The Victoria speedrunning Discord server can be found following this link:

https://discord.gg/82J4cgW

For the general Paradox Grand Strategy speedrunning server and community, join the following:

Discord server: https://discord.gg/R6cqEYtsTW

Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ParadoxSpeedruns/

Hey!

1. I don’t think we’ve directly discussed that before. The game is like 5€ on Steam, so I never thought the pirated version would see any popularity.

If the games are identical I guess there is no real advantage as cutscene skipping and level loading wouldn’t count as game time anyway. On the other hand it would be a big no-no if say someone got the game on Steam or physically and then manually deleted the music and cutscene files.

It’s a grey area, but imo we should only allow accurate copies - especially when there’s a version available for cheap. How does similar speedgames tackle this issue? Are there any sort of speedrun.com precedent?

2. If your run has a timer (with at least two decimals) on screen and is on the PC version it’s not too big a hassle to retime, so for my part it’s okay to leave it to the mod.

Initially it was meant that runners should retime themselves, but lately I’ve just done it for the runs that I’ve verified. In the end mods have to verify the runner’s retiming anyway, so it’s just double the work for no reason.

3. No discord as of yet. The game is not super active atm, but I wouldn’t mind setting up a community server

I see you run/mod Tarzan too. I don’t know if such a thing already exists, but what would make most sense to me is gathering all Disney Games from this era in one common Discord server.

If you find competing and comparing by real time dumb then you really have missed the entire point of speedrunning. It’s not relevant how greatness generally is measured within the non-speedrunning community of the game, it’s how fast can we possibly finish a predefined portion of the game.

In the case of EU4 (and other PDX games) in-game time is nowhere near comparable to real time. How do you rank a 12 hour 1785 WC against a 200 hour 1550 WC? You can’t. That’s why we split the leaderboards in two - one ranking by IGT and one by RTA. And why every Paradox speedgame does the same.

We’ve had this discussion quite a few times by now. You’re always welcome on our Discord server(s) if you want to take part in future discussions and maybe influence how the leaderboards will look.

Alright, my 10 cents:

To me basing timing off an in-game timer that isn’t relative to real time is counter-intuitive in a speedrunning sense. I feel weird by calling something where it’s fully acceptable and not punished to just take a break a speedrun.

It’s much more like a highscore run, which is awesome too, but is a very different approach to singleplayer competitiveness. They are incomparable, if you ask me, and will solve problems very differently - most obvious in the Greed scenario in Spoils of War. Therefore to me it does not make sense to rank by both RTA and IGT for the same submission, as previously suggested.

Not that one approach is better than the other; RTA might sacrifice min-maxing to gain time (as in Greed), but instead you constantly need to react to and make rushed, but good, decisions. It’s not just about “clicking fast” - although I’ll give you, when scenarios are easier and less AI-tricky they’re more trivial than harder ones.

But all in all I don’t see why not to give a fully IGT-based leaderboard a go - and a category extension seems like a very fitting place to do this. Worst case scenario no runs are submitted and we can just delete it again after some time - best case scenario more HoMM3-runners will join speedrun.com, which means a larger community and greater exposure for IGT as well as RTA within its target audience. There really is nothing to lose. But I do think they should be completely separate and no RTA-type measure used in the IGT-leaderboards and vice versa, even if it may bring a lot of tied WRs with it.

@Vegard_KristoffersenVegard_Kristoffersen Awesome that you submitted to AGDQ! Based on the way you wrote it I guess you didn’t get in, but cool nonetheless. Will you be submitting to ESA as well?

Normally you can pick whatever difficulty you like, so in this case your hard run will be measured as equal to Valenthtain's easy. If hard and easy differs enough we can split them into two different categories, but I'm unsure what parameters are tweaked and if the difference is big enough. Other than the AI probably being more aggressive how is the two difficulties different?

iirc the numpad +/- switch between x1, x2, x4 and x8 speed and * switches between x1 and x10 speed.

Speed control really makes this game a way better experience (and a way better speedgame).

As a direct response to the reply above about a browser host for Hercules, the game is now available on Steam. It costs 5€, so a legit PC-version (not bashing Donald's site or its legitimacy, I don't know it) of the game should now be obtainable for most.

I think we agree on the IGT-boards. Essentially they don’t belong in here, but I see them more as an open invitation to IGT-runners allowing them to have a board somewhere. And if they started using this board some of them might gain interest in RTA speedruns too.

But facts are the IGT-boards aren’t used. I think it’s mainly due to lack of advertising, but probably also that speedrun.com is the last place IGT-runners would think a leaderboard was hosted. I don’t really think EU4-players expect to go outside the Paradox-forums for stuff like this. I think we should give it a couple of months and if they’re still empty we can consider removing them again.

You might be new to these boards but if anything that makes your opinion even more important. If runners are too scared (or daunted) to submit because of an overly complex design, that is crucial feedback that should be taken very seriously. We are a small community and whenever there is a new runner he/she shouldn’t have a hard time joining.

The incentive to play RTA NS5 is to find the fastest time on equal (or as close to equal we can get) running times. I don’t think the solution is to make different rules for different categories depending on length. If anything I think it would make everything more confusing to everybody. If we assume there is no IGT subcategory, do you still think it would be confusing to have speed 5 and a no speed 5 as two different categories? And what’s your opinion on a fps-limiter? It would level out the playing field (or at least give an upper boundary that is not defined based on computer power), but arguably make the learning curve a bit steeper as it's one extra thing to do before qualifying to speedrun, which is never good.

I’m always in for improving the boards and any input is highly valued.

Hey man. First of all; awesome to see some EU4 speedrunning love! Feel free to join the Discord there’s always an answer if you have any questions. I’m always up for any discussion. If not then SRC-forums are fine too.

The amount of duplicate runs, i. e. runs that qualify as both NS5, any% and IGT-runs, is mostly due to lack of runs and runners overall. I'm pretty sure there would be a big difference between NS5-runs and normal speed 5-runs if the boards were filled.

To me the rules are pretty clear but I wrote most of them myself so I might be a bit blinded by that, I dunno. In any case you can submit all your runs to any%. If you never used speed 5 (like in your latest Japan-run) you have the possibility to submit your runs under NS5. The NS5 subcategories was mainly made to let runners speedrun competitively without buying a monster PC. IGT and why it was added is a special case that isn’t really speedruns. For one it breaks the one-sitting rule. But it is a way to competitively attack an EU4 singleplayer campaign, that to my information does not have any other organized leaderboard. Ideally this is more of a “highscore”-website thing than speedrun, but until such EU4-leaderboard is created I see no problem with hosting it.

At the moment I’m against removing normal RTA categories. Maybe in a hypothetical future where NS5 runs are more popular than normal RTA. Right now we need to be as open as possible to new runners and imo that is best done by letting them speedrun and upload at their own terms (well to some extent), then slowly adapting to a subcategory of their choice - be it with or without speed 5. If we make special rules for normal speedruns we exclude anyone that did a run without knowing the rules. And that can be somewhat demoralizing if that run is a 12 hour world conquest. This is why I find splitting them into two subcategories is a fine middle-ground solution.

EDIT @atom’s response: I’m pretty sure time standardization would be too complex a calculation. Sometimes even speedrunners use speed 4 and below by choice. If we wish to standardize I’m much more keen on doing it with direct limits instead of multiplicating the time with a more or less arbitrary factor. I think banning speed 5 or force runners to use an FPS limiter are better solutions. Speed 4 would be better but an external FPS limiter allows to define our own max speed.

Load removal on autosaves is fine though, that should be pretty easy to implement.

I don’t run CK2 and I lack the skill and in-game time to consider doing so in the near future - I do however run and mod EU4 and I think whatever is decided here might set some sort of community precedence for games that are alike (CK2~EU4~HOI4), which is why I decided to join the debate.

My opinion is that in no circumstances can singleplayer runs ever be displayed on the same leaderboards as multiplayer runs, so as @datrandompanda says they would need to be separated. I do see some value in multiplayer runs, but not necessarily in the way datrandompanda describes it; I don’t think making an already short run even more trivial is the right way to go about MP speedruns.

Where I do see multiplayer runs potentially shine is longer completionist runs. Like a world conquest or whatever long runs CK2 might have, where cooperation can be a key factor to actually make the run faster rather than one player just being a surrender slave. Imo surrender slaves is not that far from speedrunning Fortnite where all your buddies just suicide instantly. But a 2-player World Conquest speedrun actually sounds like a pretty damn fun idea - and it may actually appeal to some runners that never would have touched something like that otherwise. Either way I don’t think more than 2 player MP speedruns is viable, as the more players you add the closer the run is to becoming trivial.

That’s my 2 cents. Awesome to see some grand strategy speedrun love out there

That's fair. For the time being there's no greater purpose for the EU-series. I've been thinking of running EU2 and EU:Rome, but it hasn't come to that yet so let's just keep it unmoderated until needed.

However I think there would be a greater purpose for a Paradox games series, mostly to streamline the rules of games and future games in the series. They more or less run with the same system and same game engine, and I think it's pretty essential that identical systems/engines are interpreted similarly. Sure, it's nothing near the size of Mario-Sonic-DK-etc, but it wouldn't be pointless. I'm unsure how to interpret your post when it comes to creating a series for a developer instead of franchise.

Nonetheless I'll ask the mods of the other games, then apply as normal to get a direct answer. Thx for the FYI 🙂

Sounds good. Could me and/or Plant be modded for the series? 🙂

Follow up question regarding series: Are series strictly for franchises or could there be made a series for developer if all games have the same nature? I'm thinking of Paradox-games involving these two games, Hearts of Iron 4, Crusader Kings 2, Victoria 2 and Stellaris. It goes without saying that it would require the mods of the other games acceptance for this, but would it even get accepted by you if I had that?

Hi. Can MDK_ be removed as a supermod from Europa Universalis IV? ( https://www.speedrun.com/eu4 ) He hasn't interacted with the leaderboards since he added me as the second super mod (~a year ago) and played no part in the recent rework of the leaderboards. He furthermore has no active contact methods, so I can't ping him to remove himself. Thank you 🙂

Rules dictate timer to start at any in-game action after gaining control which includes any clicking and screen opening. To accept rebels' demands you must do that. Day 0-runs would be possible in this way with a couple of nations, but truly 0.000-seconds runs are not.

It would be way faster than current WR though, so if you want a free meme-record it's all yours.

TL;DR: IGT-runs will get their own boards. A bunch of new categories will be added. We’re closing in on banning speed 5 for all RTA-runs. @addictedtomorrowind has been added as a mod.

- The Return of IGT:
So I talked with @addictedtomorrowind on Discord and he convinced me to get the EU4 sr.com leaderboards to host IGT-runs as well - a standpoint i originally was against. Actually it was the first thing I changed when I got modded. But apparently no other site hosts records for EU4 IGT-”speedrunning” so I decided to welcome them back as it is the more obvious way of perfecting this game. RTA-speedrunning will always be the main purpose of the leaderboards (this is speedrun.com after all) even though chances are that IGT will be more popular. That is fine too - activity generated on the IGT-boards will bring more attention to RTA-runs too. A win-win.

Practically it will work as it did before with the time input representing the date of completion. The leaderboards will be splitted just like the HOI4-leaderboards are. This effectively makes room for both RTA and IGT without interfering with eachother. The complete ruleset and the requirements for an IGT-submission are still discussed. If you have inputs jump on the Discord and share your opinion.

- New Categories:
I will add new categories - mostly focused on IGT, but naturally with leaderboards in both RTA and IGT. If you have any ideas or request for other categories feel free to comment.

Furthermore I’m moving the any%-category as a Misc-category. It will no longer be the default category either. That will either be SPQR or HRE for now and in time it will be WC.

- And the Quest For Banning Speed 5:
It appears that speed 1-4 is hard coded relative to real time and speed 5 is relative to your computer power. Therefore we’ve come to the conclusion that it would be fair to ban speed 5 for RTA runs.

We’ve discussed a few approaches but haven’t reached a final decision just yet.

1. Purge all runs using speed 5 (no)
2. Split the boards further in a “speed 5” and a “no speed 5” leaderboard. This would probably look a bit messy and bring some confusion - and have the side effect of creating an obsolete “no speed 5” leaderboard to all IGT-boards.
3. Create a legacy category placed in Misc. This will host old runs and you will not be able to submit new runs to it. The legacy category will exist until the community decides it's purging time (probably when the new boards have been populated).

Any% will not be affected by the speed 5 ban and will function as always.

On an ending note @addictedtomorrowind will be added as a moderator.

That’s it for now.

Awesome, looks great. Thank you Adam. I'll start running next week or so, if not for anything then to at least have some runs on the boards.

Cheater% is not for me 🙂

I agree with everything Daniel says.

Assuming we enforce the HD+ ban the problem would be that almost every run recorded uses HD+. We can’t keep any runs as HD+ per default does the RNG-thing covered earlier. It’s a shame, but a fact nonetheless. As far as I can see that leaves us with two possibilities:

1. Purge everything that uses HD+ pretty much leaving the leaderboards empty and ready for new conquistadores.

2. Split the leaderboards into a strictly HD with limited tweaks and an HD+ with all tweaks allowed. This way we have the best of both worlds and we don’t have to abolish any runs. I know it’s suboptimal to have ~20 categories in a game 3 dudes are running, but it’s the only way I see possible if we want to ban HD+ and still keep old runs around.

Fair enough. Home-stuff should be prioritized after all 🙂

Sorry for the timing-thing. I broke that rule too, just realized it was a thing before posting. Luckily it’s not that bad, it probably only adds a second or two to all runs.

So, we should decide on whether every tweak should be banned or not. As far as I can see these are the relevant tweaks available:

- HD+ (According to documentation-site it adds multiplayer-stuff, replayable battles, fixed RNG-calculations)
- Sys.CPU.ReduceUsage (Self-explanatory. Unsure if it affects anything relevant)
- UI.AdvMgr.SkipMadMsgs (Skips some messages like warnings when buying stuff)
- UI.ClipCursor (Mouse cannot leave the game window while holding down the Ctrl-key, really useful when playing in windowed mode and trying to scroll the map)
- UI.QuickArmyManagementode (Better army management. I am not completely sure what this exactly does)
- UI.RecruitDlg.Autoset (When recruiting creatures it decides what the initial number is set on)
- UI.Tavern.InviteHero (Enables you to choose what hero will join your tavern next)

It appears all the controversial stuff comes from the HD+-mod. I’m for banning it completely. The other tweaks seem fine, safe for InviteHero that was discussed before.

Yo. Could we get back to this?

I just returned to doing some HoMM3-runs. I pretty much routed LLtK and will probably do Liberation and the last one next week, before the ultimate full campaign run.

BUT before all this shit, I need to have a sound ruleset to adhere to. The problems I see highly relate to the thread some months ago, that ultimately led to nothing. Let me start this again as it is pretty crucial for future HoMM3-speedruns. I have two objections; one minor and a biggie.

- Timer start:

Either do one of two things:

Change the timer start to the first dialogue skip of each scenario.

Or stay true to the current rules and actually moderate, i. e. retime, runs that start the timer too late (it appears everyone does that, myself included). My vote is on this one.

It doesn’t really matter which one, consistency is the key. It just surprises me that timing is explicitly defined one way, but is practiced in another way in all runs.

- HD vs HD+ mod:

Is HD+ mod allowed or ONLY HD mod? Further down this path are tweaks allowed? There are some legacy runs that would get purged by the disallowance of HD+, including J0hna’s as he uses the “Replay Battle”-function which is not possible in an non-tweaked version of HD mod. As the HD mod is still being updated fairly regularly this puts us in a position where we are at the hands of the modders. They could integrate every tweak by default tomorrow and we would be forced to use them.

I understand and agree with your opposition of tweaks, but the problem is, as @snDRY posted in the previous thread, that the HD mod greatly interferes with vanilla version anyway. The worst crime of them all probably is that HD mod actually manipulates every single RNG-calculation. What I’m saying is that the “this is not vanilla”-argument is not valid, because we’ve already stepped so far away from vanilla that the bread crumbs we spread to find back has been eaten by nasty birds years ago.

My point isn’t that we should ban all HD mods altogether, but I am really curious as to how tweaks breaks your rules more than HD mod haven't already done. As far as I can see in earlier posts the mod got accepted as a QoL-thing, which turned out to have a shitload of side-effects that is generally frowned upon in most speedrunning communities. So we could either accept all these side-effects in their full glory or try to make a nice subjective ruleset carefully picking out the tweaks we like. This would require an exact and up-to-date guide to set up the game and in principle require all runners to show their tweaks-code before each run (... but let's use the honor system for that).

So, please make a decision and enforce it so I can run this game. Pick my poison, so to speak.

Agreed, however it seems like you gain control of Herc at the start of fadein to each level. The scorescreen starts ticking at fadein start too. So I would argue that it should be from fadeout start to fadein start.

With that the stuff we define as loads would be fade-to-fades and whenever the game explicitly states it’s “LOADING”. This leaves 3 blocks of loads per PS-level (1 block per PC-level), which with the relative few levels in the game is tolerable.

With your Crash-experience in mind general timing should stay as it is now, yes.