Is Casimir the new Hiawatha?

I don't know about you guys but I've been noticing Pacal always picks piety first and normally gets conquered early on. Also every single game I had Montezuma in he backstabbed every single time!

Spammers game : Immortal, Pangea, standard with Siam.
AI : Washington (North), Catherine (North-West), Isabelle (West), Alex (South), Casimir (South-East), Japan (Far-South behind Alex). At end Venice, on a peninsula (behind Casimir).

Casimir is runaway. Wasted rapidely Alex and Japan in the same time managing a war against Catherine, Isabelle and Washington. When he finished Alex, I had to be the next. I send him against Venicie. He crushed it in 5 or 6 turns, taking 3 CSon the way.
I made embargo against him at world congress and he still was friend. He only backstabs me when I moved Gatling guns from our common frontier due to third or fourth Isabelle's backstab.

Casimir, Hiawatha, Monty, Alex, Washington use to go straigth ahead to war. You can plan an attack and a defense.
Isabelle is just crazy when you have her neighboor on land map.

Defense strategy note : Gatling and Machine guns with Cannon or Artillery are wonderful to defend a city.

He's obnoxious, but Hiawatha still holds the crown in my opinion. I find Casimir's a little better at science but Hiawatha's still more expandy.

I've just finished crushing Onondaga in my current game as Egypt; he was responding to my attack with wave after wave of Great War Infantry and Settlers. I started the war with crossbows, cannons, and Muskets and only ended with Artillery, Great War Bombers, Great War Infantry, and Berber Cavalry.

One of the best predictors for me as to whether or not I have to worry about Casimir or not is if he becomes friends or god forbid allies with a Cultural City State or two early.

If Casimir clears a barbarian camp or completes a quest for a Cultural City state and gets allied with them he will try really hard to protect the Cultural bonuses and take some Patronage Social Policies and use his gold this way to.

The "extra" culture combined with his UA will really allow him to stack some early game bonuses from Social Policies and he really gets rolling. If he doesn't get these early bonuses he can still do well but he doesn't seem OP.

Poland in my game has only one city. He had one briefly because he took one of mine, I'll concede, but not only did I get it back, but I'll probably take Warsaw to (I had to fight both China and Poland so I'm taking down China first).

Even though Casimir might be better than average with the AI, there's no hard and fast rule that he'll be good in every game.