Honour first? Farming the barbarians

Lately I have been getting honour first, just the first policy, and then following the liberty tree. This not only gives you a bonus fighting against the barbarians, but you earn culture points from killing them. It seems to me that if I do nothing else I wind up killing enough barbs that the culture points are worth it, plus it's nice to have the combat bonus against them.

Even better, if you find a barb camp near your city once the barbs are starting to come under control then stick an archer or other range unit on a hill next to it and, instead of capturing the camp, just let them keep spawning and take them out as they spawn. This not only levels up your unit, but allows you to farm the barb camp for culture. When you need your archer back you can take out the camp and go.

just remember you only get 2 promotions from barbs

TW_Honorius said:

just remember you only get 2 promotions from barbs

Click to expand...

True but you can still farm them for the culture points.

Xiao Xiong said:

True but you can still farm them for the culture points.

Click to expand...

Purely for these purposes Tradition opener is better. To match it you have to kill a barb every 2 turns, which is not gonna happen unless you have a big army farming several camps simultaneously.

dont start trees you dont plan on ging deeper - usually very useless

Xiao Xiong said:

Even better, if you find a barb camp near your city once the barbs are starting to come under control then stick an archer or other range unit on a hill next to it and, instead of capturing the camp, just let them keep spawning and take them out as they spawn. This not only levels up your unit, but allows you to farm the barb camp for culture. When you need your archer back you can take out the camp and go.

Click to expand...

I wish that worked for me. Usually even when not farming barbs it seems some stupid AI will have a scout hanging around near a barb camp I begin attacking, waiting to jump in and grab it after I've killed the guy inside.

Never started with Honour before but I started a game with Germany on Sunday and the early culture and ability to get units from some camps meant I had a nice little army of brutes early on and helped with culture early in the game. Aside from this theres a few other good policies in this tree especially for a military oriented civ like Germany

Don't open honour just for the culture. Even with raging barbs it doesn't pay off on the long run.

If you're also getting it for the bonus against barbs and spotting camps then take it. Or if you want policies in the honour tree. But just for the culture is 100% a bad idea.

the honor track is one of the best in the game why people neglect it I just don't get. I almost never open with any other policy track and would be surprised if many other immortal or deity players did either.

the plus 50% experience is a crucial boost. also the plus culture and happiness for the staioned units. the free general early is a nice boost much easier to take citys. added combat bonus for units in near tiles. and reduced upgrade costs. if you plan on having a small cultural win and have enemys on your island or pang then it helps get very quick upgraded units which is essential because you cannot afford many units. or if you planb to go large and far the extra happiness and culture boost is huge not to mention the drastic speed boost to promos and combatt effectiveness.

all policy tracks contain boost. but I openly say Honor is without doubt the best track in the game the only reason I can see for ignoring it is if your trying a unique challenge for yourself or if you got your own island all to yourself and plan to never war.

the idea of taking honor just to get the culture for killing barbs boost then not exploring is manifestly absurd. why waste such a powerful policy track?
tradition and liberty are nice but in no way compete with honor.

Aspon said:

the honor track is one of the best in the game why people neglect it I just don't get. I almost never open with any other policy track and would be surprised if many other immortal or deity players did either.

I openly say Honor is without doubt the best track in the game the only reason I can see for ignoring it is if your trying a unique challenge for yourself or if you got your own island all to yourself and plan to never war.

Click to expand...

Honor is a great tree, but I'm not sure I would go that far. For a peaceful style game, surely liberty or tradition is a better choice.

Honor stinks for anything but an early domination push. Seldom is a war decided based upon little bonuses your units may have.

You win by building a stronger foundation than your opponent. If you build a bigger and better empire, the battles will handle themselves. Take Tradition or Liberty.

It seems clear to me that the liberty tree is the most effective overall to get yourself in a strong position against an AI with large bonuses. My games are dominated by opening with liberty, I think it's the strongest path in most spots. I'll take honour on occasion but it will be in games with a very close AI neighbour and I will be warring superearly and pushing my initial rush for all that it's worth. The extra benefit from the GG that you otherwise wouldn't have had, discipline and faster XP along with the production bonus for melee units convinces me to go honour in that kind of spot to maximize my gains from the early war.

As for opening honour and then switching into liberty, well I don't think that makes a lot of sense. The benefit from barb culture and the combat bonus against them doesn't warrant slowing down the liberty finisher and then every other SP. Not saying that you couldn't do that and still win, but I bet you could win more games by just getting liberty finished ASAP and then opening rationalism, or whatever subsequent path you decide on.

Honor opener is great for Monty. I'vebeen trying it alot with him.go honor(first)hunt barbs then go all of liberty,with maybe a little stagger to time PT or ND.I do usually open with Liberty first with everyone else, Monty is the exception....you get +12 cult. for a barb brute.

The Pilgrim said:

Purely for these purposes Tradition opener is better. To match it you have to kill a barb every 2 turns, which is not gonna happen unless you have a big army farming several camps simultaneously.

Click to expand...

I usually take the Tradition opener then I take the Honor opener and return to fill in Aristocracy and Oligarchy. After that I usually take Liberty because I want to save Legalism to pop Opera Houses.

You don't need an army to harvest substantial amounts of Culture. One Archer per Barb camp is sufficient. If the Archer is already Barracks=promoted you can get him the Cover promotion just by capping Barbs - especially if you've enabled Raging Barbarians.

A couple of other things that haven't been addressed yet in this discussion are the fact that wiping out Barb camps in compliance with City State requests gains you influence with them as well as the Culture you harvest. The other thing is that using this strategy with the Aztecs will gain even more Culture per Barb.

Interesting idea I think I'll try it sometime. I sometimes use a similar idea but usually chose honor third. I usually start Liberty, Collective Rule then often chose Honor (sometime I pass on honor and move continue on the Liberty tree or chose Tradition).

I always start with opening up Honor first, followed by (usually) clearing the Tradition/Liberty trees.

Reasons for Honor are, of course, Barbs, for the reasons listed above, but my favorite is the automatic knowledge of new camps. This lets you know if you can maybe send out a Settler unprotected (feeling lucky?), and lets you beeline military units to those camps. I also like how your opening Scout(s) have a fighting chance when attacked, and nothing amuses me more than to clear a camp with a Scout.
And then the Culture of course, but that's been discussed previously, so I'll stop typing now.

I usually begin with the Tradition opener, then go for the Liberty tree...

However, if I have raging barbarians, or I seem to have a lot of barbarians in the area, I often choose the Honour opener. However, there has to be enough barbarians to make it worthwhile.

To me, Honor vs. Tradition/Liberty is a little like North Korea vs. South Korea.

If the two were to go to war again (Darwin forbid), who would win? Even though the North Korean army is substantially larger, I would bet on South Korea, given their huge technological, infrastructure, population, and alliance advantages.

You build a big house with a strong foundation. Choose Liberty or Tradition.

Getting Tradition Opener will of course give you far more culture in the span of a game, but you'll be missing an important source of culture very early on. The value of culture is particularly relative.

So in considering all your comments, I think I have arrived at this strategy:

-- Go for tradition opener first, to get the 3 culture points ASAP, and level up on the social policies faster

-- Once I've explored enough of the map, or if my scout upgrades to an archer, then grab honour opener and earn culture from clearing out barbs

After that either continue down tradition or honour depending on the situation, or switch to liberty and run it through to the end, before coming back to tradition or honour. I like the idea of popping opera houses with legalism.

Also I like having the honour opener done, because you never know when things are going to go to all out war, and if that happens it's nice to be able to hit the adjacent unit bonus just before launching the counter-attack.

My theory here is that advancing social policies faster than the AI does is a lasting benefit, especially if it can be worked in to something you have to do anyway, like clearing barbs.

I guess the situation where I would NOT follow this route is if my starting area is so crowded that the AI is likely to take care of most of the barbs.