Writing Strategy and CBM

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by fungalreason

I think an interesting aspect of many guides is not necessarily the specifics of what spells or units to use. One of the most helpful things is gaining an understanding of how to look at the huge list of stuff available to a particular nation and identify the strengths and shore up its weaknesses.

I would have said the exact opposite. The more you speak about which spells and units you like and you explain WHY you do, the better when the player will see if the strong point of this unit the guide was talking about has been nerfed, the weak one improved, the spell has gone up or down the research tree...

And well, if one doesn't talk about units and useful spells, what does he talk about in a guide

[fungalreason]

Originally Posted by K

Thanks. Now that I've found it, it confirms my suspicions that it is literally hundreds of changes whose only purpose seems to be to confuse players who aren't skilled modders.

I assume a text editor is needed to open a dm file, but since I'm not teaching myself to mod the game just to play it with one mod, I guess it doesn't matter.

I think that's a little harsh. Yes, it contains many changes, but the purpose is simply to take underused spells/units and make them more useful... mostly by making things more cost-efficient. I personally think it does an amazing job at this.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by K

Really? I was considering playing a CBM game a few months back and I couldn't find all the changes on the threads dedicated to the mod (just a few changelogs). If there is a list somewhere, I'd be interested in a link.

Last time I looked, the mod file itself was pretty readable. I'd count that as documentation. I prefer not to play with it for other reasons.

-Max

[K]

Originally Posted by Crust

Oh really. Having looked into the mod since I joined a game using it, literally hundreds of changes whose only purpose seems to be to confuse players seems fallacious in the extreme. Whether or not you agree with a specific change the intention can hardly be questioned.

I can only be fallacious if I'm making a formal logic argument. I'm expressing a judgment or even opinion, and my opinions and judgments are as valid as any other opinion or judgment.

But, please note that I am not making a judgment on intent. I don't know or care about the mod author's intent. I do know for a fact that I see a lot of misinformation being spread to newbies because people can't keep CBM rules and the actual game rules separate in their minds. Just by existing and being promoted it lowers the overall knowledge base of the community, which is good for individuals who are good at keeping those rules straight when their MP opponents aren't.

Hence the OP's complaint.

[Crust]

Without going into specifics of CBM or any other mod, it's easy to see how multiple sets of rules are worse than one official one. That said, looking it up when joining a game isn't that hard.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by K

I assume a text editor is needed to open a dm file, but since I'm not teaching myself to mod the game just to play it with one mod, I guess it doesn't matter.

I know it's completely unreasonable isn't it, expecting people to have a text editor. It's like it was specifically designed to only allow elitist hax0rs to use it.

You really are being silly in this thread

Edit: By the way I don't think the OP had a 'complaint'. You're the guy who has a problem with CBM (apparently without having ever used it), he was just asking if his guides were still useful to people.

[quantum_mechani]

I'd just like to point out that hardy any guides written for base game are invalidated by the CB mod. The whole point of a guide is generally to highlight possible tactics for a nation- these tactics don't disappear just because you are using CB. Now of course somone will come along and say something along the lines of 'but CB makes flaming arrows more difficult to get, that totally invalidates my shinuyama guide', but that's not exactly the case. Other game settings besides mods constantly shift how easy some tactics are (for instance the time it takes to reach flaming arrows), CB is just one more of these variables. And in general, if a tactic is good it more or less applies even under somewhat different game settings.

[K]

Originally Posted by Sombre

I know it's completely unreasonable isn't it, expecting people to have a text editor. It's like it was specifically designed to only allow elitist hax0rs to use it.

No, but it is unreasonable to expect anyone to learn all the mod commands and then read the 44KB of plain text just to figure out what changes have been made to basically every part of the game. Considering that this game takes years to master, that just seems cruel.

At the end of the day, I don't really feel good about beating people in MP just because they forgot that a tactic that works well in CMB doesn't work nearly as well in the base game.

But it's just my opinion. Confusion among the player base isn't my problem.

[llamabeast]

I've been pleased to see a considerable move towards using CBM in multiplayer recently. I hope that trend continues, because a lot of work has gone into CBM and I think it improves the game.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by K

No, but it is unreasonable to expect anyone to learn all the mod commands and then read the 44KB of plain text just to figure out what changes have been made to basically every part of the game.

They don't. You're just being hysterical about it for whatever reason and working on assumptions about modding, dm files, CBM etc without trying any of it.

The general changes made by CBM have been covered various times. They include things like recosting some of the lower tier summons to make them less of a straight-up waste of gems, recosting or otherwise improving light cavalry and infantry that are nearly always a poor choice at vanilla costs, reducing the costs of or improving pretenders that are overcosted in vanilla. And so on.