Better Honor

[evilcat]

So i was messing a little with xml files for policies, and this was time for honor.
Honor have some cool stuff, but the problem with it is that everything here comes one step to late, and the whole tree have low dip potencial. So this is what i end with:

HonorOpener:no changes
WarriorCode : FreeGeneral (and bonus) + adjecent bonus.
MilitaryTradicion (warrior code): XP bonus,. and 33% discount on upgrading units.
Discipline. 15% bonus to land
MilitaryCaste (discipline) (+1+2 if garrison in city)
ProffesionalArmy (reqDiscipline): Barracks, Armory, Military Academy 50%time. 4 units free to maintaine
Finisher: Gold from killz. Walls give 1 . And courthouse cost no maintenece.

Why:
Barbarian culture is only temporary, after few turns there is not much barbarians left. From the other side MilitaryCaste is better than liberty so thats probably fair.
Left side is for offensive power, and right for instracture which allows to time when you need what. If someone want to start with Liberty and then just pick left side from Honor, thats totally cool, maybe he plays Sweeden and just want to wait with this war. Just make sure that Honor as starter and whole is totally worth it.
Now honor actually helps with early conquest.

 

[_hero_]

There needs to be a +happiness bonus in there somewhere. I'm not sure how I could wage war early if I wasn't getting some happiness boosts to off-set all the cities I was taking.

 

[evilcat]

There is in Discipline which is avaiable after opener it gives both smile and culture. And early game this +2culture matters.
Also faster courthouse which also gives some gold count as smiles. More smiles from the CS when you kill barbcamps for them, and from new lux from conquered lands. Antical policies are about starting game, not ending.

 

[cambasonso]

There needs to be a +happiness bonus in there somewhere. I'm not sure how I could wage war early if I wasn't getting some happiness boosts to off-set all the cities I was taking.

I totally agree with that, just bring the happiness back as in G&K (+1 for every defensive building) and I would take it sometimes. As it is now, it's pretty useless. I tried some early conquest game on immortal with Ash and after only two capitals the unhappiness was the end of me. I could have struggle through the game, fighting on all sides because I am a menace to the world (which I think is understandable) but be buried under unhappiness is not my definition of fun.

 

[BillDon]

I think the big help from honor right now comes early, through the increased barbs, and I think that is where it ends. If you want to play tall in any way it is much better to take tradition. If you want to expand, honor is only better than liberty if you have a nice passive civ capital close to your own.


In my personal experience, I have tried to do two things with honor. On one hand I like to play tall, and I have found that honor seems to deter civs from attacking you early on and it helps you defend. But, you could instead simply take oligarchy or goddess of protection, and you might be just as well off, because like I said above, with honor you end up just stagnating and falling behind. So, the obvious choice is to use your army against someone else, and for me that just always leads to massive happiness problems and a tanking economy.

Here's what I would change. I can deal with the happiness loss- it is war anyway right? I'd propose this...

The opener and military tradition are all good.
Discipline- In addition to current benefit, defensive buildings can be built 50% quicker. (Similar to piety's quick faith buildings.)
Military caste- cities with a great general garrisoned give +1 happy/3 citizens, +3 culture, and +10% production towards military buildings. (Numbers and percentages might be off, but you get the concept. Now you don't have to worry about actually using honor to go to war and thus losing your garrison bonus as you move units to front lines. Adds another strategic element to gg's.)

Professional Army- Cost of upgrading units reduced by 50%
Finisher- Gold per kill. Culture per unit lost (makes sense if you think of a society steeped with military tradition-losses in war only fuel the effort). +25% combat bonus against rebels. (again, it'd be harder to be a rebel if your society was actually built on war)

 

[sonicandfffan]

The biggest problem with Honor seems to be that the opener and finisher are rather underwhelming and the policies themselves are unreliable (require killing units rather than adding a fixed bonus). Military Tradition and Military Caste are actually appreciated as policies but come later in the tree.

The other problem is that it can't really compete with tradition or liberty. The opener needs to have a more reliable culture boost (maybe make Military Caste the opener, I know I'd at least open the tree for that). There needs to be some sort of production, growth or gold boost in the tree which increases your early output. I actually think a policy which increases your gold production in each city would be beneficial, as early in the game gold is scarce and tradition/liberty cover growth/production so an early gold source might be useful.

The finisher needs a huge boost and needs to be more reliable. If the rest of the tree remains underwhelming, adding a science boost in there would definitely make it more enticing.

That said, I really doubt any of this will actually happen.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think moving the Military Caste to the opene is a good thing, because it matches up easily with Liberty and Tradition (Tradition provides a +4 or +3 in capital, white lIberty provides +1 culture per city) so it would make it equally "valuable".

Another thing is that the Honor finisher could also get the Culture from city capture.

 

[evilcat]

As for opener, it is a bit about how many barbarians you can encounter over game and early game. With standard continent raged barbarians i encountered around 3 camps early, 2 more soon, and 2 late. Havent farmed camps much, but havent exacly resourses to do so (barbarians was making troubles). Even with double culture i probably havent crosed the line of 500 which is already behind flat tradicion. Add to that hunting barbarians is costly, it like extra 3 to take down barbarians at resonable peace.
Even if Honor opening end up as best culture generator ever! Then what? Everyone could you use it (it is early so will not alter your gameplan) and everyone with early UU will have some use of it - not a bad thing. Tell me if im wrong but barbarians generally run out, so it is at beast temporary boost, which you need to invest to use, while Liberty and Tradicion are just ticking.
Generally i think that just plain invreasing the amount of culture from barbarians would be good enought.

Culture from garrison a bit late (like 3rd policy) is more or less ok, since at least in my games the pace is that early there are barbarians camps, but then they run out at some point, and this is moment when we can just move the soldiers to garrison.

I agree that defensive building bonus would be nice. Extra hammers always good, and specific boost to certain building would probably work better than generic stuff.

And im really in favor to something related to courthouse. If we asume that Honor is for agression, and even branch wonder mention it, then no bonus to courthouse is a disappointment.

As for Honor giving that imho would be too much. is already quite a lot and versalite as long as quantity is enought. Honor should have some weakness and being that science is fair enought.
However if Autocracy have a tenet when military academy and military base was adding 15% science to the city, that would be quite interesting. And to some degree making sense.

 

[sonicandfffan]

I don't think it would be too much. Science policies are highly valued. But for example in the ratings topic, Tradition and Liberty both scored on average above 7, whereas Honor scored on average about 5.5, that's a serious deficit in popularity to make up and a science policy is the sort of policy which can make up that deficit.

 

[evilcat]

Well it would be generally nice if science was a little spread about all branches, not just collected in rationalism, since that result in rationalism being a little too good. And of course adding some will make it more popular, but also more generic. And im not sure if more generic is what we need. It better if branches has their own theme, and strong in it. So i would rather accept that Honor is not a science tree, but just make it effective in production, waging wars and taking down others cities.

And the core of the problem is that nowadays starting and finishing Honor is not really important for war.

 

[sonicandfffan]

I agree but some specialisations are better than others so the bonuses need to be damn good to make players pick it over the existing popular trees. One of the biggest problems with early warfare is the gold cost and happiness cost, so that should really be the focus of the Honor tree, increasing happiness and GPT for early warmongers.

 

[MantaRevan]

I agree. Maybe honor could eliminate the maintenance costs from barracks and armories?

 

[Arachnofiend]

Honor should just give free barracks in your first three cities as one of the second policies.

 

[MarshalN]

Does culture from barb killing contribute to border growth? I rarely take honor so I don't know, but if the answer is no, that is a huge disadvantage

 

[z284pwr]

Honor should just give free barracks in your first three cities as one of the second policies.

How about making it similar to the 4 free culture beings from Tradition? Then again waiting and hitting 3-4 free Military Academy is going to have a few cities bumping out 45XP, hit that with Total War in Autocracy and it's some killer military units to start.

 

[leadtothehead]

I actually find myself taking at least a few Honor policies after completing the tradition tree in my games, sometimes in even take the honor opener before finishing tradition, granted i generally play huge maps with 12-15 Civs so barbarian activity tends be pretty heavy.

In some domination games i even find myself taking Military Cast very late in the game in order to get the quick extra happiness to keep the war machine turning.

 

[evilcat]

I havent noticed it creating border growth. Even killing quite a bit of barbs borders was still very small (in comparison to Tradicion). Which is disadavntage, but one than could be. We take borders from ruins of fallen civilizacion. More problematic is that openers are generally suposed to grant some reliable source of culture. And Honor is not reliable, and is expansive, and is not even impressive in numbers. And is temporary.

Free barracks, or free maintainence is a bit of random bonus which dosnt matter. There is already production discount which is enought. We dont need barracks in every single city early on, just in one which have best production. Free maintanence will not change much, since that is like 1-2 GPT early on, not something you can manage otherwise, after all with bonus experience and upgrade discount you can skip barracks for a while, untill finances will set up. I think that it is more beneficial to have full chain of xp building in 1-2 high production cities, than having just barrack in whole empire. So free barracks will be little help for anyone but Russia.

IMHO Honor is already quite solid when it comes to gold, promotion discount (could be 50% thou) and gold for killz is nice touch. The problem is more that there is little reason to start the tree (not much culture from barbarians) and not much reason to finish (no bump for courthouse). So this are two things i adressed.

Also it is not like Honor must be the only tree to take, and generally before hitting Ideology you can grab like 2 branches. (with liberty and patronage even more). So even if Honor dosnt offer much gold or science. Both could be acquired from commerce (if of course commerce was worth more) and rationalism (which anyone takes anyway). Which of course opens topic of whats the point of commerce? But that is another thing to discuss.

 

[MantaRevan]

Honor should just give free barracks in your first three cities as one of the second policies.

The tradition finisher gives the player aqueduct for free, often before they even have the technology to build them. Maybe the honor finisher could give free armories in the first 4 cities or whatever. I don't really think this is too powerful, it's not like armories are anywhere near as good as aqueducts anyway.

 

[evilcat]

The tradition finisher gives the player aqueduct for free, often before they even have the technology to build them. Maybe the honor finisher could give free armories in the first 4 cities or whatever. I don't really think this is too powerful, it's not like armories are anywhere near as good as aqueducts anyway.

And... will that be a bonus at all? Aqueduct and cultural buildings are always good in any city. But XP buildings not. If the city is mostly guild hub, or university farm with mostly jungle and few hammers that would be waste. Not every city need to be unit manufacture, there is some space for specializacion. And already existing discount is much better for that, since it allows to specializa in this few cities.

Better idea would to give a defensive building, but then again it is better as production discount, since not always you need this defensive building asap, and having free gone waste when city will not see fight for another 50 turns would be a waste.

 

[MantaRevan]

And... will that be a bonus at all? Aqueduct and cultural buildings are always good in any city. But XP buildings not. If the city is mostly guild hub, or university farm with mostly jungle and few hammers that would be waste. Not every city need to be unit manufacture, there is some space for specializacion. And already existing discount is much better for that, since it allows to specializa in this few cities.

Better idea would to give a defensive building, but then again it is better as production discount, since not always you need this defensive building asap, and having free gone waste when city will not see fight for another 50 turns would be a waste.

Maybe we could give culture or something from barracks? Honor needs a more consistent method of culture generation, giving barracks things like happiness or culture to give honor players the nourishment that their economies badly need. As it stands, military caste does this poorly because it feels weird and awkward to have to ship your units across your empire into garrisons during peacetime. Most honor player don't even need garrisons, which are only really good for defense. Military caste doesn't build on anything that you should be doing.