[R&F] A general strategy for Tamar

[megabearsfan]

I've been slacking about posting these on the forums, but I am still writing Civ VI strategy guides as time permits. Last week, I finished up my first guide for Rise & Fall: Tamar of Georgia. Of course, then Firaxis had to go and release a major patch, and they changed some elements of Georgia, such as the strength of the Khevsur unique unit. From my brief experimentation, it doens't look like the 5-point strength increase has made a dramatic difference to how the unit is used, but I'm curious if anybody has found it significantly more potent since the patch. I haven't updated the strategy yet to reflect the patch because I'm curious what the community thinks about this change.

Anyway, in summary: from my experience, Georgia is a religious and defensive civ that acts as a sort of "world police" similar to John Cutin's Australia. The big difference is that Georgia's world policing ability is considerably more difficult to reliable use, and she gains a boost to faith output instead of production (a much less useful bonus). Protectorate Wars have several requirements that can make them difficult to use, especially at higher difficulties. On the higher difficulties, the A.I.s are very aggressive towards city states, and will often conquer many (if not most of them) before you'll be able to discovery the civic that allows Protectorate Wars.

The more important ability of Tamar is that she gets double envoys whenever she sends an envoy to a city state that follows her religion. By founding a religion quickly, and then rapidly spreading it to as many city states as possible, Tamar can enjoy the benefits of having suzerain status with multiple city states, and it will be difficult for other civs to compete.

Georgia's ability to make multiple dedication bonuses, and to receive the normal dedication bonus as well as the Golden Age bonus means that Georgia receives very powerful Golden Ages, and can string them together for large chunks of the game much more easily than other civs.

The Tsikhe and Khevsur unique building and unit feel kind of underwhelming to me. They are expensive to bring into play, their usefuless is very conditional, and they are not particularly powerful. Use them if the opportunity presents itself, of course, just don't build your whole strategy around them.

Unless you are playing as a civ like Greece (who has a hill start bias), you generally don't have to worry much about Georgia's uniques. You can't really do much to stop Georgia from using its Golden Age powers, other than just conquering them. Expect them to have walls, but that's nothing that a few siege weapons shouldn't be able to handle.

The full strategy can be read on my blog:
http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2018/05/03/Civilization-VI-strategy-Tamar-of-Georgia.aspx

I'm curious to know what the community thinks, especially after the recent patch.

 

[AJ22PIZZA]

I don't like Firaxis' design philosophy for Georgia. It's a religious/defensive civ like you said. But, it gets late (Leader Ability) and negligible (Tsikhe) faith bonuses, and on higher difficulties, when defense is beneficial, the bonuses aren't that useful because they come after the make or break period. Georgia is just like Spain where they both suffer from having religious bonuses but no help towards getting/spreading one.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

I don't like Firaxis' design philosophy for Georgia. It's a religious/defensive civ like you said. But, it gets late (Leader Ability) and negligible (Tsikhe) faith bonuses, and on higher difficulties, when defense is beneficial, the bonuses aren't that useful because they come after the make or break period. Georgia is just like Spain where they both suffer from having religious bonuses but no help towards getting/spreading one.

Agree. Georgia clearly needs a religion and they get zero bonuses to actually getting one.Its pretty frustrating. Maybe if Georgian (Spanish too) Holy Sites gave an additional GPP like the Lavra that would help. Tamar's bonus faith should scale with how many walls you make or all wall levels give some raw faith output i.e +1F per level of wall with Tsike being the highest.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Georgia doesn't need a religion, it needs a majority religion. You can spread someone else's without worry so long as the religion founder has no chance for a religious victory (which is likely always except on Pangea maps). Once you have a religion in one of your cities, you can spread it to your other cities and to the City States.

Georgia's biggest bonus is the double Envoys to City States. If the City States are all gone, you're going to be in trouble, so you'll need a plan to protect or liberate them. The ones you keep alive you should be able to get Suzerain status with eventually.

The +1 gold per Envoy Policy can generate a lot of gold for Georgia. With a lot of City States under your influence, the +2 Science/+2 Culture policy per City State is okay, too.

 

[acluewithout]

If Georgia liberates a CS late game, can it get double envoys from liberation (+12 vs +6)?

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Georgia doesn't need a religion, it needs a majority religion. You can spread someone else's without worry so long as the religion founder has no chance for a religious victory (which is likely always except on Pangea maps). Once you have a religion in one of your cities, you can spread it to your other cities and to the City States.

Georgia's biggest bonus is the double Envoys to City States. If the City States are all gone, you're going to be in trouble, so you'll need a plan to protect or liberate them. The ones you keep alive you should be able to get Suzerain status with eventually.

The +1 gold per Envoy Policy can generate a lot of gold for Georgia. With a lot of City States under your influence, the +2 Science/+2 Culture policy per City State is okay, too.

That's a great point about majority religion and tbh I didn't think about that. Still it relies on some factors out of your control as in one of your cities becoming a majority religion which is up to the AI.i like taking DoF with Georgia anyway since its generally just good and it applies to CSs you converted so they can better defend themselves from aggressive AIs so they stay around longer for your benefit.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I have been playing Tamar for the last week. My set up is Pangaea / Everything Random and Standard except for a few Civs that I add into the mix to make games more difficult. I put Korea, Mongolia, and Tommy in the game with the other 4 Civs at Random. This combination seems to make things harder on me.

Games get out of hand many times for me. I have seen many things happen like Mongolia Declaring War on me very early with Horse Barbs all around. Tommy seems to Dow me as well. Korea gets into some crazy snowball where I have seen them at 150 spt on turn 70!

Needless to say the games are difficult or at least for me. I find Tamar to be the worst Civ to play and if not the absolute worst she is one of the the worst.

I find this Civ to be good to play for me if i want to stress out with long games or when I grow tired of using the OP Top Tier Civs but honestly this Civ really is horrid to play IMHO.

I also find this Civ to be good to use to test generic strategies that can work with any Civ. Heck if you can make it work with Tamar you will crush every time with any other Civ!

 

[megabearsfan]

Good feedback. I did make a brief mention that Tamar's ability does not require that she have founded a religion in the original strategy blog. I've bolded that line in response to this feedback so that it will hopefully be more apparent to future readers.

It is worth emphasizing however, that founding a religion and aggressively spreading it can be an excellent source of era score that can help get Georgia into a super-charged Golden Age. I've found that It's worth going for, so long as the investment doesn't hurt you in other areas of the game.

 

[Weraptor]

All Tamar needs is to either get bonus production to all wall levels/make UB offer more faith AND get Great Prophet Points for suzerainty over City States (should be manageable with Amani)

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I still think Tamar is the worst Civ for me but I recently played about 15 games with her on Deity/Pang/All Standard and won a Domination Victory every time. Instead of going with a two city all out blitz like I always enjoy doing I started to play her more slowly and became friends with just about every Civ and picked on the weaker neighbors getting the AI to war with me which worked every time. My point is that when I play with Tamar or England it goes slower and isn't even close to all the other Civs and the difference in Power. When I play Rome or someone stronger or as strong I just steam roll compared to Tamar.

I also find that if I try for a Religion it takes away from Army or Science so I don't finish as fast. Although I agree Religion is more powerful than before I find it to be useless for the most part. I find that it is better to have an Army and Encampments with GGs compared to Holy Sites and GPs. Faith Generation is Great but you don't need a Religion... you just roll the AI and use their Religion and buy things with the Faith Purchase.

 

[chazzycat]

I've been trying to role-play as Tamar for a while and finally am having a bit of success on my 3rd or 4th attempt. My goal was to play a defensive/religious game like she is designed, and not cheat by conquering my neighbors like anyone can do. Strictly faith and defense and eventually religious victory. So I lowered the difficulty to King. Got a fairly average start but inland surrounded by 4 other civs. Perfect for spreading religion and getting into defensive wars. Got my religion on 2 cities/holy sites, then plopped down 4 more with colonization for a total of 6 cities, all inland and fairly decent spots.

At first I thought I was in trouble because I had Russia on one side, Cree built Stonehenge on the other side, plus there was one more competing religion all on my landmass. It took a lot of time to ramp up my faith production compared to Russia. Starting next to Russia was frustrating - seems about as bad of luck as possible. But I decided to stick to the plan anyway...it's King after all. In the early game in addition to crushing my faith output, they also DOWed me a few times, and with much better units. Tamar is really vulnerable at first while you're rushing religion, there's no doubt about that. I barely survived those wars...it was incredibly close. I'm not sure if it was luck, but actually during one of those wars with Russia the AI did one of the smartest things I had ever seen. I had warriors at the time and my worker had just moved onto the iron deposit so I could upgrade to swordsmen, which would have swung the war instantly. Russia nabbed a nearby CS as suzerain and the CS captured my worker 1 turn before he could build the mine. So I got no swords and suffered dramatically as a result. Barely hung on. That was impressive (or lucky).

These wars were all long before you get the unique walls...but still with Tamar at least you have an incentive to build the early walls too. Just having ancient walls did help me in those wars, no doubt. Oh and one other war...my neighboring Aztecs also DOWed once while I was fighting Russia on the other side. With just my walls and 1 archer I held them off until reinforcements arrived.

The point is, the walls actually help, because when holy sites are priority over campuses, you fall behind in science and will get attacked.

After the 3rd peace treaty with Russia my faith output was finally catching up to theirs, and I got crossbows so my military situation stabilized a bit. Around this time things started looking up.

For my pantheon I went with Divine Spark - again looking to speed up the ramp-up process and get a prophet asap. My first beliefs were choral music (culture from holy sites) and cheaper apostles/missionaries. With the 2 apostles from Mahabodhi Temple I added Pilgrimage (+2 faith from each foreign city with your religion) to get the snowball rolling, and also started an inquisition to keep the Russian apostles at bay. Choral music is really good for Tamar - this provides a strong culture output, so you don't really need theaters for a long time. With all the holy sites you're building (at full price) this really limits the number of other districts you can build early. So delaying theaters is incredibly useful. The other beliefs are just designed to snowball faith output. I added mosques later as my last belief.

So far, the whole "city state" part of the strategy has not been very relevant. Even on King level, most of the nearby CS were captured too early. I did manage to secure one CS with my religion, and it was La Venta which was lucky. Now I am building stone heads for more faith and also getting +6 from each temple which is great. But I have not had the chance to declare any protectorate wars yet. Hopefully that will happen later in the game.

However. The other major part of Tamar's ability has ABSOLUTELY been relevant. And that is the golden ages. This is actually a very strong attribute when going for religious victory, and the reason for that is how good the "Exodus of the Evangelists" dedication is. This gives two extra spreads each to missionaries & apostles. With mosques, my apostles have 6 spreads each BEFORE upgrades. Plus the extra movement...it's almost too easy to convert the AI cities.

What makes Tamar unique though, is that when you select "Exodus of the Evangelists" you get all those golden age benefits PLUS you get +2 era score for converting a new city to your religion. Assuming you have spent the early part of the game ramping up your faith output, this makes it completely trivial to chain several golden ages together. Basically you can just keep cranking out these 6-9 spread apostles like forever and keep racking up the era score in addition to whatever benefits you get from spreading the religion. Within no time I had converted 5 of the 6 civs on my landmass to glorious Judaism. I saved Russia for last so that my snowball off the other civs would make me more powerful against the top opponent. We are about even in faith output now, so it should be fun battle. On a smaller/pangea map I'd be well on my way to victory.

A few key things I noticed for Tamar roleplaying strategy:
1) If possible, get a dark age for the classical so you can go heroic in the medieval. Getting to choose basically 6 dedications for the Medieval should really help shore up some of Tamar's weakness in the early game. Unfortunately in my game, I was 1 era point from a dark age on the last turn, but accidentally discovered an unknown AI and missed it. This game probably would have been easier if I had been more careful to avoid that point of era score.
2) Go for the bottom of the civic tree. I usually go for merchant republic as my 2nd tier government, but Tamar is much better suited for Monarchy if you are role playing. Housing from walls and more influence for CS are actually a good match for her abilities. Feel free to switch to theocracy later of course.
3) Try to build the Mahabodhi Temple. Ramping up the religion as fast as possible is crucial for Tamar and this goes a long way towards that goal. It's the only wonder I built so far.
4) Aim for converting a competing religion's holy city early. With all the early focus on religion, my gold economy was just AWFUL. But by converting a holy city, I triggered a religious emergency which ended up giving me over 2,000 gold. At a time when my income was barely 2 digits per turn, that was an absolutely huge moment in the game.

Overall I still think Tamar is one of the weaker civs for sure. Religion is too hard to get on the higher levels. But at least, if you can survive until you get your religion going, that golden age ability really does create a very strong snowball effect. And it can be a fun change of pace for King level...very different from other playstyles. I am having a blast. Just wanted to share that...role playing successfully is possible.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Nice Write Up but War isn't Cheating!?
Might as well say everything in this game is Cheating!
Playing on King = Cheating!?
Religious Victory = Cheating!?
Micro Magnus = Cheating!?
Micro Amani = Cheating!?
Defender of the Faith = Cheating!?
Crusader = Cheating!?
Harvest Pantheon = Cheating!? Since I get it 90% of the time now it might be Cheating!
Stealing Workers or Settlers = Cheating!?
Selling the AI Resources = Cheating!?
etc etc etc.

Honestly the game is nothing but Exploit and Civ VI is the easiest Version of the game!

 

[chazzycat]

Sorry, I guess that wasn't the best choice of words - I don't think war is "cheating". Just my intention for that game was to avoid it and role play as defensive and try to make it work.

 

[Roxlimn]

Georgia is starting to gel for me, and I agree with Trav'ling Canuck. Georgia's chief strength is her double Envoys and her double Golden Age. The Tsikhe is an incidental bonus - kind of like the Tlachtli with the Aztecs. Your gameplay won't be impacted by them much, even when you focus on building them everywhere. Like normal Renaissance Walls, they can provide a relatively easy source of +3 Tourism, but that's not multiplied by anything, so meh. Even with +3 Faith, it's not much of an incentive. I'll build one for the Era Bonus maybe, though Tamar needs this less than most. Her Golden Ages are more or less assured.

Naturally, the +100% Faith here is also incidental. It's nice if you have good Faith output. Could be decent with Grandmaster's Chapel, so snag that instead of Intelligence Agency.

But her real bonus is that she can snag 6 Envoy bonuses from multiple City States - even all City States very quickly, so long as they're the same as her religion. On the higher levels, you can use a neighboring Civ's religion and still snag your double bonuses, though you may need to war to free captive City States. Of course, this grants you Suzerainty status, but the 6 Envoy bonus is what you're really after. On lower levels, some warring may still be required though often not, but you'll likely have to start up your own Religion and then spread them yourself, because waiting for the AI to do it will take forever. The early "bonus" you get with Georgia will depend on which City States are on your Continent. The best ones are Science (naturally), and snagging multiple early 3 Envoy bonuses for 10 Science Libraries is your early bonus. This sets you up for Education and 12 Science Universities (before Rationalism). This tech route is good for Georgia because it requires Mathematics, which means you can just set up a Spearman (when it's cheap to make) for a random Barb or war kill and the Khevsur availability is basically a gimme. Still not as much as Knights, though (bitter). The unit itself isn't good. It's very useful for specialized hill conflicts, and that's basically it.

If you get multiple Religious City States on your Continent, the double Envoys sets you up for massive Faith income really quickly - 6 Faith Shrines and 8 Faith Temples. This route is most compatible with the Tsikhe because with multiple Holy Sites and Temples (and Choral Music), Monarchy is an fast Tier 2 to get and the extra Envoys and Military Cards allows you to run Limes basically all the time and builds your Walls quite fast. You can even overflow it for +100% chop bonus. The massive faith gears you up for a Religious Vic, as do the Religious Suzerainty bonuses. Theocracy can be a later your government type for this one, and the Faith discount plus your massive Faith income goes surprisingly well with Grandmaster's Chapel and warring. What you'll usually do is go for Exodus of the Evangelists, which will advance Religious Vic as well as snag you any possible overseas City States.

Multiple Commercial City States dictates a CH approach with a heavy focus on trading. +10 Gold Markets are incredible early, and +13 Gold Banks make the cog cost very much worth the investment. Fortunately or unfortunately, this means the Tier 2 you're gunning for is Merchant Republic. Your Trade Routes will make Medieval Faires a cinch to unlock, but Exploration Inspiration requires 2 Caravels, which requires Cartography (ugh). Reina is your Governor of Choice for this one, as she makes CH/Harbor sites truly shine and her insta-buy ability can snag you the Cartography Eureka (outright buying the second Harbor) quickly. Your massive gold income makes this feasible. Foreign Ministry can work remarkably well here, allowing you to levy City State forces for half the gold, and leaving the other half for upgrading occasionally outdated forces. And you get +4 Strength. Not bad.

I haven't done Industrial, Cultural, or Military City State bonus plays with Georgia. IZs, Theater Squares, and Encampments are less desirable districts, and Industrial and Military bonus outputs are conditional.

These are plays you can generally do with other Civilizations, but you can't do them quite as fast as you can with Georgia, because Georgia gives you double Envoys. You could Suzerain one or two, and generally you pick your CS based on the Suzerainty bonus. With Georgia, you do that, too, but you also just send Envoys to them all and reap the bonuses. Kilwa Kisiwani is a key Wonder for Georgia both because she doubles the Envoys output and because you'll generally be Suzerain of at least two City States with similar bonuses, granting you +15% to your output of that type Civilization-wide.

Past the early game, other Civs will inch towards 6 Envoy bonuses as well, but Georgia will then move towards 6 Envoy bonuses towards all City States on her Continent, and potentially all City States, period.

This can tie into her Golden Age ability. Basically, her ability is that she can Golden Age indefinitely, and she can usually pick whatever she wants as her "Civ ability." Granted, other Civs also have a base ability, but they'll need to hustle to maintain a Golden Age, whereas Georgia can basically just do whatever. Emblematic of this is Exodus of the Evangelists, but especially To Arms! With this Golden Age, other Civs can war without much Warmonger Penalties, but they have to pace this with other Era accomplishments or risk falling into a Dark Age. With Georgia, the war she declares can itself score her Era points, meaning she can maintain a war footing indefinitely, get Era Points for killing units, and STILL get almost no diplomatic repercussions for it. Reform the Coinage is easy mode for Georgia. She gets incredible trade routes and she scores Era Points just for having those same trade routes. To Arms! is very useful for freeing captive City States. The initial declaration penalty is negligible, and you don't get Warmonger Penalties for freeing City States. In fact, you'll get a lot of positive diplo modifiers for doing that, especially with Australia. And you'll get Suzerainty to boot. If you have a Religion, don't forget to pack an Inquisitor and establish your Religion before turning over the city keys.

So. To me, Georgia isn't a defensive religious Civ, but a flexible diplomatic Civ whose main interests are freeing City States and hoovering up the type bonuses for massive district outputs.

 

[Midgardsormr]

First, megabears fan: Thanks for the guide. And chazzycat for your comments above. Both helped me to clarify how I approached a recent Georgian campaign:

Immortal difficulty, Huge Continents. I had a couple of false starts—a horse barbarian camp spawn right on top of me at the beginning of one game. I didn't even get my second warrior built before they razed my city. In the second I'd configured a young world, without figuring on how productive that can make AI cities. Rome was producing three archers per turn, and I gave that one up in frustration after failing three times to liberate the CS he'd taken.

In the game I finally won, I got lucky and encountered Valletta early, sent a missionary to convert it, and achieved suzerainty easily. Since I was already emphasizing faith, that let me easily buy Ancient and Medieval walls in all of my cities as soon as they were founded. Victoria was my nearest neighbor, but even she was somewhat distant, so I got a DoF and maintained her as an ally for the entire game. She screened me off from the rest of the continent, and forward settling her let me preserve a large segment of the continent for my own cities. I deliberately fell into a dark Classical age so I could have a heroic Medieval period. Monumentality + Exodus of the Evangelists created some internal conflict, as I had too many things to spend not quite enough faith on—Goddess of the Harvest naturally helped, but not quite as much as I'd have liked—I had little rainforest and only a few forests and quarries. I think I got more faith from marshes and copper than I did from the usual sources. I missed Mahbodhi Temple by a few turns, but Wilhelmina conveniently attacked Carthage, offering me the opportunity to wage a Protectorate War and buy my two Apostles the hard way.

For my beliefs I took Choral Music, Mosques, Religious Unity, and Monastic Isolation. Relgious Unity was a bit of a gamble, as I didn't know how it would work with Tamar's ability. It turns out that the leader ability is evaluated last, so if you run Diplomatic League, you get four free Envoys by converting a City State! (One from Unity turns into two from League, and then Tamar doubles each of them.) So I only needed to send one "real" Envoy to each City State to get the full six, and keeping suzerainty was trivially easy on top of that, if I wanted it.

My empire was small and technologically stunted, but once I'd gotten into Theology, I just didn't care. My millennia-long alliance with England protected me from wars—Tomyris, Wilhelmina, Peter and Philip all tried to attack me at one time or another, but Victoria was my eternal bulwark against them, freeing me to spend all of my resources on faith production. Encountering Spain early made me nervous; I fully expected the Spanish Inquisition, but they still managed to surprise me… by not appearing. Oh, there were a couple of inquisitors out there, but I think my missionary onslaught caught Philip unprepared. By the time he knew there was a problem, I'd crushed all Islamic resistance. I stationed a pair of Apostles outside his holy city to prevent his last Inquisitor from reconverting it, and that's all she wrote. That let me turn my attention to the other continent, where I knew Gandhi was waiting for me. I'd managed to fend off his early missionaries, but it was certain that he was going to be my most potent foe eventually.

A couple of coastal city states gave me a nice religious beachhead into Greece. I negotiated a religious alliance with Scotland to ensure that Judaism wouldn't spread into the areas I was working, and I went to work on the Sikhs. I also sent a Debater around to start exploring the continent. The Debater was forced to withdraw when he encountered a Scottish apostle right after getting into a tussle with some Hindu missionaries.

About that time, I got a piece of gossip that Yerevan had declared war on Mongolia. Well geez! Yerevan would make this thing way easier! So I retasked every missionary and apostle with only one charge left to search for it. I found it eventually, and, naturally, it was next door to India and on the exact opposite side of the globe from Georgia. My religious conversion approach was going to take a good long time if I had to spend so much movement to get up there and dedicate enough force to keep Gandhi from reconverting it. But the side benefit of my strategy was that I had been holding back a large number of envoys. I saved a few turns worth of faith (during a Protectorate war—thanks again Wilhelmina!) and then dumped 16 envoys on Yerevan all at once. I also stationed a spy there to start fabricating scandals. With most of my envoys spent, I had to rely on the spy to reduce Gandhi's influence. With Yerevan's help, and Moksha's Patron Saint ability, and a whopping 800 faith per turn thanks to the war, I was able to start spamming powerful Apostles. Debater + Pilgrim enabled me to park an Apostle next to an Indian city and convert it at my leisure—the inquisitors could do little to stop him, and with 7 spreads, a single Apostle could convert most cities on his own given enough time. The Galapagos Islands were conveniently located right between the two continents and on my way to Scotland, so I didn't even need to detour to get those extra spreads. The other combo I employed was Proselytizer + Translator. One hit instantly converted most cities. Those guys ran as fast as they could through the second continent, hitting each city once. The majority of cities converted from one spread. Those that didn't either succumbed to pressure or were visited by a Debater a few turns later to finish the job.

The Protectorate War, while powerful, happens too randomly to rely upon. And it creates a certain tension in the game where you don't want to accept every offer of friendship you receive. Normally in a relatively peaceful game, I take any opportunity I can get to prevent the AI from warring with me. In this case, the only nation I really wanted to keep on the good side of was England, due to her proximity. I lost out on three Protectorate wars due to friendships and alliances. I missed one when England attacked La Venta—I preserved the city by positioning some units around it. I missed another because I mis-clicked and accepted a friend request from France; when she assaulted Kandy I could only stand around and watch. The third was due to that religious alliance with Scotland. On balance I think it was the right move, but it sure would have been nice to get another ten turns of 600+ faith production at that point in time. I was having a hard time stamping out Eastern Orthodoxy in France and Russia and could have used a few more missionaries.

The repeated Golden Ages are indeed glorious. I quickly ran out of Exodus of the Evangelists and Reform the Coinage options. Sic Hunt Draconis wasn't much use—I found one natural wonder and two continents with it, and I only got the opportunity to sink one fleet. But I discovered that Archaeologists don't vanish until their museum is full. If you sell artifacts to the AI, you can use one Archaeologist to dig up several museums worth of loot. And I'll admit that I did occasionally use the trade screen bug to take every dime Philip had, but he's a jerk, so I didn't feel too bad about. Even without the bug, I eventually sucked all the other nations dry. I even wound up gifting a couple of artifacts to Pericles just so my archaeologist wouldn't retire and I could keep harvesting era score. Victoria and Wilhelmina were very helpful in providing a dozen shipwrecks convenient to my shores. I did briefly switch into and out of Communism to get some additional era score when it looked like I might not make the Information Golden Age.

It wasn't a particularly fast victory, but I don't play for speed—I play mostly to see if I can do something interesting, like exploiting that synergy between Religious Unity and Tamar's ability. I'm not sure Georgia is a civ I'll choose deliberately very often, but it was a fun game once it got moving. A bit painful early on since the unique features take a while to come online, and concentrating so hard on getting a religion means that early war is difficult.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think Religious Unity is okay, but Papal Primacy is better. Tamar doubles Envoys from all sources as long as the City State is your Religion, so for overseas States, it's a simple matter of sending a Proselytizer to reduce the entrenched religion and then sending Envoys. The first few won't be doubled, but you'll convert it fast enough. After that, scoring the quest Envoys gives you double Envoys, and each one will pour more Religious pressure in.

Merchant Confederation can be ridiculous with Tamar as you could easily be in double digit Envoys in every City State by the midgame. +80 Gold from a diplomatic card? Sure!

 

[Midgardsormr]

I think Religious Unity is okay, but Papal Primacy is better. Tamar doubles Envoys from all sources as long as the City State is your Religion, so for overseas States, it's a simple matter of sending a Proselytizer to reduce the entrenched religion and then sending Envoys. The first few won't be doubled, but you'll convert it fast enough.

I thought about Papal Primacy, but it seemed backward to me: Send envoys to increase religion rather than send religion to increase envoys. On balance, envoys are a much more limited resource than faith. I may give it a try next time, though; it's like the lazy man's evangelism. The only real trouble I had with Unity was the travel time and finding Yerevan in the very last bit of fog on the map. Even that wouldn't have been such a problem if I hadn't forgotten about a string of missionaries on auto-pilot crossing Mongolia when war broke out.

 

[Roxlimn]

It's likely better on King where I play. On this setting, you can sometimes still find islands where City State have suzereins but no religions. In those cases, it's often more expedient to just spend Envoys for the conversion in addition to the exploring Missionary. This is especially true if you're spending your Faith buying units for war, or your focus is on Commercial Hubs and not Holy Sites. Georgia's ability to get that early 6 Envoy bonus is really special - you're often racing for Banking or Education to keep up with the Envoys. And here people were thinking Newton's paltry +2 bonus early on is something special, when Georgia can usually spring for +8 or +12!