Mods to use!

[Eximius Sus]

I paraphrased you. I think my paraphrase was a pretty accurate interpretation of what you wrote. Your paragraph regarding CBM is full of implicit criticism.

"CBM is supposed to balance but..." I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret this as a criticism of CBM. So if you didn't mean to criticize CBM perhaps you should work things differently.

"EGD is considered to be a fix for the limited end-game strategies that seem to show up with the cbm crowd."

Let's analyze this sentence. EGD is for the CBM crowd. EGD is a fix for limited end-game strategies used by the CBM crowd. Again, you imply that EGD if really only useful if you use CBM. And you imply that there is a "crowd" that plays CBM. You also set yourself outside this crowd and the use of the word crowd connotes "mob" or "clique". Again, there is implicit criticism.

So I stand by my analysis of your post. If you meant something else, you should have written something else. I can't possibly know what you meant to write.

And wrana is still being cryptic and not answering my very clear question.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Eximius Sus

And wrana is still being cryptic and not answering my very clear question.

Is it so difficult to find Gandalf's first post in this thread? Or the difficulty is with reading it?
I personally don't see that Endgame Diversity requires CBM nor its author ever said anything to this effect. Nor I see any such implication from Gandalf's post.
As for your reading some "implied criticisms" into Gandalf's posts - maybe you should just look at what he actually says...

More serious:
1st point you decided to isolate is the main part of the post in question. Other points were there mostly as examples.
About CBM - while I would be among the first to criticize that, I do not see it to be particularly criticized in Gandalf's post. What he says and I would second is that the latest developments made CBM quite unwieldy. I do not know whether it was its authors' purpose or not and I do not agree with some of their decisions. I agree with some of other ones. Your mistake here is that you want yes-or-no answer in a situation where one doesn't exist. It's the same as if you wanted to know which operation system is the best.
About Endgame Diversity answered above.
About SP it's your call, Gandalf pointed out that it holds some interest, too. On the other hand, you should keep in mind that he's interested in tinkering with AIs. I play it periodically, especially as it's too late to study a nation or map in the middle of MP. This also makes me better player in midgame than lategame, though, as AI is weak in parrying lategame threats - a trade-off I'm OK with.

To Gandalf:
I thought 1 & 4 were in relation to my own reply as your post came online right after it, sorry.