And here are some results from Medieval:
3: 1 stomper
I'm 99.99% sure at the moment that a no-stomper solution is possible as well. This is a fairly simple route that catapaults every lemming, making use of the
pause glitch for cannons/catapaults to speed up the process so you don't run out of time.
And indeed, the reason it's almost but not exactly 100% confirmed is because on my last attempt, the very last lemming still ran out of time (and an exploder is used so I do need to save that lemming for gold). However, I did have 5 spare jumpers and it was pretty close time-wise, so I'm fairly sure I can make up for the time with the spare jumpers. Will update this post once it's confirmed, but for now I feel comfortable updating the result already in the original post.
I notice the glitch post I linked to didn't quite explain how the glitch speeds up the process of lemmings using a cannon/catapault. (although it's pretty obvious when you see the glitch in action). There's probably already an explanation somewhere on this forum since I think it had been used previously in other challenges solutions, but I can't find it so I'll just quickly (re?)explain here: basically you pause as soon as a lemming starts entering the cannon/catapault, and wait a few seconds. The following will happen, depending on the object in question:
- for the catapault, it will start the firing animation immediately after you unpause. The lemming itself doesn't actually get thrown until the normal time after it finishes its "climbing into catapault" animation (ie. its movement becomes decoupled from the catapault's firing animation, which basically happened early as a result of the glitch); however, the catapault becomes available for use again once it finishes its firing animation, so this glitch makes the catapault be able to accept incoming lemmings faster than normal--indeed at the given release rate of Medieval 3, the glitch makes it just fast enough to accept incoming stream of lemmings with basically no skips.
- for the cannon: [caveat: following description may have some inaccuracies since I have to recall from memory] The cannon will actually continue and finishes its firing animation while the game is paused, even though the lemming itself does not move or animate during the pause. So when you unpause, it is possible for the cannon to have finished firing already even though the lemming hasn't actually finished climbing into the cannon yet! In this case (and unlike the catapault), the lemming actually can only get shot out at time of the firing animation, so by making the firing happen during pause, we effectively "skip over" the firing and cause the lemming to get stuck in the cannon instead. But again, the cannon becomes available for use by next lemming faster this way. You can "unstuck" the lemmings by making the cannon fire again normally, without the influence of pausing, and all the previous stuck lemmings will all get shot out alongside the lemming that actually triggered the firing.