[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Some do tho none at the moment. Most actually cut up cbm into pieces and play with just the pretender parts or the gengen parts. I guess if I wanted my "opinion on CBM to carry any weight" Id play more of them and join in on the cbm conversation thread. But my only opinion on cbm is that its not worthy of becoming the "de facto standard" of Dom3.

I can't stand playing most nations in vanilla, because the units are so poorly priced. (Heavy cavalry units are especially bad, and generally unplayable outside of CBM with a few rare exceptions).

Fortunately BL doesn't suffer markedly from this problem - the tiger riders are badly priced, but everything else (that you'd bother to use) is fine.

And again, back to this forum, and the king of the hill crowd (by duelist I didnt mean one-on-one as much as the my-strategy-kicks-your-*** challenges gaming). Im not sure how "best MPers" would stand up but I know a number of pretty kickass players that I dont remember seeing in a cbm game. Possibly our views are restricted. I enjoy playing with the devs altho Im not sure how they compare on your scale.

So the feeling is that only those who can win games using cbm are qualified opinions on why cbm is good? And all of the best MPers play cbm only? And their opinions on what "always happens" in non-cbm games are the generally accepted facts?

First of all, it doesn't take much playing of vanilla to figure out what should always happen. There are very few spells of each type that are worth using in vanilla. (Eg, only a small minority of summons will ever see play in vanilla). And rampant clamming means the game necessarily degenerates into armageddon fests by those nations who can take advantage of it. CBM certainly increases the number of useable spells, and makes the endgame less degenerate (or at least, it degenerates less quickly).

Both CBM and Vanilla share the 'tartarians are key to the endgame' problem. Llamabeasts Endgame Diversity Mod is a step in the right direction, but Tartarians are really just too cheap for what they do, which inordinately rewards whomever can hold onto the chalice or keep GoH up. This is the one major spell issue CBM still needs to fix.

Finally, *winning* isn't the key to having a well-reasoned opinion. Playing with good players probably is though.