This post is more or less me thinking out loud about chapter 9, which I've discovered to be a complete nightmare.
First problem, hard mode adds a few pirates to the mix.
This creates 2 problems: first, Vanessa gets attacked twice, even with a slim lance equipped she’s facing hit rates of around 64 display hit (~74 true hit). Here’s some probability breakdowns:
Vanessa gets hit twice and dies: 54.76%
Vanessa gets hit ½ times: 38.48%
Vanessa dodges both attacks: 6.76%
The most favourable outcome is already in the realm of probability of a critical hit. If we let Vanessa take a hit, that creates more burden of manipulation on future turns, though she will have more avoid to work with.
And, obviously I have to actually kill those pirates. This is made more annoying by the fact that 2/4 of them have hand axes. There is actually a way to get all 4 of those pirates attacked on turn 1 enemy phase. See picture below.
Since Artur can be 1HKOed, the pirates prefer attacking him to Vanessa, even when both are in range. Problem is, Artur can’t 1HKO back, even with a crit, and he can only double the ones that use a steel axe. Garcia can achieve a 1HKO, but he has 1 crit. Eirika can too, but she’s only in range of 1 pirate since we can’t change her starting position. Also, she can’t 1HKO unless I manipulate enemy stats, and she can’t double either.
So, while this doesn’t prevent a 4 turn completion, it does put a serious strain on time lost (requiring 2 rounds of combat on most of those pirates) and manipulation (Artur surviving, tons of crits).
Oh, it gets better. On Cheetah’s run, the mercenaries were doing 0 damage to Kyle, and he could cleanly 2HKO them with a javelin. Now the mercenaries double him for a total of 8 damage, and he can’t 2HKO even if he uses a javelin + steel lance combination. Also, on normal mode the promoted archer is weaker than a normal one, and Kyle ORKOes with a javelin. Now he can’t even double or crit (the sniper has 8 luck!), and he 4HKOes with a steel lance, which, if he equips, will get him doubled and reduced from full hp to 1.
I think the worst part is, he only has 3 crit before factoring in enemy luck. He needs 2 level-ups before he has 4 crit, and the enemies he faces have 3-4 luck. So, even if I pull off godly manipulations, those enemies will still take a while to KO. The only way to salvage his offence is with slim lance criticals, and even then he still needs 2 rounds of combat to take out mercs.
Tl;dr Kyle sucks now. There’s no chance in hell he could handle the west side of the map. I thought of having him and Forde team up for player phase kills, but that creates its own set of problems, in that Forde sucks even harder on enemy phase.
The only high-move units I have left are Tana, who’s busy with a pirate way left from the group of other pirates, and Franz, whose bases are worse than Kyle/Forde.
So, unless I’m missing something obvious, goodbye 4 turn. This is really bad because now I have to kill an extra 6 reinforcements
including Amelia.
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5 Turn plan
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My tentative idea is to have Tana ferry Seth to the south, and have Vanessa handle the west side.
Let’s start with the south:
With this set-up, Eirika kills 1 pirate with a rapier crit (not too hard), and Seth ORKOes the remaining pirates easily with a javelin (only slight hitrate issues). Next turn, Seth moves up to Tana, and she’s in exactly the same position as Vanessa is optimally starting on in turn 1. Nice.
The bigger concern is the west.
Vanessa’s offence with a javelin sucks, and there’s three 1-2 range enemies she has to face (2 archers and a mage reinforcement). She also has to kill 2 pirates that are moving away from her on player phase. Apparently they’d rather burn villages than attack Vanessa, and this is highly problematic.
A quick runthrough using some codebreaker codes tells me that even in the best case scenario that Vanessa gets all the player phase crits she wants and at least 1 enemy phase critical, she still has a lot of trouble taking out all the enemies in 5 turns. Of note, she has a hell of a time taking out the sniper. Without the slim lance, she’s forced to 2 round. With it, she can only 1RKO by procuring 2 crits in a row, a measly 0.16% chance. Getting that on player phase is in the realm of burning 1000 RNs, and burning RNs at a generous rate of 5 RNs per seconds, that’s 200 frames, or over 3 seconds of cursor movement just to kill that 1 pesky enemy.
When you factor in Vanessa having to crit, possibly levelling up (desperately needs str/skl/spd on every one, possibly even force def now), all the dodges she has to make, particularly from those archer 1HKOes, and other irritating factors like hit rates, we’re talking about manipulation hell on each turn.
I’m starting to think the optimal strategy here is to have Seth do a C turn around the map, even though that means the map will take at least 6 turns. This kind of combat failure will be short lived fortunately, as I’m receiving some awesome units in the upcoming chapters: Gerik, Tethys, Innes, Saleh (!!!), and Dozla make units like Kyle and Forde look like complete chumps.
