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/

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.

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.

I’m changing the rules to the Any% category. @niofalpha submitted a run that technically followed the rules but achieved the “endscreen” by simply quitting the game. According to the current rules this would make for an easy 0 second speedrun and eliminate the competitive nature a speedrun should have. This change will have no effect on other accepted runs.

So, just for the record, niofalpha did have WR according to old rules by 4 seconds. His run has been rejected in respect to new rules.

For reference, this was the run in question:

I made a Discord-server for any former, current or future members of the EU4-speedrunning community.

Use this link to connect to the server: https://discord.gg/BVXu7yw

Jump in there if you want to help us make a complete EU4-glitchlist and want to have your say in the decision whether to ban each glitch or not. Or, you know, if you just wanna talk with me FeelsLonelyMan

So, I found a glitch in Big Olive birds the other day and thought I’d share it. If you trap 3 or more birds you can complete the semiboss on the first wave. The glitch itself is pretty straightforward.

I think it’s the left building that’s glitched and somehow makes the birds respawn at the same spot they were killed. It works on both ePSXe 1.9 and 2.0 and on PAL-playstation. I don’t own non-emu-NTSC- or PC-versions, so can’t test it on there.

Enjoy the luck dependent glitchy-glitchy fun stuff.

Cheers.

I bring forth my suggestions for new categories:

It would be great to have some of the more popular achievements like "Big Blue Blob" or "Luck of the Irish/Re-Reconquista/Sunset Invasion/Basileus". Also a “Renovatio Imperii” or “Dismantle HRE”-category.

A 500 or 1000 total provinces speedrun (or a short 1 province in every continent). Win the HRE-religious war as leader of a Protestant or Reformed league (or Anglican in the new Rule Britannia dlc, depending on however that works). Unify islam. Have your colonies own or directly own all of americas yourself.

Maybe a form Roman Empire-speedrun. Other speedrun-viable formable nations could be:

• Hindustan/Bharat/Mughals
• Arabia
• Japan
• Qing
• Rûm
• Jerusalem
• Persia
• Malaya
• Romania

Unfortunately most formable European countries isn’t really viable as they require admin tech 10 and would be mostly waiting. Maybe there’s a patch where admin tech 10 isn’t required to form some nations, I’ll look into that.

Mind you, I’m not saying all of these would be good or even runnable categories. It’s merely just me blurbing suggestions from the top of my head.

Now, let’s get some runs rolling in a category that is not any% PogChamp

I've long considered speedrunning and requesting this game. Cool you've taken it upon your shoulders to create it :)

The only thing that's been holding me back is that EU4 isn't really a speedgame by nature, and the whole IGT-thing seems a bit counter-intuitive to me as a speedrunner. I find it problematic that a speedrun legally could be in multiple segments. It completely eliminates the rushing-perspective a speedrun should have. IGT also allows save-scumming which if RTA-timing was used would result in timeloss, but instead now is free and almost encouraged.

A rule change disallowing quitting the game would prevent this, but that would require runners to record the whole run not just the recap.

To be fair if time was measured by RTA the strongest computer would have an advantage, so IGT might be the lesser of two evils. It just feels like breaking the constitutional laws of speedrunning when the timer is directly controlled (pausable) by the runner. It's at least a topic that should be discussed thoroughly.

TL;DR: I'm suggesting an RTA vs IGT reevaluation, my point being that EU4-IGT never should be used in a speedrun, maybe as a tie-breaker. If IGT is kept I'm suggesting disallowing quitting/restarting the game. Furthermore every run should be fully recorded and be done as a single segment.