Chapter 13:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gjh_dIsgIo
So, this may look a little familiar. Turned out to be much slower trying to intercept the enemies coming from the south, given that the available combatants had nowhere near the combat parameters (or the weaponry) to deal with them, so I just made sure everyone was out of range on turn 3.
What you didn't see is that I went back to manipulate the two Silver Lance paladins' stats, so Alan could guarantee to 2HKO with 1-2 range weaponry. The defensive parameters were 36-40 HP and 10-12 Def, so with 22 Str Alan had a chance of missing out on the ORKO.
Turn 1: Once again, start Alan up with Lalum's help, and have him equip the 11 use Hand Axe. Lalum gets shifted one space up again, and Zealot and Marcus follow suit. Roy lags behind. On the enemy phase Alan clears out his attackers, netting a critical and a HP, Str, Skl, Spd, Luk level up.
Turn 2: This is the first deviation from the previous version. Zealot, instead of finishing south of Marcus, finishes to his west. Lalum doesn't need to DOG here, but it wastes no time to do so, so I may as well be fancy. Otherwise, it is just a case of having Marcus crit the troubadour, and ferry Lalum ahead ready for the next turn.
Turn 3: Now that Zealot is in a better position, he doesn't need to move on turn 4. Miledy and Zealot move out of enemy range, while Marcus takes Roy, and Alan gets refreshed forward to clear out the enemies near Percival. Didn't get a level up here, so I could spend a lot less time manipulating this combat.
This was a pretty unique battle, all said and done. Between the units on the field, there were four 11-use 1-2 range weapons (the hand axe that Alan used on turn 1, and 3 Javelins between Alan, Zealot and Marcus). Marcus used his Javelin on turn 2, giving this 10 uses. Now, the real issue is that Alan faces a total of 12 attackers, including Percival, and in order to avoid seeing the 'weapon broken' message more than once, I had to get a little creative with the combat.
Alan needs to get hit by Percival (36 hit, or 26.2% true), which changes the behaviour of the Steel Bow archer again, and brings him into close range instead of using the ballista. In order to save enough weapon uses, Alan needs to perform a double miss (55 hit, or 59.9% true) on Percival, as well as a critical hit on one of the next six attackers. This uses up one of the 11 use javelins perfectly. The remaining 11 use Javelin is used on the last 5 attackers, leaving it with 1 use remaining.
While I may not have perhaps had the most optimal weapon usage in previous chapters, this set of results makes use of what I'm left with. Bringing Merlinus on this map would be a very slow option, and he has the rest of the 1-2 range weapons on him, so I'll give it until the next chapter for him to dish those out.
Turn 4: Alan moves the troubadour out the way, while Marcus and Lalum advance. Percival again needs to double miss on Lalum. Marcus drops two low use Hand Axes on the way.
Turn 5: Recruit Percy. Alan uses the remaining Javelin (starts at 10 uses) to remove the wyverns from the map, with Marcus manipulating the crit and level up on Alan (HP, Str, Skl, Spd, Luk).
Turn 6: Roy is passed to Alan, who gets out his Killing Edge for the boss. Flaer eats a critical counter attack.
Turn 7: Buy 5 Killer Lances. Seize.
5738 frames ahead. The reason this improvement wasn't bigger is that Alan got the message he hit A Lances in turn 3, but that would have happened anyway. Incidentally, Marcus is either 1 or 2 wexp away from hitting C Axes, so I can't really afford to have him use any. I knew that would be tight in the early game, but yeah. Percival can replace him as an attacker, so that removes any weapon rank messages for a good while.
I've put (-) in places where the two runs shouldn't differ at all. Chapter 1 doesn't have Thany, Chapter 8 is indoors, Chapter 12 has a set turn limit and the Nico run desynched for me at Chapter 14. In addition, Nico run suffers from a lot of inefficiencies: Using too many units, acquiring too many treasures, poor manipulation, etc. This means the total advantage of Toothache's run should be considerably less than 8939 frames. In fact, if Toothache's frame advantage from Chapters 1-8 is cut in half (not too unrealistic since the Nico run lost 2435 frames in C1), he'd actually be slightly behind at this point from raising Alan.
Just taking away Miledy’s promotion in C13 cuts the advantage down to roughly 7939 frames. Now, looking at future maps, there a quite a few left where terrain will slow down Alan significantly.
C17
C18 This chapter is the nail in the coffin
C19
C21
Even if only 2000 frames were saved per chapter in those 4 maps above (and that’s an extremely conservative estimate), you’d still end up behind.
All to say, I’m thoroughly convinced raising Thany is faster in the long run, even without gaidens.
