G&K Newbie

Sorry for being so behind the times, I've played Civ 5 Vanilla for three years, and more or less mastered the game.

I just got around to upgrading to G&K, and now I'm really struggling at Emperor. I have a few questions. I like to play Bismarck, but that Civ seems to struggle in G&K for a few reasons. Mainly because they don't get Landschnects for a long time. Is this an obsolete Civ?

How important is faith to a conquest driven game? Obviously, buying 2 GS's with faith is nice, but other than that? It seems that conquest has gotten much more difficult because of all the staggered unit types.

Anyhow, I'm trying to break habits I got paying vanilla, any suggestions would be welcome.

I'm not thinking of any G&K changes that weakened Germany.

It only got changed in the BNW fall 2013 patch in light of the Zulus having been added though.

The main reason that conquest may be more difficult in G&K is that the G&K fall patch taught the AI how to properly cash rush units, which all the AIs took advantage of to get larger armies. As a side effect it also greatly increased war declarations.

Faith is a new tool to happiness management in G&K, if you found a religion, pick something giving happiness bonuses as a follower belief. But if your AI neighbor did that you can use their religious happiness follower beliefs instead.