Back again after absence, polling interest for a MA (learning) game

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Yskonyn

Thanks Torgon and Parone.
Ive had the game for about a year and a half as well. Hosted 2 mp games but got wiped in the first 20 or so turns on both games.
Almost no SP experience so I am still a noob as well.

For learning the game I would say we go WITHOUT CBM in this game. My vision is that you can only enjoy the changes that it brings if you first know what it actually changed.
Perhaps you dont even prefer CBM.
Worthy Heroes might be a good mod if people stand on playing with improved heroes as opposed to the vanilla setting, but I would prefer keeping it as stock as possible.

I've actually only played CBM games. In general I'm somewhat in favor of it for several reasons.

1. It's fairly standard. I just don't see many games (at least on the this forum or the z7 forum) that don't use it in some way. If you're going to learn, you might as well learn what everyone else is using. Why learn how to spam gem gens when you're never going to spam gem gens outside of this game?

2. Except for a couple big things, its not that dramatic of a departure from vanilla. Most of the changes are balance tweaks to cost, spell requirements, a couple extra units or unit buffs here or there.

3. The big changes that it does make, removal of gem gens and removal of hammers, are good changes.

4. It makes some significant improvements to some nations that just aren't viable choices in Vanilla. There are a few that may be a little over the top now (Argatha and MA Ulm seem to be good examples), but they're the exceptions.

5. Its not like vanilla is any easier to learn than CBM. i.e. its not that much better documented (lets be honest, the manual as a reference is pretty bad). We could just as easily say that learning CBM prepares you for playing a vanilla game. So given 1, 2, 3, and 4 I'd prefer going for CBM, but that's just me.