[R&F] Civ of the Week: Georgia

[acluewithout]

• Leader: Tamar.
  
  
• Leader Ability: Glory to the World, Kingdom and Faith. +100 Faith for 10 Turns after declaring a Protectorate War. Each Envoy sent to a City-State following Georgia's Majority Religion counts as 2 Envoys.

• Civ Ability: Strength in Unity. Dedications in a Golden and Heroic Age also provide their "Normal Age" bonuses in addition to their Golden Age bonuses.
  
  
• Unique Unit: Khevsur. Unique Medieval Melee Unit, unlocks at Military Tactics. Melee Strength 45, Move 2, Production 160, Maintenance 3. +7 Combat Strength when Fighting Hills (also when fighting on Hills). No movement penalty from Hill Terrain.
  
  
• Unique Infrastructure: Tsikhe. Unique Renaissance Walls. Just like normal Renaissance Walls but you get +3 Faith and some little flags or something.

• Leader Agenda: Narikala Fortress. Original resting place of the Iron Throne of the Third Age of Wielding, before the Age of Men and Women that Look like Men and also Dogs that Look Like Men and so, so many beards. Also, likes Civs that build Walls and dislikes Civs that don't build walls.

• Interesting links: [Sigh. I'll get there eventually.]

 

[KayAU]

Oh, Georgia.

• Leader Ability - Glory of the World, Kingdom and Faith

I don't like this ability. Protectorate wars come up very rarely, and even if they do happen, +100% faith per turn for 10 turns isn't going to be too helpful. Perhaps if it was combined with the ability to purchase units with faith at a discounted price, it would have been good for the few situations where it applied. The other part of the ability, double envoys in city states which have Georgia's majority religion, is also quite weak. I tend to end up as the suzerain of all surviving city states in any case, and for far-away city states, spreading my religion to them takes significant time and effort in order to get this bonus.​

• Civilization Ability - Strength in Unity

Another fairly weak ability. It will get you a few more Golden Age points during Golden Ages, which can be useful. Usually, however, I find that it is easy to get enough points without this ability.​

• Unique Unit - Khevsur

It's not great. A little bit weaker than a Knight or Samurai, less mobile than a Knight or Berserker. As with the Samurai or Berserker, you can't upgrade your Swordsmen into it. It has a combat bonus (+7) and slightly faster movement on hills, but I don't see too many situations where that would be significant. In comparison, the Samurai's pure strength and consistent damage output, and the Berserker's mobility, pillaging speed and attack power just seem more useful.​

• Unique Infrastructure - Tsikhe

A 15% discount on Renaissance Walls, which then get +3 faith. Oh my. For one thing, I hardly ever build Renaissance Walls. They arrive too late in the game, and my cities are hardly ever under serious military threat, certainly not at this point in the game. The production discount is really small, and you still have to build Ancient and Medieval Walls to get there. For the monumental effort to get these, the +3 faith is not great either.
I suppose if these replaced Medieval Walls, but retained the same defensive strength, housing bonus and faith generation, they might have been okay. I also would have liked if you could purchase them with faith.​

So there you go, 4 abilities, none of which are very good or synergize well. I wish Georgia had been a lot better. On a positive note, I enjoy their musical theme and the fact that they are included. However, I think their abilities need a complete rework.

 

[Kwami]

On the plus side, Georgia has a great leader, colors, and musical theme!

 

[XplosiveLun]

I've won an Immortal religious victory with Georgia recently. In essence, Georgia doesn't have any particular strengths that helps it surviving an early game and consolidate in the mid-game. However, you don't simply "go" to get a bonus. You "wait" for the bonus to come in play. Its UA, UB, and UU can be useful when situation is right. The UA and UB also have great synergy.

Glory of the World, Kingdom and Faith

• +100% Faith for the next 10 turns after declaring a Protectorate War

• Each Envoy sent to a city-state of Georgia's majority Religion counts as two Envoys.

I deliberately separates this UA into two parts. The reason is that the second part comes in play earlier. Essentially, double envoys for city-states following your religion will ensure you eventually getting their first, third, and sixth envoy bonus, and suzerain bonus, faster if done right. In order to maximize this UA, you might want to delay sending envoys to city-states until they follow your religion. On the other hand, this UA gives you higher chance to declare Protectorate War in the first place, after researching Diplomatic Service. Given that you most likely have more envoys than your opponents. It might also counteracts on AI getting envoys faster in higher difficulty. To maximize the synergy of extra envoys from religion, Religious Unity as founder belief is also recommended, which grants 1 envoy upon converting city-state and completing missions. The only downside of a Georgian religion game is that you'll have a rough time securing a religion. You best bet would be choosing the Divine Spark pantheon which increase your chance to grab a great prophet.

For the second part, I'll have to emphasize that "you are here just for the faith bonus". The second part is situational. You can't actively seek to use this casus belli since it relies on passive-aggressiveness. When someone, especially denounced rivals, attack your city-states, you should always use it. You don't have to care whether you could kill their units or capture their cities. You're just for the faith bonus. It works exceptionally well when the attacker is far away from you where their military would have hard time coming to you. You could just sit there and wait for the faith to come.

Strength in Unity

• When making Dedications at the beginning of a Golden Age or Heroic Age, receive the Normal Age bonus towards improving Era Score in addition to the other bonus.

I don't have much say on this UA since I have only experience a few times. However, it might be powerful in theory . In practice, this UA ensures you not falling into a dark age immediately after a golden age by giving you some extra score. You can also get higher score during heroic age by selecting 3 dedications to have 3 bonus and 3 ways to improve your score. Plus ultra.

Khevsur

• Production cost was decreased from 180 to 160
• 45 Combat Strength
• +7 Combat Strength and no Movement penalties in Hills.

I'm always welcome at unique units. For most part, it's because they replace a powerful unit that would otherwise require strategic resource, which sometimes is hard to find. With Khevsur, you're guaranteed a medieval swordsman-line unit with decent combat ability. Whenever your unique units online, you should strive for conquest. It's not saying you should conquer the world with this unit till the end of world. But rather, you should try to expand a bit by conquering 1-2 neighbours to expand your domestic economy. It is enough to ensure a victorious game. After that, just grow your city and ready for going to space.

What's Khevsur's strength? Well, it is a medieval units. That's it. And a little extra strength for its timeline. For one thing, Khevsur doesn't siphon resources when you're attempting to found a religion. You could always secure a religion, then switching to conquest, with a UU. You would want to start preparing encampments and barracks immediately after you have secured a religion. With great general and battering ram, you could ensure a successful conquest against your neighbour.

Tsikhe

• Lower Production cost (265 vs. 305).
• +3 Faith.
• +50 Outer Defense Strength.
• +3 Housing under the Monarchy Government.
• +3 Tourism (with Conservation)

This UB actually have great synergy with its UAs. When declaring Protectorate War against stronger enemies, when you cannot attack them, then defend against them. The extra 3 Faith also comes in handy. As Georgia, you have great incentive to build walls, both defensively and for faith generation. With reduced cost, Tsikhe is built with only 87% of time of Renaissance wall. With Lime, which gives +100% production. With these two modifier, Tsikha is built in only 43.5% of time. You could easily fortify even your underdeveloped cities. Before switching to Theocracy government, Monarchy government is a nice transition government that gives extra housing.

Edit: I love Georgia's theme.

 

[Softly]

I'm very disappointed with the Tsikhe. I understand that Firaxis didn't want to make them too strong as they are the only Unique Building that can be built in every city (being city center) but +3 faith in the renaissance era for something that requires massive amounts of production to get too is absolutely terrible. A couple suggestions to make the Tsikhe stronger and more interesting (these are on top of the current benefits).

(1) Grants +1 envoy to all city states within 8 tiles. This helps enable legitimate (city states you can actually defend) protectorate wars.

(2) Grants +3 yield of any city state that shares a border with this city. I like this one as it gives you an incentive to settle forward “fortresses” to defend your city states. Also nice because you would be building them strategically, not just spamming in all of your cities.

(3) Grants an additional +3 faith during a Golden Age. This synergizes well with the civ ability and makes the Tsikhe quite strong during Golden Age protectorate wars (will give +12 faith)

(4) Grants faith on city strikes. Can be equal to 100% of the defeated unit or some other mechanism. Can also make it 50% and be any combat within borders. Imagine a Mongol/Arab horde trampling through your empire only to be broken upon your city wall. Historically Georgia was invaded many times by foreign powers and each time they were repelled the piety of the country was strengthened.

(5) Walls immediately begin generating tourism, instead of at Conservation. I really like this one since it gives Georgia a leg up at a cultural victory and makes them less one dimensional. Earlier tourism is always nice with religious civs since it synergizes well with relics.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

The best thing about Georgia is that it's in the game. An interesting new civ for the series.

The second best thing about Georgia is that Tamar doesn't annoy me when she shows up for diplomatic messages, unlike many of the other leaders.

The third best thing about Georgia is I can safely always play as Tamar during my AI test games, letting me cycle through the other 35 leaders every 5 games. Georgia is the weakest AI civ by such a clear margin that there's no need to test to see how well Tamar would do. If she could win the game, another leader starting in her location could win it faster.

I will say, however, that the Strength in Unity ability is quite good when playing peacefully. If you're warring, you're probably going to be in Golden Ages all the time anyway. If you're playing peacefully, its a bit more of a struggle, but much less so for Georgia. And if you go Classical Dark Ages, in the Heroic Age that follows Tamar doesn't just get 3 Golden Age bonuses, she also gets all 3 of the Normal Age bonuses towards era score associated with them, letting you blow through the Golden Age threshold for the next era at lightning speed.

The double Envoys can also be good way to turn Envoys into gold using the appropriate policy card. You don't even need to found a religion, as long as your neighbour spreads their religion to you and an adjacent City State, you can pile dozens of envoys into that one City State and then get 2 Gold from each. It at least makes Envoys more useful if the AI has conquered most of the City States in your game.

 

[Weraptor]

The biggest hit for Georgia is the lack of guaranteed religion. Perhaps being a suzerain of a city-state could provide some GPPs (Amani comes into mind)? Khevsurs are an alright unit after the buff (I still don't understand why Georgia doesn't have a hill bias), Civ ability helps towards earlier Golden Ages (Exodus of the Evangelist is overall the best for Georgia). Tamar's LUA can get you a whopping amount of faith ready to be used to expand your religion/faith-purchase military/stockpile for park goodness/secure a GP) and further ties Georgia's religion and city-diplomacy scheme. Having a strong military presence is beneficial for Tamar, so she can liberate fallen city-states and convert them and/or fight against new oppressors. Their wall replacement is however very weak and I rarely build it more than once or twice, it really could use a buff. I like Softly's fourth suggestion, everybody would need to see those magnificently colored fortifications.

Overall, I really like Georgia, even if it is probably one of the weakest civs atm. They have quite a unique playstyle, require a decent set of planning and thought, plus the colors and music truly shine. Heh.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Khevsurs are an alright unit after the buff (I still don't understand why Georgia doesn't have a hill bias).

Khevsurs would be alright if they weren't on a leaf tech. Having to slow down your tech advancement to get them really hurts. Generally you can bypass them and just go straight to Musketmen, which your Warriors/Swordsmen can upgrade into. If you don't have Nitre and you get attacked, then one Khevsur bumps up the defence value of your cities. Or if you need the era score, one Khevsur gets that for you. I'm not sure there's any value to the Khevsur otherwise.

And I agree that a hill bias would be a simple, flavourful way to help this underpowered civ.

 

[Archon_Wing]

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/86t4gj/civ_of_the_week_georgia/dw7rs0b/

Ah, pretty much the same as I wrote before. They're pretty bad and sometimes situationally mediocre. Less so since their UU was improved. I guess it's a matter between them and Egypt, though Egypt's weakness isn't as horrid if you're not playing from the view of efficiency. As much.

Needs a buff I'd say. I think they're in the same league as Spain for the same reason-- tied to a religion. But Spain at least has those conquistadors.

I think the abilities are very situational and the best one to me is strangely enough the 100% faith on declaring a protectorate war but even in those cases the dice have to fall into place; in my case I put an encampment right against a CS, but then Saladin still killed it when I wasn't looking. (Well, Liberation is good too) Faith is good though, even if you're not going for religion.

But that also highlights the other issue that holds Georgia back. Firaxis has made CS's less of a punching bag but the problem is CS's can still die fast and that negates your abilities. You can be vigilant with the Protectorate Wars but at the same time if you're going to do that, then you should look at just liberating the CS and killing the offender for good.

Funny enough, I think the biggest buff to Georgia will be if they ever introduce a diplomatic victory.

The UU? Well, to be honest I sorta just ignored it since it comes at that useless tech. And the unique wall is underwhelming but at least it costs less.

The Golden Age ability is sorta neat but then again I just didn't find it a big deal. Maybe in those circumstances where you're just a bit off it could help and they might just be the only people that want to build the Taj Mahal actively. My complaint about it is that it doesn't actually help you get a golden age, and its benefit basically does not start until medieval. If you fail to get the first Golden Age, it's going to take even longer, so this feels like more of a snowball ability and less valuable to me.

Due to the lack of bonuses to getting a religion, I don't see them as a religious victory oriented civ. A faith supported conquest or culture victory seems to be more suitable. (Remember that Naturalists cost a ton of faith and you can faith buy great people). Grand Master's Chapel will be nice. On Emperor or so, I can usually ensure Divine Spark + Oracle which helps me pull for a religion or just some early writers. YMMV on higher

AI Tamar isn't too annoying, depending on your playstyle. I tend to build a lot of walls especially when Limes comes up so usually we're sorta cool, though it is rare for whatever reason to become an ally.

 

[Disgustipated]

I still don't understand why Georgia doesn't have a hill bias

I thought they did have a hill bias? I started on my hills in my game. See below.

Strength in Unity: Probably their best ability at the moment. This is the only Georgia feature I feel helped me in my victory. I already played a complete game yesterday. It was fast. Religious victory tends to be fast. Having Exodus of the Evangelist certainly helped me out. Other than that, I don't think any of their abilities helped me in my game. I never built the walls. I only built one set of medieval walls on a city I thought Spain may threaten. I can't say no to golden ages, so this ability I rank as a B. Would be an A, but it's very difficult to get heroic age with these guys. Your only shot is to get a classical dark age.

Glory of the World: I never declared a single Protectorate war in my game. The faith ability is completely useless. The envoy thing is alright. It was an easy way to get up to 3 envoys with Diplomatic League early on. But this doesn't really help you in any victory type as far as I'm concerned. Grade: F

Khevsur: I'm reluctant to grade this one since I really never used it. I built one for era points, not that I needed them, but I thought I might. I never used it offensively, though it did get attacked by a frigate once. As with all the later UU's at this point, I find them useless since my playstyle means I'll never be at war this late in the game unless I'm going for Conquest victory with a Conquest orientated Civ. This is not that civ. This unit is worthless to me.

Tsikhe: Completely worthless to me. Does anyone build Rennaissance Walls? At the difficulty level I play they aren't needed. Grade: F

Overall I rank this civilization as grade F. It is failing and Firaxis needs to fix it. Worst of all they aren't even fun. At least with Norway you can say they are fun because they have some fun little abilities you can play around with. But these abilities are so rare you will actually use them. Yes I did get a fairly fast Religious victory in my game, faster than the religious victory in my Scythia game. But none of that was because of this civ's abilities, though Strength in Unity made it easier to get golden ages and hence Exodus of the Evangelist, so you can say this ability partially helped my religious victory. Everything else is worthless. I can see what they were going for, a defensive civ. But it just doesn't work. It's a Civ I will not play again unless Firaxis makes some major changes to it. My victory was only as fast as it was because of plains hill start, and good starting location with mountains, rainforest (not too far away), and 2 Natural wonders not too far away, and knocking out 2 nearby civs.

Here's my starting location for my game. It may look like a TSL map, but it's not, it just looks appropriate for a starting location for Georgia.

Spoiler :

And my final screenshot. I could have won this game faster, but I took the time to convert every city, not just half. Half religious conversion is cheesy, just like taking capitals for Conquest victory. I won't do it. It's all or nothing. I believe I converted every city in the world except for Brussels whom I met too late and didn't have any nearby apostles. I also didn't beeline Cartography which would have made things faster.

Spoiler :

C1 is the starting save if anyone wants to play my game. Who can pass up that sweet starting location which looks perfect for Georgia. C3 is the final save for anyone who wants to see a setup for converting every city in the world to your religion. It's just a whole bunch of holy sites LOL. I never even got around to building lots of builders, so I have lots of unimproved tiles.

 

[Scaramanga]

Protectorate wars are one of the most accessible casus belli I find, with the AI attacking city states often. I haven't declared one with Tamar yet but it can mean being paranoid about any potential ally civ taking one out.

 

[Weraptor]

I thought they did have a hill bias? I started on my hills in my game. See below.

I dug through the game files, and they don't.

 

[liv]

The one possible good thing about Georgia (in addition to the pretty colour scheme) is the incentive to get into a classical dark age as a religious civ with holy sites and take advantage of the science from holy sites card. It can be quite powerful for the bit that the dark age lasts.
In my game I was lucky enough to have horses and Poland as a neighbour who always build holy sites so that made my classical age quite glorious really.
No luck with the protective war or the envoys. Russia is in the game and Lavras made them establish their religion as a major world relgion before I was out of the gate. Georgia like Khmer needs a little bit help in getting up faster Holy Sites or generating fath.
I had no luck getting any of the faith giving pantheons. Having Armagh as my ally for a bit was somewhat helpful as I managed to get out quite a few monestaries before Russia took Armagh. I am behind. Russia is controlling religion. Gilgabro has the science lead. America and Russia are pushing out great writers and Scotland generates a ton of great scientist points. War is all that is left. Maybe I will build a Khevur next and see how it does against Nubia's knights
I'll use limes and magnus and chop in some walls at some point for the era score. Those three faiths for all that effort may come in handy (NOT)

Spoiler :

 

[Archon_Wing]

Played a game and nothing to really talk about. Thought it was cool getting Goddess of the Harvest fast, but was stuck on a crappy island forever.... and only 1 CS. Kandy was good, but couldn't find many natural wonders. Basically worst case scenario since nothing to do with any of Georgia's abilities, but it sure liked to make me lose suzerainity as soon as the thing got overran!

Probably shouldn't have founded a religion, but at least this St. Basil's City and Amundsen Scott was cool. (literally)

I'll try to roll a better map.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

I like the general idea Firaxis was going with Georgia: Defensive, tall, religious, medieval, patron of city states, focuses on new golden age mechanic, etc.. They have a very different playstyle and I appreciate that. But the implementation is just so lacking. Much has been said already about them being a religious civ without any bonuses to founding their religion. The problem with that is even if they do manage to found a religion (even a good one), how they go about spreading the religion is so inefficient.

Tried them out on King and got lucky: Earth Goddess as pantheon (although I couldn't immediately settle the good tiles), Choral Music (because I'm building HS buildings and I need to fly through the culture tree) and Papal Primacy. Papal Primacy is a belief I never take, but it does work really well with them. It spreads your religion to a city state every time you send an envoy. It synergizes so well with their civ and makes a good feedback loop: Convert a city state, now every envoy I send is worth two (Tamar's leader ability), and it adds more religious pressure for me (Papal Primacy). As cool as that is, I never EVER waste my time converting city states when I play religious games. If you're going for an RV, it's actually quite a waste. Why waste missionaries/apostles to convert a bunch of city states when you should be converting the enemy? And to make it worse, the AI absolutely loves to send missionaries/apostles to city-states. I've had more than one game where their apostles just wander through my territory, never even attempting to convert my cities, but they ram them all into a city state.

So why would I even be spending my effort to convert city states? Well, it does help with the 2-envoy bonus. But also because if I'm suzerain, and someone attacks my city state, then I get 100% faith generation (for 10 turns). But it's not like I was generating much faith to begin with anyways. Because I have no bonuses to making holy sites, I have no adjacency bonuses, I have nothing. I'm not Russia with Dance of the Aurora, nor Khmer with a dozen martyrs, or even Japan with three holy sites next to each other. It's just so unreliable. I have to jump through all these hoops first to finally take advantage of my bonus to convert others. It's almost like Georgia is a civ that encourages you to found a religion and generate faith, but not go after a religious victory. And it doesn't give you any bonuses to do any other victory. You just hope whatever bonuses you get from golden ages and city states will carry you to victory.

Finally, the Tsikhe is easily the worst of all unique building/improvement/districts of any civ. Not only are Renaissance Walls already pretty pointless, all they add is a slight discount and 3 faith. Just WHY? You shouldn't even be building Ren Walls, there's better use of your production. And if you need them because you're getting hit that hard by the AI, then you're just playing the game wrong to begin with. But even if the playstyle encourages you to turtle up and let them hammer at your gates, then at least give you an incentive. If you're going to have Unique Walls they should be really damn good.

I don't know, maybe they're better as a weird scientific civ. Create a religion to get Jesuit Education and Wats. Convert scientific city states, get 2 envoys, spread your religion further. You're in the hills so you're near mountains for campus bonuses. Use your golden ages for scientific bonuses or spend excess faith on settlers/builders. That would actually be a fun game to try.

 

[acluewithout]

Georgia seem to suffer from having a whole lot of bonuses that sit smack bang in the middle of three mechanics that just don’t quite work.

Religion. I really like how religion works generally. I like the race to found a religion, I like how it lets you customise your Civ, I like how it lets you change the benefits population gives you, I like the opportunity for a different type of military conflict, and I like how it synergise with other mechanics - science, culture, tourism, loyalty. There are a few things I’d tweak (great prophets all game, although still limit religions; get rid of the matyr promotion), but overall it’s great. Maybe it doesn’t have that much game impact for the investment (outside of RV), but that’s lots of things in the game and that’s okay. Having a religion always makes my games more interesting (even if just because it lets the AI get a little further ahead before I crush everyone ).

But. What if you don’t found a religion? Well, faith is still very useful, so Civs that have faith bonuses are still great. So, for example, Norway is still awesome even without a Religion. But what if your bonuses are Religion based not Faith based. Then it’s a bit rubbish. You can still use your abilities (eg Khmer’s Matyr ability, Spain’s unique unit etc), but it just doesn’t quite work.

The problem isn’t that Georgia doesn’t get a bonus to founding a Religion or get bonuses to RV. The problem is that Religion (not Faith) is just a little limited if you don’t found one. FXS obviously intended Relgion to still be a thing you can use even if you didn’t found one - eg Apostles having some non-RV promotions, Kongo getting Apostles. But it doesn’t quite work - eg Relgion on affecting loyalty if you’ve founded a Religion.

What the game needs is some way to “adopt” an existing religion. The founder would still own the religion, and perhaps you adopting their religion might risk helping them winning an RV. But by adopting it maybe you could maybe get some benefit and so feel like you have some ownership - eg loyalty bonus to cities following your adopted Religion, maybe your own beliefs etc.

Walls. Walls seem to be designed around a defensive “builder” strategy. Walls give you defence - obviously - but also housing with Monarchy, so allowing you to build tall.

But it doesn’t work: first, you just don’t need walls for defence usually, and certainly not Medieval or Renaissance walls; second, there are so many other sources of housing than walls; and third, high pop cities just aren’t that useful.

Ages. I like the ages system, although I think it needs some fleshing out. But it does have two bugs. First, it punishes you for getting too much era score at the wrong time (eg overflow), which therefore encourages you not to do “cool stuff” at various points in the game. Second, it’s too hard to get dark ages. Georgia sort of gets punished here because they find it hard to get dark ages, meaning they miss out on the challenge of dark ages, the powerful dark age cards, and can’t get heroic ages (albeit HAs aren’t all that great anyway).

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Georgia seem to suffer from having a whole lot of bonuses that sit smack bang in the middle of three mechanics that just don’t quite work.

Religion. I really like how religion works generally. I like the race to found a religion, I like how it lets you customise your Civ, I like how it lets you change the benefits population gives you, I like the opportunity for a different type of military conflict, and I like how it synergise with other mechanics - science, culture, tourism, loyalty. There are a few things I’d tweak (great prophets all game, although still limit religions; get rid of the matyr promotion), but overall it’s great. Maybe it doesn’t have that much game impact for the investment (outside of RV), but that’s lots of things in the game and that’s okay. Having a religion always makes my games more interesting (even if just because it lets the AI get a little further ahead before I crush everyone ).

But. What if you don’t found a religion? Well, faith is still very useful, so Civs that have faith bonuses are still great. So, for example, Norway is still awesome even without a Religion. But what if your bonuses are Religion based not Faith based. Then it’s a bit rubbish. You can still use your abilities (eg Khmer’s Matyr ability, Spain’s unique unit etc), but it just doesn’t quite work.

The problem isn’t that Georgia doesn’t get a bonus to founding a Religion or get bonuses to RV. The problem is that Religion (not Faith) is just a little limited if you don’t found one. FXS obviously intended Relgion to still be a thing you can use even if you didn’t found one - eg Apostles having some non-RV promotions, Kongo getting Apostles. But it doesn’t quite work - eg Relgion on affecting loyalty if you’ve founded a Religion.

What the game needs is some way to “adopt” an existing religion. The founder would still own the religion, and perhaps you adopting their religion might risk helping them winning an RV. But by adopting it maybe you could maybe get some benefit and so feel like you have some ownership - eg loyalty bonus to cities following your adopted Religion, maybe your own beliefs etc.

Walls. Walls seem to be designed around a defensive “builder” strategy. Walls give you defence - obviously - but also housing with Monarchy, so allowing you to build tall.

But it doesn’t work: first, you just don’t need walls for defence usually, and certainly not Medieval or Renaissance walls; second, there are so many other sources of housing than walls; and third, high pop cities just aren’t that useful.

Ages. I like the ages system, although I think it needs some fleshing out. But it does have two bugs. First, it punishes you for getting too much era score at the wrong time (eg overflow), which therefore encourages you not to do “cool stuff” at various points in the game. Second, it’s too hard to get dark ages. Georgia sort of gets punished here because they find it hard to get dark ages, meaning they miss out on the challenge of dark ages, the powerful dark age cards, and can’t get heroic ages (albeit HAs aren’t all that great anyway).

I agree with your first two points, especially your comments about Walls.

You're not really punished for getting overflow era score, per se. It's more of an opportunity cost to generate overflow: if you held off on doing that thing until the next era, you'd get the benefit of the era score, while doing it now you get era score you don't need. Which is your point, I believe, about being encouraged not to do cool stuff at various points. That can set up some interesting decisions (finish a boat now to go exploring with or wait until the start of the next era?), but feels very "gamey", i.e. is a bit immersion breaking. At the end of the day, though, the amount of era score you need to hit a normal age/golden age is not affected by how much era score you have at the end of a given age, you've simply lost one possible way of getting era score in the next age.

 

[Scaramanga]

Georgia is the only civ I've legitimately won a multiplayer game with (well, 2 humans and 3 AI left). Snatched the religious victory after my capital was taken. I could have declared a protectorate war near the end against Brazil but was already at war with everyone else.

 

[Softly]

Alot of hate here for Glory of the World and I'm not sure why. It is the one aspect of Georgia that is strong/fun. Faith is really good for Georgia since their perpetual golden ages mean you almost always have either monumental or Exodus of the Evangelist. Protectorate wars are a causus belli that I use quite often, and with Georgia's extra envoys I can easily get 4-6 of them in a game. 5 Protectorate wars in a 250 turn game equals a 20% overall increase to faith. Not only that, but since you can adjust your policy cards to focus on faith during your protectorate wars that number is likely much more than 20%. Switching to Scripture, Simultaneum, Triangular Trade or Theocratic Legacy during the protectorate war generates massive faith.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

So why would I even be spending my effort to convert city states? Well, it does help with the 2-envoy bonus. But also because if I'm suzerain, and someone attacks my city state, then I get 100% faith generation (for 10 turns). But it's not like I was generating much faith to begin with anyways. Because I have no bonuses to making holy sites, I have no adjacency bonuses, I have nothing. I'm not Russia with Dance of the Aurora, nor Khmer with a dozen martyrs, or even Japan with three holy sites next to each other. It's just so unreliable. I have to jump through all these hoops first to finally take advantage of my bonus to convert others. It's almost like Georgia is a civ that encourages you to found a religion and generate faith, but not go after a religious victory. And it doesn't give you any bonuses to do any other victory. You just hope whatever bonuses you get from golden ages and city states will carry you to victory.

Finally, the Tsikhe is easily the worst of all unique building/improvement/districts of any civ. Not only are Renaissance Walls already pretty pointless, all they add is a slight discount and 3 faith. Just WHY? You shouldn't even be building Ren Walls, there's better use of your production. And if you need them because you're getting hit that hard by the AI, then you're just playing the game wrong to begin with. But even if the playstyle encourages you to turtle up and let them hammer at your gates, then at least give you an incentive. If you're going to have Unique Walls they should be really damn good.

Sounds like their niche is essentially agitating the enemy. Although I don't multiplayer, and large marathon campaigns are far from the norm in MP, I think Georgia's niche may well be that. They strike me as a great support civ for a grand 12+ civ, huge+ map teamers campaign on marathon speed. Holy sites with choral music will get them through the civics tree earning them more and more envoys to send to city states for a x2 bonus. Essentially denying any CS bonuses to the enemy. While having little to no chance of winning themselves, their team may due to control of the CS's. If not that, then what?

Edit: Well, perhaps not marathon speed. Georgia would team up well @ any speed, well at least relative to their prospects in single player.