Well, in the game I played last year it was just as you say, in the end it was me with over 200 provs and Executor who had about half as many, but he was EA Ctis and clammed like crazy while I (LA Ctis) was conquering the world. In the end I had about 400 converted astral/turn but he had Nexus and FotA up, so we had some nice battles and finally he won with GoH-Armageddon combo because he had more gems than me (999 dispels/recasts were not uncommon there). So I know what are you talking about but still I'm against such changes. About making our own mod - hehe, this mod already exists and is called CBM 1.5

Actually I prefer vanilla game (heresy!), but 1.5 was also fine. I see no reason to argue with the community here and actually I was going to start some sort of "nostalgia" no-mods game after I'm finished with in some of my current games but it seems I'm going to stay for a while in them.