Tradition over Honour for Warmongering?

I often warmonger and I typically go full tradition, then part of honor, then part of commerce until ideologies unlock, commerce gives more ability to purchase units which when you are building a highly promoted military machine is key to maintaining a high level of quality. The honor policy allowing for culture and happiness for garrisoned units plus the tradition policy giving no maintenance for garrisoned unit gives you the ability to maintain a lot of units in peacetime and gives you some level of a bonus when the empire starts growing wide.

Almost all the time you need to take at least some policies in Tradition or Liberty to start but a few Civs can get by with only 2-3 in one of those trees before going full Honor, Aztecs, Mongols, Huns, Zulu, and Denmark come to mind, as these Civs need to drag at least a few of their neighbors down in order to be positioned for a strong mid-late game.

Ninakoru said:

Honor is supposed to be a warmonger oriented tree, but in practice it puts you out of the game.

Click to expand...

Honor helps you have a defensive military more than it helps you conquer (with the exception of Statue of Zeus, but whatever). I find it's most useful when building (building) wide, waiting out an invasion from an aggressive neighbor and then going for later conquering.

But yeah, even then, you probably want to open with Tradition or Liberty; maybe not wait to finish those before opening Honor, but definitely opening one first.