The categories we currently have are good, but they have a few disadvantages:

• Flee strats mean that, especially on lower difficulties, much of the run will be spent fleeing. This isn't super fun because it's a lot of waiting.
• There's some RNG from islands taking different amounts of time. (This is especially true for First Checkpoint Island, since the checkpoint island is placed randomly. I remember trying a run of it once and my checkpoint island was placed like 10 islands further than it was in the WR run.)
• There's no reason to cleverly split your commanders across multiple islands in the same turn. (This is quality gameplay that speedrunning misses out on.)

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=== Desirable category properties ===

• Low RNG
• Short (sub-hour perhaps)
• Hard (the game is much more fun that way, in my opinion)
• Multiple islands per turn (for strategic commander splitting)
• Unseeded (since no one's figured out how to consistently make save file sharing work, and it would be a hassle)
• Not too arbitrary (ideally only one new rule)
• Not easily fail-able (meaning, it shouldn't be too easy to accidentally break the rules and get your run invalidated)

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=== Category ideas ===

Idea 1: Limited Fleeing

You must actually complete at least one island every turn.

If people aren't satisfied with the way flee strats kind of takes over the main categories, this is a reasonable restriction. However it does mean gold will be more plentiful and so the game will be easier. Although at the same time it's nice because it means the Last Stand won't kill so many runs.

(If you accidentally end your turn before really completing an island without fleeing, play as if you didn't end the turn. (Assuming the mist doesn't make that impossible.))

Idea 2: 90 gold

The run ends once you've acquired 90 unspent gold.

This category would be short, hard to accidentally invalidate, may result in multiple islands per turn (because earlier islands are shorter and you're pressured by the mist), and not be too RNG (because you don't have to rush to the Last Stand).

The idea of requiring the gold to be unspent is that there's a tradeoff between getting upgrades and getting closer to the run's victory condition. Also, total gold would be more difficult to keep track of in the run. Although I admit that saving up a bunch of gold means the squads won't change as much over the course of the run.

(90 is mostly off the top of my head - if we make this a real category, we'd want to pick the number more carefully.)

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=== Challenge run ideas ===

Two squad types

You can only take 2 types of squads to each island, excluding militia. You can pick per island which types to send, just never all 3 at once.

(For example, you could take 2 infantry and 1 archer, or could take 1 militia, 1 pike, and 1 archer, but could not take 1 infantry, 1 pike, and 1 archer.) (Commanders native to an island do count towards your limit of 2.)

One squad type

Same as above, but limited to one type. (Also, commanders native to an island do not count to your limit of 1 type - otherwise some islands would be impassible. You're still allowed to use them on that island.)

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=== Final thoughts ===

I don't think we should make a whole bunch of categories right now - ideally like 3 more max, if any. Too many categories means less competition. But new and interesting categories means more competition.

So if these ideas are made into categories, each should only be one difficulty. (Like, let's not make 90 gold easy, 90 gold medium, 90 gold hard, and 90 gold very hard categories.)

We could replace First Checkpoint Island with an Island 15 category, so there's no more RNG in where the checkpoint island spawns. By "Island 15", I mean any island that, on turn 15, would be covered by the mist. 15 is the earliest the checkpoint island has spawned in the 3 current runs for First Checkpoint Island, so those runs would remain valid.

My proposal is this: we make a Two Squad Types (Very Hard) category, as well as a 90 Gold (Hard) category (but put some thought into the gold number first lol). The former is a super difficult, unique, and long challenge, while the latter is a more accessible and shorter one.