Starting with Honor or Piety - feasible?

Those two are the only trees I haven't explored in any game yet. The reason: they're clearly designed to be adopted early, but as an alternative to Tradition or Liberty they appear to be intrinsically inferior.

Honor:
To even match the culture bonus from Liberty, to say nothing of Tradition, you need to kill one barbarian unit every three turns, assuming the Liberty player has one city. The same policy actually gives you the ability to kill them fast, but they don't spawn nearly fast enough for that. So you'll be lacking for culture and more social policies to improve your civilization. Military Caste helps somewhat but you won't have as many cities as those with Tradition or Liberty at the same time because you won't have the building bonuses and may have opted to produce more units instead anyway.
Also, you'll likely go into a budget deficit with the maintenance you need to pay to keep the Honor tree useful. "Professional Army" is very cool but it only becomes important when you're actually ready to upgrade something or build those military buildings, while the bonuses from Tradition and Liberty are there right from the start.

Piety:
This seems designed to benefit you in the long run, which is really nice, but choosing Tradition or Liberty appears to give you a jump-start you'll be hard-pressed to catch up to with those long-term advantages. Also: culture is again a problem. Sure you'll get the bonus for Holy Sites but your first two prophets will be expended for the religion and then they become increasingly more expensive, even if you think the Holy Site is worth getting compared to a prophet's ability to convert three to five cities to your faith. Any kind of flat bonus not dependent on increasingly expensive resources appears to be more advantageous in the long run.

So...are these really feasible as starting choices? So far I've mostly just opened them later in order to get access to their special wonders if I'm interested in them, if at all.

Honor :
Prepare yourself too be small and late.
If you plan to dominate the map later, go for Tradition or Liberty. With Honor, you need to push early. Because you have no early boost, you need to get AI cities to progress.
In my current game (Sweden, Immortal, Pangea), I try to push later with Honor. I'm waiting to see witch AI caps I need to have (certainly my awesome neighbor Ramses where a wonders pop every turn ). But, I begin to be late and no AI want to go against another. I need to have one or two ally all the game.
Full Honor is for fast domination, pre T200 or without runaway far on the map (on higher level, on low, you can do what you want).

Piety :
Best way is ICSsacred sites.
Also I tried Korea Full piety (Emperor), it's fun but slower than Tradition. And I took Order instead Liberty.
There's a guide for Deity diplomatic victory and this forum. Read it, it's interesting.
Depend of your difficult level. You can have 4 to 5 prophet before Industrial Era. I use to land the second prophet if I have a religion.

Heh, try "fast domination" on a huge map. I guess my preference for big maps and long games means I'll never play with a full Honor tree.

Piety appears somewhat more interesting, even if slow in building up anything but religion. I'll read that thread, thanks.

Ieldra said:

So...are these really feasible as starting choices? So far I've mostly just opened them later in order to get access to their special wonders if I'm interested in them, if at all.

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Don't open them simply to get access to the SoZues or Mosque of Djinn. If you want SoZues you'll be capturing cities anyway, just capture the capital that has SoZues. If you have the hammers HS and Borobudur are just as good for spreading religion, probably more so on lower levels since the AI doesn't spread religion as much.

What is your definition of feasible? As easy as Tradition? Then the answer is no, by that definition Liberty isn't feasible either though. But if we are talking about viable, The Huns can go Honor, Sweden on a Tundra Start can go Honor. There are some other but that's about it.

I've dropped 3 in Liberty for fast settlers and then finished Piety with the Celts but that's not really what you're after.

What I mean with "feasible" is: if you play a game where you start with piety or tradition, are you well-advised to lower the difficulty one step below what you usually play because it's harder, or not?

Taking Honor means slow expansion and slow growth. The opener can be nice for civs like Germany or Songhai that want to immediately farm barb camps, but the other policies are quite lackluster. I guess it's the fastest way to get a GG if you absolutely must wage war at the very start of the game. However, I really do like the finisher. It's a nice extra source of money and can get you 50-75 gold per enemy in the late era wars. On the other hand, I haven't done the math, but there's a chance you'd just be making your money back from unit maintainance!

Piety is even worse for growth. The ONLY reason to go into Piety, IMO, is if your entire gameplan is based around getting a specific finisher belief, like Sacred Sites. Every other Civ seems to love Piety, though, so expect tough competition. If you're not Byzantium, I wouldn't even consider Piety (unless you just want to have some fun). Even if you did want a certain belief like Jesuit Education, you can always find the Civ that adopted it and steal one of their prophets!

Ieldra said:

What I mean with "feasible" is: if you play a game where you start with piety or tradition, are you well-advised to lower the difficulty one step below what you usually play because it's harder, or not?

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I'd say that depends on the difficulty, you can play smaller (i.e not tall or wide) on difficulties where the AI DOESN'T just run away with tech, if you can catchup with the AI in tech by the Renaissance then you can do whatever you want with social policies.

paralistalon said:

Piety is even worse for growth. The ONLY reason to go into Piety, IMO, is if your entire gameplan is based around getting a specific finisher belief, like Sacred Sites. Every other Civ seems to love Piety, though, so expect tough competition. If you're not Byzantium, I wouldn't even consider Piety (unless you just want to have some fun). Even if you did want a certain belief like Jesuit Education, you can always find the Civ that adopted it and steal one of their prophets!

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Hmm...I've had at least one game where nobody appeared to care much about religion but me (I was the Celts, started with Liberty). So maybe it's more that certain civilizations appear to love to go Piety, and having none of them in a game is maybe unlikely but possible. In that game, I had the Huns, the Ottomans, Egypt, Poland, Ethiopia, Carthage, the Shoshone, Assyria, America and two civs I don't know because they were destroyed before I could meet them.

With all due respect to others here. If you are playing on a high level on a "normal" map..ie Immortal or Deity and never EVER open Piety or Honor you're likely to have a better game. There is just too much goodness from other policy branches.

Religion, while nice, isn't super critical to being able to win most games and on Immortal I am often overrun by AI prophets and missionaries anyhow.

Honor is for warmongering and while fun, will result in mass hatred from the AI's leading to poor trades and sometimes multiple DOW's (like in my ongoing game as Brits).

In general, the sooner I have Tradition finished the happier I am.

If going Liberty, I want to be able to get my free GE when I need him to guarantee a wonder.

neilkaz said:

With all due respect to others here. If you are playing on a high level on a "normal" map..ie Immortal or Deity and never EVER open Piety or Honor you're likely to have a better game. There is just too much goodness from other policy branches.

Religion, while nice, isn't super critical to being able to win most games and on Immortal I am often overrun by AI prophets and missionaries anyhow.

Honor is for warmongering and while fun, will result in mass hatred from the AI's leading to poor trades and sometimes multiple DOW's (like in my ongoing game as Brits).

In general, the sooner I have Tradition finished the happier I am.

If going Liberty, I want to be able to get my free GE when I need him to guarantee a wonder.

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OP isn't a high level player though and that's okay we just need to tailor our advice to lower levels without pulling what a well known poster does and say "do whatever you want to still win" and then ridicule low level players and call them apes. My advice is that if you can stay relatively close to the tech rate of the AI civs then you can feasibly go Honor and Piety. Is it Optimal? No, but that's not the question asked.

Having Piety tree as your first tree: Unless you are playing Poland, it's equivalent to playing one difficulty level higher than normal. Somewhere in this forum in an article on how Poland can use this with their free policies and faith buying science buildings. That same article has how Byzantine could use this with Sacred Sites.

Having the Honor tree as your first tree: For every civ, Equivalent to playing two difficulty levels harder than normal.

Always the same things. Ancient trees are NOT balanced at all, specially playing vs AI. Feasible? sure, why not.

After all, if you wanna warmonger early, liberty is more suited for it. If you want a strong religion, either liberty/tradition can do it fine enough. Piety need at least some culture passives to get going, Honor is downright bad design. There are no real economic/production aids to assemble an early army, and the garrison for happiness/culture is just annoying: an expensive way (as unit maintenance goes up) to get some passives in the tree.

For the sake of variety and to have some fun with different approaches, I recommend you to lower one difficulty and go either full honor// full piety. While not competitive, they are fun on their own.

Opening honor as the Songhai on Marathon is quite strong. Camp gold is 3 times higher than standard at this speed (75g), whilst unit/building costs are only 2.3 times higher, making the treble camp gold UA very strong.

I’m not sure this will work, but I’m trying an Honor/Piety emperor game as the Songhai (huge map) with the aim of using Sacred Sites in combination with domination (rather than ICS). The principle is to settle 5-6 cities, then pick a victim & take a city or two. The tourism from the 6+ cities should rapidly swamp the target civ, bringing up cultural dominance. That civ is then used to train the Renaissance spy rapidly (lv1 spy operates at lv3 = time to steal/1.5 + no setting up surveillance period) & to bag some extra caravan science (+4).

Later in the game my plan is to focus on military tech, pick Autocracy & use the happiness bonuses to support further conquest. As cultural dominance is reached against further civs, Industrial Espionage can be used alongside a mob of spies with an effective level of 3 to rapidly accumulate tech ((time to steal/1.5)/2). It will also give me the option of taking cities with no population loss or resistance period.

Pretty sure this won’t represent anything optimal, but should be fun to play in a slightly different way.

It really depends on what you think makes a game "easy". If you're having trouble staying alive and catching up to the AI, tradition is easy. If you are having trouble building expansive infrastructure, liberty is easy. If you are having problems with early military conquests, honor is easy. If you are having problems spreading and/or keeping a religion alive, piety is easy.

The main problem with game balance is that generally everyone is looking to stay alive, catch up, and build infrastructure, regardless of what you're trying to do (except very civ-specific niche strategies like Huns conquest or Byzantine sacred sites). Early wars and religious focus are optional... and in BNW, their payoff is generally only worth the effort if you do it very well. So, THAT is the additional layer of difficulty that's added, you're forcing yourself to succeed on one more level than you would have to otherwise, and it has to be to a degree where it makes up for the lack of tradition/liberty infrastructure bonuses.

If you do fine at self-defense and infrastructure, you can win the game. Adding the necessity to game-long war either religiously or militarily is unnecessary, and just adds risk. On the other hand, if you're not doing so hot on self d and infrastructure in the first place, then you'll certainly lose, even if you perfectly exploit Honor/Piety. The only exception I've found with Piety as a general strategy is purposefully playing small and behind and friendly, so you don't really need either defense or infrastructure. I haven't played much with Honor to know how it can solve the infrastructure problem outside of clearing the map pre-industrial (which requires a good mix of military savvy, civ selection, and favorable map conditions), but that's certainly one way to make sure you don't need infrastructure.

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Honor as a first tree is really ok , but situational if you want it 'easy' , it works wonder in a continent /pangea kind of map where you will actually have land neighbours , and with a civ designed for it , like say shaka or attila, monty stuff like that ,( and with quite some practice sweeden). It s quite good if you go for a composite bow rush assisted by OP early tanks (jags or ikanda powered spears) . I would then build minimal amount of building in my city (obelisk , granary, maybe shrine, ikanda if zulu) and go for units fast. For a nice Hun horse archer rush , there is a superbe guide around here somewhere.
Oh but I admit , I usually grab the trad opener as my first policy before going leftside of honor. Honor is still my first tree.
This is exactly how Honor gives you bonus early on , kill your neighbours ,all of 'em in a pangea before turn 200.
If you are on a continent setting , I can then stop waging war once my continent is mine , usually before even meeting the other continents guys ! (hello , no I m no warmonger , no I just happened to be all alone in this empty continent) and go for an order wide and tall late game empire or go on with an autocratic kill em all.

if you play singleplayer or Public games then sweden With honor can be very OP.
just finish honor and farm generals by decleareing war on a cs and farming it for exsperience.
give the generals to other cs for a Nice 90 influence bonus. later on give them the artists,admirals,writers,and musicians for even more allies.

so honor really does favor Sweden.
If you play no quitter games then you can legally kill Your nabour early game and let him keep a bad city and just farm the civ for generals.
since no quitter games are played at immortal this should give you lots of Nice generals.

Ieldra said:

Heh, try "fast domination" on a huge map. I guess my preference for big maps and long games means I'll never play with a full Honor tree.

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It depends of your difficult level. Up to Emperor, you can do it. Immortal is harder, I suppose. I didn't play a on huge map since I move on it. On deity, maybe for real good player.

What I really learn on deity is how AI is weak for war. So, full Honor is not really an issue. It's just a longer game over Tradition or Liberty (Note : I'm not yet able to play full honor on Deity).

Full piety is harder, IMHO. I tried it again after my first reply (Prince, Emperor, Immortal). I love Jesuit Education and wonder how I can optimize To the Glory of God. For other gameplay, klaskeren showed the way.

Honor is weird. Having played/done an LP with it I honestly still don't like it, I think Liberty/Tradition will still outperform it, but there are some maps where you can actually play it decently close to the other two trees. It should still be used as a second tree rather than the opener imo. I honestly don't know of any time I would want to open with Piety beyond the opener. If you have good land, Tradition does it better. If you have crappy land, go Liberty or even Honor and take someone else's land. You really want that religion? Oh well, sometimes the map says you're not doing X, doing Y is way better.

And as other people have mentioned the AI has a complete fixation for Piety/Tradition to the point where 90% of the time I open up the diplomacy screen and see Tradition/Piety/Piety/Piety/Tradition/Tradition/Piety from the AIs. It's SO incredibly dumb.