This post is about speedrunning Hardened Europe Huge, which is post-phase-4 gameplay. And it was graemes who asked about comparing artifacts. If I remember correctly, graemes was playing around with the Simul Levels advancement 2 months ago. So it's very likely that graemes is in late phase 4 now.

So I'm commenting in the context of late phase 4 gameplay.

Fair. (in context)

I think I have a pretty chalk artifact rollout:

Legendary:
Triple Strike

Epic:
Time Warp
Army Camp Boost
Bonus Money Boost
Hospital Boost
Mercenary Discount

Rare:
Speedy Crafters
Army Cache Boost
Alloy Values
Item Values
Supercharge Army Camp

I want to push Army Cache Boost to Legendary, I think BMB and HB are expendable. I can also see value in pushing Alloy Values to Legendary.

This would all be in advance of Phase 5 achievements or super-hardened levels, obviously there’s minimal return on investment for any artifact other than Time Warp once you’re already at stage 4.

Graems, leave ACB alone and go all into Alloy Values

This would all be in advance of Phase 5 achievements or super-hardened levels

There are no phase 5 advancements (at least not yet). And you don't need all that to do the hardened levels. Phase 3 with the right artifacts is actually sufficient, phase 4 advancements with good artifacts makes them a cakewalk.

Totally agree w/Parsifal on this - focus on Alloy Values for clearing levels if you're playing actively, then add Time Warp to benefit your use of Actives(SAC+Leg TS)/digging/Clan reqs.

If you already own all the good Adv's, then go Leg TW and get Leg AV after that.

Once you get Leg AV, you can do away with TMB, BMB, ACampB, HB, SC b/c you can compensate for all of those with more money & more armies (more mercs). Which means you can also afford to sacrifice all of these in order to get a Leg AV.

Merc Disc is good to keep, ACacheBoost is not bad to keep, Item Values isn't required but doesn't hurt (to sell resources on HTrisk, etc) but don't need to sell anything on HChina or HEH to finish those once you get Leg AV. The money is sufficient, and money solves all problems if you've set your Adv's up properly.

Here‘s my attempt with the setup described by Parsifal, ending up with 10/10 minutes.
My run was also far away from perfect.

- I messed up the start after the 1st / 2nd market and had to take army caches manually to reach the 3rd market
- I did not only go for the markets, but also took the hospitals, before activating auto conquer
- I used Triple Strike on the 1.1T territory
- I manually sold ore, alloys, items during auto conquer and bought mercenaries with it
- I ended up with 3.6T armies remaining and no money

Powers used
1x Super Charge army camp
4x Free cache
1x Super Charge IM

Relevant artifacts used
- Legendary Triple Strike
- Legendary Mercanary Discount
- Epic Resource Cache Boost
- Epic Alloy Values




Edited 11/13/2021 15:16:32

nicely done Muli! beating my record by 7 min!!!!

Alright, just did two more of runs, saving 3 more minutes on the faster one.

Fastest win by time: 7 minutes 18 seconds
Fastest win by session age: 6 minutes 57 seconds

The difference:
- Ignoring hospitals that aren‘t on the way
- Ignoring the 1.1T territory and just let auto conquer take it
- Ending up with 2T armies, 80B money and lots of unused mercs



Edited 11/13/2021 20:10:18

7 minutes! Totally flabbergasted.