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

Originally Posted by curtadams

Although not without flaws, CBM is a substantial improvement over vanilla at all stages of the game.

I rather think it achieves a different balance, not necesarily a better one. And it splits the playerbase.

If the mod had stopped at a dozen changes moving from one system to another would be more manageable, but I can understand how there's been some kind of a snowball effect.

[legowarrior]

If you are starting a cbm game, I'd love to get on with it, but maybe not quite yet. I just started a non cbm game, and I think I'd like to stagger it so that I don't have to games in the same stage of the game.

[Yskonyn]

Does CBM do away with all gems and hammers? Or does it merely streamline it?
Gathering gems and forging hammers is a big gameplay feature in the game IMO, and every nation is able to do so, so where lies the problem?

If gems are dropped, doent this make the game a much more standard wargame with some magic added for kicks instead of the cool wargame where you have to build your strategy around magic and gems?

I might be totally ignorant here, because I have not yet played any CBM, but if the above is true I dont find them to be 'little gameplay tweaks'.
Could someone elaborate please?
Besides, I dont think the devs where ignorant as well. Game design takes a lot of forethought and I would like to experience the real game first before I could agree or disagree that it needs balancing.
In my many years of gaming I have learned that 'balancing' is something very personal for many players. Most are stuck playing a certain way and scream fire and hell when their tactic gets nerfed in a patch eventhough it might actually improbe balance. They will scream it has become unbalanced, however, because they are unable to win anymore. Instead of adapting.

[Yskonyn]

Edit: double post

[Korwin]

All gemgens are artefacts in cbm, dwarfen hammers too.

Vanilla has one big advantage: the wiki lists the vanilla stats.

[bbz]

The problem is that when every nation does that they have to manually equipt/ forge hammer every turn and forge gem generating items a turn then you would have to either manually(because you would have some commanders carrying some gems in them) remove every gem that has been generated this turn by the gem generators or use collect all button and having to assing gems to your battle mages/commanders again.

Also late game the game doesnt boil down to who was the most active/conquered most, its about who played it safe and forged 1000000 calms. Also Tartarians would be the only SC you'd ever see(ecept for the occasional Seraph) making even elemenatl royalties obsolete. That gave armies more of a support role. Why have an army when you can steamroll someone in 1 turn teleporting/cloud trapezing 100 tartarians everywhere.

The problem is that if you were nation without earth, you'd have to make a pretender with earth to be somewhat competitive.

Also late game people were able to use the spell 'wish' like 2-3 times a turn which cries for an unfun game.

Also sometimes a nation could just try and stay out of harm's way, turtle for a whole game. get insane ammount of calms and then just claim the victory, while others who fought hard to gain territories and conquered other 2-3 nations just loose because their gem income was connected to the magic sites not the items their commanders wear.

All in all I really like how CBM plays making armies a bit more important(late game) than just vanity items. And also adds a diversity now people actually have to think with what to counter certain armies rather than the standard "equipt tartarian with fire brand and vine shield" and drop 3 of them on top of an army and you win.
It also made some items that were never used useful, so now you have a choice of what to use with its drawbacks and good sides.

[bbz]

Also the advantage that Korwin states is half an advantage since the wiki shows plain stats and not the columative stats with the added gear for some soldiers.

Originally Posted by Torgon

Basically everything comes down to forge a boat load of gem gens, forge a bunch of hammers, get GoH or chalice, summon Tarts, win.

You have the settings ingame to limit all of the above, if they are a problem in your games:
Play games with harder research, or 8 provinces/player with 6 player max, lower magic sites...and you will not see a single Tartarian. Or play against more agresive players.

I played many games of Dom PPP and we hardly ever got to lv9 spells. Pretty much the same with Dom2. Dom3 I have played little in MP, but I know it is even more customizable that those were.

I would also like to add that endgame strategies need some kind of imbalance (from a game design perspective) in order to avoid stalemates and draw games to a conclusion. With this I do not mean that "I win" buttons are fine, just that lv9 spells being slightly over is not bad per se.

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Wendigo_reloaded

You have the settings ingame to limit all of the above, if they are a problem in your games:
Play games with harder research, or 8 provinces/player with 6 player max, lower magic sites...and you will not see a single Tartarian. Or play against more agresive players.

I played many games of Dom PPP and we hardly ever got to lv9 spells. Pretty much the same with Dom2. Dom3 I have played little in MP, but I know it is even more customizable that those were.

I would also like to add that endgame strategies need some kind of imbalance (from a game design perspective) in order to avoid stalemates and draw games to a conclusion. With this I do not mean that "I win" buttons are fine, just that lv9 spells being slightly over is not bad per se.

But with those options you have to play artificially short games, or play with few magic sites, etc. I guess I would just prefer to play the game where you can get to level 9 spells and have the game still be interesting and diverse.

And I agree that level 9 spells should be powerful, absolutely. It's just that there should be powerful spells available down all path and for all nations without forcing everyone down the same trajectory.

But this isn't the CBM thread, so I'll stop after this. Bottom line, I'd prefer to play CBM, but I'm not 100% averse to playing a vanilla game.

[bbz]

the problem is not with the imbalance, you cannot have perfectly balanced game, the problem is that everyone uses the same strategy and it gets boring and tedious in the late game. And as the best thing about dominions is its diversity(among other things)its rather a shame that by the late game all nations have to become the same(to be competitive).
Whats CBM does is introduce more choices, like now you have all the EDM summons or tartarians and they seem sort of balanced.(still some tweaking needed) But for example if you are stuck with fire or air or water, and not death you at least have some options rather than just forfeit the game.