Battleskoolbrat
Chieftain
Is it ever a good idea to open with honor solely for the culture per barb kill? I find myself doing it on occasions, but I'm not sure if it's ever really worth it.
If you plan on filling out one of the other trees, it will cost an extra 130 culture to fill it if you open with honor, and that's if you only have one city.
If you think you can farm that many barbs then it might be worth it. There's the extra bonus of farming barb camps for cash and CS influence.
I wouldn't do it though.
I never do a pure Honor opener. I will usually get my monument up first, take the first Tradition policy and then take the Honor opener for exactly the reason you mentioned. From there, I will work between Tradition and Honor. I like the Oligarchy, Military Caste combination. I try to put together a three unit hit team to keep the culture coming in from barb kills. I am not sure how efficient the strategy works, but I've won a few games with it on Immortal (my preferred difficulty) and Emperor.
As others have said, on a long-term perspective, it never pays off to open Honor alone for the culture. For the entire game, your policies will be pushed one step back - for instance, this means you'll need to earn one more policy before you finish Tradition, one more policy before you finish Rationalism, etc. In late game, that extra policy will amount to several thousand culture points, and since you will never farm this much culture from barbarians, at this point it will mean a delay that you opened Honor.Is it ever a good idea to open with honor solely for the culture per barb kill? I find myself doing it on occasions, but I'm not sure if it's ever really worth it.
With the barb spawning rate being drastically buffed in BNW (a new barb every other turn when you kill the last one standing on the camp), it makes sense to pick the Honor opener and set up 'culture farming camps', especially as the Aztecs. The trick is to wait 'til a camp spawns in a convenient place (surrounded by mountains or on a peninsula), so that you can close off access with 2-4 Archers. Then you just shoot the barbs as they appear, racking up xp and culture... In an ideal situation you might have 3 or even 4 such camps, although the unit maintenance may get too taxing at some point.
Imo it's a bit cheesy to use a mod to give you unlimited xp from barbs in such a case... But to each their own (and I'm not saying Cicerosaurus was advocating this specific tactic; just pointing out that if you do use that mod to 'farm' like this, I'd think it cheesy). Ofc even without the mod some may argue that this tactic is, well, unintended by the devs (to put it politely)... But it does take luck and a modicum of skill to set up. And I'm not sure if it's worth it if you're not the Aztecs; with them it certainly is.
Now even as the Aztecs I'd never take more than the opener in Honor... *That* is a problem that needs dealing with (and which the touted Fall Patch failed to address, making me question my faith in Firaxis).
As others have said, on a long-term perspective, it never pays off to open Honor alone for the culture. For the entire game, your policies will be pushed one step back - for instance, this means you'll need to earn one more policy before you finish Tradition, one more policy before you finish Rationalism, etc. In late game, that extra policy will amount to several thousand culture points, and since you will never farm this much culture from barbarians, at this point it will mean a delay that you opened Honor.
However, opening Honor can mean that you earn the subsequent 3-4-5 (depending on number barbarians on map) policies faster than you otherwise would. Thus, as a short-term investment opening Honor might be worth it because it can help you cross certain early key policies faster than you otherwise would. Obviously opening Honor also gives you other benefits than just the culture, so these might also make it worthwhile to do this investment. But if you're in it only for the culture, the best answer is probably that it's a bad investment viewed over the duration of the game.
I rarely use the "farming" technique with barbs- in the early game the 25 gold for getting rid of the camp is generally more valuable to me. However, I will leave barb camps in place if they aren't annoying me and they are a hindrance to the AI sending settlers my way.
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 always open with the Honor adoption strictly because it acts as a kind of "barbarian radar", letting you see when a barb camp appears in your vicinity. It gives you the opportunity to run a unit over there and destroy the barb unit before it starts moving towards any of your developing cities. And as someone else mentioned, it's an easy way to generate cashflow. (ESPECIALLY if you're playing Askia/Songhai, which pays you 225 gold per camp rather than just 75-90. Stomping barb camps all over the map is usually good enough to keep your Treasury in the plus, despite usually having a negative per turn cashflow.)Is it ever a good idea to open with honor solely for the culture per barb kill? I find myself doing it on occasions, but I'm not sure if it's ever really worth it.