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In Progress Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War

Can one man kill a fourth of the earth?

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boot

Prophet
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
1,016
Location
NYC
Sigurd, Alec, Noish, and Ardan take to the battlefield.


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Aideen must be saved.

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The barbarian horde pushed back.

But first...
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we must configure our settings.

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Much better.

Notice that Genealogy has an Autosave feature, and you're allowed to manually make a save at the start of each turn. This is a necessary evil. Even with perfect play, the chapters take too long to beat in one sitting (if you have any responsibilities at all). While it makes it very easy to cheat through the game with poor strategy, the game remembers when you've gotten a character killed and penalizes you for it when your performance is ranked at the end of the game.

And everyone uses save states these days. Except for me, anyway.

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One last thing. I have to give a summary of each unit's abilities and worth. You wouldn't really appreciate the tactics and strategy used if you weren't familiar with the systems, or the units themselves.

I'll assume that you have some basic Fire Emblem knowledge here. Going over everything in extreme detail seems unnecessary for a series as well known as this one, and it's simple enough that newcomers will easily catch on, anyway.

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Sigurd has strong base stats and good growth rates. He starts the game as a promoted unit.

He has a Steel Sword and an Iron Lance in his inventory, but the Iron Lance will not see much use. I'll talk more about the different weapon types in a bit, as I think the way they balanced them is fascinating.

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This page is mostly unique to Genealogy, so I'll go over it in more detail.

On the left side of the screen

Personal Data


Lead stands for Leadership, and the two stars indicate that Sigurd is an army leader of modest ability. Only army commanders possess Leadership stars. The more they possess, the greater their ability to lead and inspire their troops. The maximum is five. For every star after the first, the leader grants a +10 bonus to Hit and Evade to all units within 3 squares. The army leader themselves also benefit from this bonus, so Sigurd is walking around with a +10 bonus to the most relevant combat stats at all times.

Lover stands for, uh.. lover. If the unit is in love, the name of the person they are in love with will appear there. Any two of our units can be made to fall in love, as long as both are unpaired at the time, and are not the same sex. There are a number of benefits to having units fall in love with each other, but right now none of them are relevant

Talk lets us know that a unit wants to talk to another unit. From these conversations characters may fall in love, gain stat boosts, special items, or just give us interesting background information.

Move is the units move stat. Promoted units that are mounted all have a Move of 9.

Gold is the amount of gold a unit is carrying. Gold is not shared between the entire army, but must be managed by individual units. Making sure your units have enough money when they need it is an important part of efficient play.

Arena will make sense later.

State refers to a unit's condition. Units can be silenced, put to sleep, or driven berserk. All three conditions will appear here.

On the right side of the screen, we have two more categories.

First is Weapon Level.

Here, a unit's proficiency with the various weapon types is displayed. Proficiency with weapons cannot be developed, it is wholly dependent on a unit's class and bloodline. Weapon Level can be either A, B, C, or *. The letter indicates the highest level of weapon a unit can wield. A rank weapons are typically the strongest and rarest of weapons, while B and C ranked weapons are weaker and more common.

A Weapon Level of *, like Sigurd has, indicates that the unit is a direct descendant of one of the 12 Crusaders. He is able to wield all weapons of that type, as well as a specific divine weapon. This leads us directly into our next bit.

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The Holy Blood screen.

When the 12 gods descended and blessed the Crusaders, they each gave a piece of themselves up as a weapon sealed to a single Crusader's blood. These weapons are tremendously powerful, allowing a unit to devastate entire armies effortlessly. However, their powers are locked away to all but a select few.

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Finally, Special Skills.

There are many different special skills, no real point listing them all now, we'll have to go over them as they come up.

Sigurd has the Pursuit skill. Pursuit gives the ability to attack twice if the unit possessing it has greater AttackSpeed than their opponent (AttackSpeed is just the Speed stat modified by the weapon currently equipped). This ability is innate in nearly every other Fire Emblem, but not in Genealogy.

There's also a distinction in special skills between Citizen and Soldier. Special skills marked Citizen are skills that are particular to that unit. That is their skill, they own it. Special skills marked Soldier belong to the class the unit belongs to, they do not actually possess the skill. The distinction is unimportant early on, but should be noted.

So, to sum Sigurd up, as a unit... He's awesome. Fast, strong, and mobile, he can easily hold his own against many opponents at once. There is never a point in the game where his usefulness drops off. From beginning to end, he is the best unit in the army. Just by his blood alone, we can tell that he is destined for greatness.

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Now, Noish.

Base stats are decent, will have good Strength and Defense growth but he'll have trouble developing almost everything else.

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As a Social Knight, Noish has a B rank in Swords and C rank in Lances. This will hold him back a bit, but it's not terrible.

Noish has both the Critical and Charge Skills. Critical gives a unit the chance to land an extremely powerful blow on an enemy, while Charge gives a chance at initiating extra rounds of combat with enemies. Critical depends on Skill to activate, and Charge depends on a combination of total HP and AttackSpeed.

Note that Noish does not possess the Pursuit skill. Without the ability to naturally double attack, Noish's ability to deal damage is severely hindered. He has the skill set to put out extreme damage, but cannot depend on these skills to activate often as his stats are going to be weak.

To sum up Noish- he's ok. Maybe I'm biased, as I really like his character, but he remains useful throughout the game. He will not be able to consistently deal high damage, but always carries the potential to. The lack of Pursuit holds him back, but does not make him useless. High mobility is almost a requirement in this game, and he has that.

Before moving on to Alec, need to talk about Critical.

Critical hits are another ability that was innate in other Fire Emblem games but in Genealogy, require a special skill. Critical hits can be delivered under certain other conditions, but these conditions can only be met by player controlled units.

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Alec's base stats are decent. Has a good Skill growth rate with the others being very average.

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A Social Knight, so the same weapon restrictions as Noish.

For skills, Alec has the Pursuit and Nihil skills. Nihil stops critical hits and special sword skills from effecting him. Enemies able to attack using these skills are incredibly rare, so it's easy to forget that Alec even has it.

Most of what I said for Noish applies to Alec. Useful, but not great. Nihil will be used to our advantage at least once, and the ability to consistently put out damage is nice, but Alec is doomed to mediocrity. His stats are merely average, and his skillset only functional. With a few lucky early Strength Level-Ups this changes somewhat, but Alec will never be a huge asset. Another mobile combatant, he'll have his moments and then be forgotten.

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Ardan has Strength and Defense but nothing else. His growths are exactly the same.

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Ardan's class is Sword Armor, able to wield B rank Swords. Upon promoting to General he is able to wield almost every non-magical weapon.

His only skill is Ambush, which allows him to strike first when attacked if below 50% HP.

Ardan could have every special skill in the game and it wouldn't matter, though. He's too slow. To be fair, nearly every unmounted unit is too slow. The maps we are playing on are quite big, and it just takes 5 move units too long to get to the fighting. His highest point will be right here, in the Prologue, where his durability will be put to the test. After that, he's not going to factor too much into our strategy.

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All three of Sigurd's knights are without blood-ties to the Crusaders.

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That's enough explanation for now.

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Our general strategy for the Prologue will be to use Sigurd to beat back the Brigands, while Alec and Noish save the villages. Ardan must head west immediately. We want him at the Verdane border as soon as possible.

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Sigurd will take out this barbarian.

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With his Sword, terrain bonus, Leadership bonus, and high stats

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the average barbarian doesn't stand a chance against him.

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After making an attack, mounted units are able to expend any remaining movement points, as well as equip a different weapon, before ending their turn. Another unique Genealogy mechanic, it makes mounted units even more versatile.

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Alec and Noish head for the nearby village while Ardan gets moving.

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I kept Noish out of this barbarian's attack range as I want him to target Sigurd and be killed. We want Sigurd to get as many kills using his Steel Sword as possible. It may seem counter-intuitive to feed kills to the strongest unit least in need of the experience, but Genealogy isn't like other Fire Emblems.

We end our turn here.

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But I’ve gotcha now. Die!

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Where are you goin’?
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Don’t ya worry. I’ll be back with Kinbois and his men. Hell, we may even press on to Barhara. There’d be no one to stop us if we did! Make yourselves at home here, boys. Anything goes!
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Heh… you can count on us for that.

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She’s my booty! I’m takin’ her back to be my wife. She’s a keeper, wouldn’t ya say?
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Yeah, she’s makin’ my mouth water.
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You wipe that grin off your face! You’ll get your needs met once Grandbell is ours. Show a little self-control till then.
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You’re all animals… Dear Lord, please instill these people with a little decency.
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What’re you mumblin’ about!? We’re goin’! No fallin’ behind this time!

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Before our turn starts, the Mountain Thieves all move together. Mountain Thieves are enemy units that pillage villages. If they spend enough turns occupying one, it'll be completely destroyed. You can see one here going to work.

Their AI prioritizes the destruction of villages over attacking our units, and they are always the last enemy units to act. We'll use this knowledge to our advantage on our next turn.

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To the North, Allies approach.

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He’ll sure be happy to see us. You just can’t stay out of these things, can you, Azel…
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Yeah, but with the military on engagement to Isaac, Grandbell’s completely strapped! Sigurd and the few soldiers left in Chalphy are out here fighting for their lives! I can’t just leave them hanging…
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Oh really… I’m not quite buying your story, Azel. What aren’t you telling me?
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Wh…what’re you talking about!?
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I’d surmise that you’re all worked up about Lady Aideen of Jungby. I know you like her.
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Y…you’re nuts!
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A-ha! Face is getting red there, buddy! You little player you.

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boot

Prophet
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
1,016
Location
NYC
Each update looks like it will require at least 2 pages.
 

boot

Prophet
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
1,016
Location
NYC
it looks like you can't get more than 500 Large images on a page at once without problems
 

boot

Prophet
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
1,016
Location
NYC
 
Last edited:

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