Do you use CBM?

[Korwin]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

IIRC no nation is untouched? And almost all answers, guides, wiki pages, etc have to say whether its the CBM or Vanilla version being answered for.

Only nitpicking: IMHO its not enough to preclude an answer/guide/whatever with CBM or Vanilla.
If CBM you also need which version the answer is for.

[Foodstamp]

CBM, vanilla, whatever... it's all good. Llama has put a lot of work into CBM and I think a lot of people make uninformed assumptions about the changes. When I play SP, I don't use it because I have my own megamod I use. When I play MP, I am as equally happy playing with it as I am vanilla.

[Gandalf Parker]

I play almost entirely Solo now.
Here is a pretty good thread about boosting the AI with recommendations on settings, maps, mods, 3rd party programs, etc
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44783

[Bananadine]

10) I want to use the latest CBM but have been putting it off until my current, non-CBM game ends. Because of gem generators, my current game has turned out to be VERY LONG.

[Slobby]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

10) I want to use the latest CBM but have been putting it off until my current, non-CBM game ends. Because of gem generators, my current game has turned out to be VERY LONG.

LOL let's play it for another year!

[DeadlyShoe]

I don't really go so much for strategy, and I will willingly squander gems and resources just to get a thematic army. That sets me back a bit.

The thing about this is, CBM goes to significant effort to make thematic choices more viable. Pretenders, troops, spells; the lot of em. Just because it is conceived for multiplayer doesnt lesson its value for singleplayer in any way, really. The only thing it strips out of the game entirely are gem generation farms.

[Herode]

Because llamabeast asked why people do not like CBM and because I'm one of those, I want to answer here and give my humble opinion.

Of course, I'm not an expert. I did not play a hundred games. And I did not play games for some couples of month now, so I did not play with CBM 1.8+. Nevertheless, here are some thought about CBM < 1.8 :

I understand that the point is to balance the vanilla version. I think we can more or less balance things : scales are the first exemple coming into my mind, some spells costs, some troops costs. But perfect balance was obviously not aimed at by the conceptors and I am pretty sure that perfect balance is 1 - utopic + 2 - boring.

Also, you shall have noticed that I emphasized on the some adverb. Some modifications are interesting, a lot of modifications are... well.. a question of taste. As of CBM 1.7, it's more than a lot of modifications. It's the entire game that has been modified. And what is more interesting from my humble point of view is that on CBM 1.7, things were still on the edge on changing. I guess (but it's only my guess) that 1.9+ is not an exception to the rule. The policy of CBM only leads to more changes, more re-balancing, more mods and more stuff. Each version add new stuff that adds new unbalanced features that invites to a new version that add new stuff etc. Infinite loop.

I think that such infinite loops are the sign that something went wrong with the algorithm. I also think that vanilla version really needs some balance, but a modest one. It could be really interesting, now that players and modders share a lots of experience with various flavours of CBM and other mods, to plan another 'balance mod' from vanilla, a new BM who would aim to be a modest and a stable one.

That said, I'm not firing at anyone here and I very well know that QM and llamabeast did a lot of valuable and generous work for the community. When I don't like a mod, I just don't play with it and I do not have any problem with other people - more experienced or playing more games than I do - using specialized mods.

Cheers from limbo,
H.

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Herode

And what is more interesting from my humble point of view is that on CBM 1.7, things were still on the edge on changing. I guess (but it's only my guess) that 1.9+ is not an exception to the rule. The policy of CBM only leads to more changes, more re-balancing, more mods and more stuff. Each version add new stuff that adds new unbalanced features that invites to a new version that add new stuff etc. Infinite loop.

I think that such infinite loops are the sign that something went wrong with the algorithm. I also think that vanilla version really needs some balance, but a modest one. It could be really interesting, now that players and modders share a lots of experience with various flavours of CBM and other mods, to plan another 'balance mod' from vanilla, a new BM who would aim to be a modest and a stable one.

I wouldn't call it an infinite loop--the balance chaos since 1.7 was almost all a result of the hammer change, so I would characterize it more as punctuated equilibrium. That one change(and SDRs becoming unique I suppose) threw a lot of stuff off-balance--a lot of that was simply that almost every strategy was affected and it took a while for people to understand the changes well enough to be able to rebalance things. Only just now are item prices settling down from the disruption. And a lot of that is simply that it takes months usually to get good feedback on changes because games take a while.

It's almost impossible to make both a modest and a stable balance mod. For instance, say you wanted to not have gem generators(a noble enough goal). This *greatly* disrupts the balance of most every nation, alters the relative value of various pretenders, and wreaks havok with prices for many items and summons. At that point, your modest mod either becomes rather far-ranging or loses all semblance of balance. And likely no matter what you'll fail to account for a few of the hundreds of spells and variables in the game and have to go through a few development cycles to catch things.

All that being said, in my mind CBM isn't a balance mod in that sense--it isn't about making all the nations perfectly balanced with each other(as you said, that's impossible and perhaps even boring). Instead it's about opening up possibilities and making otherwise useless options usable. I think a better description is that CBM wants every spell, every unit, every item to have a legitimate use in serious play, even if that is a fairly obscure niche. It wants people to see even occasionally Ziz(hey, they might be really nice with medallions of Vengeance these days. I'll have to look into that) and other really really useless things in play because they're cheap enough and useful enough that someone will find a way to do something awesome with them.

[Herode]

Originally Posted by kianduatha

It's almost impossible to make both a modest and a stable balance mod. For instance, say you wanted to not have gem generators(a noble enough goal). This *greatly* disrupts the balance of most every nation

I agree with most of your post, and on this point precisely. But as a matter of fact, removing gem gens or hammers is not what I call modest modding .

BTW, I tend to avoid CBM since these features have been removed. The point is that all MP games are using CBM anyway, so I stepped to 1.6. And stopped MPs after that point.

I also happily admit that there are indeed pretenders who need to be balanced, and nations, and spells. I just stopped following to CBM when re-balancing began to mean rewriting. CBM 1.5 is IMHO the best version so far and I now SP with this mod.

Anyway, I'll give a try to 1.9+ one day or another. Just for sake of curiosity, you know

[brxbrx]

I thought Dominions was supposed to be unbalanced.