When do you open with the honor tree?

1) Under what conditions/in which situations do you open with (and complete) the honor tree?
2) What is/are your approach(es)? I.e., what do you do with your honorable empire?
3) What policy tree do you move into after honor?

I've had some success just unit-spamming with the capital and conquering, but feel that, that approach can lose steam after awhile. For example, I wiped out USA and Polynesia, but then ran into a very strong Hiawatha and stalemated for awhile. I've also had a lot of success with honor as a second tree, but am wondering about it as a first.

I'm wondering about going honor-->tradition, but am curious what others do.

If I'm going for an efficient win, I can honestly never see myself opening with honor. Maybe with the possible exception of Monty. You're giving up early growth through Tradition/Liberty for an amount of culture that you can make up in a few turns at the end of the game. As a second or third tree is a different story. Of course, I'm also not a very radical player.

I go tradition for pretty much every game unless I'm Monty. If I'm Monty, Open Honor -> Full Tradition -> Finish Honor.

Monty -> Honor -> Barbarian farming -> Complete Honor tree as you go rampaging other civs once they start expanding

It depends on my scouting; if I see on the map that Barbarians are going to be plentiful, I'll take the Honor opener first. But even then, I usually mix honor with Tradition, taking whichever one seems needed at the time. I like the early Great General of Honor for grabbing resources without having to build a happiness-consuming city. If I can tell that war is coming, I'll finish out Honor as soon as possible, because I really like the supplemental gold income.

Basically never.

It's only good for very early rushes with civs like the Huns if you have very nearby neighbors.

And you'd better make it count, as it's a far weaker tree for starting out than Tradition or Liberty.
It's nice later game, but a good start is vital, and Honor doesn't really give a good start.

When I plan on utilizing warrior line to its fullest potential.

I would never argue growth versus Tradition, but why are people throwing Liberty in that same category? Liberty gets zero bonus growth. Even the quick settlers is a poor excuse, because you are limited by happiness; still no bonus growth.

People focus too much on the opener while ignoring the rest of the tree. You get +2 culture later on (which means you can either ignore monuments or double up for a ton of culture). The finisher ends up contributing a significant amount of gold as long as you are militarily aggressive (which if you aren't, why would you open Honor anyway?).

IMO the one area that Honor tree is lacking is economy. The gold on capital and free garrisons from Tradition make a huge impact on early game. Honor gets screwed in both areas, as garrisons aren't optional and you need to pay for them. I think if Honor tree got some kind of gold boosts it would be at least equal to Liberty, as far a first tree.

ense7en said:

It's nice later game, but a good start is vital, and Honor doesn't really give a good start.

Click to expand...

In such cases you still need to split policies else it is a complete waste. Late game Honor with no barbs around and already have great generals sucks.

Something like Tradition opener ~> Honor Opener to Military Caste ~> Oligarchy (free garrisons) ~> finish Honor

Or a split of Honor/Liberty, but in those games I tend to finish both and skip Commerce. Adding on both Commerce and Liberty takes away too many other vital policies, such as Rationalism.

Opening and using the honor tree (for me) is viable in a few situations:

Playing a Game "for fun" on lower levels (King and lower)
Playing as Aztec (and still not always)
Using a Specific Civ (Huns, China, Germany) and decided specificaly to go for domination, or to at least quickly take my continent.

Matthew. said:

Something like Tradition opener ~> Honor Opener to Military Caste ~> Oligarchy (free garrisons) ~> finish Honor

Click to expand...

comatosedragon said:

Opening and using the honor tree (for me) is viable in a few situations:

Playing as Aztec (and still not always)
Using a Specific Civ (Huns, China, Germany) and decided specificaly to go for domination, or to at least quickly take my continent.

Click to expand...

These are the kinds of things I was thinking about starting this thread and would love to hear more

Matthew. said:

In such cases you still need to split policies else it is a complete waste. Late game Honor with no barbs around and already have great generals sucks.

Something like Tradition opener ~> Honor Opener to Military Caste ~> Oligarchy (free garrisons) ~> finish Honor

Or a split of Honor/Liberty, but in those games I tend to finish both and skip Commerce. Adding on both Commerce and Liberty takes away too many other vital policies, such as Rationalism.

Click to expand...

You certainly have bonus growth in Liberty. Its called Citizenship, Republic and the free settler/fast settler build.

Yet you also need to hard build monuments, which basically negates the free worker; deal with the extra unhappiness from settling additional cities, which negates any growth bonus (until quite later on when policies/happy buildings can compensate); and the +1 hammer isn't going to make a notable difference in building granaries (which otherwise I don't see how hammers are going to affect growth?)

I'll give you points for the tile improvement, although the bonus is small. You still need the population before you can work the improved tile.

Edit: Also, Liberty happiness is slowed by requiring roads, which further limit to how well you can exploit the quicker settlers. IMO, Liberty tree shines in mid-game--that time where there is still plenty of places to expand on the map, but after markets/coloseums/roads are up, allowing you to play wide/ICS better than Tradition/Honor starts.

I'm not a big fan of the honor tree, but I've used it with some success as China. When you go China-honor, plan on an early war with CBs where you exploit the free GG and get enough experience to get the range promotion. Rush to Machinery, then upgrade your 2 range CBs to 2 range CKNs. Now go out there and murder everything. Use garrisons, walls, and castles to keep your people happy while you go on a conquering spree. The bonus to exp should allow your uber CKNs to rack up just about every important promotion.

Dogmouth said:

I'm not a big fan of the honor tree, but I've used it with some success as China. When you go China-honor, plan on an early war with CBs where you exploit the free GG and get enough experience to get the range promotion. Rush to Machinery, then upgrade your 2 range CBs to 2 range CKNs. Now go out there and murder everything. Use garrisons, walls, and castles to keep your people happy while you go on a conquering spree. The bonus to exp should allow your uber CKNs to rack up just about every important promotion.

Click to expand...

About what turn number do you get your UUs online when you do that?

Do you use education, a wide build or NC with a couple cities?

Left side Honor is 3 policies and you can get that pretty fast for more xp/gg with your Chinese aggression.

budweiser said:

About what turn number do you get your UUs online when you do that?

Do you use education, a wide build or NC with a couple cities?

Left side Honor is 3 policies and you can get that pretty fast for more xp/gg with your Chinese aggression.

Click to expand...

I haven't done this since vanilla, so the world is a bit different now. I did it with NC and a couple cities. I started with the left-side of honor, and then went right as I began to rack up puppets and therefore needed happiness. I'll see if I can dredge up the game this weekend to flesh out what actually happened.

Well, I did one earlier this week and I did NC to Chok's and killed a guy around 200 - 300 AD, but I think that was a little slow. I posted a screen shot of it in another thread. I didnt do left side honor though... I did trad/right side.

India ICS

Honor > Disicpline > military caste > Liberty > Citizenship > Meritocracy > Professional Army


This gives you +4 global happiness with Cerimonal burial and one wall. Add a castle and your per city penalty is evened out.... after that its gravy...

Matthew. said:

In such cases you still need to split policies else it is a complete waste. Late game Honor with no barbs around and already have great generals sucks.

Something like Tradition opener ~> Honor Opener to Military Caste ~> Oligarchy (free garrisons) ~> finish Honor

Or a split of Honor/Liberty, but in those games I tend to finish both and skip Commerce. Adding on both Commerce and Liberty takes away too many other vital policies, such as Rationalism.

Click to expand...

I didn't say i never go Honor.

I didn't post in great detail, just posted that i pretty much never open with Honor, which is true.
I do often jump over to Honor (particularly right side) if i'm planning on world domination.

Usually i like to do Liberty + Honor.

Tradition i like to get finished as fast as possible, since Tradition finisher is insanely nice for tall empires. While you can delay finishing Tradition, i just don't see Tradition making as much sense in a huge sprawling empire acquired via conquest.

Not that you cannot do it; i've done Tradition in games where i end up dominating the world after getting off to a nice strong tall start (particularly naval maps).

Anyway, back to Liberty + Honor.
Liberty for quicker settlers + worker.
Reduced city cultural costs + trade route boost (and great person finisher) can be delayed while grabbing some Honor policies, especially the right side for cheaper upgrades.

It can be tough getting enough culture to finish both Liberty and Honor though, so i often go into Autocracy for the culture pillage awesomeness and then finish up the other trees if i didn't before.

In this thread i did a game with 15 civs total and dominated the world.
Finished Liberty then did right side Honor then all Autocracy then finished Honor finally.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=484235

I did an Honor + Autocracy game here as an LP: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=488410

I only managed to do it because I was Ethiopia though. If you are looking for rapid expansions, it's really not as good as opening Liberty (because you lose the extra hammer from Republic), but if you manage to pull it off it's decent to say the least.

Basically, with Honor + Oligarchy, you can get +1 happiness and +2 culture per city with a garrison (which is free if you have Oligarchy). You will get further happiness per defensive building. So imo in terms of happiness and culture, it's actually a bit better than Liberty. But it is a lot more costly in SP and it's hard to pull off (I basically have never succeeded in running like this unless I am Ethiopia or the Maya).

I open with Honour nearly all the time, but normally switch to Tradition after Military Caste.
The later Tradition policies are very strong, but to start wit Tradition is dodgy in my opinion. I've explained it a few times in a Succession game, I'll just quote myself:
"If you would combine Tradition and Honour it's best to start with Honour. That 3 extra culture that the Tradition opener gives isn't that strong. Unless you really need your capital to grab some extra tiles, it's much better to go Honour > Discipline > Military Caste first, and only then start with Tradition.
Military Caste already gives 4 culture per turn with 2 cities, so it catches up with the Tradition opener soon, but a very important thing is also the per town happiness. It makes it so much easier to get your third and fourth town in when each garrison gives a happy face. The garrison requirement is quite easy to fulfill compared to the trade route requirement of Liberty.
By going for Military Caste first it's quite doable to get 4 towns in with monuments before picking Legalism, and your free cultural buildings will all be amphitheatres, while if you go for Legalism straight away some of them will be monuments.
You may still have to pick Oligarchy first, but you may appreciate that as well if you're surrounded by AI, because the AI is likely to have a go at you when you settle 4 towns quickly. Perhaps on a level like Emperor you can go Aristocracy instead of Oligarchy, as there shouldn't be much threat from the AI."

I think this way of opening will become more popular if more players give it a try.