TAS - Fire Emblem Path of Radiance - Maniac Mode - WIP 4 (Ch. 12 & 13)
11Chapter 12 is a rout one, but for once it can be cleared fast as long as you have a strong Marcia who can directly go kill the boss.
Chapter 13 on the other hand is a defense map that you can end a few turns earlier if you rout the enemy, which is usually what is done on normal mode speedruns. However this is maniac mode, with 15 extra enemies and raw stats allowing them to double all but 5 of my units, so it felt more time efficient to go for the pacifist route.
While I could just protect the defense tile with Ike, he would still be attacked by 3~4 enemies every turn, and he would need to dodge everything in order to not get healed by the tile. Another issue would be the difficulty/inability to open the chests, as the ravens will waste a lot of time opening them. Instead I blocked the three paths leading to the second boat, and with clever movement I was able to limit the enemy phase to only 2 attacks, despite the abundance of 1-2 range enemies.
The last factor was the green units, as I wanted them to be dead fast to not have the "other phase" message every turn, but they also needed to never have a turn while low on health, else they would waste time using a vulnerary. In practice, I manipulated the southeast soldier stats so that he had enough bulk to not be 1RKO by the mage, and I also manipulated the one attacked by 2 myrmidons to hit them back but still die after the second fight.
The old maniac TAS WIP stopped at chapter 12, and I am 23 minutes and 30 seconds ahead of it, so I guess I did a good job so far.