I just found out about CoM a couple months ago and have been playing it a fair bit since then. I get the complaints, but it's still pretty playable to me, and

I just found out about CoM a couple months ago and have been playing it a fair bit since then. I get the complaints, but it's still pretty playable to me, and it's been quite a long time since I played the original, so I may not quite remember how it used to play. It's overall enjoyable and I'm impressed that the guy make the changes he did by patching the binary. I think there's a few aspects to the CoM patch. 1. General bug fixes (fixing diplomacy to actually work, making some spells actually do what they say they do, that kind of thing). While these cause some changes to gameplay, I imagine most people aren't complaining about this. 2. Balance fixes - things like not being able to pick 11 books, start with a rare summon, and wreck the world early on (hello, formerly completely broken Wraiths). Certainly it's a reasonable change to make, but it's definitely not fun for people who just want to, well, wreck the world. 3. AI/Balance changes. The writer of the patch has some design goals that aren't the same as the original game - in particular, more of a focus on magic in big overland spells and such, and less on invincible heroes. This, coupled with some AI fixes in prioritizing spells, really messes with people used to playing the old game. Between these and the resource buffs AI players get even at pretty low levels, you're going to be facing some pretty ugly combats by midgame. Certainly in my play so far this is least "fun" part I've found - basically fighting uphill by abusing the remaining problems in the AI (e.g., not protecting navies well), and not really getting to use heroes against the AI unless you have the right defensive spells, since the AI is much better at just pelting your heroes with direct damage. Overall I think it's a better game, but possibly not a more "fun" one, depending on your tastes. I remember seeing Brian Reynolds (Civ 2, Alpha Centauri) give a talk once where he said that while everyone complains about how 4X game AIs just cheat with more resources at higher difficulties, the large majority of players just want to be able to beat the midrange AIs with minor exploits, and improving the actual logic of the AIs actually made them enjoy the game less. I can definitely see that happening here as well. Edit: I should add that there's at least 2 big QoL improvements in CoM: build queues (slightly wonky, but better than nothing), and an earlier win condition for conquest, so you don't need to bother conquering the entire world once it's obvious you're going to win.