Death does no good for Phil's strategy, since Death steals exp from the fighting unit by manner of fact. Magician/Judgement, on the other hand, can bring the enemies down to minimal HP levels for a Mage/Sorcerer/Lich to finish off, thus handing the exp. to the party, who can then make even shorter work of subsequent battles which are not deemed dire enough to merit Tarot cards.
On the other hand, I can see definite merit to your strategy, especially if you wanted to involve the opinion leader's unit in some of the combat. (Since his unit deploys free and whatnot.) Though you'd have to keep in mind that Death never works on any soldiers in the boss units. (At least I think it doesn't. Maybe it's just at reduced effectiveness.)
I am starting a run doing exactly this.
From my experience, you don't need more than 1 lich, as you have bonus attacks that you never fully utilize. You could then have:
Hero with Icefield, 1 wizard/Lich(Warren), Griffon/Wyrm in front, then another lich if possible but instead you could have a ninja(Lans) in front, with the griffon in the back.
Battles would go Griffon gale, hero icefield, and then death.
I would buy Int potions ASAP so that they deal just enough damage to reach half on the monsters, then finish with a death.
Gale seems to do physical damage, and the hero does ice damage.
Why Ice damage? Because MOST mobs are equally effected by it.
Phantom does physical damage so you have the caster/melee split, whereas as everything but say Ice giants take equal damage, and clerics take more.
The basic idea is to get 2-3 all attacks and then just pop off a Death.
With the Hero leveling so quickly, he might be able to get powerful enough to get his attack+1 more all attack to let Death go off faster.
I will manipulate tarots as much as possible.
The base guarding unit would be something like 2 fighters in front, 3 wizards in back with Leader strategy, just to finish the leader and get them retreating.
Could be an interesting run.
So is Death. Imagine fights that go like this: Magician, Starlite, Death. Fight over.
That's the kind of run I was originally expecting.
That's why I put down strategies to get more cash for more Jokers so you can manipulate Magician/Death over and over.
However, you have decided to go another route.
I feel that your route Phil, is great for a Speedrun, butPOSSIBLY not for a Time Attack.
I really want to start a speedrun trying out the all Joker tarot strategy, but I'd like a base video to start from, or rather, to see if my technique makes good time AT ALL.
It might proove that your run has a much better time, and that getting items to sell and getting Jokers, and using them to fight is a waste of time.
However, if my time is better for the last few levels, I would be certain that the Joker approach could be made faster through other opimizations I have in mind, but am waiting for a video to comment on their possible use.
Can we please see anymore work you've done Phil? I love this game so much, even watching one more level is worth it for me. Good luck sir! :D
This is what I didn't catch. I thought all the stages after a certain point would just be, fly over to the boss and win.
As the levels get bigger, it gets harder to get to the boss fast enough, or to avoid all enemy units, as they will sometimes come straight for you. On several levels it is possible to get to the boss directly, but if you are trying to manipulate luck to get Undead Staves/Rings you have to fight some enemy units.
Enhasa wrote:
I think you might have indirectly answered my question about not INT boosting wizards. Somewhere in between near the beginning when you would not have much money, and naer the end when you would not be able to put it to great effect, is a point which can be considered the optimal time to buy INT potions. I already knew that. The key is, you don't have an issue with boosting wizards who will later upgrade per se, it's just that at that optimal point, you would have mages/sorcerers by then. Which is why you were against boosting wizards. I think.
Yes, that's exactly what I mean. I did say that, just not as obviously as you put it. Early on you simply don't have enough money to get enough potions to make it worth it in terms of damage/time saved. And as was also said, you'd have Mages/Sorcerors by the time you'd have enough money/the enemies were harder to make it worth it/able to do so.
Enhasa wrote:
This is why I said I think buying Jokers, instead of buying INT potions, is the way to go. It also takes Phil a whole lot less money this way, meaning he doesn't have to waste any time creating other Low/High Sky units to find treasure.
If you look at the earlier posts in the thread you can see my suggestion to buy mass Joker Tarots, but it is most likely not worth it. You lose time because of the full casting animation; if your unit were powerful enough (and we all know what unit that would be) you can kill the enemies so quickly it doesn't even matter, plus it costs nothing.
BacardiNCola, please re-read my first paragraph. I know that mages are obviously better in a normal game. But unless I remember wrong, boss fights are over when the leader dies, meaning units that can target the leader are just as effective. However, there are a couple of drawbacks, which I mentioned. So I concluded that mages/sorcerers are probably better, since I don't think using Fool cards is an optimal use of time. I realized afterwards that gaining more XP is the key factor, so I guess this is a non-issue. =p
The answer is pretty obvious I would think, and I did answer it. Mages/Sorcerors do more aggregate damage.
The highsky unit will be fighting both regular units and the boss unit; hence it wants the most damage possible in a high-sky unit, and that unit is the griffon/wyvern, princess , 2 liches (or mages/sorcerors's).
As you also say, XP gain is a key factor, and Fool cards are not not necessary if you can kill the leader with 3x all attack magics.
Although, since Animation turns ON for boss fights automatically it might be better to only have Mages. THEN at boss fights you can swap them into wizards for the fight, thus making the casting animation time decrease slightly perhaps? Then you just change them back.
This would have to be tested to see if there is any actual frame gain from doing this, and with everything involved in it, I feel like it wouldn't be much time gained.
Enhasa wrote:
About my earlier question, what I meant was, I understand increasing INT. What I didn't understand was why anybody would wait until getting mages/sorcerers to boost INT. When you class change, you keep the INT you gained. If you think that the INT potions would be better served on a princess, I understand, but that doesn't mean that boosting wizards would be pointless. Hope I explained it better.
I think it's more a matter of resources.
You can only get so many Merchants/Trade Tickets to summon Anywhere Jack, and it uses them up, so you really only should buy potions once or so.
In addition, I have used potions get get character's stats up to the max of 255 (unsigned byte anyone?) in the physical categories, and 999hp.
This takes ALOT of time and MORE Goth. I had 3 billion Goth, so I figured why not.
So in the early game, you can see that buying heals is pretty important. Buying 32 or so of them might not be necesary, but I believe Phil buys so many because he doesn't want to waste time with another buying stop.
Same idea with the Wizards in the early game. You stop the game to only boost them a little bit.
Another reason I can see is that when they level their stats will increase anyways. Since this unit will be doing alot of leveling, it will have greatly increased stats already.
Also, you will notice that the stat boost does not increase your damage by THAT much. Yes, it's an increase, a considerable one, but will it save you another one attack on the enemy? In addition, you must consider the time spent summoning jack, buying the potions, and then using the potions on the character. Will the end output exceed that threshold? It remains to be seen.
Hope that all helps.
I don't see why that would matter. Care to explain this? And also, wizards get one more hit than mages. I'm not sure you would really want this intermediate upgrade, unless the extra hit ends up not mattering.
This is simple to explain Enhasa.
Perhaps you have not played Ogre Battle many times (if at all) or just forgot as we all do.
Wizards get 2 attacks that hit ONE unit per attack.
Mages get 1 attack that hits ALL units.
If the enemy has 5 units, that's 5 hits; and the MINIMUM number of Characters in units is 3, so Mages actually get more hits, and actually end up doing more aggregate damage than Wizards.
In addition, with the Princess leading the unit, each Character gets 1 more attack.
Wizards hence get 1 more hit, whereas Mages get 1 more attack that hits ALL the enemy units. As you can see, Mages are more effective than Wizards in terms of damage.
Next, the part about the int potions.
Buying Int potions takes time; going to the item menu and selecting the Int Potion and giving it to the Character takes time; doing this 50+ times takes a LONG time.
The question is, is it worth it to do this? Will it save enough time in encounters to be worth doing?
The answer EARLY on is definately NOT.
But later when you have 3x units that are hitting ALL the enemies, increasing their Int will speed up fights tremendously.
However will it be enough? I still guess NO, but that remains to be seen.
Hope that answered your question fully Enhasa.
Keep up the good work Phil, I hope you finish this instead of working on your FF2(or was it Mystic Quest?) run please please pretty please!
Phil, just a couple of things that I wanted to point out.
With the Merchant you have, if you can get huge cash money, (from manipulating treasure spots on the map to get the most expensive items to sell) you would be able to afford a ton of Joker tarots (which you can easily manipulate to whatever you need.
You can also use the extra cash to use those Merchants and up your princess/wizards int.
I know it seems like the pay off is not there, as this will take many frames of effort for seemingly nothing, but it will make each and every fight go much faster.
If you think that increasing the int on the wizards won't be effective until they hit mage/sorceror I can understand that, but as is, if your Princess had higher Int I can see a couple of fights that already went an extra hit that she could have prevented.
Just some food for thought.
Time attacking the first few levels for the best time does not ensure you will achieve the best time for the entire game.
The choices you make in the early game are going to influence your time in each battle until you finish the game.
Please post more as you make it! I love watching :D
I believe your movie ends after you beat gilbert? If not, I need some help viewing these. But I think I can see it saying "Movie Stopped" so hopefully I saw everything.
Looks good so far, although you should try to snag the extra treasure in levels that you have wait time in anyways.
Getting very expensive sellable items is surely the way to make this the fasttest possible, and you really ought to get a Trade Ticket to pump your int stats for all 3 casters.
I do suggest, however, that you use a wyrm instead of the griffon(as soon as you can make that switch) for the reasons I mentioned.
Getting gilbert might not be a bad idea because he may have better stats than the non-warren wizard, and he comes with 2 wyrms, which will allow you to have 2 more high sky flyers to bounce around the map picking up items and free tarots.
I assure you, that heavy use of tarot cards will speed up every battle, especially while waiting for mage/sorceror/liches to happen.
Nice work so far, but keep in mind, the later levels are huge and are the ones where time saving will make the most impact.
+Int should not be a problem considering he can get a "Trade Ticket" call Anywhere Jack and just buy an assload of them.
For early game I can see you maybe wanting a griffon in the back but the question is who would go in the front; the amazon?
Putting units in the front/back seems to make a difference in terms of leveling stats, as I have found wizards get huge str ups if left in the front row.
Therefore, you'd need to have the Wyrm/Griffon in front.
One reason to have the Wyrm instead of the Griffon would be that Griffon's have hi Agility, and hence attack first often; you don't want this. You want the Princess to have the most Agility to attack undead units first.
In addition, you'd prefer to have Princess/Liche/Liche go before Griffon.
Wyrms are slower hence this won't be as much of a problem.
Hello all, I'm very interested in seeing a speed run through Ogre Battle as it is probably one of my favorite games of all time.
From playing through this game well over 100 times, here are some things that will probably aid in beating it much faster.
The unit:
As has been said before, THE single most important unit to have is the princess/2 liches/wyrm. This unit will wipe out enemies in one round of attacks, is available early on as wyrm/amazon/wizard/wizard to enable good leveling.
The princess can be received very early due to random Dream Crown drops that can be influenced, and then undead staves and rings too.
Tarot and Jokers
These will be your TRUE weapons of mass destruction. Use of multiple Fortune cards can allow you to plow through units that are in your way to the end boss. They can also be used to stop your base sitting unit from fighting if need be.
For all other units that get through to your base guarder, you should use a Fool and force the weakened unit to retreat back to their own base; that buys both units more time/less enemies fought.
Sun is also a powerful card against many bosses, a few of them take such a huge amount of damage that it really doesn't matter if you lose your liches; they will be revived for the next map anyways.
In fact, defeating the first few bosses will probably be done with nothing but tarot cards to speed it up, although you would have to test this. Luck manipulation to get a constant stream of Fortunes/Fools/whatever else you may need.
Also, you might be able to fly through this just using Fortune/Fool/AoE Tarot +Death to clear units.
If such a strategy is used, the main character will want to have either Ianuke(sonic strike) or 3 Slash front attack because you will only be fighting 1 opponent per fight AND all the xp from the Death Tarot goes to the leader.
Cash
Fast cash is the most important thing I believe a run of this nature will require. There are two ways that this can be achieved, but only one appears to be "worth" it at first glance.
A heavy manipulation of luck should be used to make the highest selling items drop randomly from both killed mobs and treasure spots.
The other way to make cash is to kill all enemies, liberate all cities, then simply wait. You will keep getting tribute each day. This may be viable at some point for enough extra cash to buy more jokers. They ain't cheap at 2,000 goth each.
Your reputation suffers quite a bit doing this, although I know it's not a concern.
Another thing you may consider is that as the next "Day" is approaching, send out units with 1 wyvern/griffon/hawkman etc. to as many "safe" towns as possible, and liberate them JUST as the next day is arriving.
Bam, you get free manipulated tarots, +2,000 goth per since you won't need jokers, and then bonus tribute you wouldn't get otherwise.
You can time this to concur with your attacking unit just about to reach the boss and finish the level.
You *may* be able to buy enough jokers and finish through the game surviving on just bonus cash and vendored items, but that would need to be tested.
Time Savers and Wasters
Liberating, bonus cash, special character dialogue appearances, and anyone just generally talking to you all waste your time and should be avoided if possible.
This will restrict your cash/tarot flow however.
Conclusions
I really want to see a time attack of this game. Is it still being considered?