New Upgrade for Honor...Reformation Belief?

dexters said:

I think you're just proving that it will be advantageous to the human player.

It's very hard to code a flexible war AI, which already isn't that good, to station AA units to prevent that.

Even if it does manage to crank out AA units and sort of place them in the right spots, Guess what the human player will do. Wipe those AA units out ASAP.

When I mean counter, I mean a way for the game mechanic to balance out an overpowered/annoying mechanic like strategic/tactical bombing such that it can also act as a check on the human player and it's not entirely putting the pressure on the AI to understand the mechanic, because it never will be able to perform like a human player can, so it will be overpowered/exploitable in the human's favour.

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At that point, however, you're really talking about a problem with the entire core game in regards to the AIs ability to handle unit tactics. There are already a multitude of ways in which the player can exploit the A not so I, many aspects of which are essential to the core gameplay. That being said, I can understand why adding one more means to do so might not be such a good idea.

Stellarnight said:

Personally I think the Honor tree should facilitate early warfare which is often economically expensive for the warmonger and comes with high opportunity cost in term of foregoing developing the economy or science.

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Discipline is rather weak because in the early game, you can't afford to have many units standing around so the effect rarely comes in. I would rather shift that effect to say Military Tradition or Professional Army and have the doctrine idea of yours take the final policy slot.

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Old lurker registering to answier this post.

I think Stellarnight describes the problem accurately, but I don't think free units will og a long way in solving that problem.

What Honor really needs is something that provides economical income in the early game. Not only is the lack of such income a problem for Honor, but it is also a problem for all civs with unique units.

I'm normally a builder, but I've played a few domination games recently (only at Emperor) to test out Honor. I do this with civs that have mid or late game UU's.

For such civs, I will take policies in the following order:
- Tradition opener
- Honor opener
- Discipline
- Military caste
- Oligarchy
- Finish Honor

I find that this provides a decent economical start. Not as good as pure Tradition or Liberty, but it helps a bit vs barbs, and also sets me up to finish the Honor tree, and then get ready for war in the medieval or reinessance era.

Contrary to what many seem to think, many of the Tradition policies are just as good late game as early game. If I have free policies to spend, I may come back to pick up Aristocracy, Legalism and Monarchy, mostly for the happiness.

But for civs with early war potential, this does not work so well, as they will run out of money early game too easily.

I suggest replacing Warrior Code with

War Bounty:
- If a military unit is in a city, razing is twice as fast
- Once an enemy city is razed to the ground, gain 200(normal speed) gold and a free worker.

Also:
- Move the free great general to Discipline
- Move the +25% general production to Professional Army

I feel the above should be enough to make sure that early wars will pay for themselves, and also reflect the nature of early wars, which were often about plundering and enslaving more than gaining territory.

Later on, the benefit will be less significant.

Doctrines are an incredible idea, but I feel they should fill a substantially different role to reformation beliefs focusing much more on direct offensive or defensive capability, rather than empire enhancing beliefs, to keep it very grounded in actively winning battles. I'm going to rattle a couple of examples off because they're fun.

Guerilla Warfare: your melee units are invisible if fortified in Forest or Jungle. Enemy units adjacent to their tile can spot them.
Higher Ground: ranged units stationed on a hill gain +1 range.
Strength in Numbers: you can produce obsolete units from your cities until their replacement unit should become obsolete.
Safe Cove: naval units can repair in Atoll tiles at the same rate they would in friendly territory.
Maginot Line: forts provide +1 production and +1 culture. Citadels provide +3 production and +3 culture.
Reconnaissance: Scouts have +1 sight and +1 movement.
War Machine: you get 150 gold for the first time you conquer an enemy city.


Beliefs like these directly mould the way you'd want to fight battles; the Maginot Line makes forts more viable so you can plan for a much more defensive game, while Strength in Numbers favors a much more horde related approach. War Machine provides a bit of leeway economically for you to overproduce units in the early game and go into a spree without finding your coffers drained and sacrificing science output for it. Having terrain based benefits makes picking your battles much more of an effective way to play, and provides unique flavor to encounters, not to mention influencing army composition.

SolDelta said:

Doctrines are an incredible idea, but I feel they should fill a substantially different role to reformation beliefs focusing much more on direct offensive or defensive capability, rather than empire enhancing beliefs, to keep it very grounded in actively winning battles. I'm going to rattle a couple of examples off because they're fun.

Guerilla Warfare: your melee units are invisible if fortified in Forest or Jungle. Enemy units adjacent to their tile can spot them.
Higher Ground: ranged units stationed on a hill gain +1 range.
Strength in Numbers: you can produce obsolete units from your cities until their replacement unit should become obsolete.
Safe Cove: naval units can repair in Atoll tiles at the same rate they would in friendly territory.
Maginot Line: forts provide +1 production and +1 culture. Citadels provide +3 production and +3 culture.
Reconnaissance: Scouts have +1 sight and +1 movement.
War Machine: you get 150 gold for the first time you conquer an enemy city.


Beliefs like these directly mould the way you'd want to fight battles; the Maginot Line makes forts more viable so you can plan for a much more defensive game, while Strength in Numbers favors a much more horde related approach. War Machine provides a bit of leeway economically for you to overproduce units in the early game and go into a spree without finding your coffers drained and sacrificing science output for it. Having terrain based benefits makes picking your battles much more of an effective way to play, and provides unique flavor to encounters, not to mention influencing army composition.

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I think these ideas would be the best for honor doctrines, with some changes and my own doctrine ideas:

Guerrila warfare - also provides forester promotion to all melee and ranged land units (double movement across forests and jungles) and units ignore ZoC whilst traversing through jungles and forest.
Safe cove - naval units in atolls are invisible as well as enable healing unless an enemy naval ship is 1 tile next to it. Doctrine is ineffective against modern naval forces.
For the Glory of the Empire - +2 happiness and +3 gold per captured city. +4 happiness and +6 gold per captured capital.
Doctrine of Flexibility - immune to enemy flanking bonuses
Doctrine of Mobility - flanking bonuses are 25% more effective and cavalry units ignore ZoCs.

I like where you guys are going with this as far as breaking the doctrines down to things that really focus mainly on battle mechanics. The reason I went for more empire type things is that I'm thinking of the reformation beliefs and how powerful they are. +30% Gold gift increase to CS and buying science buildings with faith are super powerful. People have based entire strategies around sacred sites. And being able to buy whatever great person you want starting in the industrial age? Religious fervor can change your game if you get it early enough, and heaven heathen conversion, while rarely useful, is at the very least a super cool idea and mechanic.

So in comparison, giving an extra boost to some battle mechanic, imo at least, a bit lackluster.

I'm looking for things like that in the Doctrines, also really focusing on changing great generals a bit. I think that as a warmonger you end up popping so many of them that you never have to buy them through honor. I'd like to have something where your doctrine boosts your great generals in some way. Plus, where is the synergy even within honor? The policies are scattered all over the place and don't really work with each other than well.

In comparison look at piety. Twice as fast shrines and temples, AND shrines and temples produce +1 faith. AND a 20% discount on purchases using faith. Again, not game breaking, and still a bit weak compared to a pure tradition or pure liberty shot, but the point is that you are rewarded for staying in piety. And like honor (for most people) you have to usually dip into or start with another opener.

I think a social policy should be able to stand on its own.

How about take away the zero maintenance cost for a military unit garrisoned from Oligarchy and give it to Honor.

In addition to +2Culture and Happiness Garrisoned Units boost growth by 5%
Finisher should include half price courthouses

Resispa that's a really great idea. Simple, takes a little chip off tradition and also puts it somewhere it feels more natural.

Then again you have to have a replacement within tradition.

BillDon said:

Resispa that's a really great idea. Simple, takes a little chip off tradition and also puts it somewhere it feels more natural.

Then again you have to have a replacement within tradition.

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Oligarchy still gets defensive bonus when units are garrisoned while that's not the best social policy in the tradition tree its still better than average especially when you consider that tradition openings are generally defensive in nature.

My thoughts are that in order to make Honor viable you need to buff them in the build up time before war and to do that it makes sense to use garrisoned units so that the bonuses don't out track the bonuses from Liberty and Tradition.

Here's what I'd do; I'd combine warrior code and discipline and have military tradition follow it on the left side; this is the combat side to Honor. On the right side I'd have a SP that grants zero maintenance and +5% growth when you have a garrisoned unit, Military caste remains the same and revert the changes to professional army so that defensive structures add +1 happiness. The finisher in addition to gold per kill you get half priced courthouses.

If Honor was buffed in this manner I might actually be inclined to open Honor in Domination games.

In summary the buff I'd make to honor tree
-zero maintenance and 5% growth for cities with garrisoned units
-+1 happiness for defensive structures
-Half Price Courthouses in the finisher

Well I don't think any building happiness should be in Honor. (I think they were deliberately limiting building happiness to ideologies... note stadiums nerf from 4 to 2)

However, in general things I would see as good possibilities somewhere in the tree

Free garrisons (move from Oligarchy..give Oligarchy another boost (like 5% production boost per 10 pop..or production boost with garrisons as well.)

Culture from Exp buildings..to give a pre-Autocracy reason to spread out exp buildings (maybe remove it from garrisons)

Boosts to citadels..or forts (possibly happiness from Citadels... no great improvement gives happiness.. and hammers from both?)

Culture from city capture (like G+K Autocracy opener)

[for anywhere there are Garrison benefits..limit them to non-recon units]