Honor Open

[Alziel]

The Honour opener is great for reasons other than the culture per kill. It's value will increase or decrease based on factors such as Civ choice, map size etc.

I would say that it's almost essential to get the Honour opener if you play as the Aztecs, Songhai, Germany and (to a lesser degree maybe) the Ottomans. It's value also goes up if you play on larger maps or with Raging Barbarians on.

It can also be useful if you are pursuing a City State strategy - a lot of CS's will give out 'clear encampment' or 'kill barbarian' quests early in the game and with the Honour opener you can see camps as they spawn, estimate if they are close enough to a CS to potentially trigger that quest and then send your military that way before the quest is even announced. The boost to combat strength when fighting barbarians helps with this as well.

But I'm a fan of the Honour tree as a whole and fill it out often, so I'm probably biased!

 

[Barghaest]

I started using the unlimited experience mod mainly as I was tired of blasting a barb camp to nothing with my archer and then an AI scout appear from out of the mist and grab the gold. I thought I may as well obtain something for my effort even if experience. I can't really understand the capped experience anyway- if barbs can get tanks and destroyers why is it different to fighting them than the AI? (I can understand the cap when there were bears and lions etc).

I've done this before then I realized two things... there are other advantages to clearing camps (25g, plus other bonuses from Honor or with specific civs - Aztecs/Germany mainly) and they are significantly easier to defeat than even CS units. They do not heal or promote so you can use a pair of scouts to whittle down a camp and clear it (even capped at 2 promos, Survival II makes them hard to defeat in defense while fortifying to heal between forays against dug in barbs). Although I do believe they should at least give as much xp as the entire Barracks line... 45-60 since any combat should be more of a learning experience than basic training.

As for Honor. The last few games I've played I open and complete Honor before doing anything else for two reasons - First, I play huge maps with 8 Civs instead of 12 with raging barbarians so there will be LOTS of barbarians even into Medieval period and the bonus culture and gold really stimulate my empire and the gold bonus from finisher means when I'm fighting AI I'm still supplementing my economy quite well as the gold bonus scales with the unit's tech level so I get even more per unit later in the game. Secondly, the Statue of Zeus wonder has less competition because AI tend to go Tradition or Liberty instead as well so I'm more likely to snag that over Pyramids/Hanging Gardens.

 

[El Caballerion]

Opening with Honor is the chosen path for one civ: SONGHAI