Chose Zulu; picked Honor; warmongered; now bankrupt

Had a game on emperor Rome continents I wanted to discuss.

Did the right side of honor, consulates, and commerce. Built statue of Zeus, built a forward city and an iron city, and built two ballista and four legions.

Conquered my continent, killing Germany in the classical era, a hostile city state in a good location with unique luxury which provoked a denouncement from the Dutch and Polynesians (other cont) I killed him to in medieval. It is now the early renaissance and I'm sailing a dozen soldiers to go make a beachhead. Japan warmongered the other continent and we are 'friends' and no one else knows of my exploits other than the city states being nervous.

I'm middle of the pack in science but I will definitely run away with the game since I consolidated two German, two Dutch, and the Vatican into Rome.

I traded with the Dutch until I killed him and now I trade with the city states but I'm self sufficient on gold. I did settle a great merchant in Rome as well for some extra cash.

I think honor makes sense for Swordsman UUs. With Zeus, Legions, ans discipline I melee'd cities to death easily and against Germany I didn't have ballistae yet.
 
I replayed the map from the beginning and decided to focus on some warmongering (around classical era), but not in capturing measly cities. I've dabbled in both TRADITION and HONOR, giving me some culture bonuses and more experience in combat. At this rate, with all the small scale battles my troops are in, when it's time to upgrade to Impi, they'll have super amazing promotions under their belt. So far so good!
 
Lots of criticism of the honour tree but I think the opener is great for whatever kind of game I'm playing. You get the 33% combat against barbarians and with so many of them around that allows you to quickly build up XP for units and the culture points for every kill means you get the first few SPs really quickly. From the honour opener you can turn to tradition or liberty to build up your economy for later warmongering if that's what you want to do.
 
footslogger said:
Lots of criticism of the honour tree but I think the opener is great for whatever kind of game I'm playing. You get the 33% combat against barbarians and with so many of them around that allows you to quickly build up XP for units and the culture points for every kill means you get the first few SPs really quickly. From the honour opener you can turn to tradition or liberty to build up your economy for later warmongering if that's what you want to do.
Click to expand...

This works really well with the Aztecs. Get four or so Jaguars and clear out all the barbarians nearby - you get a bit of money, some well-trained troops you can upgrade, city-states that like you, and no worries about having workers snatched (goddamn barbarian horsemen) or tiles pillaged.

One policy in honour is reasonably solid in any multiplayer game. (or if you don't replay games that go wrong)
 
I agree that Honour could do with a buff to gold (and possibly happiness) to make it more competitive against Tradition.

How about adding something similar to the Songhai's ability to the finisher? Extra gold pillaged from cities and camps? And then also maybe +3 happiness and +2 culture for every two garrisoned units instead of +1 and +1 for every one?
 
In addition to some of the other stuff said, IMO Honor feels like it needs a policy that allows you to damage units garrisoned in a city.
 
Everyone here usually loses their mind when they see the Zulu on their border. I'm actually glad because I know that they will pose absolutely no danger in long run. Yes, they do have a throng of units in the earliest game, and yes, they have some badass unique military abilities, however, when the time for confrontation comes, they are far behind with technology. From day 1 the Zulu have negative income. They can fortify their economy with extortion, but it can only get them so far. If they are unable to conquer in very early game, they can become the everyone's enemy, the best uniting force for all other civs in BNW.
 
If they boost Honor like that (giving free units etc.), then these same ppl that complain about it will be the first complaining about being wiped out early because Honor is sooo OP ... Go figure :)

Honor seems to be quite OK for a secondary tree. I don't really understand the problem here. Yeah, its not wise to open with it, but so what?
 
I usually play epic games when I want to go warmongering, because they allow me to build up a lot more XP. I tend to make 3-4 teams of melee + ranged (archer or catapult) + 1-2 to protect my cities from barbs. I use the pairs to attack a city state with each and the archer attacks while the melee takes dmg. I've done this a few times so far and each time it leaves me with several hugely powerful units. we're talking 7-8-9 promotions before I start my first real war. That leads up to a really easy military game because the computers simply cannot deal with 6-8 units that have been upgraded so hard.
 
dragonxxx said:
Honor seems to be quite OK for a secondary tree. I don't really understand the problem here. Yeah, its not wise to open with it, but so what?
Click to expand...

Well, two issues really. If it's a rubbish primary tree yet is available from the start of the game, you get new players and bad AIs taking it as their primary tree, and failing as a result.

If Honour's supposed to be a tree you can take from turn 1 without hamstringing yourself, it should be designed that way. If it isn't, it should unlock in a later era.

My own opinion is that they actually intend the other trees to be a match for Tradition, but got the balance wrong, so the result is that some trees are way worse than Tradition, and one is only arguably worse.
 
Every tree is ok if we view it secondary tree, and even more awesome if it was free tree. Unfortunetly, there is no place for free trees (exept Poland). And generally we may end with 2 branches, and ideology, or some combinacion. And we have 9 no-ideology branches, forcing Tradicion (or maybe Liberty) start crippes number of combinacion. So Piety/Honor being viable singular choice for ancient era is way to go.

Which basicly means that Honor needs more smiles. Since 1 smile with harsh requrment is far behind 1/10pop + 1/2 pop in capital. And some mantenence free units, to keep this garrisons, or barb hunting on.
 
Early game only conquer one civ at a time because there isn't enough hapiness and economy to keep it stop at you're first war built trading post at puppets and go beserck in the renaissance stop and finish it in the late industrial modenr era.

Thats usally how you have to play domination
 
I think OP'a problem is the ICS 'fix' biting him as the overwhelming cost of maintaining buildings in captured cities, lack of improved tiles, low populations and and missing road connections means he's paying more to keep up the cities than he's getting back.

I don't see how you can fix this outside of avoiding honor and go Liberty warmonger, free workers + pyramids help with building infrastructure or nerf the ICS fix which will probably cause other problems.

He only has 4 units right?

Unfortunately, Civ5 is a game and you can't fix this or all games will be won in the first 50 turns.
 
The way to do it is consider the first war a training exercise with two goals,

1 level up some elite units

2 extort cash from the losing civ

Once you killed all their units and close in I their capital they will offer mondo cash. Actually, they will probably offer some cities. Ask for the cash instead.

Now you are loaded.

Take those elite units to your other neighbor and start the real warmongering, using the cash from the first settlement to fund your war.

As a nice bonus, when the payout ends the first civ will usually be seriously lagging from having been dirt poor and you can walk all over them.

By that point you should have your economy going.

If you try and use the first war to expand instead you will go bankrupt.

I usually start the first war by stealing a worker, and just keep sending units to the front, retreating to keep them alive, until I have a levelled up army capable of making them pay. But I don't capture cities, or only raze.
 
I usually use a combination of tradition commerce and honor when warmongering, it works decently ...then autocraty if late on science or order if I m ahead. Commerce gets me cheaper roads , hence connections to my puppets gets me more cash , and then happiness + more gold on TP , since I still TP spamm the puppets I kept , It kind works well.
Also I usually uses aztecs or poland to warmonger , because i find that some extra policies to also get three rationalism SP really helps.

Actually my main issue on early warmongering is the diplomacy :) they really hate tyou for it , you always have to be so subtle , attack when they still don t see you , peace , meet new friends , use them while they are still not mad at you ...use denounce with parcimony otherwise you just make things worse despite what has been said before.
 
I feel your pain, OP. The only game I've ever quit after playing more than 200 turns is when I tried to do a Zulu warmonger game, choosing Liberty and then Honor. I didn't even go to war that early - I waited till Impi were available.

I was brought down not by bankruptcy but by warmonger hate. All my neighbours saw me as a threat and ganged up to DOW me. Also, Inca was a runaway in science and culture with no one to stop him because I was too occupied with wars.
 
I agree with the opinion that Honor should get maybe 6 maintance free units, maybe that would help a lot.

Also I dont get why is the cheaper Barracks, Armory construction at Prof.Armies, when I take that policy I already have all the warmonger buildings build in my core cities.

Anyway I think Honor needs a change, a buff.
 
Pre-BNW, I firmly believed that Honor was an underappreciated tree specifically for a strong defensive military, and that most of the ire against it was that it was no good for conquering (it wasn't).

I kind of feel like the revisions have made it into a slightly better at offense, but way worse at defense, option.
 
If we are going to modify garrison, I would suggest keeping the happiness / culture bonus, but adding "Cities with a garrison will stop revolting 1/3 faster" or something similar. Then those captured cities can become useful sooner.

Even if honor doesn't give gold, you can usually bankroll a deficit with the money from captured cities for awhile.

At -10 gpt, that ~100-200 gold from a captured city gives you 10-20 turns to work with. That gives you time to capture another city, or sue for peace and sell some newly acquired resources for gpt to make things manageable.
 
You obviously are not a student of history, many many "Princes" have bankrupted their kingdoms in their vainglorious pursuit of military domination. It seems to me the game is working fine. I suggest you run your economy better, don't kill off all your trading partners, and use scouts to find big piles of gold you can pull from the ground after you settle nearby.

You can also buy tiles to get resources or plop down a great general. I've great generaled my way to natural wonders before.

The commerce social policy even piety can make money or at least you can use your religion to make money. Some wonders make money. In my current game I'm Ethiopia and I have plenty of coin, but I only fight defensive wars, always against Montezuma who seems to think I should be attacked every 60 turns. He also likes to attack France our other neighbor every few years, he's never taken a single city, now he is trying to conquer Cape Town but I keep giving them units, which I get from Belgrade.

;-)

The path to victory is no longer kill all your neighbors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
Few questions about vox populi and more
Replies
1
Views
220
Yerltvachovicic
Yerltvachovicic
mastrude
[BNW] [Deleted]
Replies
3
Views
349
mastrude
mastrude
ThermobaricPunch
Multiplayer desyncs (loading screen between turns) and weird bugs
Replies
1
Views
801
coolhandluke11
C
Henri Christophe
The Mongol conquest
Replies
5
Views
1K
lerrocco
L
J
Please help, I can't ever get past the industrial era on immortal.
Replies
6
Views
1K
martindo
M
Top Bottom