Is Darius made too powerful?

[gettingfat]

Recently when I don't feel like getting too stressed playing a game, I pick Darius. Honestly, I think his traits, UU and UB and starting techs have the best synergy among all leaders. With horse nearby it's almost a guaranteed win. Without horse Darius is still powerful enough with his financial prowness.

People here always argue about a particular trait (e.g. financial) or UU (e.g. praet) overpowered. To me Darius as a package is somewhat overpowered. Does anybody here like me think the same way?

 

[thelibra]

Shush!!! No. Don't give them the idea of nerfing my favorite badarse. I've been waiting since Civ4 came out for a Financial/Organized Leader, no one else has had this combo since they nerfed the American leader that had it initially.

The combination of the two is a serious economic powerhouse, and immortals are really brutal, fast, and don't require any metals.

In this post I give Darius as an example of how Settler as a first build unit works. He's a great leader, but heavily, heavily geared toward economy play, and his UUs become obsolete relatively quickly. His military advantage is gone by the Classic Age.

 

[qwertz]

Shush!!! No. Don't give them the idea of nerfing my favorite badarse.

same here

 

[gettingfat]

Shush!!! No. Don't give them the idea of nerfing my favorite badarse. I've been waiting since Civ4 came out for a Financial/Organized Leader, no one else has had this combo since they nerfed the American leader that had it initially.

The combination of the two is a serious economic powerhouse, and immortals are really brutal, fast, and don't require any metals.

In this post I give Darius as an example of how Settler as a first build unit works. He's a great leader, but heavily, heavily geared toward economy play, and his UUs become obsolete relatively quickly. His military advantage is gone by the Classic Age.

Haha, I don't want to see him nerfed as well. The fun thing is, Firaxis nerfed the Vanilla Washington simply because of the fin/org combo. But Darius not only have this combo, he has a lethal UU and a decent UB on top of his traits. So there goes the initial nerfing idea.

Darius is not a pure economy guy. I think the correct way of playing him is econ + early expansion (thru war or peaceful REX). With the organized trait I can easily handle 8 cities pre-CoL and more than that after. His military strength is also not gone by the Classic Age, as by that time even immortals become useless, he should have established a substantial tech advantage and his wealth will allow him to support a sizeable army consisting of state of the arts units.

Yesterday with a good seafood driven start with horses nearby I was able to wipe out two AIs BC AND complete a Feudalism slingshots AND researched CoL first AND quickly established over 70% research after chopping the courthouses to discover liberalism around 750 AC (without aggressively lightbulbing and tech trading). I was playing a post-3.13 monarch level game. This is almost a bit obscene IMHO.

 

[AfterShafter]

Shush!!! No. Don't give them the idea of nerfing my favorite badarse. I've been waiting since Civ4 came out for a Financial/Organized Leader, no one else has had this combo since they nerfed the American leader that had it initially.

The combination of the two is a serious economic powerhouse, and immortals are really brutal, fast, and don't require any metals.

In this post I give Darius as an example of how Settler as a first build unit works. He's a great leader, but heavily, heavily geared toward economy play, and his UUs become obsolete relatively quickly. His military advantage is gone by the Classic Age.

Problem is, having a strong economy lets you do everything else a bit more. You'll be able to afford more units than war geared guys, and get better units faster, more beakers than tech geared guys, more cities than guys who are made to expand... Unfortunately, in this case, having a robust economy is the lifeblood of the game, so having someone who is that much better at it than anyone else just makes for an insanely effective guy.

Of course people love Darius. Just like people used to love old redcoats and cossacks - made the game pretty damned easy, and all those difficult hitches you run into with most guys ("tech's getting low," "can't expand more," "can't afford another 10% into spying/culture," "gotta stop building units and stop the war - economy is tanking") just happens less with him. *Notably* less than a civ with neither financial nor organized.

Darius... Well, he's the *clear* best Civ in the single most important area of the game that most of the other major mechanic in the game is reliant upon, and he has an incredible UU with a pretty good UB of a building type that you build anyways. I don't want him to be nerfed because I don't believe total balance is something to be strived for ahead of entertaining diversity, which having one guy who is an absolute money machine lends to, but frankly... Depending on your definition of overpowered, he's a pretty good candidate to fit the term.

 

[eewallace]

I like Darius too, but Huayna and Hannibal seem to be to be similarly powered, with financial and good early UU.

Frankly, once you are on to how to do it, it is hard to lose with any of the financial leaders, absent really bad luck (surrounded by shaka, isabel and augustus caesar for example).

 

[Quagga]

Strangely, given what is written above, I've never had a game where the AI played Darius to be a top dog. At best he's been mid-tier and often somebody's vassal.

 

[gettingfat]

Strangely, given what is written above, I've never had a game where the AI played Darius to be a top dog. At best he's been mid-tier and often somebody's vassal.

The AI Darius seldom use immortal rush right, which a human player will pull this one off before 1500BC or even earlier. Darius works best with fast early expansion and I don't see the AI does that. AI also doesn't put CoL high in priority enough to leverage Darius' cheap courthouses (I also wonder if AI whip courthouses at all). The only thing I ever see an AI Darius does is aggressive cottaging. In short I think the AI plays him too conservatively.

I also seldom see the AI plays Elizabeth (never see redcoat beelining) and Pacal (never see Holkan in early rounds, always go for early religion) right.

 

[danieldaniel]

In my last game i played Darius of the HRE with the unrestricted leaders option, it was just cheeeeasy, by the end of the game I was running 100% science and making +1300 gold per turn, it was fun thou

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Strange resoning indeed. Wahington at least has very late=rather useless UU/UB, but Darius is even more overpowered. For this reason i don't chosehim as a leader (I also boycott the Romans for their absurd Praets).
At leats the Darius AI is not too strong.

 

[Dominico]

I dont think any of these cultures are too superpowered. For example i just started a game as rome and i had no iron in any of my lands and i had quite a large amount of land!! the only iron was near the english capital. In the end by the time i was powerfull enough to attack london it was pretty much too late to gain any advantage and build pretorians.

I still took the capital much later so i could build other things but in this game Rome has never built one pretorian!! Instead they had to rely upon axemen to win the day.

If everything falls into place they can be good, but imagine the games where you have no horse. Of course its different for people who use the world builder or reload etc.

 

[DigitalBoy]

You have to remember they're running out of trait combos. They probably just said "***** it, just give Darius Fin/Org and be done with it."

Just because they nerfed Washington for having too a powerful a trait combo (which I'm not sure is why they changed his traits to begin with) doesn't mean they can't change their minds latter.

 

[gettingfat]

I dont think any of these cultures are too superpowered. For example i just started a game as rome and i had no iron in any of my lands and i had quite a large amount of land!! the only iron was near the english capital. In the end by the time i was powerfull enough to attack london it was pretty much too late to gain any advantage and build pretorians.

I still took the capital much later so i could build other things but in this game Rome has never built one pretorian!! Instead they had to rely upon axemen to win the day.

If everything falls into place they can be good, but imagine the games where you have no horse. Of course its different for people who use the world builder or reload etc.

If you play a Roman leader and you don't have iron, you're at most average. But if you play Darius and don't have horse (which definitely happens), you are basically like playing the good old Vanilla Washington (except the organized trait has been slightly boosted later), still in pretty good shape. The fin/org combo is really that good. The UB also comes at a really good timing, when health is becoming an issue. The only time I lose with Darius is when I get trapped by an aggressive leader in a small corner without metals and horses at all. But if that happens you'll lose using any other leaders most of the time.

 

[Blaarg]

Strange resoning indeed. Wahington at least has very late=rather useless UU/UB, but Darius is even more overpowered. For this reason i don't chosehim as a leader (I also boycott the Romans for their absurd Praets).
At leats the Darius AI is not too strong.

When washington was Fin/Org, there were no Unique Buildings.

 

[ezwip]

If everything falls into place they can be good, but imagine the games where you have no horse. Of course its different for people who use the world builder or reload etc.

I rarely get access to horsies.

 

[jray]

The AI Darius seldom use immortal rush right, which a human player will pull this one off before 1500BC or even earlier. Darius works best with fast early expansion and I don't see the AI does that. AI also doesn't put CoL high in priority enough to leverage Darius' cheap courthouses (I also wonder if AI whip courthouses at all). The only thing I ever see an AI Darius does is aggressive cottaging. In short I think the AI plays him too conservatively.

I also seldom see the AI plays Elizabeth (never see redcoat beelining) and Pacal (never see Holkan in early rounds, always go for early religion) right.

Same here. I'm disappointed that AI civs rarely play to their strengths like this. They do have some diverse personalities dependent on their diplomacy modifiers and such, but I'd love to see them gravitate more towards strategies that an experienced human would use with the same civ.

 

[Craterus22]

Just because they nerfed Washington for having too a powerful a trait combo (which I'm not sure is why they changed his traits to begin with) doesn't mean they can't change their minds latter.

Maybe they just "forgot"

 

[Calder]

Playing Darius on my last Monarch difficulty game led me to move up a level to Emperor. I was well into the modern age before anyone else started the Industrial age. I'd chosen Darius to try out the new Space Race strategies, and was more than capable. I think his traits have excellent synergy and if used well, he can be quite overpowering both militarily and economically.

 

[zenspiderz]

Playing Darius on my last Monarch difficulty game led me to move up a level to Emperor. I was well into the modern age before anyone else started the Industrial age. I'd chosen Darius to try out the new Space Race strategies, and was more than capable. I think his traits have excellent synergy and if used well, he can be quite overpowering both militarily and economically.

funny i had the same experience in my last game playing Peter of Russia (philo/exp) shooting for space vic and running a pure SE economy. These days I am hooked on SE so I haven't tried Darius yet but if I ever did want to go back to cottaging Darius or lizzy would be my first choice of leader. fin/org is very synergistic and very tempting even for an SE player. Is he overpowered? IMHO no every trait/UU/UB has some strenghts and weakness in different situations and strategies especially so in MP. Fin/org only seems overpowered because the strengths are obvious and the weaknesses less obvious. other combos can be just as powerful but the best strategies and tactics to make them work are less obvious but there none-the-less.

funny thing is in almost every BTS game i have played AI khemer is a serious powerhouse and more often than not my only seroius rival for the win. he is creative/expansive I think, who'd have thought that combo was overpowered?

 

[Bino]

funny thing is in almost every BTS game i have played AI khemer is a serious powerhouse and more often than not my only seroius rival for the win. he is creative/expansive I think, who'd have thought that combo was overpowered?

Is a good mix imho, i love Willem for the creative /financial thing, but Khmer is good too, land grab is easy and quick, very important imho.

I think that Darius, which i never played, if played MP by a good player against a similarly good human would win 9 out of 10 times, maybe is overpowered...