Strategies for Tradition, Honor, or Piety

I would say Piety is a practical option (at least as far as Emperor, haven't tried it on the higher difficulties yet). The tighter happiness in the early game and the AI's more sedate pace of expansion means that you don't have as much to gain from getting out three settlers super fast. What is impractical is opening Piety and expecting to also build a bunch of ancient/classical wonders. Opening Piety means you're hard building your settlers, monuments and other early buildings, and that means you don't have the hammers to spare for chasing after something like MoH or Stonehenge.
 
OK, I'll stick up for Stonehenge. I play at Immortal/Deity, I beeline for it and almost always get it. People are saying that the Piety tree obviates the need for Stonehenge. . . but the reverse is also true, and building Stonehenge is a much smaller investment than completing the Piety tree, or even STARTING with the Piety tree, which means you sacrifice the quick easy benefits from Tradition, Liberty, or Honor.

Building Stonehenge also means you get a religion WITHOUT making your Pantheon belief a Faith-producing belief, allowing you to choose a Food, Production, Happiness, or Culture-based Pantheon belief and beef up in those areas.

Finally, a few Shrines are not as good as one Stonehenge, because Stonehenge offers Great Engineer points VERY early in the game, long before you've got Specialists working a Workshop. For me, Stonehenge, usually yields ANOTHER wonder thanks to the early Great People Points pumping out one of the world's first Great Engineers.
 
In terms of the OP, I also often go for Liberty for the free merch, but I do like to switch it up.

Honor is great if you plan on an early warmongering strategy and turn on Raging Barbarians. The synergy is great here, because with the Honor opener, killing barbarians = culture, and with Raging Barbs on, it's not too long before you're killing at least one barbarian every turn for 7 - 10 culture. With all the barbs, you can also skip building barracks, because the barbs will level up your soldiers for you. As soon as you hit 50% faster XP gain with a half dozen or so barb-seasoned units, you can go to war and be surprised how quickly your ranged units gain the all-important extra range and double attack promotions. If you can get a couple of siege units with extra range and double attack, the world is your oyster. All the while, killing a steady stream of raging barbs keeps your XP and your culture up without needing to build barracks or culture buildings. By the close of the Honor opening, your warfare is providing your gold income, too.

Tradition is great for a tall hermit strategy, and is really the fastest way to close out a policy tree since the opener and one of the first policies both offer big, early buffs to culture. Yeah, no free workers or settlers, but you gotta figure that if you're doing Tradition, you're not building more than four cities anyway, so the investment is smaller. When playing Tradition, I typically hard-build my worker. Raging barbs is also a nice complement for Tradition because 1) it keeps the AI from expanding so fast that all the good land is taken by the time you get some settlers 2) it provides a lot of barb camps that need disbanding, offering more gold with which to maybe buy a settler (especially at lower difficulty levels).
 
Here is my approach for tradition:

- shrine, scout, worker, GL, Oracle, Hanging Gardens (a must for tradition and GP boost). There is some deviation from that though.

My reasoning: when you aim for a tall empire, tech is on your side, because tech costs increase by 2% per city. If you have tech under control, you can start building wonders earlier and with aristocracy, you can gain about 1 production for every 6 production being generated at the city working on a wonder. This could be the difference of 1-2 turns. I also recommend founding a religion based on growth if you're going tall. Getting ToA would also help.

15% growth at capital + 10% growth from fertility rites + 15% growth from swords to plowshares + 10% growth from ToA = 50% growth rate and tall empire in a short space of time. Add hanging gardens for even further growth at capital. It will mean higher GP rate, faster tech speed and more production.

Keep in mind that pyramids and stonehenge also provide free GE points. However, this can be offset if you're aiming for finishing tradition and purchasing GE's with faith.

As for piety, if you're aiming to complete piety then stonehenge is somewhat pointless. Having a relatively wide empire helps for religion, unless you choose world pilgrimage to gain faith for every city with your religion as the dominant religion. Also, with my piety game, I chose heathen conversion mostly for the lols. It is very useful if you're going for autocracy. If you get over 10 :mad:, have a missionary at your capital, and you'll gain 2-3 troops every 5 turns or so.

As for honor, this is rather tricky. Although barbs will be less of an issue, honor obviously lacks development policies such as free settler and worker in liberty or increased growth in tradition. However, completing honor would help lower upgrade costs. Its happiness boost is best combined with oligarchy from tradition and a wide empire, as well as a large army. And warmongering is too risky in BNW. However, honor might help in very intense fights, offering at a 30% combat bonus to your troops with a nearby general and discipline. If you warmonger, you have to keep this sequence in mind:

1. Attack civ you wish to attack
2. Other civs hate you (some might tolerate warmongers instead).
3. wave of denounciations against you.
4. 30 or so turns later, everyone DoWs you.

Conclusion: I personally think tradition is best path for most civs in BNW. Anyone aiming for liberty should consider aiming tall eventually or face a huge tech cost.

Hope all this helps.
 
Thanks for the tips everyone.

I finished my Tradition game last night. I played the Maya and my capital had 41 population when I achieved a cultural victory sometime in the mid atomic era (~turn 250ish?). Although I was going for a diplomatic victory, because I skipped the early wonders in favor of Hanging Gardens, Petra, and the Colossus. I was also paying more attention to growth than I normally would have. By early mid game my capital was pumping out wonders in 5 or so turns each. This game was so successful that I feel like I've been playing the game wrong all along, and that I could easily jump up to King difficulty after another game or two.

I still feel like Stonehenge would be beneficial in some cases. But if I'm hard building a worker right after a shrine and granary, I don't really have the time for a wonder. Grabbing some of the later ones does make up for it. In this case I may have gotten lucky, I only had 3 cities generating say 5 or 6 faith at the most when I founded my religion, and I had founded the second religion.

I'm going to try an honor game next.
 
Oops, I was going for a diplomatic victory because I had such a larger gold income, because I skipped early wonders in favor of later ones*
 
Am I better off saving my warmongering for mid game and taking honor as a second tree, as opposed to trying to do it immediately?
 
Options for warmongering:

- Early: when you see only 1 civ near you in the beginning of the game. If you wish to warmonger, cease exploring, attack and hope no one else encounters you. In terms of specifics, I would recommend waiting for mathematics and maybe iron working. However, by the time you get those, you would have encountered multiple civs, thus making this option rather hard to follow without receiving warmonger diplomatic penalty. Ah, another thing, if you are aiming for early warmonger, you must build an army of a few units and get terracotta army ASAP. Recommended civs for early warmonger: Huns and Assyrians.

- mid-game: by this time, you will have encountered multiple civs, if not all of them. Era would be somewhere between medieval and industrial. At this time, it's not a good time because most of your AI neighbours will have built an army to defend themselves. However, keep an eye out for diplomatic relations between other civs. If multiple civs suddenly denounce one AI civ in particular they could request your assistance in attacking them. You might get a warmonger penalty but it will be countered by the "fight against common foe" diplomatic bonus. You then rely on the AI civs to do the heavy lifting whilst you use cavalry to capture towns that are damaged by AI allies. Then it's up to you if you wish to betray them. You might risk a war on multiple fronts though.

- Late: By this time, you will have locked in your ideology. If you are going for domination, then the game obviously advises a choice beteen order and autocracy. There is already a thread debating which is better, but it only applies to G&K and Vanilla, not BNW. Ideleogy options:
--autocracy: reduced unit maintenance, temp attack bonus, cheaper unit purchase, gunboat diplomacy (combine with commerce to stack bonuses), united front. With honor, autocracy can provide a 50% combat bonus with a general and discipline ability.
--Order: combat bonus in friendly territory, faster production, counterbalances increased science cost per city to an extent. Tourism bonus with other Order civs.

Autocracy might be the better option in the case of domination victory. Once you get Clausewitz' legacy, you have to maintain momentum to make the most of it. Keep an eye out for those aiming for science victory, as I lost my Polish autocracy game on emperor that way. I was only 5 votes away from diplomatic victory.

Warmongering at a late stage contains high stakes and it is best to secure many allied CS' as possible, especially militaristic ones. With united front, you can produce an army through allied militaristic CS' alone without actually producing an army. As I said, as soon as you receive a wave of denounciations, that is when you have to prepare yourself quickly. Unless you're playing on pangaea, develop a strong navy ASAP. Persians are quite good for late game warmongering due to their golden age benefits.

Hope this helps.
 
I'm going to disagree slightly with sendos; early warmongering won't necessarily lead to everyone immediately hating you. More distant civs may overlook your wars as they aren't worried that you're going to come beat them up next, and while the warmonger penalty may not go away entirely with closer neighbors, it will fade enough after sufficient time spent at peace that you can still deal with people. That being said, you absolutely have to plan for the worst case scenario of everyone in the world hating you, because it will probably happen once Ideology comes into play. You need to ensure that you can get enough gold and happiness between your cities and city states to keep yourself profitable and happy. I'll add to sendos's rundown of the ideologies at this point by noting that Autocracy has better and more reliable happiness tenets than Order, and gets the excellent Prora wonder on top of that, so if you foresee happiness being an issue, you may want to lean Autocracy. The way I see it, if your goal is to war early and then switch to a peaceful victory condition, you'll want to aim for Order for the production and science bonuses. If you're aiming for a late game domination victory, Autocracy will help ensure that your empire stays happy and that you can keep pumping out quality units.

As far as the Honor tree itself goes, I'd ignore the left side. An early Great General is nice for clinching an early war, but you can succeed without it, and the bonus to melee unit production won't see much use unless you have a really good melee UU (like Impis). Likewise, Military Tradition isn't that great; sure you can coddle a few units and keep them alive until they have a half a dozen promotions, but they won't be that much better than a unit with 3 or 4. The right side of the tree, on the other hand, has some good policies. Discipline will help keep your melee units alive (especially if they're supporting each other with the Medic promotion). Military Caste gives you local happiness and local culture from garrisons, which means your empire stays happier and your cities' borders expand faster. And Professional Army's discount on upgrades is nice for your treasury and helps you get up military buildings faster, which becomes important if you pick up Autocracy later.

The big caveat on all of this is that I would only open Honor if you intend to war early. If you aren't going to kick off any wars until mid or late game, any other starting tree will give you better bonuses and better help you prepare for those wars.
 
I'm going to disagree slightly with sendos; early warmongering won't necessarily lead to everyone immediately hating you. More distant civs may overlook your wars as they aren't worried that you're going to come beat them up next, and while the warmonger penalty may not go away entirely with closer neighbors, it will fade enough after sufficient time spent at peace that you can still deal with people. That being said, you absolutely have to plan for the worst case scenario of everyone in the world hating you, because it will probably happen once Ideology comes into play. You need to ensure that you can get enough gold and happiness between your cities and city states to keep yourself profitable and happy. I'll add to sendos's rundown of the ideologies at this point by noting that Autocracy has better and more reliable happiness tenets than Order, and gets the excellent Prora wonder on top of that, so if you foresee happiness being an issue, you may want to lean Autocracy. The way I see it, if your goal is to war early and then switch to a peaceful victory condition, you'll want to aim for Order for the production and science bonuses. If you're aiming for a late game domination victory, Autocracy will help ensure that your empire stays happy and that you can keep pumping out quality units.

As far as the Honor tree itself goes, I'd ignore the left side. An early Great General is nice for clinching an early war, but you can succeed without it, and the bonus to melee unit production won't see much use unless you have a really good melee UU (like Impis). Likewise, Military Tradition isn't that great; sure you can coddle a few units and keep them alive until they have a half a dozen promotions, but they won't be that much better than a unit with 3 or 4. The right side of the tree, on the other hand, has some good policies. Discipline will help keep your melee units alive (especially if they're supporting each other with the Medic promotion). Military Caste gives you local happiness and local culture from garrisons, which means your empire stays happier and your cities' borders expand faster. And Professional Army's discount on upgrades is nice for your treasury and helps you get up military buildings faster, which becomes important if you pick up Autocracy later.

The big caveat on all of this is that I would only open Honor if you intend to war early. If you aren't going to kick off any wars until mid or late game, any other starting tree will give you better bonuses and better help you prepare for those wars.

Other than the stuff in bold, I agree. The warmonger toleration varies a lot though. In my Polish autocracy game on emperor, I had a relatively nearby civ (France), initially about 50 tiles away but still connected to land) who tolerated my warmongering. The map was continents and I had the Ottomans (who won the science victory in that game) disliking warmongers like me and they were a bit further away as well as being separated by about 10-15 tiles of ocean. So I think the warmonger tolerance levels depend on civ character and proximity.

Also, in that game, once I did make peace with most of the other civs who wanted peace, they were still in a guarded state and the wave of denounciations continued anyway. I could still deal with them, but I had to make huge concessions so I didn't really bother.

As for selecting policies in Honor, military is highly dependent on how you lead your troops. If you want to produce veteran soldiers that can really kick ass, then military tradition is a must, because they'll level up faster. Examples of epic veteran troops consist of an (upgraded) Indonesian Kris Swordsmen that can attack 3 times + 1 movement to accommodate the third attack, upgraded longbowmen with double attack, Keshiks, artilleries with +1 range and double attack + volley, bombers with air repair and double attack, battleships with +1 range and double attack...feel free to add to this list. So to conclude, if you are rather conservative with your troops and you want them to be tough, getting military tradition will help.

Conversely, if you prefer to rely on quantity of troops, using weak/damaged units as bait for bombards, then military tradition isn't really for you. Increased xp gain doesn't matter as much for pawn units and I assume this is a popular tactic with Kaigen. I am not saying it's bad though.
 
As for selecting policies in Honor, military is highly dependent on how you lead your troops. If you want to produce veteran soldiers that can really kick ass, then military tradition is a must, because they'll level up faster. Examples of epic veteran troops consist of an (upgraded) Indonesian Kris Swordsmen that can attack 3 times + 1 movement to accommodate the third attack, upgraded longbowmen with double attack, Keshiks, artilleries with +1 range and double attack + volley, bombers with air repair and double attack, battleships with +1 range and double attack...feel free to add to this list. So to conclude, if you are rather conservative with your troops and you want them to be tough, getting military tradition will help.

Conversely, if you prefer to rely on quantity of troops, using weak/damaged units as bait for bombards, then military tradition isn't really for you. Increased xp gain doesn't matter as much for pawn units and I assume this is a popular tactic with Kaigen. I am not saying it's bad though.
It's less about sacrificing units willy-nilly (personally, I like to use melee with Medic and archers with March to keep my army durable on the offense, withdrawing wounded units as necessary) and more about the fact that you are sacrificing two social policies just to get better units a little faster. It's not hard to get a unit the four (maybe five) promotions it needs to hit the big payoff promotion, and once you're there anything beyond that is icing.

Meanwhile, you could have used those two policies to open Patronage and grab Consulates so you can effortlessly maintain friendships with City States. Or you could get a head start on Commerce so that you can have Protectionism up and running by the time the rest of the world is against you and you have to rely on your own territory + city states to keep your empire happy and in the black financially.
 
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