New Player and Mods

[Rejakor]

Hi, i'm a new Dom3 player, and i'm planning on organizing a LAN MP game with a bunch of other new players.

I've been reading through this forum and llamabeast's server, but i'm still confused.

CBM's development stopped at 1.44, but other people have made some tentative extensions on that? Was it ever picked up properly by someone? I see there's a few 'CBM 1.6'/'CBM 1.7' mods on llamabeast's server.. are those legit? Which CBM should I get?

I'm interested in Pretenders being slightly more impressive than they are right now... ideally i'd want them straight out the gate to be able to take level 5 indies, or for mage pretenders, do 5ish turns of research for alteration/evocation and then be able to take out indies. I know that certain pretenders with certain paths can already do this (cyclops, Prince of Death, dom9 wyrm, etc), but i'd still like a bit more impressive pretenders. The Greater Gods mod says it does this, but i'm worried it won't work with CBM? Does it? Is it the best solution?

Are there any other balance/gameplay mods that are worth putting in? Graphics updates?

Are any of the new nations balanced and interesting enough to be worth using?

[BlanketThief]

Greater Gods does conflict with CBM if I recall correctly. CBM1.6 is really close to the vanilla game in terms of content. The later versions have EDM included along with some new nationals. Current development of CBM is basically at the forums over here (http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/)

[Soyweiser]

A lot of pretenders can take most indies without much problems. If you modify all pretenders to be able to do that if will mostly just remove playstyles.

Mytheology has some additional strong pretenders, but it also adds a lot of other junk, and isn't compatible with CBM atm. I still need to fix that.

[llamabeast]

Hmm, CBM did not stop at 1.44, no. Why do you say that? Maybe I need to tidy up all the mods on llamaserver and provide some kind of "Mods for new players" guide.

There are two versions of CBM which are commonly used - 1.6 and 1.84. 1.6 is the latest one to refrain from making certain changes which a few people find controversial, most notably making the Dwarven Hammer an artifact. While I can see that losing hammers is sad, it is done for very good reasons (e.g. removing the requirement for viable pretenders for non-earth nations to always take earth magic) and the community now seems to *mostly* prefer the later versions of CBM.

CBM 1.84 is the latest version, and includes quite a lot of good stuff including a number of new national spells to boost various nations (e.g. Machaka, MA Ulm, Marverni), as well as integrating some other mods like the Endgame Diversity Mod (which adds some new lategame summons as alternatives to Tartarians). Personally I have no hesitation in recommending it over 1.6, although I am undeniably biased.

quantum_mechani was the author/maintainer of CBM from the beginning right up to 1.83 (I think), and I took over from 1.84. 1.84 is just a bugfix version of 1.83, but I'm currently working hard on 1.9.

I hope that helps! :)

[Gandalf Parker]

IIRC Zen started it back in Dom2, and QM took it over from him.

[Quitti]

Since no-one wants to help the newbie in an obvious way, here's a link to the forums that has the newest CBM versions (and bunch of other compatible mods): http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php

[llamabeast]

Oops, thanks Quitti. :)

[Aethyr]

Mytheology has some additional strong pretenders, but it also adds a lot of other junk, and isn't compatible with CBM atm. I still need to fix that.
I love your Mytheology mod, and am waiting for you to do just that.
:)

[Gandalf Parker]

I love Mytheology. Its on my list of "more More MORE" mods that I play with regularly in solo games.

[Aethyr]

Another mod that I hope sees more MP play is Azurain's Assimilation mod. Take over another nation's cap and gain access to recruit some of their troops & commanders. A very neat and thematic idea.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=764441&mode=linear#post764441

[Soyweiser]

Wow, mytheology is not mine people, I just try to maintain it. Currently swamped in work. So an update will have to wait.