Nice run! Official time from start to end is 1:16, but you can skip the very long loading at the end by pressing ESC to close the diplomacy menu and then clicking your mouse. That should get your time down a lot.

Hey all. Sorry for being late to the party, I rarely check this site lol.

As for the accusations, I will say that I have not modded Rome: Total War in any way at all. It is just the exact perfect combination of luck and unit placement. I genuinely love this game, and want to push just how much the AI and game can be abused within the base game. I just uploaded a video on YouTube that details my thought processes behind certain decisions and unit placement, as well as addressing how the odds of success are (they aren't great). I've attempted this run dozens if not at least a hundred times, and there are so many little things that can go wrong. Rebels spawn basically anywhere on the peninsula and mess up the AI, or you lose one of the battles, or the gate doesn't open at the end. The runs on my channels are pretty much the ONLY successful ones I have gotten.

I hope you all will believe me when I say that I haven't cheated in any way. My run is only the result of luck and pure experimentation and repetition. If you would like, I can upload scrap footage from all the failed runs I recorded, and there are a lot. Have a nice day!

Also, I'm not sure about the effect of patch differences at all. I just know I play on the version I downloaded off Amazon years ago, and the US version if that means anything.

I would argue figuring out the optimal speedrunning sequence for the fastest time with autobattle requires skill, but I would also be willing to do a no autobattle run.