[rdonj]

Vanilla is not really that well balanced, really. There are a number of nations that are just plain stronger than most others. They are still beatable, but there are just far fewer chinks in their armor than most nations. CBM doesn't really try to address this that much, though it does make some of the grossly overpowered nations a bit more reasonable. Mostly what CBM does though is make more strategies viable, and try to work around bad mechanics (see: clam nerf). I prefer playing CBM because it improves a lot of spells and pretenders that are pretty useless in vanilla, and makes them actually usable and fun.