Georgia: Doomiest Doom of Doomy Doomness?

[unmerged(73269)]

So, I thought I'd give Georgia a GC try on HT3, and I learned something useful: Geogia is ... rather dependent on the Timurids and Golden Horde suffering internal collapse quickly, otherwise the Tim/GH/Otto encirclement will kick Georgia around like a fall-down drunk at a curbstomping convention. In the three games I tried (with a lot of save scumming on the last two), both tribal superstates stayed stable enough to come visiting before 1430.

Any thoughts/tips, especially non-gamey ones? (Note I can get out of the early Timurid war on my own.)

I've tried:

• Keeping my head down. No dice.
  
• Grabbing neighboring territory early (Treb, QC, and sometimes Indep Crimea)and forting up, with biggest allies I could find. Closer, but eventually we get worn down. A big ally can hold off one of the big neighbors, but not all three plus their own enemies.
  
• Prolonging the early war with Big Tim and hoping to grab some of his territory. Mistake.
  
• Librum Veto - 15 units is barely enough to win one war with Tim, Otto, or GH, and by the time 8 WE comes around, the others will be ready for a pile-on.
• Inciting rebels. Too expensive.
  
• Massively cheesy embarrassing save scumming. Moderately successful, but not fun.

 

[Jooze]

It depends alot on your start date, I suggest something around the same start date that's so good for Byzantine.

In my Georgia game alot of nations piled on the Timurids, thus they were no longer bordering me. As an orthodox nation it was quite easy to get an alliance with the Byzantines and they beat the Ottomands and released an awful lot of small nations. So I was practically surrounded by OPMs in the south and whatever nation is in the north didn't attack me.

Then it was just expanding...

 

[unmerged(146928)]

How about annexing an Irish minor? A bit gamey but you can force a white peace

 

[HNT]

So, I thought I'd give Georgia a GC try on HT3, and I learned something useful: Geogia is ... rather dependent on the Timurids and Golden Horde suffering internal collapse quickly, otherwise the Tim/GH/Otto encirclement will kick Georgia around like a fall-down drunk at a curbstomping convention. In the three games I tried (with a lot of save scumming on the last two), both tribal superstates stayed stable enough to come visiting before 1430.

Any thoughts/tips, especially non-gamey ones? (Note I can get out of the early Timurid war on my own.)

I've tried:

• Keeping my head down. No dice.
  
• Grabbing neighboring territory early (Treb, QC, and sometimes Indep Crimea)and forting up, with biggest allies I could find. Closer, but eventually we get worn down. A big ally can hold off one of the big neighbors, but not all three plus their own enemies.
  
• Prolonging the early war with Big Tim and hoping to grab some of his territory. Mistake.
  
• Librum Veto - 15 units is barely enough to win one war with Tim, Otto, or GH, and by the time 8 WE comes around, the others will be ready for a pile-on.
• Inciting rebels. Too expensive.
  
• Massively cheesy embarrassing save scumming. Moderately successful, but not fun.

Yeah, Georgia is not easy, but interesting country to play. In the start period I got:
1) core on trebizond, so I snatched them ;
2) Candar as vassal ;
3) QK DOW'ed me dragging OE into the war. That was the first tricky war. I got a nice peace with OE ceding candar territory o. Then I could crush QK ; In that war I observed this:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=466601. If you observe something similar please post it.

4) Kaffa defected to me, great .
5) Tricky war with GH and OE. They were suffering from high RR, and the usual tribal difficulties. I DOW'ed them as I had a core on Astrakhan. This war gave me a great victory, though more in terms of territory instead of WS.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=466732
6) At some point I allied with Muscovy, that was a great alliance.
7) tricky war with Timmies; things were not that bad and at some point the Timmies made a typical mistake: parking 35 k troops in a SE province; Furthermore they removed the general from this stack (or he died). Then I could wipe it out, reverse the roles and snatch a lot of territory. After that the Timmies collapsed.

With Georgia it is extremely important to keep a close eye on the big Muslim neighbours. What are they doing? RR and regency council stuff.

I used the national focus as an important tool to preach the gospel and convert the muslim provinces to orthodox. Furthermore to enact Land reforms.

The economy was trade based. I was a member of a trade League and had SCP as first NI.

posted 22-03-2010.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=449824&page=41

 

[anomanderus]

NEVER CONQUER TREBIZOND. I have no idea why people think it's a good idea to conquer your only ally at the start, mindless expansion is always bad expansion. Vassalise candar after trebizond takes a province from them, but before that Crusade against Qara Koyunlu. Take as many provinces as you can from them. Then proceed to split your army at the border with the timurids and send each division to a different province. If you're lucky the ai will realize the implications of this and white peace. Now that you have 6 provinces and a vassal the russians will probably respect you more and offer you an alliance. Then just wait for the GH to show some kind of weakness, maybe their army is in siberia, maybe they have rebels of some kind but make sure you hit them before they ally with the other three big muslim powers and before they can build forts. Then grab as many provinces as you can while the enemy fights the russians and then peace out when you can. Then it's a matter of waiting for the next war with the GH, so you can cripple them for good.

 

[Grosshaus]

In my last Georgia game I managed rather well, although don't now remember exactly what I did in the start to get the ball rolling. For a long time I was allied with Muscowy and Byzantium, which I think prevented most of war declarations against me. On the other hand they focused fighting others than Golden Horde and Timurids.

Rather soon Timurids did fall. I didn't have much to do with it, although did attack them right in time just before their collapse when they had succession crisis and were fighting against most of Sunni World. They did become Persia with theocracy, which at first seemed scary but with reduced cores and relationship with me resetting we were at peace for next centuries. Quite soon finishing Golden Horde was a breeze together with Northern allies.

 

[6354201]

I find that attacking the Golden Horde on day 1 (starting in 1399) works very well. The GH has no forts and is at war with Lithuania. You can usually take Astrakhan and one or two other provinces. Astrakhan alone is worth it, with the center of trade it has.

 

[unmerged(91435)]

I got incredibly lucky with the Timurids in my game (ganged up by QK, Jalayirids, and Ottos) and took Van, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Sharizhor. Then, I helped defend Trebizond and now I turned north to the Golden Horde for Astrakhan, Kouban, and Kalmykia.

QK is next. Just need to watch out for the Mamluks and Ottomans.

 

[HNT]

I find that attacking the Golden Horde on day 1 (starting in 1399) works very well. The GH has no forts and is at war with Lithuania. You can usually take Astrakhan and one or two other provinces. Astrakhan alone is worth it, with the center of trade it has.

That sounds interesting. But how did you handle the Timmies, as Georgia is at war with them at day 1.

 

[unmerged(199227)]

1399 start:

Scorch your land and let the Tims tire themselves out, you might get a quick peace offer.

Wait for GH to get tangled into a western war and DOW them just to work your way towards Astrakhan. Once you get that, congratulations! You're a legitimate competitor in the region.

May take a few tries but it can work. A few more notes:

Don't ally with Muscovy unless you want to fight the horde alongside them. That usually ends ugly in the early start.

Byzantine and Tbz are not targets yet, you'll need them to keep the Ottomans from seeing you as weak if you border them. That might drag you into the inevitable Venice/Naples/Castille alliance wars, but you should be able to keep them off your shores and having Byz weakened early won't hurt Georgia's interests in the long run.

Alexandria south to a core in the Suez can also give you some quick territory once you're established, since you can basically just swallow Ethiopia for breakfast without anyone batting an eyelash. Plus you'll inevitably get Castille for a neighbor for westernization and the mega neighbor bonus.

Take Armenia and don't ever ever ever ever let the ottomans lay a finger on that land for historic reasons.

 

[unmerged(199227)]

Mini AAR:

So far with the new patch I've had no problem with my strategy, about to head south into the tumultuous TE provinces to get me my Armenia.

Still allied with Byz, Moldavia, and Wallachia - Byz being down to just Thrace but so far they've been left well alone. I dropped my Tbz alliance just in case Byz wants that particular spot back he won't get annexed and I don't have to make the tough choice.

Staying cool with Genoa for a possible alliance if they can stave off the next inevitable wave of horde aggressiveness.

Probably going to stay small and play a diplo/trading game until I get close to westernizing, then make a land bridge of QK provinces down to Fars and Hopefully I can reinstate all the Balkan orthodox countries.

Horde can stick around as a speed bump for Muscovy and an army tradition battery until I feel strong enough to have Russia as a neighbor.

Edit: I guess Crete defected to BE at some point so they aren't a 1 province yet.

Actually I'm kind of surprised you think it's a difficult country, you start out with nice expansion choices, provinces with good proximity for national focuses, and nice trading products. It's nice not playing a minor nation with grain in every direction.

 

[unmerged(25822)]

You can always advance in Timurid soil avoiding death stacks , take provinces without forts and ask for a lame Persian province worth nothing , you can then DOW Persia as it forms and occupy their land .
Scorching works great since your provinces are mostly mountains .

 

[darkbrokendisk]

Georgia is the the doomist nation in eu3 i think that title belong to the nation of shan. 3 province producing wool and low tax base. bad religion and tech group the worst of all it is right next to ming. georgia still have a slight chance of survival but shan is doom from the start

 

[Doomdark]

Georgia: Doomiest Doom of Doomy Doomness?

Nonsense! I am the Doomiest Doom of Doomy Doomness!

 

[tuore]

Nonsense! I am the Doomiest Doom of Doomy Doomness!

No, you are the Doomdarkest Doomdark of the Doomdarky Doomness!

 

[Shadiiw]

lets sing the doom song now! \o/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqcn_TPu4qQ

 

[Inner Circle]

Nonsense! I am the Doomiest Doom of Doomy Doomness!

And i am Inner Circle, I´m everywhere and i know every secret

 

[PanzerWilly]

And i am Inner Circle, I´m everywhere and i know every secret

I am a singularity, I know all that was, is, and all that is to be