MP: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Wrana

That's clearly excellent way of discussion - naming 1 example which isn't applicable for most cases (i.e., nations) and then making broad conclusions from that. Thanks for making my point for me.

I could point out dozens of examples. Really, CBM gets it mostly right, and changes something like 70% of pretenders in some way. That's how far off Vanilla is.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by ano

CBM is good in many aspects, I don't argue with that but it is not balanced. And regarding the gem generators, I understand why people don't like them - they lead to games full of micro that often end in draws because people get tired or in Armageddon+GoH wins. While the first problem doesn't look like a problem to me at all (because I don't play much and devote much time to the game I play) the latter really is a problem. And it could be easily solved by banning Armageddon.

Oh, well... This discussion should probably have appeared in another thread but I do not want to prove anything to anybody. People play the game they like

CBM is not balanced *yet*. Its certainly better balanced than vanilla. Nation balance needs the most work.

I would maintain *pretenders* are pretty balanced in CBM. I mean, there's a couple that are still out of whack, but most of them are well-costed for what they do. (This necessarily means you can't make up for a weak nation with an undercosted pretender anymore, but nation balance is something that needs to be addressed anyway, fixing the pretenders possibly just made it more obvious).

[ano]

We may call it anyhow but nation balance in CBM is, most probably, worse than in vanilla. Yes, you may be happy, that PoD costs 125 instead of 75 and that weakish nations for whom PoD was nearly the only viable choice can't take it anymore. You may be happy that there's no more fever fetish that was nearly the only hope for Machaka to do at least something. You may be happy that there's no clam of pearls for MA C'tis which has nearly no chance in CBM now unless it is really, really lucky. Yes, you may live and be happy but it is nations, not pretenders, or fetishes, or clams what people are supposed to play for and lead to victory, aren't they?
And, once again, CBM is a very good mod with a lot of work in it and many, many good and balance-wise changes, many new strategies and options etc. It is more interesting to play, without doubt but it is not balanced and actually is pretty far from that.

[Gandalf Parker]

At this point its nearly 9000 lines of mod code covering (as far as I know) every nation in the game. Im also not sure where it would be balancing to. But since its new manager I think its possibly shifted more toward balance more along the line of one-to-one (chess) balance for dueling strategy style games on small to medium maps. In that regard it does appear to serve its purpose and earns the dedicated support of its followers.

The only real problem I have with CBM now is that its gotten so large that its become "know how to play Dom3" and "know how to play Dom3 CBm". Guides, lists, most answers all have to specifically mention whether they refer to Dom3 or CBm.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by ano

You may be happy that there's no clam of pearls for MA C'tis which has nearly no chance in CBM now unless it is really, really lucky.

Cheap communion slaves + death, nature, and astral mean that they will do just fine as long as they aren't attacked by multiple people, but then, no nation can survive that.

[pyg]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

The only real problem I have with CBM now is that its gotten so large that its become "know how to play Dom3" and "know how to play Dom3 CBm". Guides, lists, most answers all have to specifically mention whether they refer to Dom3 or CBm.

Not really, the point of CBM is that all spells in the research tree should be worth casting, not just some of them. CBM should be easier for new players in that they can't go [as] wrong trying out something new. Generally for any given nation, CBM provides more viable choices than vanilla.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by pyg

Not really, the point of CBM is that all spells in the research tree should be worth casting, not just some of them. CBM should be easier for new players in that they can't go [as] wrong trying out something new. Generally for any given nation, CBM provides more viable choices than vanilla.

I understand your point. I know thats the mission.
I dont agree that it does that. But I do understand that it wants to.

[Septimius Severus]

The age old balance debate. Wonder how much about balance is subjective or contextual.

[ano]

Cheap communion slaves + death, nature, and astral mean that they will do just fine as long as they aren't attacked by multiple people, but then, no nation can survive that.

I didn't say "survive", actually. Surviving is not the aim of this game, really. For me, at least. I just said that they have little to no chance to win just from the start, but, of course, due to excellent troops and good magery they can survive very long.
You better tell me how you're going to play Machaka under CBM . But all this is just words, just like Baalz' guides.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by ano

We may call it anyhow but nation balance in CBM is, most probably, worse than in vanilla. Yes, you may be happy, that PoD costs 125 instead of 75 and that weakish nations for whom PoD was nearly the only viable choice can't take it anymore.

And who is that? What about all those nations which were good and could take an undercosted PoD? What about those nations which couldn't take an undercosted chassis like PoD?

You may be happy that there's no more fever fetish that was nearly the only hope for Machaka to do at least something.

Empirically disproven. Machaka beat the crap out of Vanheim in Land RAND, which is CBM 1.6.

(Machaka did die to Mictlan, but Mictlan jumped them while they were fighting Vanheim, and because they ran over a poorly played Shinuyama, they had a lot more material and had lost a lot less in their first war. So that's not really indicative of any nation balance issues necessarily.)

This isn't to say Machaka is necessarily good, but they're hardly hopeless.

You may be happy that there's no clam of pearls for MA C'tis which has nearly no chance in CBM now unless it is really, really lucky.

Empirically disproven, MA C'tis was 4th (admittedly a distant 4th) in Land RAND, and beat Pythium (a power nation in MA by any metric).

I think you're the only person I've ever seen claim MA C'tis is bad.

Yes, you may live and be happy but it is nations, not pretenders, or fetishes, or clams what people are supposed to play for and lead to victory, aren't they?

Sure, but you can't balance nations until everything else is balanced, because so much of the material is shared between nations. Most pretenders are available to multiple nations. Any item can be forged by any nation. Almost all spells can be cast by any nation. And so on. While these options remain unbalanced there's no good way to balance nations. (A great nation benefits disproportionately more from unbalanced options than a poor nation does).

So now that items and pretenders and spells have been (mostly) balanced, nation balancing can actually happen. Indeed, CBM has done some of that, but its only started making changes specifically for nation balance.