Possible to have a good game starting with honor or piety?

The two infamous starting SP's. Honor and piety are very infamous for being terrible starter SP's because in order for them to work correctly you have to already be well established but they can still be selected from the start of the game.

Has anyone ever had a successful game where they don't start with tradition or liberty but go with piety and honor first? I have tried it but i was behind everyone and never recovered until i reached the medieval era and everyone else was an era ahead of me or just getting out of medieval Even though i recovered i quit because there was no way i could win the game in the position i was in.


So has anyone ever had a good game starting with the SP's?

Here game piety first, idea was to exploit Siam trat by have +34% influence form gold gifts from religion + bonus from patronage. Game not finished as I seems can not trigger diplomatic victory by some reason.

Taking the Honor opener with your first policy can be good for the barb hunting. For this to work well you want raging barbs, rough terrain to produce dark areas to spawn, partial isolation from the other civs so they do not kill the camp and archers so they can kill the barb but not wipe the camp. Fast spawn rates with multiple barb farms can get you a lot of early culture.

After that go into liberty or tradition as desired. You might not take any other honor policies as it is best when complete and you have a lot of war. The knowledge of where the camps spawn can help you keep the shipping lanes clear throughout the game.

I have not tried to go early piety. I think I've only gone piety once as Ethiopia.

Barb hunting is pretty useless, especially on high difficulty after fall patch. AI and CS clear barbs way too fast. Honor is really for the fast xp and great general. Completing honor is not necessary but taking the left side along with liberty/tradition can work with certain civs. Zulus for fast xp, china for fast GG, mongol for early khan and sweden for early GG can all work.

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Depends on the difficulty. Both of these policies scale really badly the higher difficulty you go. Honor relies on the AI not killing off barbarians before you can reach them, while piety relies on you having a chance to get a decently dominant religion to be really worth it. You can do this on emperor and below, and even on immortal with the right civ, but it's not easy to do it on deity.

I've done a successful Aztec full honor rush and a Songhai honor/piety combination on emperor before. I haven't gotten these policies to work on immortal though.

redwings1340 said:

Depends on the difficulty. Both of these policies scale really badly the higher difficulty you go. Honor relies on the AI not killing off barbarians before you can reach them, while piety relies on you having a chance to get a decently dominant religion to be really worth it. You can do this on emperor and below, and even on immortal with the right civ, but it's not easy to do it on deity.

I've done a successful Aztec full honor rush and a Songhai honor/piety combination on emperor before. I haven't gotten these policies to work on immortal though.

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Posted game save is immortal. (post 2)

I've had successful Aztec and China Honor starts on immortal but 0 piety even on emperor

You don't really want to start with Piety or Honor because most of the benefits of the policies only come later. Mix and match with Tradition or Liberty. The Honor opener is pretty much the only policy that has its full effect almost at the beginning. Take the Piety opener for example, you can build one whole Shrine at half cost early on. That's a whole 20 hammers you save, and any additional benefits only come when you found more cities or research Philosophy.

I've tried honor lots of times, I have the same difficulties even a bit more with honor in emperor than with tradition in immortal.

Piety is harder to make it work on higher diffs to me. There are two specific strategies that may work going piety. One would be purchasing units with faith and using pilgrimage, or trying to get the most out of interfaith dialogue to get great boosts of science.

Basically the higher the difficulty is, more science you will need to be, so tradition and liberty are far more suited.

I've never tried opening with Honor AND Piety, but this gives me an idea for my next game: Celts, Tilted Axis map, open Honor, finish Honor & then work on Piety, build a bunch of Pictish Warriors and send them into the Tundra to generate copious amounts of , , and .

shaglio said:

I've never tried opening with Honor AND Piety, but this gives me an idea for my next game: Celts, Tilted Axis map, open Honor, finish Honor & then work on Piety, build a bunch of Pictish Warriors and send them into the Tundra to generate copious amounts of , , and .

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Songhai or the Celts are civs that can make this work. Maybe not on the highest difficulty levels, but definitely below that, and especially if you have raging barbarians on.

redwings1340 said:

Songhai or the Celts are civs that can make this work. Maybe not on the highest difficulty levels, but definitely below that, and especially if you have raging barbarians on.

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Oh, yeah, whenever I try one of these funky game set-ups, I drop down a level from what I normally play. Seeing how it's usually a fun game with suboptimal gameplay, it's not likely to be successful on my normal difficulty.

I've had plenty of piety victories on deity difficulty. Diplo, culture, science. (I generally play peaceful). I sometimes jump piety halfway through to hit another tree first, but I always come back to finish it at some point mid game-ish.

I wouldn't say it's better (or even on par) with tradition... but its certainly more fun imo (and in some ways, easier, because you're worried about different things). It's a totally different mindset. 100% playing from behind. Lots of diplo and World Congress use. Success rate is generally on par with Tradition. Although, it FEELs more risky because you're playing from behind 90% of the game.

I'm writing a guide right now for the diplo/science victory (culture victory up next after that, but its weaker... Because deity CV is just plain weaker).

I don't think I'm the only one out there doing this either.

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Opening with Honor isn't really that hard or risky on Immortal. The AI is never going to win before turn 360 so all you have to do is survive until dynamite.

The payoff is that it's funner. As adwcta mentions, you are more engaged with diplo and World Congress when you play from behind. There's a lot more to do with the BNW late game mechanics that are generally trivial when you turtle for science. It's a fun way to play.

I've won with Denmark, Germany, Aztecs, I think someone else - lost on turn 362 as the Huns because I held back when I should have killed Ethiopia all the way so I could flip their last CS allies to me in time.

A more ideal Honor strat would be earlier domination, but we all know that Honor doesn't work best for that, and pre-industrial melee units are trash anyway.

On the Honor side of things, you might browse the Honorable Germany Deity Challenge thread (cannot take any other policies until Honor is finished, and cannot ever take Tradition or Liberty): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=513182

Light Cleric did a video series of his (successful) effort: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=516478

I run Honor when I get tundra starts with Sweden on deity, you aren't going to have a great capital anyway. The early GG gift to a Culture CS means you can finish a 2 City NC Honor start at around t65-70 and then start making gold per kill. Your archers will have range or logistics much more quickly and you will get alot of gold in the mid game from kills.

Its not better than Liberty Pyramids but it works.

I've never been able to make piety work on Diety. I tried a Celtic Semi-Wide Jesuit Education SV but never finished it. By the time I got labs up I was pretty far behind and just retired from the game.

Resipsa said:

I run Honor when I get tundra starts with Sweden on deity, you aren't going to have a great capital anyway. The early GG gift to a Culture CS means you can finish a 2 City NC Honor start at around t65-70 and then start making gold per kill. Your archers will have range or logistics much more quickly and you will get alot of gold in the mid game from kills.

Its not better than Liberty Pyramids but it works.

I've never been able to make piety work on Diety. I tried a Celtic Semi-Wide Jesuit Education SV but never finished it. By the time I got labs up I was pretty far behind and just retired from the game.

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I'm going to play my next game with Sweden and take an Honor start. Just declare war on someone, preferably Austria or Venice, and fight them for GG points. You don't even have to conquer them, just don't lose any units, farm GG points and gift your GG to a city state. The second and third policy you take will basically double the GG points you get. And because you can gift a Great Person from anywhere, instead of having to go to a specific city state as you have to do with a Great Merchant, you can pick whichever city state is going to give you the best benefits and culture, faith or luxuries that other city states are looking for.

Take honor if the ONLY solution of your current game is to declare war and take the capital of AI. If you are able to play peacefully until dynamite, just take traditon.

Piety? Sometimes it is good to be a 2nd tree, or ignore it completely.

soldier2975 said:

The two infamous starting SP's. Honor and piety are very infamous for being terrible starter SP's because in order for them to work correctly you have to already be well established but they can still be selected from the start of the game.

Has anyone ever had a successful game where they don't start with tradition or liberty but go with piety and honor first? I have tried it but i was behind everyone and never recovered until i reached the medieval era and everyone else was an era ahead of me or just getting out of medieval Even though i recovered i quit because there was no way i could win the game in the position i was in.


So has anyone ever had a good game starting with the SP's?

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How exactly did you "recover", but were still not in a position to win the game? What difficulty level were you on? I know that on King and Emperor, a player can effectively pivot your victory strategy almost on a dime during the industrial or modern era (when ideologies come around).

Also, are you asking about the viability of simply opening the Honor or Piety tree with your first policy choice? Or are you asking about the viability of exclusively finishing one of those trees before going into another?

I would imagine that an Honor start with Aztecs or Germany could be highly successful. It also might work with Shoshone considering the high strength of its Pathfinder unit. It can also work well with Assyria, since you can use your army to steal technologies.

As noted by an earlier poster, Honor can also be a life-saver if "Raging Barbs" is enabled.

In any game in which you specifically want one of the popular pantheon beliefs or want to be the first to found a religion, then starting with Piety is almost necessary. I've found that God of War, Goddess of Fertility, Stone Circles, and Desert Folklore are usually one of the first pantheons to go. Once religions are founded, Mosques, Cathedrals, and Monasteries seem to be the most popular choices for the A.I.s. If you want any of these beliefs, then taking Piety and Organized religion as your first two policies and building Shrines and Temples ASAP in all your cities might be the only way to get them if you are competing against religion-flavored civs like Celts or Ethiopia. Otherwise, you are stuck relying on finding and settling near a religious natural wonder, being the first to meet multiple religious city states, or finding faith in ancient ruins on multiple occasions - none of which is a reliable strategy.

I've had plenty of successful games on King difficulty in which I started with Piety.

While I do think that Tradition and Liberty are generally superior as starting policies, there are merits in some cases to starting with Piety or Honor. With either policies, you might get a slightly slower start, but if played properly, it could pay off later down the road.

Aztec / Honor opener is pretty strong if you can find a barbarian camp to farm.

Not sure about it on Deity, but I don't play Deity much. Anything up to that though, works just fine.

One thing I find Honor is really useful for is knowing where barbarian camps are when they spawn under the Fog of War.