C16? Easy pickings]. Even with that ignored, this is barely half a level a chapter for her which sounds like ridiculous sandbagging.

No, it's more like this:

9 Minerva: 31 HP, 11 str, 17 AS, 11 def, probable silver bow use which Ceasar may not have.

So essentially it took Ceasar this long and he's still only COMPARING to her. Wow.

Does Caesar want Warrior, or General? Good question, but either way Caesar's beating Minerva by quite a bit, so it's all good.

Ah, but when you stop sandbagging her, his AS/STR are similar as warrior, so General's the only way he's going to claim superiority in some way.

she misses the double if she's just 1 point below average, and won't double anything else without her Spd going way above average

Good thing this isn't an issue, since, you know, she has absolutely no reason to be level 6 at C18.

and won't double anything else without her Spd going way above average (the next benchmark is 20 AS to double the chap's Paladins, 4 points above Minerva's average)

Funny. I don't see Ceasar doubling these schmucks either.

Steel Bow Minerva doubling those Cavs does only 22-23 damage

Steel bow? STEEL BOW? You're saying she has not had the 30 rounds of combat required to reach B Bows in TEN CHAPTERS, and that she can't make use of our gigantic stockpile of funds to buy a Silver? Now I KNOW you're sandbagging her.

Once again Caesar's growths are higher than Minerva's, and he's still on a lower level, so he'll just win by more and more as the game keeps going.

Except for the fact that level leads kill EXP growths and being promoted in this game actually plays in your favor much better than, say, FE7 for gaining levels. The gap is much smaller than you're making it seem, Ceasar's uber EXP gain does not last forever.

btw, you didn't bring up longbows at all. So I will bring up all of the things that longbows are handy for, because Minerva can use them and Ceasar cannot.

can instablick mages without a counter [VERY useful for those 34 atk assholes in C23]

extends the middle finger to javelins/handaxes

increased range to attack fliers who are trying to utilize flying utility to stay out of attack range [Like, dracos hovering over the sea two spaces away from the plains]

In general, just a more convenient way to attack. If I'm having a chokepoint with Abel and somebody with a jav held off, Minerva can still attack and find a way to be useful.

Can attack units who like to hide behind walls. C17x and C19 are good examples. Hell, C17x has what I like to call "the 2-range trap corridor of death" which I find is nearly impossible to pass without a longbow picking off the archers/mages.

[CATS]

How did he get five levels so quickly? I know he's underlevelled, but that still doesn't give him a free pass on levelling just because he has such a hard time killing anything with his 12 base atk.

Everyone has a hard time killing things at this point; it already often takes multiple units ganging up on an enemy in order to kill it. Having "a hard time killing anything" is not outside the norm. Outside of effective weapons (which must be forged in order to one-round in the case of horse enemies), generally no one is able to kill anything on their own yet.

Yes, Caesar's Atk is low, but it's also enough. Those Ch 8 Cavs have 31-32 Hp and 7 Def. L8 Cord + Barst each hitting a Cav with the Steel Axe takes its Hp down to 3-4, at which point Caesar can finish it off. L8-9 Ogma doubling with the Steel Sword does 16 damage; throw in another hit from Cord or Barst and the Cav's Hp is once again reduced below 5. L8 Mage Shiida doubling w/ Fire is 18 damage, L8-9 Cain does 10 damage with a Javelin hit, which brings a Cav's Hp down to 3-4 points. etc.

Caesar is more than capable of getting kills and gaining Exp, and since you already need 2-3 units teaming an enemy in order to kill it, it's not a big problem for him to do so. It isn't like FE7 Nino where everyone is always one-rounding by the time she joins, so that it's a hassle to leave anything alive for her. Rather, the PCs here are individually unable to do anything more than weaken the enemies. Furthermore, Caesar's level is obviously the lowest in the party at this point, and thus his Exp gains are the highest; you get a greater net benefit by giving him kills than by giving them to anyone else, and so it's in your best interest to let him make a kill shot whenever possible.

If you're that concerned about levelling him up, he can just be left as a Mercenary for Ch 9. Ch 9 has a ton of Pirates with 9 AS, which Merc Caesar can double after gaining Spd just once, pushing his damage against them up into the double digits. WTA over the Pirates also reduces their hit by 20, which helps pad his defense. Then Ch 10 has flying enemies which Hunter Caesar can obviously do some good damage against. To get an idea of how much, Hunter Caesar's Atk against those fliers is similar to Barst's w/ Steel Axe, and a kill on a Dracoknight gives him nearly a full level all by itself.

Even if he WERE level 8, he's losing to Minerva in every single base stat. And he's losing str more than what it looks like due to Minerva's bow rank giving her 1 more pow. I'll go further than that, even.

No, go look at the stats again. L8 Hunter Caesar has 9 Str (7 base + [.4 * 5]), base Sniper Minerva has 8 (base Str as Dracoknight is 9, Sniper's class base is 1 lower than Draco's). Her Bow rank just allows her to tie in Atk.

Let's totally skimp on the fact that cavs are very common enemies throughout this timeframe, they just aren't common here on this chapter. Like, they come as reinforcements in C12 and 12x has lots of them too.

Enemy stats topic lists 2 Cavs for Ch 12 out of 17 enemies total (18 including the boss). There's no mention of reinforcements, though I know that the reinforcements come from all the way behind you, rather than in front of you, and as always they stop coming after you defeat the boss, so you don't have to fight them all. IIRC it's 2 Cavs and a Horseman showing up like every other turn; if you fight 2 waves of that in addition to the starting enemies, then you now have 6 Cavs in the chapter. 2 more than in the last, while there's also more total enemies in this chapter.

12x has significantly more than 11 or 12, in terms of % of total enemies. 6 out of 17. But then 13 has none at all, so that more than evens out.

14 has 4 Cavs out of 22+ total enemies. Less even than there were in Ch 11 and 12. 15 once again has no Cavs at all. Then by around Ch 16 Caesar can start doubling himself, so w/e.

To get an idea of how many Cavs there are during this timeframe......from 11 through 15, not including reinforcements (excluded because it's difficult to calculate exactly how many reinforcements you fight, while including them shouldn't significantly affect the result, since there are Cav reinforcements in one chapter but non-Cav reinforcements in multiple chapters), I count 16 Cavs out of 110 total enemies. By this figure Cavs are approximately 14.5% of the enemies. I suppose if that’s your definition of “very common.”

Unless Ceasar shrunk to level 6? He is not. Not quite sure how you got that number.

You get 30 Exp for a kill if the level difference between you and the enemy is 0, -1 or -2. L8 Caesar vs L6 enemies is a difference of -2.

Sorry Hans, wrong guess. As Ceasar's level goes up, his EXP gain goes down. Eventually he starts hovering around 20~ for a kill which is barely better than Minerva's 15~. You're giving him too many levels, too fast.

Too many levels, too fast? I just gave him 1 per chapter for that time period. Perhaps you mean that I didn’t give Minerva enough levels.

I won’t bother arguing that Caesar’s Exp gains don’t go down faster than Minerva’s, since it’s certainly true. But how much, and how fast? Let’s try to get a more accurate picture of exactly how their leveling rates should match up, rather than each side just attacking each other’s level estimates with such subjective terms as “that’s ridiculous sandbagging” and the like.

Caesar starts off getting twice as much Exp for a kill as Minerva does, vs either promoted or unpromoted enemies. 100% more.

Towards the end of this time period (11-18), Caesar gets about 17 Exp for killing unpromoted enemies, vs Minerva’s 14. ~21.5% more. Meanwhile Caesar gets 40 Exp for killing a promoted enemy while Minerva gets 30. ~33.3% more. Averaging those two together, Caesar gets about 27.4% more Exp than Minerva against enemies in general.

Averaging Caesar’s Exp leads at the beginning of this time period with those towards the end, we thus get ~63.7%. So rather than giving Minerva .5 levels for every level Caesar gets, it would be more accurate to give her .637 levels for each 1 level that Caesar gains.

If Caesar reaches L18 by Ch 18, he gains about 10 levels from 11-18, so Minerva gains about 6.37. 6-7 levels, while leaning more towards 6.

So let’s rewrite our comparison. +1.37 levels for Minerva as compared to the last one I made. Approximating that to +1.33 for simplicity’s sake; Minerva’s growths on Str/Spd are 35/40, so 1 and 1/3 levels for her is roughly +0.5 Str and Spd.

So all that comes out to produce half a point more to each offensive stat for her. Awesome. Is that going to turn the tables? No, ofcourse not. Caesar still wins.

Ah, but when you stop sandbagging her, his AS/STR are similar as warrior, so General's the only way he's going to claim superiority in some way.

Similar? AS, maybe. Minerva has about 16.5 while Caesar has 17.5. Str, though, not at all. Minerva needs to be L18 to match 18/1 Warrior Caesar’s Str. I mean, they have the same Atk at the beginning of the comparison, back in Ch 11. Minerva doesn’t have much chance when it comes to Atk.

Steel bow? STEEL BOW? You're saying she has not had the 30 rounds of combat required to reach B Bows in TEN CHAPTERS, and that she can't make use of our gigantic stockpile of funds to buy a Silver? Now I KNOW you're sandbagging her.

No, don’t make assumptions. Ofcourse Minerva has B Bows. That’s not the issue. The more relevant question would be, does the game give you enough money to buy as many Killer, Silver, Slayer and 1-2 range weapons as you want, on top of purchasing whatever standard weapons you might need, buying high end tomes and staves for your magic users, and using forging as much as is beneficial to you? No, likely not.

Yes, you get plenty of money, but this game also has tons of outlets for it. Unless you get so much money that any money spent on Silver weapons for whoever couldn’t have gone towards something else to help another character, there’s an opportunity cost associated with using rare and expensive weapons.

Besides, Caesar would have B Bows at this point too. If he has D around the time Minerva joins, then he has 10 chapters to go from D to B. 105 WEXP is required to go from D to B; you get 2 WEXP per battle; so Caesar needs 52.5 battles during this timeframe, or 5.25 per chapter. More than feasible. You can leave him as a Merc for Ch 9 and still easily hit B Bows by promotion time.

Funny. I don't see Ceasar doubling these schmucks either.

He’s closer to it than Minerva is. His speed is more likely to deviate high enough to double Paladins, and more significantly, it’s less likely to deviate low enough that he can’t double Cavs.

Also, Caesar does in fact have an option to double them. Reclassing him to Hero gives +4 Spd, which pushes his AS plenty high enough to double Paladins. He loses his bow rank (temporarily, atleast), but Hero Caesar doubling w/ Steel Sword does more than Warrior hitting once with Silver, so it’s a viable option.

Minerva has the option of reclassing to Swordmaster to double Paladins here, but that reduces her Str to a dismal 8. Caesar doesn’t lose any net durability from this either (compared to Warrior, Hero is -4 Hp but +2 Def), while Minerva does (SM has less than Sniper in both Hp and Def). Caesar’s Atk lead is also accentuated since they’re both doubling now; +1 Atk is +2 damage when you double. So this reclass option certainly helps his case, should you choose to do it.

Except for the fact that level leads kill EXP growths and being promoted in this game actually plays in your favor much better than, say, FE7 for gaining levels. The gap is much smaller than you're making it seem, Ceasar's uber EXP gain does not last forever.

?_?

“level leads kill EXP growths?” Yeah, I know that. That’s why I pointed out that even after promoting, Caesar still has the lower level, so his stat leads simply continue to increase.

Bottom line is that Caesar is overall similar to Minerva across the whole period of time before he promotes. As I pointed out earlier, he has about a 1.5 average Atk lead across that whole span of time, while Minerva’s average Spd lead is about the same. I suppose that since we boosted Minerva’s level a bit in this post, her average Spd lead and Str deficit would change accordingly, but it’s just +/- 0.25 (since she ends the timeframe with ~0.5 higher Str and Spd) in both cases, not a significant difference.

Then Caesar promotes and very clearly wins for the remainder of the game, about 10 more chapters.

Roughly tying across the first half of the debaet + winning across the second half = Caesar wins.

btw, you didn't bring up longbows at all. So I will bring up all of the things that longbows are handy for, because Minerva can use them and Ceasar cannot.

Likewise, Caesar gets to wield 1 range weapons and 1-2 range weapons, which Minerva will never use (unless you reclass her away from Sniper, in which case she obviously loses Longbows). I could probably make my own big list of all the ways in which having 1 and 1-2 range options is useful, but it’s mostly subjective stuff anyways, so I don’t see much point in arguing it.

[Dat Nick]

Everyone has a hard time killing things at this point; it already often takes multiple units ganging up on an enemy in order to kill it. Having "a hard time killing anything" is not outside the norm. Outside of effective weapons (which must be forged in order to one-round in the case of horse enemies), generally no one is able to kill anything on their own yet.

okay

There is a MAJOR difference between "having a hard time killing things" and "12 base ATK". Ceasar's offense doesn't suck because he's not ORKOing everything, it sucks because it sucks. We're talking an average of 5 damage a hit gainst ~30 HP cavs. That's a problem no matter which way you want to sell it. Even if we go out of our way to feed him kills there's only so many times where he actually reaches things within a kill margin, and even if Barst could weaken with Iron, why wouldn't he just kill with Steel to avoid a counter?

Yes, Caesar's Atk is low, but it's also enough. Those Ch 8 Cavs have 31-32 Hp and 7 Def. L8 Cord + Barst each hitting a Cav with the Steel Axe takes its Hp down to 3-4, at which point Caesar can finish it off. L8-9 Ogma doubling with the Steel Sword does 16 damage; throw in another hit from Cord or Barst and the Cav's Hp is once again reduced below 5. L8 Mage Shiida doubling w/ Fire is 18 damage, L8-9 Cain does 10 damage with a Javelin hit, which brings a Cav's Hp down to 3-4 points. etc.

This is cool and everything but it still doesn't give Ceasar a free pass to more than his fair share of kills. He levels faster, I agree. He doesn't level 2.5 levels a chapter fast, when you consider we have the alternative of Ridersbaning these noobs straight off the map.

and thus his Exp gains are the highest; you get a greater net benefit by giving him kills than by giving them to anyone else, and so it's in your best interest to let him make a kill shot whenever possible.

The words "Ceasar can't get kills" never came out of my mouth. I said you're giving him too many kills, which is not only a form of favoritism, it's not always convenient. For instance, if I could wipe a putz off the map with a forged Ridersbane, would I do that, or waste the turns of two units setting up a kill for Ceasar?

No, go look at the stats again. L8 Hunter Caesar has 9 Str (7 base + [.4 * 5]), base Sniper Minerva has 8 (base Str as Dracoknight is 9, Sniper's class base is 1 lower than Draco's). Her Bow rank just allows her to tie in Atk.

Tying is not winning, so this doesn't impress me.

Enemy stats topic lists 2 Cavs for Ch 12 out of 17 enemies total (18 including the boss). There's no mention of reinforcements, though I know that the reinforcements come from all the way behind you, rather than in front of you, and as always they stop coming after you defeat the boss, so you don't have to fight them all. IIRC it's 2 Cavs and a Horseman showing up like every other turn; if you fight 2 waves of that in addition to the starting enemies, then you now have 6 Cavs in the chapter. 2 more than in the last, while there's also more total enemies in this chapter.

Speaking of Horsemen! They double Ceasar. They don't double Minerva. There's another advantage for her, she can go toe to toe with Horsemen on her own, Ceasar needs backup. Adv: Minerva.

You get 30 Exp for a kill if the level difference between you and the enemy is 0, -1 or -2. L8 Caesar vs L6 enemies is a difference of -2.

My blunder then.

oo many levels, too fast? I just gave him 1 per chapter for that time period. Perhaps you mean that I didn’t give Minerva enough levels.

Well, maybe it's closer to that. The level gap you have between them is ridiculous.

Towards the end of this time period (11-18), Caesar gets about 17 Exp for killing unpromoted enemies, vs Minerva’s 14. ~21.5% more. Meanwhile Caesar gets 40 Exp for killing a promoted enemy while Minerva gets 30. ~33.3% more. Averaging those two together, Caesar gets about 27.4% more Exp than Minerva against enemies in general.

Two factors this ignores:

Minerva can kill promoted enemies easier than Ceasar in the form of Horsemen, so she will likely get more of those kills. And she can kill the 12.4% of cavs easier as well, so this is more EXP for her.

Minerva has longbow access for more attacking/killing opportunities, and thus more EXP gain.

So the gap needs to be larger still. Like 2-3 more levels for Minerva as opposed to your original argument. I could push for 10 but I did just fine with 9 so I won't bother.

Similar? AS, maybe. Minerva has about 16.5 while Caesar has 17.5. Str, though, not at all. Minerva needs to be L18 to match 18/1 Warrior Caesar’s Str. I mean, they have the same Atk at the beginning of the comparison, back in Ch 11. Minerva doesn’t have much chance when it comes to Atk.

Okay, I admit I pulled a slight blunder with numbers here, I was reading Ceasar's str as lower. Still, there isn't a huge gap. 9 Minerva gets about 11 str and bow rank pushes her forward an extra MT, plus she has possible access to Silver Bows that he may still not have. Minerva's been creaming Ceasar for this long, he should be beating her by more if his extra effort required is to be worth the payoff.

The more relevant question would be, does the game give you enough money to buy as many Killer, Silver, Slayer and 1-2 range weapons as you want, on top of purchasing whatever standard weapons you might need, buying high end tomes and staves for your magic users, and using forging as much as is beneficial to you? No, likely not.

I have no idea if you're honestly this ignorant or if you're just trying to bullshit me in an attempt to win the debate, but seriously knock it off, nobody who has played this game for any reasonable amount of time is going to buy this atrocious sandbag attempt.

Let's look at ho many funds you GET during the game.

10k from the C1 village.

5k from the C2 village.

15k from the C3 chapter end.

5k from the C4 village.

10k from the C6 Bullion.

I'm ONLY up to the point before Ceasar joins and already we're up to FOURTY THOUSAND. What the hell are you buying to make Silver Cost an issue? But no, we need to go further still.

15k from the C9 village

20k from the C12 village

A FREE SILVER BOW [Holy DORITOS, BATMAN also in C12]

Silver Card in C14 and another 10k. Oh look, the shop in this very chapter sells Silver Bows at 1050 a pop due to said card!

Ninety. Five. Thousand. Gold. Plus. The. Silver. Card. And this is before we factor in the generics that come with iron weapons to sell which adds up to a LOT over time, the fact that we may be selling the master keys, selling the superflous stat boosters [secret books/goddess icons] adds another 2500 to the mix [1 book and 1 icon apiece] Yes forges, but we aren't forging every damned chapter or anything and even then we aren't forging +10 might or anything so forges really shouldn't be costing more than 3k tops. All of this equating to that "Minerva can't afford Silver for 1050 per bow and we get several free ones as well" is such a bullshit argument on so many levels I don't even know where the hell I'm supposed to start.

Yes, you get plenty of money, but this game also has tons of outlets for it. Unless you get so much money that any money spent on Silver weapons for whoever couldn’t have gone towards something else to help another character, there’s an opportunity cost associated with using rare and expensive weapons.

Or just, you know, give everybody silver, eliminating the problem this creates entirely? There's so much funds in this game and team size is generally so small that you REALLY don't have an excuse not to. You can even sell spare master seals for 1250 apiece.

Besides, Caesar would have B Bows at this point too. If he has D around the time Minerva joins, then he has 10 chapters to go from D to B. 105 WEXP is required to go from D to B; you get 2 WEXP per battle; so Caesar needs 52.5 battles during this timeframe, or 5.25 per chapter. More than feasible. You can leave him as a Merc for Ch 9 and still easily hit B Bows by promotion time.

By this point? Yes. By the time Jeorge's Silver Bow and the C12 Silver Bow exist? Doubt it, so Minerva is winning even more during the timeframe where she has access to them and likely a monopoly.

He’s closer to it than Minerva is. His speed is more likely to deviate high enough to double Paladins, and more significantly, it’s less likely to deviate low enough that he can’t double Cavs.

He NEEDS to be blessed for it to work, and notably. This is a minor point, at best.

Then Caesar promotes and very clearly wins for the remainder of the game, about 10 more chapters.

Very clearly? Maybe. Very significantly? That's very debatable. We're talking about a 2 str win vs longbow use. Try "Comparing to after getting spanked by better AS and Silver Bow use for a good deal of the game"

Likewise, Caesar gets to wield 1 range weapons and 1-2 range weapons, which Minerva will never use (unless you reclass her away from Sniper, in which case she obviously loses Longbows).

This is only after promotion as opposed to Minerva having longbow use for much of the game, so access to 1-1/2 range isn't nearly as relevant.

[CATS]

There is a MAJOR difference between "having a hard time killing things" and "12 base ATK". Ceasar's offense doesn't suck because he's not ORKOing everything, it sucks because it sucks. We're talking an average of 5 damage a hit gainst ~30 HP cavs. That's a problem no matter which way you want to sell it.

In a situation where all the PCs one-round, then yes, this would be quite a problem for Caesar. That’s the situation you have in a game like FE7—the enemies are really shitty and your PCs are usually one-rounding them, so an underlevelled unit with crappy offense would have a hard time getting kills. But the case here is the exact opposite, and the more rounds it takes to kill the enemies, the less significant an offensive deficit becomes. Rather than the enemies being shitty, here they’re actually stronger than the PCs, so any damage a unit lays down can be helpful.

If Shiida + Cain attacking an enemy Cav takes its Hp down to 3 anyways, then at that point, there’s no difference between Caesar hitting it for 5 damage and Rapier Marth hitting it for 20 something damage. Both will produce the same result.

If you have three units that do 15, 10 and 5 damage respectively against a 30 Hp enemy, then their contributions are all similar. The most important benchmark when attacking an enemy is whether or not it lives to attack you again on enemy phase, and in those terms, each of these 3 PCs contributes equally. With all 3 of them attacking the enemy dies, regardless of what order they attack in, and if one of them is missing, regardless of which one, the enemy lives.

Even if we go out of our way to feed him kills there's only so many times where he actually reaches things within a kill margin, and even if Barst could weaken with Iron, why wouldn't he just kill with Steel to avoid a counter?

Barst can't kill it with Steel. That was my point. L8 Barst + Cord both hitting a Cav with Steel Axes still isn’t enough to kill. They do enough damage that Caesar can finish it off, though (20 and 22 Atk vs 7 Def and 31-32 Hp).

This is cool and everything but it still doesn't give Ceasar a free pass to more than his fair share of kills. He levels faster, I agree.

It entitles him to the extent of the marginal benefit produced by giving him kills over other characters. Kills are just like any other resource—best spent on the unit who benefits most from them. No, Caesar doesn’t get all of the kills or even close to it, but it makes perfect sense for him to get more of them than any other individual unit, in the same way that it makes perfect sense to minimize the amount of kills Jeigan gets early on.

He doesn't level 2.5 levels a chapter fast, when you consider we have the alternative of Ridersbaning these noobs straight off the map.

I agree. He doesn’t gain 2.5 levels a chapter.

I said you're giving him too many kills, which is not only a form of favoritism, it's not always convenient. For instance, if I could wipe a putz off the map with a forged Ridersbane, would I do that, or waste the turns of two units setting up a kill for Ceasar?

Against the one enemy that you can hit with your one Ridersbane, sure. However, you don’t face only one enemy at a time. Rather, the enemies in this chapter come in two groups of 4, assuming you don’t antagonize the big block of enemies chilling in the top left (which you shouldn’t). So you can smack one Cavalier out of the 4 that rush you with that forged Ridersbane, but then you need to find something else to do against the other 3.

Even if you had the option of one-shotting every enemy, it’s still not your best option here since you have such a big surplus of PCs. You have 14 PCs going up against 4 enemies. If you just one-shotted all 4 of those enemies, you’d have a ton of PCs left over with nothing to do. They don’t even have to move forward, since there’s no enemies by the throne in this chapter and none blocking you from it, so the only units that have to actually go for the throne are Marth and maybe Barst or a mage to help kill the boss.

Here it would be better to only Ridersbane one or two of the enemies in each group, and let the rest of your army chip the others to death. That way you get more total Exp and WEXP out of the kills. Indeed, since Marth is one of the very few units who needs to be actually moving forward in this chapter, it’s best if he doesn’t have to stop and use his Rapier on the Cavaliers, and can instead keep going past them.

Then Ch 9 has no enemies weak to slayer weapons.

In Ch 10 there’s 4 flying enemies (which Caesar gets his own effective Mt for which most units lack) vs 4 Cavaliers starting on the map. Ofcourse that huge block of reinforcements contains alot of additional mounted enemies, but when they show up there’s so many enemies that you want every bit of damage you can get.

Tying is not winning, so this doesn't impress me.

I was referring to this statement you made:

Even if he WERE level 8, he's losing to Minerva in every single base stat. And he's losing str more than what it looks like due to Minerva's bow rank giving her 1 more pow. I'll go further than that, even.

Stating that Minerva beats Caesar in every stat, and implying that he’s losing in Str before factoring in Minerva’s bow rank, both of which are false.

Speaking of Horsemen! They double Ceasar. They don't double Minerva. There's another advantage for her, she can go toe to toe with Horsemen on her own, Ceasar needs backup. Adv: Minerva.

Yeah, Caesar can get doubled by the 2-3 Horsemen that exist from Ch 11 through 15 (1 Horseman in Ch 11, then you’ll fight one or two as reinforcements in Ch 12). By the time they show up again in Ch 16, Caesar’s not getting doubled anymore. He may not even get doubled by the Ch 12 Horsemen; there aren’t stats listed for them, but the Ch 11 Horseman has 15 AS, and L10 Caesar has 11.5 Spd.

Regardless, I’m not going to initially attack Horsemen with either one of them anyways—rather, I’m going to weaken a Horseman with melee units before finishing it with a 2 range unit. And when I’m doing this, Caesar may actually be better off; neither one doubles, but Caesar has about a point higher Atk, so it’s slightly easier for him to polish off a weakened Horseman.

This is quite a minor advantage for Minerva, if it’s even an advantage at all.

Minerva can kill promoted enemies easier than Ceasar in the form of Horsemen, so she will likely get more of those kills. And she can kill the 12.4% of cavs easier as well, so this is more EXP for her.

Minerva’s better at taking attacks from Horsemen, but when it comes to killing them, she doesn’t win. Caesar is better at that due to higher Atk. Again, there’s a very small number of them anyways (during the timeframe that they can double Caesar).

Against Cavs, Minerva does more damage, but she still doesn’t kill them outright, so she’s not any more likely to get the actual kill shot. A Cav in 12x with 33 Hp and 8 Def takes 18 damage from Steel Bow Minerva doubling it and 10 from Caesar hitting it once. You have to throw in someone else on top of those two to actually kill it—and it doesn’t matter what order the three units attack in. Any of them can take the kill shot after the other two have weakened the enemy. Indeed it’s better if Minerva doesn’t get that kill thanks to her lower Exp gains.

Minerva has longbow access for more attacking/killing opportunities, and thus more EXP gain.

From what I can see, you get your first Longbow in Ch 17x. Caesar promotes in Ch 18.

Okay, I admit I pulled a slight blunder with numbers here, I was reading Ceasar's str as lower. Still, there isn't a huge gap. 9 Minerva gets about 11 str and bow rank pushes her forward an extra MT, plus she has possible access to Silver Bows that he may still not have.

Caesar easily has B Bows. He has about 11 chapters to build Bow rank, so he needs ~6 rounds of combat per chapter for B Bows. Considering how high turncounts are in this game, that means he generally needs to attack on less than half of the turns you’ll be taking in a chapter.

Minerva's been creaming Ceasar for this long, he should be beating her by more if his extra effort required is to be worth the payoff.

I suppose if doing extra damage against one type of enemy, while Caesar does smaller amounts of extra damage against almost all other types (doubling Cavs vs a small Str lead), is your definition of “creaming.” Personally, I’d think of that as a fairly similar comparison, rather than one character “creaming” the other. Again:

Base Sniper Minerva has 8 Str and 14 Spd. 8 Hunter Caesar has 9 Str and 10-11 Spd.

6-7 (leaning towards 6) Sniper Minerva: 10.25 Str, 16.5 Spd

18 Hunter Caesar: 13 Str, 15-16 Spd

Minerva's average Spd lead over this whole duration of time is ~2 points; and Caesar's average Atk lead is about ~1.4 points. So who's better overall before Caesar promotes? Minerva does what, ~8 more damage to Cavaliers (12x Cav takes 18 from Steel Bow Minerva doubling, 10 from one hit by Caesar), which are about 14.5% of the total enemies during this time? So Caesar does, on average, 1.4 more damage to the other 85.5% of the enemies. Weighting their situational damage leads proportional to the number of enemies that each lead applies against, we get this:

8 * .145 = 1.16 more overall average damage output for Minerva, thanks to doubling Cavaliers

1.4 * .855 = 1.197 more overall average damage output for Caesar, thanks to having more Atk

That’s without accounting for the fact that Caesar’s Atk lead is effectively doubled against slow enemies, such as Ballisticians. But the point is, if you look at the whole period of time before Caesar promotes, Ch 11-18, they’re really damn close. Whereas Caesar is very clearly better after he promotes.

Ninety. Five. Thousand. Gold. Plus. The. Silver. Card. And this is before we factor in the generics that come with iron weapons to sell which adds up to a LOT over time, the fact that we may be selling the master keys, selling the superflous stat boosters [secret books/goddess icons] adds another 2500 to the mix [1 book and 1 icon apiece] Yes forges, but we aren't forging every damned chapter or anything and even then we aren't forging +10 might or anything so forges really shouldn't be costing more than 3k tops. All of this equating to that "Minerva can't afford Silver for 1050 per bow and we get several free ones as well" is such a bullshit argument on so many levels I don't even know where the hell I'm supposed to start.

Marth wants +6 Mt on his Rapier to consistently OHKO mounted enemies. That’s ~12000G right there. Even taking it down to +5 Mt is still ~9000G. So there goes the idea that forges only cost 3k tops.

Abel needs +3 Mt on the Ridersbane to consistently OHKO Cavs. He’d also like some hit, since his hit against them is shaky (low 70’s displayed). +3 Mt and +10 Hit on that weapon is 6000.

About 20% of that 95K disappears just from forging those two weapons.

Consider the costs of simply the basic weapons that you want to buy. Buy two Hand Axes/Javelins each for Cord, Barst, Cain, Abel, and Hardin, and one Javelin each for Wolf/Zagaro/Jeigan, and that adds up to a little under 9000. That’s just the secondary, 1-2 range weapons; Steel weapons are more expensive than those and there’s more units who want you to buy them (you can add in the Sword/Bow units).

If you still have money left over from that, the next step is to start forging those basic weapons. Forging +2 Mt onto a Hand Axe is 1080G, about the same cost as buying a Silver Bow with the Silver Card. While a Silver Bow is +4 Mt over Steel, the forged Hand Axe also has 10 more uses and is available much earlier in the game.

Ofcourse, if money is as plentiful as you claim, you’d probably forge more than just +2 Mt onto that Hand Axe, and maybe some Hit aswell; this is just to demonstrate what else you could’ve done with the money spent on that Silver Bow.

Another example would be putting that cash towards a Killing Edge from Ch 12’s shop for Julian/Ogma/Navarre/Marth/etc. The non-carded KE will run you 1500, as compared to the carded Silver Bow’s 1050, but again it’ll also be there two chapters earlier.

Your healers all want to use Mend as much as possible if they can, as both the additional Exp gains and the extra healing power are helpful; that 1050 from a Silver Bow could instead make up about 80% of the cost of a Mend staff, and once again, while that staff is more expensive, it’s also purchased earlier in the game.

Then you simply have to consider that if we buy a Silver Bow for Minerva, every character with a B rank in their weapon type (or who will have B rank soon—Caesar would fall into this category) also deserves a Silver weapon. And each character also wants multiple Silvers, not just one, as 20 uses is certainly not going to be all that you’ll want.

Do you get enough cash to do all the things named above, as often as you want, in addition to purchasing all the Silvers you would want afterwards? No? Then there’s an opportunity cost associated with using expensive weapons—that money could’ve gone towards something else to help a different character, so the net benefit of spending it to improve Minerva is small or non-existent.

For example, simply forging +3 Mt onto a Steel Bow and handing it to Caesar costs about 2.5 times more than buying a Silver Bow with the Silver Card, but a Steel Bow also has almost twice as many uses as a Silver Bow and can be forged as soon as Caesar hits D Bows. If we’re willing to give a Silver Bow to Minerva, we might as well just assume Caesar gets this forge or something similar, and there’s little net effect on the overall comparison.

Or just, you know, give everybody silver, eliminating the problem this creates entirely? There's so much funds in this game and team size is generally so small that you REALLY don't have an excuse not to. You can even sell spare master seals for 1250 apiece.

What problem? The fact that there’s an opportunity cost for using expensive weapons? Simply insisting that said weapons should be given out like candy certainly will not make that fact go away.

Selling spare master seals? By the time you have spare master seals left over to sell, Caesar certainly has B Bows, so it wouldn’t matter either way.

By this point? Yes. By the time Jeorge's Silver Bow and the C12 Silver Bow exist? Doubt it, so Minerva is winning even more during the timeframe where she has access to them and likely a monopoly.

Minerva won’t have B Bows in Ch 12 anyway; she was only able to reclass to Sniper just last chapter.

He NEEDS to be blessed for it to work, and notably. This is a minor point, at best.

Or Minerva simply needs to be slightly screwed. If her Spd goes just 1-2 points below average, she’s no longer doubling Cavaliers, a scenario that is very well within the range of standard deviation and has a significant chance of occurring. Caesar with his higher Spd is less likely to run into this problem.

We're talking about a 2 str win vs longbow use.

Allow me to give a more accurate picture of the situation.

6-7 (leaning towards 6) Sniper Minerva: 10.25 Str, 16.5 Spd

Longbow use

18/1 Warrior Caesar: 14 Str, 17-18 Spd----40.5 Hp, 9.25 Def

Axe rank

or

18/1 General Caesar: 15 Str, 13-14 Spd----42.5 Hp, 19.25 Def

Lance rank

Comparing to Warrior, it’s 3.75 Str, 1 Spd and Axes vs Longbows. Not 2 str vs longbow use.

Let’s not forget endgame stats, which have gone totally unmentioned so far. What stats would we estimate for the final?

18/10 Warrior Caesar: 19.4 Str, 20.65 Spd

14-15 (leaning towards 14) Sniper Minerva: 13.05 Str, 19.7 Spd

The Spd gap stays about the same while the Str gap widens, and Caesar’s Axes also become more useful as his Axe rank grows and thus his melee counter becomes more useful. Caesar has an average Str lead of 5 points and an average Spd lead of 1 point during this time period; whereas, before promotion, it was an average Str lead of ~1.4 vs an average Spd lead of ~2. From Ch 11-18, the average stat leads are a fraction of a point in Minerva's favor (and this doesn't even necessarily mean that her actual damage output is higher, as shown earlier in this post), while from 18-Final, the average stat leads are in Caesar's favor by about 6 points. Clearly Caesar’s win after promotion easily outweighs the pre-promotion period.

Edited November 4, 2009 by CATS