Social Policy: Honor (BNW)

Introduction

The Honor tree is one of four social policy trees available from the Ancient Era. Each of the Ancient Era policy trees rewards investments into different aspects of the early game: Tradition rewards smaller empires that focus on population growth and infrastructure, Liberty rewards empires that focus on early expansion and claiming land, and Piety rewards empires that focus on religion, while Honor rewards the player who invests in military units and buildings.

The Honor social policy tree offers both military and other advantages: the left branch of the tree rewards going into either defensive or offensive early wars, while the right branch of the tree offers a mix of military, gold, culture and happiness advantages.

The Policies

• Honor
• Warrior Code
• Military Tradition
• Discipline
• Military Caste
• Professional Army
• Finisher

Strategies

• General Use
• Synergy With Other Social Policies
• Civilizations Well-Suited to Honor

The Policies

Honor

Adopting Honor gives a +33% combat bonus versus barbarians, and notifications will be provided when new Barbarian Encampments spawn in revealed territory. Gain Culture for the empire for each barbarian killed. Unlocks building the Statue of Zeus.

With this policy, units attacking or defending against land and sea barbarian units will receive a 33% combat bonus (both melee and ranged) for all type of units. As with most other direct combat bonuses, it works best for units with high base strength. It does not matter from what era the barbarian units come from; it will work for both barbarian Archers and barbarian Giant Death Robots. Furthermore, a notification will be given whenever a new barbarian camp spawns on any part of the map not covered by clouds (i.e., revealed hexes). This is especially useful for leaders that gain additional bonuses when plundering barbarian camps (Bismarck, Askia).

In addition to the abovementioned benefits, adopting Honor rewards the player with culture for each barbarian unit killed. To gain this bonus, barbarian units can be killed by either units or cities. The amount of culture gained is based on the base combat strength of the unit. A barbarian brute will yield 8 culture, while a barbarian Infantry will yield 70 culture. Note that ranged units (such as archers) have lower base combat strength. This culture gain stacks with the Aztec Unique Ability (Sacrificial Captives) and doubles the culture gained in this fashion.

The Statue of Zeus is the most underwhelming of the world wonders that are unlocked by the Ancient Era social policy trees. It provides +1 culture and each your units gains +15% Combat Strength when attacking cities. Although it is described as a bonus to combat strength, the Statue of Zeus bonus applies to both melee and ranged attacks on a city. Comparable in power to an additional Great General, it is usually more efficient to conquer the city in which the Statue of Zeus is built than to build it yourself.

Warrior Code

+15% Production when training Melee Units, and a Great General appears outside your Capital. Great Generals are earned 50% faster.

Great Generals provide +15% :c5combat: combat strength to all friendly units within 2 hexes (naval vessels and air units gain no benefit). The boosts to combat strength and Great General spawn rate can be very important, sometimes critical in wars, especially if the player is outnumbered or when fighting technologically superior units. A Great General also can construct the special Citadel improvement which gives a big defensive bonus to any unit occupying it, damages enemy units in adjacent tiles (-30 HP per turn), and annexes all adjacent tiles (other than an enemy's city center tile) into your territory.

The best way of using Warrior Code to maximum effect is to get it very early, providing a Great General before the first war. This is especially useful for civilizations that have high base unique units in the Ancient or Classical eras (Greek Companion Cavalry, or Roman Legion, for example), China (which enjoys doubled combat bonus from Great Generals), Mongolia (which would receive a Khan), and Sweden (which could gift the Great General to a City-State for +90 influence).

Adopting Warrior Code also increases the production rate of all Melee Units. Its effect stacks with Forges (+15% production for land units). Note that Warrior Code only applies to units from the "Melee domain" (warriors, swordsmen, longswordsmen, spearmen, pikemen and replacement unique units); mounted, ranged and air units don't enjoy the boost from Warrior Code and the bonus does not apply to gunpowder and later ground units.

Military Tradition

Military Units gain 50% more experience from combat.

Units fighting under Military Tradition will gain 50% more experience points per attack rounded down, thus a standard +5 XP attack will instead provide +7 xp. Note that this extra experience is not counted toward Great General or Great Admiral progress. Gaining promotions faster is advantageous, as higher level units (level 4 and beyond, requiring 100+ experience) profoundly change warfare. Ranged units can gain Logistics, effectively doubling their strength and allowing them to move after attacking, and melee units can gain March, allowing for healing every turn, significantly increasing survivability and lessening downtime. All units, including naval and air units, benefit from this social policy.

Discipline

+15% combat strength for Melee Units which have another military unit in an adjacent tile.

Discipline rewards players that form tight unit formations. Each melee unit adjacent to another of your units will receive a 15% bonus to its combat strength. This bonus can never be higher than 15%, even if multiple units are adjacent to each other. This bonus stacks with all other applicable bonuses, including flanking, terrain and Great General bonuses. Note that, like Warrior Code, this policy only applies to units from the "Melee domain," although the adjacent units that enable the Discipline bonus can be from any combat unit domain.

Military Caste

Each City with a garrison increases local city Happiness by 1 and Culture by 2.

Any city with a garrisoned unit will increase the local happiness by 1 and Culture by 2. The culture gain is not negligible, especially in the early stages of the game, where every bit of culture will help your cities' expand their culture borders. The more cities and units the player has, the more beneficial this social policy is. Note that during wartime, when most units will be needed on the front, measures must be taken for the empire not to fall into severe unhappiness (which in turn will result in negative combat morale of units, among other things) -- garrisoning spare scouts in your cities while the rest of your army is invading a neighbor can help maintain empire-wide happiness.

This social policy works well in combination with Oligarchy (Tradition), under which garrisoned units cost no upkeep. Combining these two policies enables the player to create a large standing army that will keep enemies at bay (most AIs hesitate attacking militarily strong players), while providing happiness and culture at the same time.

Professional Army

Gold cost of upgrading military units reduced by 33% and construct Barracks, Armories, and Military Academies 50% faster.

Empires utilizing Professional Army will be granted two very important bonuses. The first one makes military unit upgrades 33% cheaper, enabling empires with modest income to upgrade their armies and navies more easily. Thus, it provides a direct financial benefit in form of expense cuts. The upgrade discount from this social policy stacks with the Pentagon world wonder, increasing the total discount to 66%.

This policy also provides a production boost, allowing you to build XP buildings 50% faster. If, when you take this policy, you have not yet built barracks in all of your cities, this policy will allow you to quickly kick out barracks in your remaining cities, which should enable you to build the Heroic Epic national wonder more quickly.

Finisher

Adopting all policies in the Honor tree will grant Gold for every enemy unit killed. It also allows the purchase of Great Generals with Faith starting in the Industrial Era.

Once all the social policies in the Honor tree are taken, every enemy unit killed (barbarian or otherwise) will grant the player a lump sum of gold equal to the base combat strength of the defeated unit. Note that missiles and air units don't provide this gold bonus. The value of this policy increases with the number of enemies killed and the combat strength of the killed units; it will provide more income on higher difficulties and faster speeds.

Being able to buy Great Generals with faith beginning in the Industrial Era is far less worthwhile -- there are usually better Great Persons on which to focus your faith purchases.

General Use

a. Honor -> Warrior Code -> Discipline
A three-policy strategy for early aggression with higher-than-usual base strength units (very early Swordsmen, Hoplites, Immortals, etc.) that gain a 30% boost from the Great General and Discipline. The aim of this strategy is conquering your nearest neighbor and following that up with either further aggression or a period of peaceful build-up.

b. Honor -> Warrior Code -> Military Tradition
A three-policy strategy designed to provide highly promoted units (usually ranged and siege units) for world domination. If no civilizations are available for "target practice", players can farm barbarians for XP or declare a "permanent" war against a City-State in which the aim is not to capture the CS but to gain XP for your units. This three-policy strategy can be also used for early aggression that is continued by further aggression. Highly experienced troops (levels 4, 5 or 6) may become virtually indestructible on all but the highest difficulty levels.

c. Honor -> Discipline -> Military Caste (-> Professional Army)
A balanced three- (or four-) policy strategy aimed at creating an early empire based on military might. The Honor opener provides culture by killing barbarians, Discipline provides basic combat benefits, while Military Caste provides basic economic advantages in form of +1 happiness and +2 culture per city. This strategy can be expanded to incorporate Professional Army for even more gold savings.

Synergies With Other Social Policies

The effectiveness of the Honor policy tree greatly depends on terrain, map size, game pace, difficulty level and the expected level of aggression. In a typical game, however, it is an excellent addition to all three (tall, wide, conquer) styles of play. There are no social policy trees "that work well" with Honor. Instead, there are social policy strategies that incorporate social policies from Honor.

• Tradition
  Oligarchy works extremely well with Military Caste. With Military Caste, you will build a large army and station them in cities. Since your unit maintenance cost will scale up very quickly, Oligarchy will save a lot of gold throughout the game. And since Oligarchy is now more likely to be taken early (as it is now a prerequisite policy for Legalism), a Military Caste/Oligarchy strategy is arguably less "costly" than in prior versions of the game.
  
  
• Liberty
  With Honor, you will be conquering a lot of cities so Liberty helps cement a large empire you created, by offering production, culture and happiness in every city and culture discount for future policies.
  
  
• Autocracy Ideology
  Honor and the Autocracy Ideology are close siblings. Honor is built for warmongers, for it provides a relatively short-period benefits for units and defensive buildings, while Autocracy, which provides bonuses similar to Honor's, is almost a must-have for those who dream of world conquest.
  

Civilizations Well-Suited to Honor

Generally, all civilizations that focus on early war and have early Unique Units are well-suited to Honor. But there are five civilizations that could leverage Honor's bonuses like no other.

• Assyria
  Since its Unique Ability (Treasures of Nineveh) depends on taking cities, both the Honor policies and the Statue of Zeus are of particular benefit to Assyria.
  
  
• Aztec
  With Sacrificial Captives and the Honor opener, each barbarian you kill will provide culture points that are equivalent to two times their original combat strength, while non-barbarian units you kill will also provide culture. However, unless you intend to proceed deeper into Honor, you generally should not select the Honor opener as the Aztecs -- the incremental amounts of culture obtained from barbarian kills will never outweigh the added culture cost of future social policies resulting from taking the Honor opener.
  
  
• China
  It is quite important to get an early Great General from Honor when playing as China. When you combine the 30% combat bonus from Chinese Great Generals with the 15% bonus from Discipline, watch your Warriors (8 combat strength, enhanced to effective 11.6 combat strength) go toe-to-toe with Spearmen (11 combat strength).
  
  
• Germany
  Similar to the Songhai, the Honor opener, by providing a combat bonus versus barbarians and notice of barb camp locations, enhances Germany's Unique Ability extremely well. With more barb units captured, your cities will always be able have a garrison, which will increase happiness by 1 and culture by 2.
  
  
• Japan
  With Bushido, even wounded Japanese soldiers will defeat enemies easily with bonuses from Honor.
  
  
• Poland
  Because it receives a free social policy when it enters a new era, Poland is uniquely able to complete a primary social policy tree (such as Tradition or Liberty) and obtain Honor policies without adversely affecting its ability to obtain additional pre-Ideology social policies (such as those in Rationalism, Patronage or Commerce).
  
  
• Songhai
  Because of tripled gold from barb camps, the extra rewards from each barb killed, the +33% combat bonus against barbs and notice of barb camp locations are extremely useful. Honor matches the play style of Songhai quite well.
  
  
• Sweden
  The free Great General and +50% generation rate for Great Generals is particularly valuable to a militaristic Sweden, which can gift Great Generals to City-States for 90 influence. Gift GGs to religious CSs for a boost to founding or enhancing your religion, or to cultural CSs to provide a large culture boost, or to mercantile CSs for crucial happiness as you conquer your neighbors.

Players are encouraged to devise "social policy strategies" on their own and - depending on the game settings - these recommendations can incorporate none, a few or all Honor policies.


Note: Amended from vanilla Honor article by Bibor and the G&K Honor article by LordLeoz.