Social Policy: Honor (vanilla)

Honor
A closer look at the social policy branch

Introduction

The Honor tree is one of the three social policy trees available from the Ancient Era. Each of the Ancient era policy trees rewards investments into different aspects of the early game: Tradition rewards small empires that focus on infrastructure, Liberty rewards empires that focus on expansion and claiming land and Honor rewards the player who invests into military units and defensive buildings.

The Honor social policy tree offers both military and economic advantages, all based on military units and defensive buildings. The left branch of the tree rewards going into either defensive or offensive early wars, while the right branch of the tree offers a mix of military and economic advantages.

The Policies

The Policies

Honor

Adopting Honor gives a +25% combat bonus versus barbarians, and notifications will be provided when new Barbarian Encampments spawn in revealed territory. Gain Culture for the empire for each barbarian killed.

With this policy, units attacking or defending against land and sea barbarian units will receive a 25% :c5strength:

bonus. As with most other direct combat bonuses, it works best for units with high base strength. It does not matter from what era the barbarian units come from; it will work for both barbarian Archers and Destroyers. Furthermore, a notification will be given whenever a new barbarian camp spawns on any part of the map not covered by clouds (i.e. revealed hexes). This is especially useful for leaders that gain additional bonuses when plundering barbarian camps (Bismarck, Askia).

In addition to the abovementioned benefits, adopting Honor rewards the player with culture for each barbarian unit killed. To gain this bonus, barbarian units can be killed by either units or cities. The amount of culture gained is based on the base :c5strength:

of the unit. A barbarian brute will yield 6 :c5culture:

, while a barbarian Infantry will yield 36. Note that ranged units (archers) have lower base strength. This culture gain stacks with Montezuma's Unique Ability (Sacrificial Captives) and doubles the culture gained in this fashion.

Warrior Code

+15% Production when training Melee units, and a Great General appears outside the Capital.

Great generals provide a 20% bonus to combat strength to all friendly melee and ranged units within 2 hexes (naval vessels and air units gain no benefit). This bonus can be very important, sometimes critical in wars, especially if the player is outnumbered or when fighting technologically superior units.

The best way of using Warrior Code to maximum effect is to get it very early providing a Great General before the first war. This is especially useful for civilizations that have high base :c5strength:

unique units in the Ancient or Classical eras (Babylonian Bowmen or Greek Companion Cavalry, for example). Although the Great General gained this way can be used for an economic advantage (a Golden Age), it is best used as an extra edge in early aggressive or defensive wars.

Adopting Warrior Code also increases the production rate of all melee units. Its effect stack with Forges (that grant a 15% boost for land units). Note that the selection of units from the "Melee domain" is limited to scouts, warriors, spearmen, pikemen, swordsmen, longswordsmen and their Unique Unit counterparts. Thus, the effectiveness of this policy diminishes with the invention of Gunpowder.

Discipline

+10% combat strength for military units which have another military unit in an adjacent tile.

Discipline rewards players that form tight unit formations. Each friendly unit adjacent to another friendly unit will receive a 10% bonus to its :c5strength:

. This bonus can never be higher than 10%, even if multiple units are adjacent to each other. This bonus stacks with all other applicable bonuses.

Military Tradition

Military Units gain 50% more experience from combat.
Requires: Warrior Code

Units fighting under Military Tradition will gain 50% more experience points per attack rounded down, thus a standard +5 xp attack will instead provide +7 xp. Note that this extra experience is not counted toward great general progress. Gaining promotions faster is advantageous, as high level units (level 4 and beyond, requiring 100+ experience) completely change warfare. Ranged units can gain logistics, effectively doubling their strength, and melee units can gain march to allow for healing every turn, significantly increasing survivability and lessening downtime. All units including naval vessels and aircraft benefit from this social policy.

Military Caste

Each City with a garrison increases empire Happiness by 1 and Culture by 2.
Requires: Discipline

Any city with a garrisoned unit will increase the global happiness in the empire by 1 and provide 2 :c5culture:

Culture for its city. Note that if a unit attacks from within the city, it will no longer be garrisoned. The more cities and units the player has, the more beneficial this social policy is. Note that during wartime, when most units will be needed on the front, measures must be taken for the empire not to fall into severe unhappiness (which in turn will result in negative combat morale of units, among other things).

This social policy works perfectly in combination with Oligarchy (Tradition), under which garrisoned units cost no :c5gold:

upkeep. Combining these two policies enables the player to create a large standing army that will keep enemies at bay (most AIs hestitate attacking militarily strong players), while providing happiness and culture at the same time.

The culture gain is not negligible, especially in the early stages of the game. It stacks extremely well with Monuments (+2 :c5culture:

), Napoleon's Unique Ability (Ancien Regime +2 :c5culture:

per city until Industrial Era) and the Liberty tree opening policy (+1 :c5culture:

per city).

Professional Army

Gold cost of upgrading military units reduced by 33% and +1 happiness from every defensive building (Walls, Castle, Arsenal, Military Base).
Requires: Military Caste

Empires utilizing a professional army will be granted two very important bonuses. The first one makes unit upgrades 33% cheaper, enabling empires with modest income to upgrade their armies more easily. Thus, it provides a direct financial benefit in form of expense cuts.

The second benefit is that every single defensive building in the empire also provides +1 :c5happy:

. Walls, Castles, Arsenals and Military Bases can potentially be built in every city, and puppets tend to focus on these buildings after gold buildings making this a reliable source of happiness. Note that for everything except walls the happiness gain / hammer cost is limited, for example a colloseum can be built for 100 hammers vs a castle's 160, providing twice the happiness, and the saved hammers could go into a market to more than recover the upkeep.

The upgrade discount from this social policy stacks with Pentagon World Wonder, increasing the total discount to 66%, while the defensive structure bonuses work exceptionally well with The Kremlin World wonder which provides a 25% boost to their .

Finisher

Adopting all policies in the Honor tree will grant Gold for every enemy unit killed.

Once all the social policies in the Honor tree are taken, every enemy unit killed (barbarian or otherwise) will grant the player a lump sum of gold equal to the base combat strength of the defeated unit. The worth of this increases with the number of enemies killed; it will provide more income on higher difficulties and faster speeds.

General Use

a. Honor - Warrior Code - Discipline
A three-policy strategy for early aggression with higher-than-usual base strength units (very early Swordsmen, Phalanx, Immortals etc.) that gain a 30% boost from the Great General and Discipline. The aim of this strategy is conquering your nearest neighbour and following that up with something else (might be further aggression, but usually a time of peaceful build-up).

b. Honor - Warrior Code - Military Tradition
A three-policy strategy designed to provide high-level troops (usually siege units) for world domination. If no civilizations are available for "target practice", players can engage barbarians or declare a "permanent" war against a city state in which the aim is not to take the city but to shoot at it and gain experience for later use. This three-policy strategy can be also used for early aggression that is continued by further aggression. Highly experienced troops (levels 4, 5 or 6) may become virtually indestructible on all but the highest difficulty levels.

c. Honor - Discipline - Military Caste (- Professional Army)
A balanced (three or four) policy strategy aimed at creating an early empire based on military might. Honor provides the necessary culture by killing barbarians, Discipline provides basic combat benefits, while Military Caste provides basic economic advantages in form of +1 happiness and +2 culture per city. This strategy can be expanded to incorporate Professional Army for even more happiness gains.

Synergy with other social policies

The effectiveness of the Honor policy tree greatly depends on terrain, maps size, game pace, difficulty level and the expected level of aggression. In a typical game, however, it is an excellent addition to all three (tall, wide, conquer) styles of play. There are no social policy trees "that work well" with Honor. Instead, there are social policy strategies that incorporate social policies from Honor.

Here's, for example, a fairly typical Ancient start policy strategy that includes these 9 initial social policies:

1. Honor - will grant culture for killing barbarians that will roam the countryside anyway.

2. Discipline - helps deter early aggression from AIs, as well as providing a "basic edge" for offensive maneuvers.

3. Military caste - the settler escort will immediately provide +1 happiness and +2 culture in newly founded cities.

4. Liberty - will grant 1 additional culture per city speeding up policy gains and land grab.

5. Citizenship - will grant a free worker that will connect newly acquired resources.

6. Tradition - will grant additional culture in capital as well as further boosting land grab in all cities.

7. Oligarchy - will prevent the empire from plummeting into negative gold per turn, which is quite common at this stage of the game, as well as help defending from AI aggression and barbarians.

8. Meritocracy - providing further happiness.

9. Representation - providing a golden age for the developing cities, as well as setting the stage for further easier social policy gains.

Players are encouraged to devise "social policy strategies" on their own and - depending on the game settings - these plans can incorporate none, a few or all Honor policies.

Patch version of this article: 1.0.1.383