Cyrus: You GOT to be kidding me!

[Watiggi]

I have started a huge lakes marathon map on noble with Cyrus. Now, I haven't played as Cyrus since Warlords come out, so I thought I would give it a go anyway. Friggin' heck! He's a bit bloody over the top isn't he?

It's 1420 BC (BS more like it). I have ALREADY eliminated 5 civs: Hannibal, Shaka, Isabella, Roosevelt and Brennus. ALL I have really built is the Immortal. WHY the heck bother with anything else? They have:

* a +100% attack against Axemen.
* a +50% attack against Archers.
* a +10% withdrawl factor (with Char trait, not hard to get Flanking I & II).
* the ability to get terrain bonuses when defending.
* the ability to fortify.
* can move 2 spaces per turn.
* are as cheap as an Archer - and are cheaper than Axemen.
* they have Charismatic backing them (no need for Barracks).
* and they get +100% great generals, which I might add comes quite regularly with the odds. (I already have 2 of them).

WHAT A FRIGGIN' JOKE. I understand why he had a strong UU in vanilla considering the old traits (Creative/Expansive). But now, he really is the only one who has a very strong trait combination AND a very strong UU.

What seals this leader as being WAAAYYY over the top for me - FAR more than the Praetorians and what not - is how quickly you can get them, how cheap they are and how fast they can move, not to mention how effective they are at defending and attacking everything in the early era.

Just hook up Horses (easy with the settler bonus I might add) when you get Animal Husbandry and start pumping them out as fast as you can pump out Archers. Screw building anything else, they move faster than Praetorians and can effectively take down any Barbarian unit both on the offense and defense. Geesh. With the settler bonus, you can hook horses fast and produce an army way before the AI even gets close to building spearmen.

I am really loosing the point of this game. It is one smack in the teeth after another with the f****d up choices that have been made. It pretty much kills the game in my opinion.

Sorry, but I am just getting frustrated with this game.

 

[FuRRie]

Try something harder then Noble?

 

[Nestorius]

Its too bad they never added Spearman barbarians like they said they would.

 

[puglover]

Good. The Persians need to be powerful to live up to their real life counterparts.

 

[PMabey]

1. well try it on a harder difficulty
2. a couple of spearman and you can forget about attacking a city.

 

[Arlborn]

People, its not about his difficult level ..

Immortal's are overpowered in warlords yes, but well, they never did something about the Praetorians..

 

[Olleus]

The immortals are a gamble. Start near horses and you've won. Also, they are not that good on quick speed as you don't get long enought to use them properly. That said, they are still overpowerfull.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

Try something harder then Noble?

Ah, say it aint so.


I do agree though, his traits make him very stout. And his ub basically makes him expansive.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

Yeah, once you hit Guilds, you're nearly Expansive. But Immortals are disguisting. Remember....you may need horses for them, but you also need Iron for Praets. Praets are worthless if you don't have Iron. But that doesn't change the fact that they're horribly overpowered.

Spearmen, eh? Yeah....they cost 10 more hammers, and the AI has, AT MOST, 1 per city, and that's if they already know what's coming. You see, that's not nearly enough to stop an Imbamortal rush. A spear, even one in a city, is typically killed by the efforts of 3, 4 imbamortals TOPS, and they have a pretty good shot at withdrawing from combat too. The whole point is to whack them before-hand, and unlike with War Chariots, the gambit is helped immensely by Cyrus's traits. Imperialistic makes it easier to get after horses sooner, and Charismatic makes your imbamortals grow stronger faster. Your initial rush will probably be unpromoted imbamortals, I'd go with 6-8, depending on difficulty. That should be sufficient to conquer 2 or even 3 cities. Later on, when the opposition is getting a bit stiffer, you toss in a barracks, and all they have to do is SURVIVE a battle to get their second promo. And then there's the fact you're probably going to pop your first GG pretty quickly. And by GG, I mean, "good game" because 5 experience immortals versus archers, axes, and the odd spearmen is a foregone conclusion(due to their fatal weakness to pointy-sticks and the admittedly shoddy odds they run into, a Warlord would just be dumb). Did I mention, that, unlike with war chariots, you can safely fortify them in a city to wait for the injured to heal?

And what if there are no horses? Boo-hoo. You snag copper and axe rush with the backing of your Charismatic trait. Nothing like Egypt, where there's a major drop-off in terms of effectiveness vs. a WC rush or a standard axe rush.

In short, they're imbalanced because they benefit greatly from their leader's traits, have a bonus against every ancient age unit save warriors(lol) and spearmen, and shock allows them to stand up decently to swords(cats and elephants come WAY too late for your victims). The imbalance is just how fast you can get started, and how long you can keep it going, and how seemlessly you can transition into a different military strategy once it stops being effective....

 

[Crimso]

Try something harder then Noble?

What he said.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Rather than argue about difficulty, maybe we should also consider how they balance in multiplayer.

 

[MightyGooga]

I think they wanted to change the axis on game balance here. Romans were always a good choice for a begginer to learn. But they were also an Excelent choice for matured players to get BIG DOMINATION SCORES GOING. If they had change the preats in a way to make them more powerful, say 50% against melee. The whole game would become a mess.

Cyrus will only be easy to play with in a lower level dificulty. But hey... So will the other civs. Romans, Pangea, Noble, Standard. Get that, since day one you will be a nuclear civ rolling. If you get iron of course.

 

[MightyGooga]

Rather than argue about difficulty, maybe we should also consider how they balance in multiplayer.

In multiplayer . I think i would change my opinion a bit. If you're playing one on one, that would make things a little dificult. But there is always a goods opposing strategy for CYRUS. Althought I dont know what.

 

[flamingzaroc121]

Its too bad they never added Spearman barbarians like they said they would.

they did a barb Spearmen, but they can only appear in barb cities and CANT spawn in the fog of war

 

[douglas_21]

Marathon is biased towards warmonger strategies compared to the other game speeds. I usually do Epic.

 

[ollj]

Yeah i also never wonder how good horse units are on the LAKES map on marathon.

 

[Antilogic]

I'm an epic man myself, although I played a marathon or two in Vanilla.

But I am a lot more partial to Cyrus now than I was before. Also remember that since the patch, Expansive, Organized, and Creative have gotten significant new bonuses. So, although he appears super powerful, you can still beat him in the long run--Imperialistic loses its charm as the game goes on.

Using the Immortal rush only works against the AI because they tend to build a truly prodigious number of archers, despite having horses or metals available. Whenever I'm up against Cyrus early in the game, I have at least two spears in all my border cities, and I try to have an extra couple on hand in case things get ugly. I've never been killed by a Cyrus Immortal rush--I'm a Prince/Monarch player, if that makes any difference.

 

[kristopherb]

Immortals are to good i used them and i suffered the conquenses(bad ecomeny,tech research,ect),

 

[Agarwaen]

The problem with Immortals is: expand too much, too early

 

[aelf]

I think Noble, Marathon and a single-landmass map can explain everything. Cyrus is very strong and Immortals are very effective, but the game settings certainly helped a lot.