Thanks for adding them, this will give a more accurate breakdown of skill, I'm also with you in putting the speed to the fastest possible and measuring it in real time, it can't be a speedrun when they game is so painfully slow!

Both are right depending on grammatical usage, if without any noun and standing on its own I usually just say Allies and if with a noun it becomes Allied (Allied missions, Allied campaign)..

Hi, a member of this community asked me some weeks back to post my opinions on this as I have speedruns of TD and RA on my YouTube. These are my opinions:

1. Difficulty It came as a surprise to me that speedruns can actually be categorized by difficulty cos coming from the RA community (and knowing how the pros there can be very judgmental of anything lesser than commonly accepted 'pro' standards) and also my own personal character that a feat is achievement-worthy only when the most difficult of obstacles are resolved, my personal opinion is that only games at the hardest difficulty level should be considered legit. As I don't take the game very seriously I'm of course fine if people still wish to categorize them by difficulty, but by common sense if a speedrun of a mission at normal level has a shorter time than the same mission at a harder level, it cannot be considered 'superior' due to its inferior difficulty. Leaderboard-wise, the harder mission should take precedence. I can't speak for every experienced player in the RA community but honestly, having played there for nearly 2 years I can say with confidence that showing off a speedrun at normal and easy levels would get you trolled there, should there ever be a contest on this.

2. Time There's division on this and both camps have valid points. In-game time supporters think it's lame for instance to run the game at max speed, wait for an air strike to get ready and then bomb everything flat and hey mission accomplished in 2 mins cos the air strike wait time was so short. Real-time game supporters such as myself feel it's lame if one isn't skilled enough to swiftly micro and macro manage units across the map and slows the game down so he can control everything better, then claim he's still as good as the player who is fast enough to multitask. For this my suggestion is to go by real time since it takes a lot of skill to do things fast - really, I just scoff at people who challenge me online but "hey let's play at a slower speed cos I can't control my tanks properly on speed 7 / speed 7 is gay, we truly experience the finer details on speed 2!" BUT this will not apply if the mission is complete after an in-game timer ticks down to zero (cos you could just speed up the game to max to make the in-game timer tick off faster, Allies mission 8 is one such example). One is also not permitted to speed up the game at certain parts of a mission (back to the air strike example, covert operation mission Blackout is a good example) and then go by real time.

3. Speed This is very closely related to the time issue. In-game time supporters may play the game at a slower pace and the opposite applies to real-time players. Again as I value skill, the fastest speed (except for those timers air strikes etc) should be given priority. For RA and TD, humanly-possible speed would be one bar just before maximum, as the max speed is CPU-dependent as you pointed out, and unless one is still using a 486 the game just blazes off at this level. By 'human consensus' then, this speed should be used as a benchmark unless if someone can play at max speed and getting everything right, we will kneel down and kiss his butt.

4. Res I agree with you that hi-res might be a little lame as multitasking skills become null, though at the same time hi-res actually slows down production as the distance between sidebar and target area to move/place buildings is greater. You can probably guess my gut sentiment on this now - in missions where multitasking is essential, I think using a hi-res isn't legit. Of course all this is highly debatable so I'm very open to hearing views on why I may be wrong.

All this is just my 2 cents, let me know if you have differing views. Also for contribution to this site - do I just attach links to my YouTube here or upload the video from my pc?