[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Some of the concerns are more about the type of game preferred and the type of settings preferred. You said that large maps do address many of the issues. As do solo play and team games. Also some nations pros and cons can be altered by game settings such as research, resources, victory points. So what is a downside in one type of game is a balancing factor or even preferred facet of the game in another.

The competitive dueling MP style of play definitely did need maps and a balance mod to focus on their needs.

There are also maps and mods which target the opposites. Ones which add opponents, more pretenders, more magic sites, more spells, more equipment. Much of which would be quite the reverse of the type of balance that competitive MP requires.

Your points were excellent. Im just saying that they would likely get more discussion in the thread for CBm than for example the thread in one of the game expansion mods.

CBM has addressed many of the problems and continues to address them, but as a matter of philosophy will not make some changes no matter how necessary (no new spells, for example). The real point is that they apply to any MP game. The discussion is in this thread because the belief was expressed vanilla is balanced (its not).

A sufficiently large map addresses early game concerns, but not endgame concerns. If there are, say, 50 provinces/player there is no early game, sure, but nations which don't need their pretender to provide death access (for example) have a substantial advantage because they can tart farm easier and can build their pretender with a better early game in mind - leading to more mid and late game advantage. And since everyone is going to tart farm, the person who can do it best wins. Also, 50 provinces/player is *insane*. How many games like that have you seen start? Actually end? Without rampant quitting and general unhappiness about the game?

I am only convinced team games address issues if the people choosing nations for a team do so wisely. Or if someone takes the time to pre-choose team arrangements for nations so the teams are choosing nations as a block. The Blesseds sort of shot themselves in the foot with their nation choices since they have a bunch of nations that all do the same thing - raid. Obviously what nations are desirable are somewhat different in a team game environment, and depend on what nations are already on your team, but there are still winning and losing combinations, and winner/loser nations. (That Ermor went unchosen in this game is still shocking to me).

SP is only 'balanced' because the AI is bad and anything can beat it, and its metric of when it has the advantage is horribly flawed. It never uses good tactics like SCs or thug raiding. It can be artificially induced not to declare war on you by doing things like buying decent PD along your border. Talking about balance in the SP game is ridiculous because the concept is meaningless. Balance is only a concern for MP games.

Balance should also concern itself with default settings. Unusual settings are obviously going to not necessarily be balanced - and that's more ok. But the defaults should offer something resembling reasonable balance.