can one survive without the honor policies?

I usually play with raging barbarians, so I use my second policy choice to open the Honor tree for the bonus against barbarians and culture points from killing barbarians. I rarely go any further with the Honor tree.

In a game with Raging Barbs, taking the honour opener pays for itself I think. Otherwise, I think it may be the policy tree I use the least. (Possibly Autocracy might be competitive for that title though).

Cultural victories almost all start with tradition (or possibly tradition opener then liberty to the policy reduction). If you're scared about defending without honour, note that tradition has a policy which makes cities stronger - probably better in defence than honour, just by itself. Put your cities on a hilland build a couple archers. If needs be rush build walls once or twice.

Aztecs are a noyable exception, but It's still fine to start tradition and take honour as a second tree even then.

mlund said:

Honor would be so much more relevant if your units had a -50% XP cost for promotions instead of +50% XP for kills.

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Wait, what?

In vanilla, the Military Tradition Social policy awarded +50% more experience due to actions taken in combat.

Was this revised to +50% experience ONLY on killing an actual unit in Gods and Kings?

If so, I can understand the hate for the Honor tree.

mintcandy said:

Was this revised to +50% experience ONLY on killing an actual unit in Gods and Kings?

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No, no, I just made a poor choice of words there.

- Marty Lund

You can definately survive without Honor. I almost never open with Honor. The increased XP is extremely nice for ranged units, because it's easier keeping them alive.

If you are going for domination - and keeping a lot of puppets it will keep your empire happy. It's so nice combined with the maintenance free garrison from Tradition and puppets always seem to make the defense buildings.

If you're going to build a lot of cities yourself and your social policy points are going to be limited, I'd absolutely ignore Honor.

mlund said:

No, no, I just made a poor choice of words there.

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Hmmm...

I'd have to say that I wouldn't be in favor of that, assuming that the XP bonuses from buildings and World Wonders stays constant.

Why? Because such a reduction in experience prereqs makes it possible to churn out Level 2 units upon researching Bronze Working, and Level 3 units upon researching Machinery.

In short, it would make beelining to the Military Tradition social policy THE clearly superior cultural choice for Ancient/Classical era domination rushes. Is that a bad thing? In my opinion, yes.



In a somewhat related topic, I wish there was more incentive to build Military Academy than just a flat +15 XP on top of the +30 from Barracks and Armory.

Yes, I realize that experience doesn't exist in a void, that there's a huge difference between the +15 experience that the Barracks provides and the +15 experience that an Armory provides. However, the Military Academy doesn't unlock any new experience levels. If I'm shelling out 300 hammers for an experience building, you can bet that I'd want it to unlock an experience level that the previous experience building didn't already unlock.

I'd be more satisfied if each experience building/World Wonder unlocked a new level, rather than provide a flat amount of experience. What do you guys think?

I agree. I never build military academies because the benefit doesn't seem worth it.

Yzman said:

I agree. I never build military academies because the benefit doesn't seem worth it.

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It is easily worth it in a city with heroic epic and brandenburg, or just any central military hub you create.

CiV can have less "specialized" approach to cities than some previous civs, but having a military specialized city is always a great choice.