I'm actually quite surprised that this time is possible, and there IS NO WAY I can significantly improve this time.
Lastly, I dedicate this to the human race, as it is one illustration which shows what we can accomplish if we are persistent. This win is not just for me, but for the entire KaM remake community.
No, I'm done. This, as far as I'm concerned, was a perfect game at the "microscopic level". I cannot improve it anymore.
never say you can't do it!
Thanks for the encouragement. Just to clarify, when I said "there IS NO WAY", I had in mind the restriction of normal game time. Therefore, I still consider my 7:57 to be a significant (and beautiful) game. That game was much harder to achieve than my 5:58. Since I've realized that I can slow down game time to be efficient, I have significantly reduced the time again, but I've reached my max by using this "help".
If you watch this 5:58 replay carefully, you will see that I utilized the yellow ally much better than my 6:28. The biggest problem with my 6:28 plan is that the yellow ally doesn't go for the important buildings first. No matter how many troops it has after the initial battle, it doesn't start to whack at an important building until around 5:30 (and that's with no interruption). Not only that, the entire yellow AI attacks a single building. Therefore, I am forced to destroy all buildings myself if I want to beat this with any time under 6 minutes.
In addition, you will see EXTREME efficiency in this 5:58 replay with the yellow AI. That is I attacked the black AI at the precise moment and drove them in a specific direction to ensure a quick death of them (all the western defending AI of the middle town). The yellow pikes were fighting against the black knights and the yellow swords were attacking the black pikes. Simultaneously, I effectively was quickly killing all of the knights in the deepest town.
Therefore, if the yellow AI was programmed to just attack important buildings (or at least attack them first) AND have different groups attack different important buildings, then I could have surely get 5:30, at least, with enough effort.
At 5:00, I believe I only had 11 total losses, and thus even in this game, I didn't "waste" troops. All troops were being utilized and of course I was alternating troops by my village to make it as if I had more than what I did.
What more can I do?