Pirkanmaa, FinlandImo even the easiest category could be removed - almost all times are worse than hardest category and not because they are more difficult, but because runners lack interest in running them. And I don't blame them. I only consider hardest category to be noteworthy, with the exception of "I'll Be Back" where the easiest difficulty is unique. (I might forget some other, but these are few regardless)
That said, I don't really see a point to include the moderate difficulty, unless there are clearly distinct optimal strategies w.r.t. hardest and easiest
But welcome aboard, I'm looking forwards to seeing some action here again! 😄
The run will start on Sunday at 7:00 GMT. I'm going to have my friend read my notes I have made in preparation for the levels but other communication will be random chatting.
Thank you for the advice - I tried it a few times and it feels consistent enough with one save file when landing with the camels.
Hello, I'm going to do an All Campaigns (Hardest) run live on the Games Done Decently event 25.-27.11. (at weekend three weeks from this moment, but I don't know the exact time yet). I'll try to beat bigbassie's superb record with the help of stone age glitch and other recent findings by the amazing speedrunners of this game. The stream will be live at https://www.twitch.tv/tr3gamers and I will upload it to my Youtube channel afterwards regardless of the final time. The stream will be in Finnish but I can switch to English if need be.
I'm planning to ask a friend of mine to provide snacks etc. during the run. The rules don't specify limitations, so I'm asking upfront where does the line go of what is legit and what is not. Can he:
- Read keynotes I've written beforehand about each level (to me and the stream)? For example, what is the goal of the mission, to what population I plan to go to?
- Tell me when a certain time has passed in a level? For example, in Coming of the Huns, I want to send my villagers at 5:00 gt.
- Warn me if I'm about to get housed?
- Warn about things happening in the map that I might not notice?
Also, if anyone has any new ideas not apparent in bigbassie's sub 7h run, I would be delighted to hear about them. Especially I have reached a dead end with the Nineveh mission - I would like to have a safer strat since I can't restart the run. I would not like to lose 15 minutes there for RNG...
Feudal upgrades = Tool Age upgrades, silly me playing too much aoe2 :D
The GOG version is perfectly fine. You may choose any of the different versions of the game. I actually am not very knowledgeable if the different versions differ much, but I tend to think they should play out almost the same. Maybe some (bad) glitches may occur only in some versions.
Example of cheese settings to win ez 1v7 vs hardest bots: small islands with too little map size.
I would approve 1v7 bots RM & DM speedruns for all maps, especially Hill Country. Except for very cheesy settings, however, I think it is borderline impossible vs Hardest bots, since they cheat big time. However, I enjoy clapping 7 AIs on Hard difficulty in RM and DM as fast as possible (been doing that quite a lot) and would love to see that as a speedrun category as well. Curious to see if in land maps the strategy of choice would be to fast bronze Assyrian chariot archers or something else.
No problem, it's a pleasure to help.
The patient is first diagnosed and if the diagnosis is successful it is then cured - if the diagnosis is failed you get a fax to the fax machine that prompts you if you want to send the patient home or to the auto-autopsy. Curing rooms are Pharmacy, Operating theatre, Slack tongue etc. So diagnosed patient is not yet cured.
I'd say Consult doctors are the way to go in general since they are very efficient and give the most diagnosis points to the patient. Having a non-Consult in specifically GP room could be a good idea if you know what you are doing.
I'll give 3 scenarios to illustrate this problem. In all of them a patient arrives to your hospital, "suffering" from Invisibility. I'll describe the patient's route.
Scenario 1: -> Reception desk -> GP with a "good" (Consult) doctor. Doctor diagnoses the patient's condition without additional diagnosis (+100$) -> Patient is sent to Pharmacy and is cured (+2268$) Total: 2368$
Scenario 2: -> Reception desk -> GP with a "bad" (Junior) doctor. Doctor fails the initial diagnosis and sends the patient to additional diagnosis room, let's say Scanner (+100$) -> Scanner (+600$) -> goes back to GP (+100$) -> Diagnosis was correct, patient is sent to Pharmacy and is cured (+2268$). Total: 3068$
Scenario 3: -> Reception desk -> GP with a "bad" (Junior) doctor. Doctor fails the initial diagnosis and sends the patient to additional diagnosis room, let's say Scanner (+100$) -> Scanner (+600$) -> goes back to GP (+100$) -> Diagnosis failed, patient is sent to home or auto-autopsy. Total: 800$
These examples illustrate the risk this strategy would have. You may end up with more money per patient, or significantly less. You would need more GP and additional diagnosis rooms with this strategy as well, since the patients stay longer in the diagnosis part. Notice that when the patient comes to the GP for the second time, it would be better to have a Consult there this time, to have the best probability for a successful diagnosis.
And what comes to my hospitals' layouts, they definitely aren't perfect, there is a lot of room for improvement. Pun not intended.
Hi lepapagameur, that is a good question and I like answering such questions.
The matter is a really complicated optimisation problem. I think adding X-ray in that level would be a good idea, but not mandatory. I don't add Cardiogram since I've concluded that adding it could even be harmful. I could write a full-length article about diagnosis rooms, but I try to explain briefly here. Keep in mind that the theory is specifically for Hard difficulty, and some things are different in easy difficulty - for example, doctors cost less money.
Inter-room variables: Room placement related to other rooms and reception desk Explanation: Why are diagnosis rooms needed? Apart from GP, they really aren't. Patients' route in hospital: -> Reception desk -> GP -> (if needed: additional diagnosis -> GP) -> Cure. Minimising this path maximises hospital efficiency, but that is a separate topic and I don't discuss it further now, except that it was one variable on the planning of Festering-on-the-World.
Intra-room variables: Time taken per visit (with optimal design), money obtained per visit (with default charging), diagnosis points for patient, minimum room size Explanation: Diagnosis rooms have different time taken per patient. This is pretty obvious if one monitors them closely. Different diagnosis rooms cost money, but since you need hospital value anyways, that variable can be ignored. Your hospital fines the patients more for the more expensive diagnosis equipment. This is the reason why I sell General diagnosis room and build Scanner room in its place. GD default charge is 150$; Scanner is 600$. Diagnosis rooms yield diagnosis points. In short, this means that some diagnosis rooms are more effective at producing correct diagnosis than others. When patient visits a diagnosis room their diagnosis points are incremented according to diagnosis room's and doctor's skill points. Some diseases require more diagnosis points than others. Finally, the room size matters for obvious reasons. X-ray takes the most space.
Here are my observations. Time is seconds on normal speed. Points could be found from game files - here I list "medium", "high", "very high" based on my observations. name time money points size GP 5 100 medium 4 GD 12 150 medium 5 X-ray 7 400 high 6 Scanner 15 600 high 5 Ultrascan 9 500 very high 4 Cardio 14 300 medium 4 Blood machine 21 500 high 4 Ward (diag) 38 200 medium 6 Psychiat (diag) 4 400 medium 5
The doctor at GP guides patient to "most suitable" diagnosis rooms, if additional diagnosis is needed. A quick look at the table gives us confidence that the Cardio is a bad deal, and should be avoided. I also don't build Blood machine, since it is not as good as Scanner, Ultrascan. X-ray doesn't give the most money, but it operates very quickly => long queues don't form. However, if the lines don't get too long, having no X-ray could be beneficial. This is really an optimization problem that would need more research.
One interesting strategy that I haven't covered is intentionally having a poor doctor at GP, forcing patients to take additional diagnosis. This surely increases money obtained from diagnosis, but is it worth it, if some proportion of patients' diagnosis fails because of this? This would result in less money from cure - curing the patients gives the most money after all. This strategy needs more research.
Sorry for long post, I tried to keep it brief. I hope this enlightens the reasons behind my choices in the run.
What I've found by making tests no correlation with staff happiness and amount of windows. The only practicality would be to better see if the room has a radiator or not, but placing the windows takes time, so I don't place them myself.
Not at the moment as far as I know. I could create one myself, as there could be minor need for it. I'll think about it.
My individual level runs are recorded with the Windows 10 built-in default recorder. But there are many capturing software that does the job better like the ones hogziller and MilkToast use.
I finisihed The Assasins on conquest again - 1:30:00 IGT but it took much longer than 45 minutes because of tons of save/load. You can jebait towers with the Hero Perseus in a way it stops shooting anything by moving out of the tower range at the right time - this helps you a lot with the guard towers. You can lure the objective enemy hero far away with your cavalier or Perseus to avoid him attacking while you are sacking the town. And it's a micro fest - actually not bad to train your micro.
The real pain in the neck in conquest is Caravan. I took red and brown easily with -15HP to the improved bowmen. Orange's eles were easy to micro but then I went for the towers... 6 composite bowmen take forever to take down 1 Guard tower and you need to dodge almost every projectile it shoots. The jebait doesn't work here and I quit after taking forever to take one tower down and realized I had 5 left. So it is possible but extremely frustrating.
The Assasins is possible if you are willing to grind for 2 hours or so... I once did it for the kicks and giggles. I don't recommend it... And yes, BigBassie has a good point; some missions are nearly impossible if not impossible. Though I'm going to try conquest in Canyon of death and Caravan when I have the time for the same reason I did it for The Assasins
Interesting idea.
Thought I believe validating some runs with this idea might prove problematic. Take Oppression for an example. How can you tell for sure that when you destroy the red Government Center as the last thing, it really is the last thing red had? I haven't really studied the map apart from rushing the building down, so I can't tell if there is a chance of them making a single troll War Galley and leave it in random corner or so. But that just crossed my mind.
Yes! I've created this glitch many times by accident on the Babylonian Nineveh mission when I've restarted after countless placed houses next to red's wonder without the douchebag catapults shooting them. I never could figure out the cause, but I immediately realized it after watching the video! I need to invest on this when I have time.
Yes - that is quite weird one. When you attack them and stop attacking, the Huns change diplomatic stance to Enemy and then to Ally. Attack more and you'll get a bunch of changes in diplomatic stance, finally resulting in them being your enemy as they should be.
There is a general server for finding games in Discord, here's the invite link:
I think if one really needs a text channel for speedrunning there it can be arranged. I don't see much use for a dedicated Discord server to discuss speedrunning this game for it isn't too popular, at least for the moment.
However if you still want to create a server for it go ahead and leave an invite link :)
I haven't thought much of criteria for a mod on this game. I think one who wants to be a mod should have played through all the hospitals on any difficulty to be able to determine if a run can be certified. One also should own the basic skills like decent English etc. Have you finished the game yet?
