CBM recommended

[mrlich]

Do the people here recommend CBM for playing offline against the AI or is the latest official patch enough? If they recommend it, do I just need the latest official patch to install it? What is the latest version?

[Valerius]

From a SP perspective you won't be as sensitive to costs being out of line that are a big issue for MP and a significant part of what CBM does. What you'll probably find most interesting is the additional content, particularly thug/SC summons. Certainly worth trying out - you can download it here (and it is a good idea to update to the latest patch).

[Soyweiser]

CBM makes SP a little bit harder. Because a lot of the spells the AI likes to spam are cheaper and easier to research. (So more winter wolves etc).

[Gandalf Parker]

Exactly as worded. The people here do tend to recommend CBM.
Other forums have their own recommendations, and some are quite against mods like CBM. But here it does tend to be recommended.

Im not sure that CBM take into account the AI. There are mods that do. And game settings or maps that are designed to improve AI play. Maybe even some scenarios floating around altho Illwinters new game does those things much better if you are into solo play.

[llamabeast]

CBM is not specifically designed for the AI, but neither does it work poorly with it. It is designed to increase the range of choices in the game which are reasonable. This applies to the AI too, and may possibly make it more effective by reducing the number of stupid choices in the game. But I'm not sure about this.

Without CBM, when you've been playing a while you're likely to realize that some apparently cool choices are actually always poor choices. For example you may come to the conclusion that you should *never* summon drakes. I think that's sad.

If CBM has met its goals, then under CBM this shouldn't happen. Summoning drakes (for example) may still be highly situational, but under some set of circumstances it would be a good strategy. So the range of interesting choices has increased.

Personally I think you will enjoy SP more if you use CBM. But as the current maintainer I am biased!

[Soyweiser]

Gandalf,

Perhaps it might be useful to make a list of the other forums, and the different mods they recommend.

CBM might incorporate some of the pretender changes NinjaDebugger used in his awesome gods mod. So that was nice discovery.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Gandalf,
Perhaps it might be useful to make a list of the other forums, and the different mods they recommend..

Probably.
I do mention this forum in other Dom3 forums, threads, chat channels.
But Im not likely to mention those other places here. I dont want to be the one they can point to and say "he did it".

Its no longer my concern. I will be just nice enough to mention that they exist. Let people go hunting if they want.

I knew that "CBM" pollinated the "Awesome" series of mods but I did not know that Awesome had pollinated CBM. Nice to know. Thanks. I tend to lose track of whats going on with them. Im not into balance mods. Im into more More MORE type of mods.

[Soyweiser]

I understand, this forum has such a reputation of harassing other forums. Just look for the "lets invade a dom3 forum" thread at the dom3mods forum.

Also, I used to keep track of the SA threads just to see if there was new information I didn't know that needed to be added to the wiki. Learned a lot by skimming that.

[Stagger Lee]

Originally Posted by mrlich

Do the people here recommend CBM for playing offline against the AI or is the latest official patch enough? If they recommend it, do I just need the latest official patch to install it? What is the latest version?

First off, yes, patch to the latest version(3.27 I think) as any mod that still gets use will have been updated to work with the latest version of the game. Look up the shrapnel site for the game, the download link to the patch will be there somewhere.

As for recommending cbm for playing "offline" against the AI, it really depends on how you want to play. CBM removed gem generators like clams (well, made them const. 8, unique), so if that's what you're into, play vanilla. I found this game a few years ago looking for sp like Master of Orion or Master of Magic and thought playing "online" MP was not for me. In almost no time, I was playing pbem MP. Comfortable pace, no direct connect to somebody else's computer (which would have turned me off to it), and the changes made for cbm are not made by some autocratic forum guru who must be followed blindly or you're not cool; they're made after long discussion open to input from all, and are for the purpose of making the game more fun. So, yes, I would recommend cbm for SP, but going further, I would recommend MP. It's just a better game imho.

[Admiral_Aorta]

I recommend CBM for all ailments, including cancer, micromanagement and AIDS. CBM should be taken at least once a day.