VietnamRegarding my runs of this game:
- Back then I launched the game using Voobly, unfortunately this only works with Clone Campaigns expansion. Settings are kinda computer-dependant and campaign-dependant as wrong ones tend to crash the game while loading a level, a general rule is not using any of the resolution tool at all.
- The runs before Voobly in widescreen resolution (ones that didn't include small trees/grid mods) was with the All-in-one patch. Again, this only works with Clone Campaigns expansion.
- For some levels that require the base game I will have to run the vanilla executable manually.
- I ran all of my programs as administrator.
For full-game runs, yes. It does include the loading times between levels, similar to previous titles as well as the StarCraft series, for a good measure.
We decided to change the timing to real time, in-game time is deemed inconsistent. The Art of War missions' runs will be put under "Story" difficulty, as there is no actual difficulty for this campaign. And the timing for these missions except for "Basic Combat" will be the medal time the game gives you.
I'm not against it, but currently we are using this method to improve: https://www.speedrun.com/aoe2de/guide/7l9v6
A bit late but to avoid any other confusion: It's difficulty based. On Easy the level has a 15 mins timer and on Hard it has a 10 mins timer.
Technically they're the scenarios holes which were made by the devs by accident while designing (i.e. the wonder victory site was made too big) and can be easily found by opening them in the scenario editor, it's completely different from glitches which are caused by the game itself. If you want to run this game I would say pick a time and version to compete with and don't take it too seriously. There is this idea which was on a AoM thread: because it's the scenarios that changed, you can replace the current campaign files with the old ones to play the old version of them without having to patch back the entire game. They can be found in the resources section. But I think it's kinda too sketchy to make sense as the very big difference is the game data (e.g. civs balance). TL;DR: It's not a bug, it's a feature.
My thought is that we already had a patch filter option, adding a sub-category just because of some exploits fixes in some levels doesn't make that much of a difference, and we have other things like civs balances to work with and not just exploits. It's also hard to keep track of what metas the devs have fixed because they usually don't include them in the patch notes and the fact that sometimes bugs came after bugs, this one got fixed in that patch but not that one, it's stressful to categorize. But it's all up to the mods to decide, I have no rights here to judge.
Just want to ask: Are Bounty Hunters/Flaming Wolf portals allowed on Non-Premium?
I can't give you any advice other than spamming the button just after closing the objective. Spamming it during levels loading will always put you in 2.0 however, except for WW where the game will mostly stop you at 1.7. And the only exception to use 1.7 is The Art of War. If you are trying to run any level outside WW/AoW, the game won't put you back to 1.7 if you're restarting it. So you might want to just enter the level, use the speed up key to set to 2.0 and then restart the level instead of quitting and re-enter, then start your attempt from that point on.
I approved this, but there are some of my runs which got the pathfinding bug that allows units to walk pass walls. I have found like 3 runs and removed them, and I'm not sure if there were still some with that bug as well, so if the mods don't mind I want to either: removing all runs on 34699 of mine or re-verification and ban the glitched runs. I don't mind redoing the ILs.
The Brown Scout Ships sometimes suicide themselves to the red archers, I don't think it depends on version of the game though. However I haven't tested that on any difficulty other than Hardest.
I don't think it's needed, the goal is to gain the fastest time finishing the level, which route you chose doesn't matter.
I wanna ask: Can I save and load during the run as long as it's in the same attempt?
What do you mean? If you accidentally typed the wrong time, you can edit it (or delete) in your "Pending Action" tab in your profile. Also the mods will retime it for you if the time is incorrect.
About the differences between difficulty, you can test this easily by going to WW7 and pass the units to the red gate, if it's on Hard the towers will attack right away as the units are in range, if it's on Standard the towers won't attack unless you move the units near them. However it seems only WW5 and WW7 are different, rest was the same according to my tests before. Edit: I found out the reason why you can play the campaign on Hard, On AoK you can change difficulty of WW by playing a mission of another campaign on the difficulty you want, then quit or finish the map, then go back to WW and you'll be locked in the difficulty of the previous map.
I know it's late, but you can play the WW campaign on Hard by using AoK.
Update: Today I went to the game and examine a bit more of this glitch and found something interesting: This glitch not only reset all players to stone age, but also remove all age restriction and building limitation. For example, some missions won't allowed you to build some buildings (e.g Alesia - Temple) and advance to higher age (e.g: Hittites - Iron Age, Trojan War - Iron Age), but by using this glitch you're able to build it and advance to the higher age.
Proof (Hunting - where you can't build anything besides house and can't advance to Tool Age):
This probably explains why the yellow on Mountain Temple advance to Tool Age on bigbassie30's run, normally they were locked at Stone Age.
