Are the Mayan's overly powerful?

Seems to me like playing games on King and Emperor with this civ is far easier than with any other. The number of great people you can get with it just seems ridiculously unfair. Opinions?

I've only played as them once, so I don't have a great deal of experience, but I did not love having to take a great person of each type before I got any doubles.

I would agree that it is a powerful UA, but I would only consider it OP if you could choose what great person you wanted exactly every time.

I love Mayans, not sure they are overpowered, but they have (one of) the best UB and a very versatile UA. On the other hand, their UU sucks, so ...

kaspergm said:

On the other hand, their UU sucks, so ...

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Eh? What's wrong with cheap archers?

The Mayans are very powerful, but they do have a hidden flaw - their Unique Ability (gaining free great people, but never of the same type twice) increases the cost of gaining other great people.

So say you're going for a science victory - the Mayan Unique Building gives extra science, so it makes sense. You pick a Great Scientist as one of your Long Count great people, all well and good. You then have to pick Artists, Engineers, Generals, Admirals, Merchants, and every time you do, the cost to generate another Great Scientist by normal means increases.

You can say the same thing if you're going for a cultural victory - you get one Great Artist for free, but the others are more expensive than normal.

I think the Mayans are generally strong, but there are better choices for every victory type. If you want domination, pick someone like Japan, or Germany, or even somewhere like Arabia that has an overpowered horse archer type unit. If you want Cultural victory, places like India or Egypt do those better than the Mayans. If you want science, there's Babylon or Korea. (though I will admit those are both DLC civs)

Yes, Mayans are overpowered. This has been discussed before.

Their uu can be built without archery tech. This means you can start building range units instead of warriors, clear barbarians very efficiently and divert tech choices preferably, namely to an early theology.

Once you get theology, plop down an academy for, along with ub, an early tech lead rivaling (countering?) korea's or babylon's.

Great merchant should be next to strategically choose an appropriate city state ally which will be conducive to the best "cascade" of city state "faction bonuses".

Each additional early great person is a "shot in the arm" when used productively. Since you've likely chosen liberty policies, this will probably net 2 great engineers, or 2 hand-picked wonder buildings.

Great admiral allows you to explore the world early, especially if you've opted patronage over commerce. If you took commerce and play your fights well, you have a virtually indestructible navy for the duration of capping a coastal opponent.

Mayans are just so versatile and their only real limitation is happiness which is easily countered with constructive choice of early religion bonuses (pyramid bonus and/or instant faith wonders), build order and city state alliance. To me, they're not even that fun to play because I rarely reach an impasse short of deity difficulty.

They're definitely a top tier civ, but I don't think their SOOOO much better than Aztec, Egypt, Persia, Siam, or China to consider them an overpowered civ

I like their UU, it gives a boost to defense early.

Having played the Mayan, I don't think they are nearly as powerful as they look at first glance. That they can only pick each GP once can be a disadvantage (except with policies, etc). So I would agree with Snoopaloop above.

Gort makes some good points too.

I would say they are a powerful civ, but not overpowered, there are others I believe are more powerful.