Adopting Honor with the Zulu a good idea?

[Athenaeum]

I really want to find a way to incorporate the entire Honor tree into domination games on Immortal and Deity. However I never seem to do that well when I go simply Honor, and I don't want to adopt the Tradition opener just for the culture because I don't think it would pay off in the long run.


In fact, I have a hard time when I adopt anything other than Tradition. This is because I feel compelled to build an early monument to make up for the lack of culture. Doing this means I either have to sacrifice my shrine build, or my second scout - and if I choose to sacrifice the second scout (which I don't like to do) it also means that I can't start my shrine right upon getting pottery unless I stop halfway through the monument.

Suggestions?

 

[HeliosDisciple]

Turn on Raging Barbarians and use the Honor opener for your culture source.

 

[Dushku]

Honor isn't a competitive starting tree. If you choose that path, you're going to have to adapt for the ways the game is different. Check out Mel Uncensored on youtube. He does a lot of straight Honor on deity.

 

[z284pwr]

Honor isn't a competitive starting tree. If you choose that path, you're going to have to adapt for the ways the game is different. Check out Mel Uncensored on youtube. He does a lot of straight Honor on deity.

peddroelm is another one that does the full honor/commerce/autocracy strategy regularly with YouTube LPs. While it isn't anywhere near as strong as Tradition/Liberty, the amount of gold made can be quite substantial and add the fact of how cheap you can buy units, it's a strong strategy for Domination. peddroelm's Netherlands is a prime example of the Honor/Commerce strategy, the amount of Cavalry/Landships he was able to buy/upgrade was just ridiculous.

 

[Athenaeum]

What does LP stand for?

 

[Browd]

LP = Let's Play video

 

[Kriogen]

I really want to find a way to incorporate the entire Honor tree into domination games on Immortal and Deity. However I never seem to do that well when I go simply Honor, and I don't want to adopt the Tradition opener just for the culture because I don't think it would pay off in the long run.


In fact, I have a hard time when I adopt anything other than Tradition. This is because I feel compelled to build an early monument to make up for the lack of culture. Doing this means I either have to sacrifice my shrine build, or my second scout - and if I choose to sacrifice the second scout (which I don't like to do) it also means that I can't start my shrine right upon getting pottery unless I stop halfway through the monument.

Suggestions?

Don't build a shrine?

Founding religion only slows you down. So far I can win Immortal 100% of times if I ignore religion. If I get it from CS or lucky ruins, cool, if not also cool. If I go for early shrines, I fail or have troubles.

My first Immortal victory was with Austria. Or was it second? One of 1st victries anyway. As Austria is a bit on the weak side, I decided to go for basics. I ignored religion. Used 'shrine' hammers for extra units to slow down ICS-ing Sweden and got a loyal friend Ethiopia. Ethiopian religion had 2 buildings and Jesuit Education. Because I adopted their religion, they liked me even after I exterminated Sweden and Maya. And this is with civ that usually hates warmongers. They didn't even hated me much after I reduced them to 1 city.

Early faith, religion is like an accient World Wonder. Sure its nice, but it can easly be lots of wasted hammers, oportunities.

Lots of hammer at the time when you have nothing.

Question: how many times did Shaka go Peity(religion) in your games? Is he more into Impis or Missionaries. Hagia Sofia or Statue of Zeus?

 

[Athenaeum]

I understand that religion is not necessary, and even at times sub-optimal...but when you have a fantastic pantheon start (like 3 stone), do you really want to skip that?

 

[CraigMak]

Honor is a terrible choice in all starting conditions. Just don't do it ever unless you're using a mod which buffs the tree. Liberty is actually better for war than honor and tradition is better than both at almost everything else.

Tradition is your best choice at least 80% of the time and liberty if you plan on early war or rapidly expanding. Honor is just really really bad.

 

[claudiupb]

Honor is a terrible choice in all starting conditions. Just don't do it ever unless you're using a mod which buffs the tree. Liberty is actually better for war than honor and tradition is better than both at almost everything else.

Tradition is your best choice at least 80% of the time and liberty if you plan on early war or rapidly expanding. Honor is just really really bad.

I disagree, Honor has it's shine. It is very situational (terrain dependent, civ dependent maybe) but it has some good buffs. With the Zulu it has a great synergy since:

Warrior Code speeds up production on Impis
Military Tradition would further buff the Zulu UA, and since the Zulu have more promotions this is a welcomed bonus.
Discipline is just a free 15% combat bonus, since you will be using a lot of melee units
Professional Army helps build the Ikanda faster, and will give a substantial gold reduction when upgrading your Spearmen to Impis.

Honor shines when you don't want to rush civs, since it does not give early bonuses. Instead if you want to start attacking in medieval era it will give you a lot of good bonuses, and the bonuses really shine further if you use the HCA strategy.

 

[docbud]

When I play as the Zulus I do adopt honor. But it's not my opener. I take a few in tradition first and then go into honor.

 

[z284pwr]

Honor is a terrible choice in all starting conditions. Just don't do it ever unless you're using a mod which buffs the tree. Liberty is actually better for war than honor and tradition is better than both at almost everything else.

Tradition is your best choice at least 80% of the time and liberty if you plan on early war or rapidly expanding. Honor is just really really bad.

This is true....but who wants to use the same strategy every time they play a game? After the desire to boost ones ego with the fastest turn time wears off, trying different strategies is much more fun.

 

[CraigMak]

This is true....but who wants to use the same strategy every time they play a game? After the desire to boost ones ego with the fastest turn time wears off, trying different strategies is much more fun.

He's asking if it's a good idea. It's not a good idea in terms of optimal play and doing well in the game. I myself am used to MP where playing optimally every game is fun because the human opponents is what makes the game interesting. Out thinking a human is much more fun than beating up on a mindless AI.

In SP I agree, doing all kinds of random weird stuff can be fun. Mainly because the AI is so inept that playing the best you can will lead to nothing but boredom and a slaughter of the AI.

 

[CraigMak]

I disagree, Honor has it's shine. It is very situational (terrain dependent, civ dependent maybe) but it has some good buffs. With the Zulu it has a great synergy since:

Warrior Code speeds up production on Impis
Military Tradition would further buff the Zulu UA, and since the Zulu have more promotions this is a welcomed bonus.
Discipline is just a free 15% combat bonus, since you will be using a lot of melee units
Professional Army helps build the Ikanda faster, and will give a substantial gold reduction when upgrading your Spearmen to Impis.

Honor shines when you don't want to rush civs, since it does not give early bonuses. Instead if you want to start attacking in medieval era it will give you a lot of good bonuses, and the bonuses really shine further if you use the HCA strategy.

A free settler, +50% to settler production, a free worker, faster worker speed, are all much better than anything honor has to offer.

Then there's tradition with massive growth bonuses, awesome amounts of gold and happiness from monarchy, no need to build monuments and aqueducts. Honor is simply trash compared to this stuff.

 

[Athenaeum]

I just want to find a way to win with All Honor + Zulu because they just seem to synergize so well at face value.

I've found that Honor is at least somewhat workable, if you adopt the right side of the tree before the left. This way you get Military Caste earlier which gives you a way to increase happiness and culture so your culture doesn't stagnate early.


In one game where I adopted a couple Liberty policies then went straight Honor, I had like 7-8 cities and took the time to build barracks and armories in almost all of them. It might not have been gold-efficient (or even hammer-efficient) but I must have saved a lot of hammers.

In addition with civs like Zulu and Mongolia's Keshiks (due to Quick Study promotion) you should be able to rack up a lot of promotions through combat.


This was my main goal all along, I just wanted to make an army and rack up a crapton of promotions. I guess it was sort of like sandboxing, which is not something that is really appropriate for the harder difficulties anyways but still.