Alternate HM tier list

[charlie_]

It's kind of different here though. It's not like any one run gets all of the kids.

[Florete]

How is that a problem?

[Chiki]

He points out a smart problem. Where is the arbitrary limit in the number of children we get? If it isn't none or all, where do we stop?

Anyway, just because it was like that in the past doesn't mean it should be that way now. It shouldn't be. The current LTCs aren't like that at all. The FE community has changed nowadays in terms of giving importance to LTCs and how to play and so on. Why not adapt?

[Florete]

How many units do you expect to use in a run? How many mothers? It's not that hard. If a specific mother is being debated, assume her kid will be in play.

What current LTCs "aren't like that at all" aside from your own? Even drafts allow them and assume 1-4 and 17, they just have to make special rules for them because of the competition aspect, but that doesn't apply to a tier list. The other tier list for this game, the most recent otherwise in the community basically, assumes a reasonable number are played. Sure, if your goal is the lowest possible number at the end of the game, you wouldn't do them, and there's no objective reason to include them, but people generally prefer to consider as many as reasonable to be part of the main game and assume they are played in a tier setting.

In addition, characters are always tiered without being penalized for recruitment costs. In this case, playing their Paralogue would be just that and none of the turns taken would count against them. But I don't know if that's something this list does, so ignore this if not (Well, as far as just this list is concerned)

If you're not doing Paralogues, though, Donnel, Anna, and Tiki need to be removed from the list. Or else drop. Even if Anna is really helpful on getting her, I doubt that 5-7 turn rut is keeping her any higher than Low tier.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Red Fox of Fire

[Chiki]

How many units do you expect to use in a run? How many mothers? It's not that hard. If a specific mother is being debated, assume her kid will be in play.

You don't have to use units regularly to pair them up. If you have, say, Miriel paired up with Ricken for some nearby scrubs until Chapter 14, they can easily have children.

Secondly, another issue with this is that those children are a complete waste of time. Why even recruit them if they do nothing for you at all? The only two things it does is satisfy your arbitrary moral requirements and add turns to your total. It's just unnecessary. They do not help the goals of the tier list.

What current LTCs "aren't like that at all" aside from your own?

Espinosa's, Peekayell's as far as I can see.

but people generally prefer to consider as many as reasonable to be part of the main game and assume they are played in a tier setting.

They can be a part of this tier list as well; they simply get penalized for cutting a few turns.

What is this arbitrary thing you call a tier setting? Can you even define that?

In addition, characters are always tiered without being penalized for recruitment costs.

There is no objective basis for this. It is simply arbitrary and not worth considering. This is why I complained in the tier list thread: you guys have established millions of arbitrary things in your tier list and have not even bothered to properly define them. This tier list only concerns 3 things.

If you're not doing Paralogues, though, Donnel, Anna, and Tiki need to be removed from the list. Or else drop. Even if Anna is really helpful on getting her, I doubt that 5-7 turn rut is keeping her any higher than Low tier.

Anna could probably save an equal amount on her own, but I find it hard to believe that her Paralogue takes 5-7 turns.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Olwen

[Rewjeo]

Doesn't Anna require two paralogues to recruit? Or can you just skip the first one she shows up in?

[Momentai~]

Apparently those two Annas aren't the same Anna, so you only need to do paralogue 4 to recruit the 'real' Anna (according to SF paralogue 4's unlock criterion is just to finish chapter 9)

[Redwall]

Anna requires only Paralogue 4.

The most common draft rulings will either allow the player to fool around in P1-4 and 17 for up to ten turns each at no turncount penalty (so it's basically free grinding), or require all of them to be completed while making them count for turns (I believe P2-4 and 17 usually count for turns, while P1 is free); children Paralogues are often drafted with their mothers and count for turns, so if you draft Miriel, you must go to Laurent's Paralogue. For tiering drafting contexts, assuming Paralogues 1-4 and 17 as well as children Paralogues to be mandatory and count for turns is probably the simplest thing to do; even if they do not count for turns, I expect the main consequence would be that fliers and staffbots would be favored even more.

Under the assumption of Paralogues being optional and counting for turns (only in a pure LTC context) FR Anna would probably go down, but not by much.

[Espinosa]

Espinosa's, Peekayell's as far as I can see.

Neither is right. PKL's FE12 LTC playthrough has a video of him going into chapter 3x. My HHM LTC visits all gaidens besides 19xx (Nils getting to lv. 7 mutually exclusive with a low turn run) and 31x (superfluous shopping + I don't want Karla). It is an unwritten 'rule' (if you can even call it that) to have the full experience of playing the game, with LTC/efficiency simply being the playstyle of choice because players find it fun/challenging.

The specifics also differ depending on the game, e.g. FE8 has skirmishes and the tower, but they're abusable so an LTC run skips those. TRS also has skirmishes but they're forced (a certain number of them anyway), so one has to cope with the fact skirmish battles will take place in an LTC run.

If you assume a character isn't recruited in FE12, you probably shouldn't tier them. If you do tier them, it's up to you to decide whether you punish them for the cost of their recruitment or not. It is a reasonable point that recruiting character who don't repay you back in turns changes the experience allocations and demands a different approach to optimisation. Would everyone agree that a lowest turn run in FE12 and an FE12 run with 100% recruitment are two different runs?

[charlie_]

Anna requires only Paralogue 4.

The most common draft rulings will either allow the player to fool around in P1-4 and 17 for up to ten turns each at no turncount penalty (so it's basically free grinding), or require all of them to be completed while making them count for turns (I believe P2-4 and 17 usually count for turns, while P1 is free); children Paralogues are often drafted with their mothers and count for turns, so if you draft Miriel, you must go to Laurent's Paralogue. For tiering drafting contexts, assuming Paralogues 1-4 and 17 as well as children Paralogues to be mandatory and count for turns is probably the simplest thing to do; even if they do not count for turns, I expect the main consequence would be that fliers and staffbots would be favored even more.

Under the assumption of Paralogues being optional and counting for turns (only in a pure LTC context) FR Anna would probably go down, but not by much.

Actually, the children's Paralogues are free too. Severa's is still pretty tight turnwise.

And by free, I mean up to 10 turns, so it's not like you can abuse it that much.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Serious Bananas

[Chiki]

PKL's FE12 LTC playthrough has a video of him going into chapter 3x. My HHM LTC visits all gaidens besides 19xx (Nils getting to lv. 7 mutually exclusive with a low turn run) and 31x (superfluous shop)

And I would say that visiting sidequests is mutually exclusive with a low turn run, as well. Why only Nils or the "superfluous shop?" Where is this arbitrary limit in which it's okay to waste turns and not okay to waste turns? It seems your playthrough obeys neither of the rules we talked about: that is, no side quests vs. all side quests.

Second, I was not talking about that one.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=39371

Here is what Interceptor said when PKL was not sure about doing the Paralogues:

If your goal is to minimize total turns, I'd consider skipping the paralogues entirely, unless there is a really good reward at stake (like Morgan's, for instance). You won't be recovering those turns lost in most cases.

Now, this is my reply to Red Fox's argument that no one other than me does this. As evidenced by PKL and Interceptor's posts, the view that there is a total turncount to consider for every game, and skipping Paralogues, seems to have caught on. So it is not just me who does this.

[Anouleth]

Paralogues aren't counted in the endgame display of turncount, though, so I don't think the number of turns taken should count.

Anna could probably save an equal amount on her own, but I find it hard to believe that her Paralogue takes 5-7 turns.

Even if Anna is saving as many turns as she costs, that still warrants her moving down. I would recommend splitting Anna FR and Anna into Anna FR WP (With Paralogue), Anna FR, Anna WP, and Anna, for convenience and easy reference.

[Chiki]

Paralogues aren't counted in the endgame display of turncount, though, so I don't think the number of turns taken should count.

Even if Anna is saving as many turns as she costs, that still warrants her moving down. I would recommend splitting Anna FR and Anna into Anna FR WP (With Paralogue), Anna FR, Anna WP, and Anna, for convenience and easy reference.

By that logic though, that would allow DLC, grinding, etc. if the only reason we don't count Paralogues is because they aren't in the endgame display. So we need something stronger to prevent that.

That's probably what I'm gonna do.

[charlie_]

@Anouleth, I'm pretty sure they are.

[Anouleth]

@Anouleth, I'm pretty sure they are.

Actually, I think you're right. I thought about it and I remember seeing turncounts for Paralogues. I remember mainly because my turncount for Shadow in the Sands was so awful...

[PKL]

http://serenesforest.net/fe12/sidequest.html

Espinosa. I know what you're saying, but if I could have avoided going to the sidequest chapters in any way in FE12 without sacrificing my tuncount anyway, I would've done so.

And yes, Paralogue turncounts are in the endgame turncount roll.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Peekayell

[Redwall]

If full recruitment isn't assumed, FR Tharja needs to go down a lot; the other +Mag Pairbots don't have any real recruitment costs.

The OP is missing some of the edits that were agreed upon later in the thread; as I recall, regular Miriel and Ricken moved up a little, and Cherche moved up to above Tiki.

[Chiki]

My bad. I'll go ahead and fix that.

The tier list is gonna go through some major changes once we decide what to do with Paralogue units.

[Florete]

You don't have to use units regularly to pair them up. If you have, say, Miriel paired up with Ricken for some nearby scrubs until Chapter 14, they can easily have children.

Secondly, another issue with this is that those children are a complete waste of time. Why even recruit them if they do nothing for you at all? The only two things it does is satisfy your arbitrary moral requirements and add turns to your total. It's just unnecessary. They do not help the goals of the tier list.

It's like Espinosa said; full experience of the game. No, it's not necessary, but if you're going to discount everything unnecessary, delete the bottom half of the tier list.

People prefer turns per map over total turns full-game. Neither is objectively better, but the former has always been preferred. I won't tell you what to do with this list, but that's the way it is.

What is this arbitrary thing you call a tier setting? Can you even define that?

When one plays the way units are argued in a tier list. If it's an LTC list, then it's when a player plays for the lowest possible turn count.

This isn't that hard to deduce and at this point I think you're asking just to be difficult.

There is no objective basis for this.

I admitted that. Thanks for repeating me.

It is simply arbitrary and not worth considering.

This is where you're wrong. We make the rules as we want them to be. If it's what we all want, it's worth considering. You want a lowest full-game turn count; most others don't care too much about that.

This is why I complained in the tier list thread: you guys have established millions of arbitrary things in your tier list and have not even bothered to properly define them. This tier list only concerns 3 things.

Can you list these "millions" of things that aren't properly defined? I'm sure there are one or two, but even in those cases you're probably blowing the problem out of proportion because you just don't like how we do things.

Anna could probably save an equal amount on her own, but I find it hard to believe that her Paralogue takes 5-7 turns.

4 turns at best unless you're grinding or using the Avatar logbook. And I doubt she's saving that much on her own because there's no one thing she does that others can't replicate; she's good because she can do multiple things well. Chests (but you don't even have time to open them in this setting) can be opened by various keys and Gaius, Rescue/healing can be done by Maribelle, Lissa, and Libra, Gaius can even mostly replicate her support bonuses, the +1 move being of most importance.

[charlie_]

I 3 turned Chapter 9 with Tharja recruited with only foot units, you just need to get creative with Rescue.

And I agree on the full experience thing for the record.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Serious Bananas

[Redwall]

In a Full Rescue run, recruiting Tharja still costs one turn, no? (I believe the minimum TC for C9 is two turns) If so, then given the fact that FR Henry can do everything that Tharja does - namely, ferry Anna around - Tharja does not repay her recruitment cost. I personally recruit everyone, never kill anyone off, and do P1-4 and 17 just because I have more fun that way, but that's just me; for the purposes of this tier list, FR Tharja is a net negative, and I think should go down.

[PKL]

Yes, it's 2 turns, though you need a durable sand walking rescuer (definetely not Lissa). Ricken and Miriel are the only ones that can do help achieve it, since Anna doesnt exist by then and Libra comes mid chapter (if recruited). Though Miriel's lack of defense is worrisome.

[Anouleth]

Olwen, you complain about arbitrary restrictions, but use them yourself in the tier list... I speak of course of your completely arbitrary and unexplained restrictions against use of Spotpass, DLC, Renown, your arbitrary rule that Paralogues must be visited as soon as possible, your restrictions on Rescue.

[Colonel M]

I was thinking more along the lines of the Galeforce ordeal. Does that assume something I'm missing?

[-Cynthia-]

It doesn't strike me as arbitrary or poorly defined to include Gaiden chapters (and not include those with ridiculous requirements like 19xx), even if said chapters add to overall turncount. Including the Gaiden chapters gives a larger sample of chapters with which to differentiate units, which is the point of most tier lists, not simply low turncount. If you don't want to include Paralogues that's fine, but that doesn't make other lists inconsistent because they include them.

Units aren't penalized for recruitment costs on most lists because recruitment costs are not considered part of the unit's performance itself- and units are tiered based on their performance. If you want to include recruitment costs on your tier lists fine, but including them doesn't make your list any less arbitrary, just operating under different criteria.