Do you use CBM?

[Gandalf Parker]

I know thats the pitch. But I personally do not agree that its the result. I dont feel that it opens up tactics. But it does close some.

For MP play, of certain groups on certain map sizes and certain game settings then it does seem to open some things up. It doesnt make them possible, it just seems to make them more spreadsheet balanced in order to make them a viable strategy for winning. I also have never been thrilled with the "thematic" changes to some of my favorite races such as Pangaea and Caelum. Making them "balanced" for small tight maps and king-of-the-hill games doesnt really work for me. Just IMHO

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I also have never been thrilled with the "thematic" changes to some of my favorite races such as Pangaea and Caelum. Making them "balanced" for small tight maps and king-of-the-hill games doesnt really work for me. Just IMHO

Care to explain a bit? What changes to them don't you like?

[Bullock]

As a newcomer who was playing only vanilla few months ago, i have to say that i ve been fully converted to CBM.

The main reason of my choice is the removal of gems gen and to expect something else than tartarian rush in end game.

The other thing i like, which doesn't seem to be the case for everybody (and i m quite surprise about that), is the constant adding of stuff in it. Before i came here (and discovered CBM) i was already constantly discovering new stuff/spells in the vanilla version, but with CBM i have almost the feeling to play a new game with all this added stuff to be discovered.

I also like the big effort done about balancing weakest things like some nations, pretenders and crafts... Why should this game stay unbalanced like i read few posts above ? Maybe it's fun to know that some nations are weaker for thematic reason, but what is the interest if they are not played? or by people who last 10 turns in the game ?

Ofc there is still some balancing to do and with so many stuff, balancing will be a constant preoccupation.

Now it s a noobie observation, focusing MP, so maybe it's not fully relevant. But the main purpose of this post, beside giving my point, is to encourage the Llama and all people working on it to continue this great job !

[WraithLord]

It took a long time for me to come to accept CBM. I didn't try all the older versions, preferring to watch it evolve from afar.

1.6 (gem gens) convinced me since I hate MM and not a fan of high hidden tanking economies inflated by wishing.

I think QM and llama are doing a good job of directing CBM to make the game more interesting and more balanced in the sense that more options are valid.
Vanilla dom has nations, items, spells and pretender that are either weak, useless, eclipsed by some better version or a combination of. CBM does quite a good job of addressing that.

It ain't perfect. nothing is. However I think the approach is good and the modders are capable and have a clear vision so that not every random whim would make it, far from it.

1.9 looks up to be a good version. I'm looking forward to the pretenders work and I think by then CBM would be mostly done.

IMHO it polishes the dominions gem to shine even brighter.

[llamabeast]

Lots of interesting comments in this thread.

Regarding the "infinite loop" comment, I think that kianduatha's comment does a good job of explaining why that hopefully isn't the case. I think that the recent large number of changes have been caused by three things:

1) The uniqueification of hammers. This is the second really big and IMO brave change made by qm, the first being removing gem generators. At the time that was hugely controversial, but I think most people would agree now that it was a good change. The hammer change is possibly still somewhat controversial but I think many people like it; that's a discussion for elsewhere anyway. Regardless it did lead to a need for some rebalancing since it affected some nations and strategies more than others.

2) An attempt to make all items useful*. This was my big project in 1.9, although qm worked on it in 1.8 too. Hopefully, unless I have made a lot of mistakes, there should be little need to make many changes to items in future.

3) An attempt to bring weaker nations somewhat up to par. For a long time this wasn't really attempted, and MA Ulm for instance languished as borderline hopeless. Hopefully 1.9 has covered most of the nations which needed help. There may be need for a couple of tweaks if I have got things wrong, and maybe there are another couple of nations who need some help (Yomi perhaps). But again I hope we are most of the way there.

I think there is room for some significant attention to be paid to pretenders (where there are still some which are pretty useless, particularly national pretenders), so that may be the next area to focus on. But the objective is for the mod to settle into a kind of equilibrium.

--

Gandalf - you seem to have the firm opinion that CBM is balanced around small blitz games, but I don't know where that comes from. Certainly I don't lean that way and it's not obvious that qm did. Consider gem gens for example - they're probably fairly reasonable for small games (4 players or so), and only become monstrous in larger games. Anyway I don't really understand much of your comment so I guess we're not going to get anywhere.

Out of interest, what "thematic" changes to Pangaea do you find objectionable? I'm not familiar with the Pangaea changes.


* - This is a reasonable place to address a common concern about CBM. People might think that for example by making all items useful, there is a danger of making them all the same and removing the interesting diversity from the game. I've tried very hard to avoid that - rather the idea is to make all items *potentially* useful. Some items will be very niche in their use, but if a player finds just the right situation and plans ingeniously, hopefully they will not be punished for trying to use an unusual item.

[Soyweiser]

I don't think CBM was ever intended as a modest mod. Just make certain tactics and nations more viable/fun. Clamming towards victory isn't really fun. And with clams, it is the only way to win.

[TigerBlood]

I like some parts of CBM, mainly the additions to certain nations.

I don't like change for the sake of change. Justification for excessive value fiddling in the name of 'balance' seems a bit disingenuous to me.

Some balance issues are entirely dependant on the type of game being played. Short, Blitz games require entirely different tactics and playstyles to grindfests on massive maps, for example. Any modification to balance one style of play, can have a major influence on the 'balance' of a different style of game.

Having said that, I'll still use CBM for some MP games. I'll have to adjust my play style, but that keeps the game interesting. I won't use the mod exclusively, though.

No disrespect to the people responsible for developing the mod, as they obviously put a lot of work into it. At the very least it keeps the modding community alive and active.

[rdonj]

I wouldn't really call CBM built for short blitz games. No one really uses CBM for blitzing. We do have a tendency to play games with no more than 20ish players, on maps of approximately 15 provinces per player. But even a six player game can last for 60 or more turns before a winner emerges. But that still means we're playing on maps that can be anywhere from 70 to 300+ provinces. It's not an insignificant range, and MP games don't really get much bigger than that. I think you'll find that CBM was used in the largest games on these forums in the past too, like Kingmaker.

Also what you see as excessive value fiddling in many cases is just the least controversial way to give nations small buffs or nerfs without getting people all upset And in many cases it can go a long way just making small changes to a few units. Like in SC2 where just changing the max range of a unit by 1 suddenly is a big deal.

[Soyweiser]

Some people just don't get it. Balancing a game is something that is done in loops. You changed something, you test it. Any new balance issues that crop up, you change. Redo from start.

Balancing is fiddling with values. Just like Rdonj said, one point more or less here or there can make a big difference. No asymmetrical game has ever been balanced from the start. Even blizzard makes changes to their games years later. (Sure they collect a lot more data, have ****loads of cash etc).

And CBM was not designed with a specific type of game in mind. At least they never say so. Sure it gets used a lot in certain types of games, like rdonj describes. But it was not designed for that purpose. If you come up with that argument again. Give proof. As CBM was trying to give more diverse possible strategies, not to balance the game for a specific type of game.

The "I don't like CBM" camp is spreading so much disinformation about what CBM was supposed to be about. It is mind boggling. (You know who you are.) And if you think that CBM is overpowered, give the various Awesomemods a whirl. Ninjadebugger is a fan of the more is more philosophy.

Ps, Deathblob, I love you!

[TigerBlood]

I get why certain changes were made. But sometimes I'll go through a unit roster or spell list and see changes that make no sense whatsoever. It's like someone just decided to fiddle with the numbers for the sake of it, not with any obvious goal in mind. That is the part of CBM that grates on me.

In my opinion, 60% of the mod is gold. The rest leaves me scratching my head. You want proof of why I feel this way? I can't provide it, as my opinion is not something that can be debated.

What I can do is provide examples of alterations that make no sense to me. I don't see the point of that though, as it will undoubtedly decrease the signal to noise ratio of this thread dramatically. I can PM them to you if you like, perhaps then you can explain how these changes 'create more diverse strategies', without getting this thread locked.