Redo Honor

fyar said:

Olleus, honest question... If your goal is to reward successful warmonger, why should I lose my reward if I want to annex the city? I agree with those posters who have said that the proposed finisher which rewards you ONLY for puppet cities isn't a good idea.

Click to expand...

It may not make sense as a finisher, but the idea of getting some kind of bonus for puppets makes sense if honor is supposed to be a tree for early aggression, since you're unlikely to do much annexing before the medieval era, and even then it's likely only to be capitals. Mass annexation doesn't usually make sense until the Industrial era. Yes, this would mean that Honor would taper off in usefulness, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

A bonus for puppets just doesn't make any sense. The "bonus" is that they don't increase the cost of your social policies and that you don't have to build a courthouse. I just don't understand why you would want to discourage annexation.

Santa Maria, -20gpt is nuts, I have never been near that in the early game unless I was at war AND building a road that I shouldn't have been building. Yes, it screws you if you take it and don't warmonger - but shouldn't it? Is anyone seriously arguing that Honor as a tree should be viable for peaceful play?

I'll say it again, Honor can get you bonuses on par with what you can get from Tradition or Liberty, but only if you conquer. Capital cities always have lots of luxuries and, unlike cities you found yourself, have already been developed. You also get gold when you pillage, and there are two other ways your units can get you gold as well: tribute from city-states, and peace negotiations.

It is the most situational tree and that is fine, it is also the hardest tree to use most effectively and that is fine also.

haveing played a few multiplayer games i can tell you tradition is picked first in at least 7/10 times. Liberty 2/10 times. and honor and piety for the rest.

Honor is not even good at early war. The bonuses in tradition and Liberty will give you a bigger and more Advanced army at a faster rate. They get more freebies.

Honor is sometimes picked as a secondary tree and then competes With patronage and piety.
As a secondary tree honor is quite good. Nice to have when you already went tradition and are getting ready for long term WARs.

When you plan to go piety you get a few policies in Liberty first to Jumpstart Your civ.

You can implement these changes to make honor quite good.(would probably still favor tradition.)

Opener/Disipline stay the same as before.
Warrior code: free great general, + 25% great generals earned, + 3 gold and culture from citadels.
Military caste: +1 happiness + 2 culture from walls.
Military Tradition:- 50% Production cost for defensive buildings and military buildings.
Professional army: +60% exsperience from combat.
Finisher: -50% gold Upgrade cost.

I don't see the point in changing +50% experience from combat to +60%. Firstly because the increase is tiny, and secondly because the policy is already the best one in the tree.

Does anyone else think they should just bring back the +1 happiness per defensive building part of Military Caste? That and something that decreases unit upkeep costs would probably be enough to make Honour competitive.

I think cheaper barracks should be an earlier policy in the tree and there needs to be another option for culture or happiness in the tree.

I agree cheaper barracks should come with the opener or 1st policy in the tree.

crabe said:

I'll say it again, Honor can get you bonuses on par with what you can get from Tradition or Liberty, but only if you conquer. Capital cities always have lots of luxuries and, unlike cities you found yourself, have already been developed. You also get gold when you pillage, and there are two other ways your units can get you gold as well: tribute from city-states, and peace negotiations.

Click to expand...

While I agree with most of what you said, if you're arguing that the primary way Honor gets you bonuses is through conquering, I think other people are arguing that Tradition and Liberty help you to conquer better than Honor does. All those things you mentioned are not unique to Honor... a Tradition or Liberty opening will reap the same benefits if they use their other benefits to warmonger successfully. And in my experience, successful warmongering is more likely with Tradition and Liberty than with Honor.

Knut_Are_M said:

Opener/Disipline stay the same as before.
Warrior code: free great general, + 25% great generals earned, + 3 gold and culture from citadels.
Military caste: +1 happiness + 2 culture from walls.
Military Tradition:- 50% Production cost for defensive buildings and military buildings.
Professional army: +60% exsperience from combat.
Finisher: -50% gold Upgrade cost.

Click to expand...

Knut, I mostly like those changes, except for the +3 gold/culture. That makes generals much more valuable for their tile yields than for their military applications. A citadel shouldn't be leaps and bounds better than a customs house.

fyar said:

While I agree with most of what you said, if you're arguing that the primary way Honor gets you bonuses is through conquering, I think other people are arguing that Tradition and Liberty help you to conquer better than Honor does. All those things you mentioned are not unique to Honor... a Tradition or Liberty opening will reap the same benefits if they use their other benefits to warmonger successfully. And in my experience, successful warmongering is more likely with Tradition and Liberty than with Honor.

Click to expand...

Over the whole game? Liberty I can see, especially if you want to get to Steel quickly for Samurai or something, but the Honor finisher is going to do more to help you out if you spend the game warmongering than any other policy in any of the starting four trees. Tradition gets you a great start and a sweet capital, but it doesn't do anything for the rest of the cities you're going to acquire if you're shooting for a domination victory. I know people think great starts win games (look how many said the Shoshone were overpowered, but all they really get is a great start!) and they help, but over the long game, Tradition becomes less useful if you get lots of cities and spend your time building units instead of, say, wonders, and focusing on production instead of growth. Maybe it's to do with the fact that a lot of people start more games than they finish?

Main issues are
1 earlier exp building boost.(either free or + production)
2 bonus to exp buildings (other than happiness)
3 earlier bonus to gold ( maint free units? Garrisons? Bonus to bullying?)
4 better unit output bonus (particularly early)

crabe said:

Over the whole game? Liberty I can see, especially if you want to get to Steel quickly for Samurai or something, but the Honor finisher is going to do more to help you out if you spend the game warmongering than any other policy in any of the starting four trees. Tradition gets you a great start and a sweet capital, but it doesn't do anything for the rest of the cities you're going to acquire if you're shooting for a domination victory. I know people think great starts win games (look how many said the Shoshone were overpowered, but all they really get is a great start!) and they help, but over the long game, Tradition becomes less useful if you get lots of cities and spend your time building units instead of, say, wonders, and focusing on production instead of growth. Maybe it's to do with the fact that a lot of people start more games than they finish?

Click to expand...

Yes, over the whole game. When going for domination, I find that I can build up a better army faster by focusing my military production in a few high-production (i.e., tall) cities. If I can get the Alhambra, Brandenburg Gate, and Heroic Epic in a single city, you get +15% Riflemen with March right out of the gate... that's almost better than the whole Honor tree by itself. That begs for Tradition -- though to be fair, I haven't been able to get Alhambra since moving up to Immortal.

We all know that Tradition is strongest in the early game, but even my late game domination strategy often calls for a tall empire.

crabe said:

Over the whole game? Liberty I can see, especially if you want to get to Steel quickly for Samurai or something, but the Honor finisher is going to do more to help you out if you spend the game warmongering than any other policy in any of the starting four trees. Tradition gets you a great start and a sweet capital, but it doesn't do anything for the rest of the cities you're going to acquire if you're shooting for a domination victory. I know people think great starts win games (look how many said the Shoshone were overpowered, but all they really get is a great start!) and they help, but over the long game, Tradition becomes less useful if you get lots of cities and spend your time building units instead of, say, wonders, and focusing on production instead of growth. Maybe it's to do with the fact that a lot of people start more games than they finish?

Click to expand...

No, it's because most people play on standard map with 8 civs. This means you maybe have room to build 2-3 cities, and sometimes only 1 on high difficulty. Tradition is perfect for that size empire, since it gives all your cities free monument/ampitheaters and free aqueducts, and it makes your capital massive and gives you a huge amount of money and happiness. If you only have 4 cities, then getting massive bonuses to your oldest city is a really big deal.

If you're playing on a much bigger map or with many fewer civilizations, then sure, you have a lot more room and tradition isn't going to matter as much in the long run.

What if instead of having walls and such give the happiness we had the fort/citadel give happiness instead. Of course they would have to be worked to give the bonus happiness. Perhaps have the citadel give some culture as well if needed. That may be more balanced since you have to give up a bonus to tile yield and worker turns for it.