Chose Zulu; picked Honor; warmongered; now bankrupt

Early warmongering is certainly much, much harder. But you can't warmonger your way to a static advantage anymore; you have to bite and claw for resources to make up for what you're not building. Beat up other civs and demand money and luxuries for peace; take your excess army and demand tribute from city states (preferably in a way that wins favor with other CSs), finish out Honor and get gold for kills. It's more challenging than just building to a victory with a Civ that excels in the mid-late game, but still should be doable and fun.

I think that certain aspects, like enslavement, should be a part of the game. Though controversial, slavery is part of the human experience (much like war, which is a vital part of CIV).

Also, I think Honor should have more gold incentives, like each military building provides +1 gold (no maintenance) OR when units are built, a small cash bonus is added to the player's treasury.

if you want to warmonger early, you need to rush to markets and rush build them. you will most likely end up with merchant specialists to keep your GPT above the red. You'll be able to afford the specialists because your cities will stop growing due to happiness going in the red. You'll only be able to afford 1 or 2 cities tops as puppets, while razing others.

You will sacrifice growth and science for a time. If you are successful, you will take out a neighbor and some competition, and maybe grab some wonders from them. Early war is risky, and doesn't always work.

Because early warmonger is so difficult, you will need an elite army to take cities rather than massing units. Early warmonger civs, and civs with early UU's get buffed by this. If you want to warmonger early, it's best to use these civs (Rome, Aztec, Assyria, etc.)

Please stop making threads about how early warmonger is tough. Instead, try something different. Try to make it work. Try something that you don't see in these threads all the time...it just might work out. Don't use the same strategies that everyone else has done, which everyone already has failed with.

I really think the trick to warmongering is to go Tradition, get a good solid set of four or so cities, then do your main attack in Medieval or later eras. A strong unique unit like Longbowmen or Cho-ko-nu helps a lot, too.

Oh, and ignore Honour entirely.

When I did my zulu domination game and went honor first, I found the key was city connections, I hardly ever raze cities and by connecting all of them and managing to build a few wonders like machu picchu I recovered in money. Once I was established again the game got super easy.

I went Zulu and honor and had a huge problem with funding and was constantly in the red towards the end. I had to keep the war machine going though to swallow up more luxury resources and get more pillaging to keep money in the bank....

My main pain point is trade routes. It becomes a question of trading or warring. At a certain point no one will trade if you are at war with the whole world.

But realistically the only thing you can do is wait until you get Impi Units and DO NOT Turn back just keep the war machine going. Aim towards capitals and key cities and get peace and move to the next Civ.

I've had success with early warfare in BNW, especially with the Huns. Their UA allows the captured cities (I only keep capitals, burn the rest) to rebuild quickly through their pastures. As your units are fighting, the Hunnic capital can focus on economy and happiness. I never settle new cities of my own until the war is done, and the happiness situation is stable.

Honor needs some gold generation or army maintenance reduction effect that scales as you wage war. Something like:

Vassal Armies: 1 unit is maintenance free for every puppet/annexed city. Double for capitals.

This way at the very least you can garrison every conquered city for free for the happiness and culture. And provide some incentive to not just burn every city you capture.

It's absolutely essential that you bully one or two CSs for cash if you're going early warmonger.

Early warmongering in BNW is horrible to say the least. I have yet been able to wage early war successfully without either going broke or having huge happiness issues. (emperor, standard). It's as though civ 5 wants you to develop your economy first, then go to war, which means you won't be able to do anything for first 2-3 eras.

escl said:

Honor needs some gold generation or army maintenance reduction effect that scales as you wage war. Something like:

Vassal Armies: 1 unit is maintenance free for every puppet/annexed city. Double for capitals.

This way at the very least you can garrison every conquered city for free for the happiness and culture. And provide some incentive to not just burn every city you capture.

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Tradition already has a policy for garrisons being free. An honor policy like that would be more for continued attacks.

One can only hope that Honor receives a buff/change in the Fall patch. I really want to use that tree more than 1 in 10 games.

Personally I think Honour would be fine if they just put 1 happiness on walls/castles back. There are a number of ways to get gold with your army but happiness is a pretty major hassle. Unsure why they nerfed the happiness out of honour, never thought it was particularly overpowered.

pretty simple:

demand tribute from CS if u want warmonger - pretty simple ..

tommynt said:

pretty simple:

demand tribute from CS if u want warmonger - pretty simple ..

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^^ totally agree. people just need to try something different like this.

Your flaw was going Honor.

The main problem with honor is that is not suited at all for early conquest. You are better going with liberty, you skip building worker and settler, and go units instead. The +1 production bonus so early is also a big help. Even tradition helps more than honor, because it will give you more gold from capital at some point, and again you skip building monuments, and build units instead. Also there's the problem that honor is the worst policy for happiness, you you are dependant on other happiness resources other than policies, and the garrison-to-happiness is plain stupid.

Kintara said:

If you're going to change Honor to give it more gold, I prefer something that isn't a static bonus like free maintenance.

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Free maintenance units are more suited. You get an indirect economic boost involved having units. The more units you have, most gold will cost each you this approach is perfect.

Honor need some early punch that doesn't scale as the game advance. Honor need to be again the best early happiness policy, again in a way it doesn't scale. Honor need to remove the garrison unit. Keeping troops in garrison for benefits is more suited for peaceful approachs.

I would change the 15% bonus to melee prod to 20% bonus to pre-renaissance military units, or even more early-centered: 25% bonus to ancient and classical military units. while not compared to the hammers you will save from one settler and one worker (plus the 50% bonus when building settlers), or from 4 Aqueducts and 4 Monuments (all of them without maintenance BTW), I will help to mass an army earlier and save some turns to do so.

To have an actual support for the army, I would go with 4 units maintenance-free. I would attach the +1 happiness and +2 culture from garrisons to walls for culture, and stables and forges for happiness, so you can actually use your army, and to get an extra happiness boost, either +4 happiness from Heroic Epic, from the Palace, or even split in both.

I like garrison part. :-(
Since it is like cheer up policy where there is no barbarians, or nothing to bully right now. Or when im just short this one hapiness asap.

What Honor needs:
Some maintanece free units. Since most of the policies demand use of army.
Secondary source of hapiness. Garrison is ok, it is just not enought. Add to that its most harsh requirment. (vs Tradicion pop, or Liberty roads/pop).
Unit production bonus switch to just land. So it will affect also siege weapons, or practically half of pre renessanse army.

Its a second SP tree; I like to go Tradition/Liberty and then go down the left side of Honor.

I'd take away zero maintenance from oligarchy and give it to military caste

El Caballerion said:

But yes, I know I could get ridiculed, but at the same time, the game is broken for warmongers in the first few ages.

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The game is also broken for players who like to not use their first settler.

Polisurgist said:

The game is also broken for players who like to not use their first settler.

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Priceless.

"I want to use my first settler as an offensive unit against the surrounding barbarians... like in those movies about how the West was won... game is fubar".