Darisus: Early game questions

[Plinko16]

OK, I'm starting to get the hang of playing BTS at Prince level, I've been winning most of my games lately pretty easily, mostly with Victoria, but also Pacal II and Yaqab.

I decided I wanted to give Darius a try and see if I could manage a very-early rush to take a neighboring capital using Immortals.

But, I've done nothing but fail miserably at this so far, I just don't know what to do with him at the start, mostly because his starting techs are so far outside what I normally do (bronze working and worker). He starts with agriculture and hunting - which are terrible starts for BTS since your capital typcially has 3 kinds of tiles in the BFC - water, resources and forests. I can't do anything with the water without fishing, can't do anything with the resources unless they happen to be a grain or a game animal (haven't had a start with either one yet) and can't chop the forest.

I have 3 ideas, none of which have borne much fruit in 4 starts that I gave up on quickly because I had failed miserably.

1. Fishing to work sea resources then mining (hopefully have a hill to mine), then bronze working and then AH to start the race for horses.

2. Mining, Bronze working and then AH.

3. AH then other worker techs and search for horses right away.

All of them leave me with a worker having a lot of time with nothing to do. Should I just be building a warrior, or maybe a settler while researching AH?

Lastly, what to do in the face of a protective opponent? I finally got one good start (horses in the BFC), only to find myself on a small island with only Korea. Naturally, Seoul was on a hill. I sent out 6 upgraded immortals only to have all of them fall to one CG2, Drill 1 archer and one CG1, Drill 1 archer.

 

[Hackapell]

With the Persians, I always tech AH and then head towards the closest horse source.
Settle there, hook it up, pump out Immortals until a nearby enemy is dead.
In the meantime, grab cottages and BW for the chop, then head towards alpha to get in the trading loop.
Only prioritize worker techs you need. No stone or marble? why bother with Masonry? No coastal cities or lakes? No fishing. And so on. With Darius, you're in a good position to grab AH and pottery, get some cottages down, and go from there.

 

[oyzar]

most important is get food resources online and having AG/HU is great for that if you start with a farmable or animal resource as you get faster research for AH. Starting on the coast does somewhat depend on difficulty level as researching fishing takes quite alot of time on higher levels, especially if you have other resources too it is better to delay fishing imo. But yeah worker techs first is the common way to go with whatever suit your starting position having highest priority.