Tradition over Honour for Warmongering?

[Evie94]

Does anyone else prefer Tradition over Honour? Honour is a really good tree and I acutally used probably more than Tradition in GNK but in BNW, its just so difficult to maintain your empire while Warmongering and the AI generally leaves itself fairly open and undefended in the war front that I find it more useful to have Tradition and have my Capital and another City or two to stabilize and supplement my economy than have the war benefits Honour brings.

Anybody else? Just me? Am I criminally underrating Honour or overestimating the problem of maintenance?

 

[redwings1340]

Honor is pretty bad. Tradition is really good. The social policy trees aren't balanced super well to support different playstyles at the moment. Tradition is probably the best first tree for most games, no matter what you're doing, while liberty is a decent alternative for empires that support wide play.

 

[Sonereal]

Honor is almost never worth grabbing. As redwing said, Tradition is traditionally the best policy if you have less than five cities because the Tradition opener is better than the Liberty opener in the short-term, especially early game.

Liberty's effectiveness scales to map size really. The larger the map, the more likely you are to have five or more cities. In that regard, I'm finding I'm enjoying playing Liberty on Huge maps, but Tradition is still a strong opener.

 

[GoStu]

The problems are generally that the happiness bonuses in Liberty aren't comparable to Tradition until you're quite wide later, and honor's bonuses to happiness are quite weak. Early economy is too hard, making the gold bonus of Monarchy almost essential just to keep the budget balanced. Culture depends heavily on Great People, so staying tall and grabbing Hanging Gardens for an early Garden in a "guild" city is important.

In short, the game has evolved and Tradition best provides what ANY empire needs now. Honor's bonuses are nice but don't make a good standalone tree.

 

[Civilmyzation]

really, its tradition or you are likely hurting yourself.

Although in a recent game, I played small cont plus, and accidently went with a huge map and not my standard map. I didn't really notice in time, now I find myself with countless city locations(still have 4, will be 5 as my core cities), but had I gone liberty, I think I would be in a better position to expand further and take over the rest of the map that is unbelievably empty.

 

[Sonereal]

I agree that Tradition versus Liberty right out the gate is a non-issue, and that Tradition wins. I meant to say that taking out Liberty right out the gate and accepting a slightly more difficult early game situation, but a better mid to late game situation if you already know you will be doing heavy expansion, is better than dividing your attention between the two policy trees.

However, given the general penalties for settling new cities, you're probably not going to plan beyond having more than a handful of cities the entire game in most cases anyway, especially on small maps.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I usually run the whole tradition cycle, take two or three policies on another tree, then go rationalism until I get an ideology.

Liberty is my favourite second tree. The opener is nice once you have several cities running, as is the extra production in every city. Often that is as far as I go. Sometimes I take patronage and get consulates instead.

The problem with honour and piety is that by the time I get to them, there are few barbs left, and I already built shrines.

I just cannot see any reason to delay the tradition opener, legalism, food and gold bonuses on tradition and by then honour and piety aren't interesting. Plus if you try and build any early wonder you will take the wonder bonus as well. Then you have just the city defense, which may not be needed, but there are those free aquaducts, who would delay that?

Maybe if you play with raging barbs then honour pays off.

 

[reddishrecue]

Tradition is probably better for warmongering because you get more social policies than honor. Starting honor is good against barbarians or raging barbarians to get the extra culture from barbarian kills. Discipline is also good for all melee units that have another unit around to attack along with the Statue of Zeus wonder. However, tradition increases culture so much more for future social policies and allows more research.

 

[jasper]

just pick honor because it matches better

roleplay

like in bed

im expanding in your general direction my love. I wish to seize that sugar and spice. im close to reaching the golden age.

 

[Cahillicus]

In vanilla and G&K, I used to always go liberty. However, in BNW, I usually go Tradition. Liberty is still a strong opener, but Tradition wins, Hands down.

 

[Sonereal]

I feel that the Piety opener would be better if it came with half maintenance on shrines and temples as well as build costs. Likewise, make it so the Honor opener gives culture for *any* enemy unit killed, barbarian or not.

All of a sudden, an Aztec cultural victory looks even more attractive.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

For early warmongering I like to go:

Tradition Opener
Honor Opener
(gets culture really going)
Legalism
Monarchy
Oligarchy
(good for the economy, culture and your happiness)
Discipline
Military Caste
(to get the culture and happiness. I wish I could go for military tradition sooner but military caste will get you happiness and quicker SoPols)
Warrior Code
Military Tradition
Professional Army
(Honor still rocks for war even though a pure honor start is weak)

I may go back and finish tradition or just go to rationalism after that, It usually depends on where I'm at for culture output. I love Military Tradition and Discipline for war. The honor finisher and professional army help a lot if the WC starts to go south for you. Military Caste and Oligarchy work really well together to give free happiness and culture. I usually finish Honor in the medieval so sometimes I'll have to pick up another Sopol before rationalism if my timing is off. That's usually the deciding factor as to whether I finish tradition or not.

If I'm planning on later wars I'll probably just go for Tradition and skip honor. The honor benefits don't seem to give the same edge in the late game that they do early on and you can build exp buildings to make up for not having military tradition. Warrior code is worthless after you get gunpowder. It's benefits only work on actual melee units, swords, spears, clubs etc.

Even when I don't plan on warmongering I'll often take the honor opener just because it's nice to know where the camps spawn. It makes trade units much easier to protect and makes it easier to fulfill barb hunting CS quests since you'll often be on your way to the camp before they even issue the quests and the barbs are easier to kill.

 

[KmDubya]

For early war I have had good luck with starting honor, then finishing liberty and then back to finish honor. Followed up with commerce until the reduced purchase price. Add in Big Ben and then go Autocracy for the super cheap purchases.

Did this with Zulu and it rocked.

For me Honor is good if you go all the way, the finisher is great for the cash earned. The extra culture and happy from garrisons works very well with a liberty large empire. If you get a religion as well you could have happy pluses from +1 city connection, +1 garrison, +2 pagoda, +2 coliseum. This would get you +6 happy per city, throw in a monument and you get +6 culture as well. This lets you expand as you want, just need to get the science buildings and specialists up quickly. Lots of big cities can make as much science as four tradition cities plus you have a rocking huge empire with lots of production and resources.

Now all of this is based on standard maps, standard speed and emperor level. At deity level it sounds like only the super optimal can work so the above fun strat might not work, ymmv.

 

[sendos]

Actually, all 3 starting policies, excluding piety, are good for warmongering.

Tradition offers bonus city bombard attack with a garrison unit and you have a means of regulating gpt by garrisoning units. Aristocracy also provides a small contribution whilst warmongering. Monarchy's unhappiness reduction for capitol is near useless in this particular situation, but the additional gpt helps.

Liberty offers lots of happiness when expanding and warmongering with the use of city connections and it makes a big difference in the long run. In the short run, it's rather useless for warmongering.

Honor obviously strengthens your troops a little but the bonus happiness and culture from garrisoning units can make a big difference in the long run. In the short run, the tree as a whole is useless, unless you wish to open honor and farm barbs for culture.

 

[Vitruvius]

My problem with honor is its for warmongering but it has a policy that requires you to keep troops at home... especially with honor you are already running low on gold and now you need more units just to garrison them ...

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[VicRatlhead5199]

My problem with honor is its for warmongering but it has a policy that requires you to keep troops at home... especially with honor you are already running low on gold and now you need more units just to garrison them ...

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I know what you mean, it's why I often hybrid tradition and honor and find straight honor starts kind of weak.

 

[Ninakoru]

Honor is supposed to be a warmonger oriented tree, but in practice it puts you out of the game. Both liberty and tradition provides a much better empire setup, and this means more gold and production, both important to a warmonger, much more than anything that honor provides. Actually tradition is king: Legalism saves many turns in secondary cities with a monument from turn 0, and Monarchy wasn't nerfed, this specific policy counter all gold and happiness problems early game, making tradition the almost always best option.

If you want to warmoger go Tradition or Liberty instead, it pays off much better. Tradition is more fitted for Medieval and latereras, while liberty is great to go up on units on ancient, classical.

 

[joshua43214]

Play Mongolia or Arabia
research AH first, then lux techs, then writing/phylo (build the Oracle asap), then head to chivalry. then settle 1 or 2 expos to grab a min of 10 (14 or more is best) horses
save every scrap of gold you can lay your hands on

Tradition to Monarchy
Full honor right side first

build 4ish horse archers, and then build horsemen til you run out of horses. Horsemen upgrade for 65 gold, and horse archers for 90ish gold. Use the horsemen cautiously if at all because the promotions are wrong for keshiks.

I win Immortal maps in well under 200 turns - usually ~155 turns, and Deity maps in <250 turns with this strat.

For any other civ Honor pretty much sucks, it just times extremely well to get Honor 3 about the same time you get chivalry, and Honor 5 about the time you really need the gold for kills.

 

[Santa Maria]

Anybody else? Just me? Am I criminally underrating Honour or overestimating the problem of maintenance?

I agree with you. The maintenance problem in BNW is huge. Honor is bad cause it hinders your early development and offers absolutely no help whatsoever to maintenance. So taking Honor first means a slightly improved units and more GGs, but you are bankrupt and lacking development. Not to mention all the warmonger hate for conquering a CS or a neighbour.

I think it's out of balance.

 

[zukenft]

honor should be you second tree, after finishing tradition. maybe take just the opener early if the barbs are being naughty. the free maintenance garrison synergise well with the +happy and culture.
of course, this means you're not 'early' warmongering, but medieval/renaissance wars are when the civs which profit best from honor (zulu, mongol) shines.