Social Policy: Honor (G&K)

Introduction

The Honor tree is one of the three 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 small empires that focus on infrastructure, Liberty rewards empires that focus on expansion and claiming land and Honor rewards the player who invests in military units and defensive buildings.

The Honor social policy tree offers both military and economic advantages, all based on military units and defensive buildings. 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, economic 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.

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 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 strength of the unit. A barbarian brute will yield 8 , while a barbarian Infantry will yield 70 . Note that ranged units (archers) have lower base strength. This culture gain stacks with Montezuma's Unique Ability (Sacrificial Captives) and doubles the culture gained in this fashion.

Warrior Code

+15% Production when training Melee units, and a Great General appears outside the Capital.

Great generals provide a 15% bonus to combat strength to all friendly melee and ranged units within 2 hexes (naval vessels and air units gain no benefit). This bonus can be very important, sometimes critical in wars, especially if the player is outnumbered or when fighting technologically superior units.

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, who has doubled combat bonus from Great Generals, Mongolia, who would receive a Khan, and Sweden, who could give it to a city state and earn 90 Influence.

Adopting Warrior Code also increases the production rate of all melee units. Its effect stack with Forges (that grant a 15% boost for land units). Note that this policy applies only to units from the "Melee domain" (warrior, sword, longsword, spear, pike); thus, ranged and air units can'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.
Requires: Warrior Code

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 Admiral progress. Gaining promotions faster is advantageous, as high level units (level 4 and beyond, requiring 100+ experience) completely change warfare. Ranged units can gain Logistics, effectively doubling their strength and allowing them to move after attacking, and melee units can gain march to allow for healing every turn, significantly increasing survivability and lessening downtime. All units including naval vessels and aircraft 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 friendly unit adjacent to another friendly unit will receive a 15% bonus to its melee . 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 bonuses.

Military Caste

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

Any city with a garrisoned unit will increase the local happiness by 1 and Culture by 2. 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).

This social policy works perfectly 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 hestitate attacking militarily strong players), while providing happiness and culture at the same time.

The culture gain is not negligible, especially in the early stages of the game.

Professional Army

Gold cost of upgrading military units reduced by 33% and +1 local city happiness from every defensive building (Walls, Castle, Arsenal, Military Base).
Requires: Military Caste

Empires utilizing a professional army will be granted two very important bonuses. The first one makes unit upgrades 33% cheaper, enabling empires with modest income to upgrade their armies more easily. Thus, it provides a direct financial benefit in form of expense cuts.

The second benefit is that every single defensive building in the empire also provides +1 global . Walls, Castles, Arsenals and Military Bases can potentially be built in every city, and puppets tend to focus on these buildings after gold buildings making this a reliable source of happiness. Note that for everything except walls the happiness gain / hammer cost is limited, for example a Colosseum can be built for 100 hammers vs a Castle's 160, providing twice the happiness, and the saved hammers could go into a market to more than recover the upkeep.

The upgrade discount from this social policy stacks with Pentagon World Wonder, increasing the total discount to 66%, while the defensive structure bonuses work well with The Kremlin world wonder which provides a 25% boost to their defensive strength. Additionally, the benefit of building castles in each city could be enhanced by building Neuschwanstein, which adds 3 , 2 , 1 to each castle.

Finisher

Adopting all policies in the Honor tree will grant Gold for every enemy unit killed.

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. It stimulates players to kill enemy units, rather than making injuries. Note that missiles or air units don't provide gold bonus. The worth of this increases with the number of enemies killed; it will provide more income on higher difficulties and faster speeds.

General Use

a. Honor - Warrior Code - Discipline
A three-policy strategy for early aggression with higher-than-usual base strength units (very early Swordsmen, Phalanx, 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 something else (might be further aggression, but usually a time of peaceful build-up).

b. Honor - Warrior Code - Military Tradition
A three-policy strategy designed to provide high-level troops (usually siege units) for world domination. If no civilizations are available for "target practice", players can engage barbarians or declare a "permanent" war against a city state in which the aim is not to take the city but to shoot at it and gain experience for later use. 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. Honor provides the necessary 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 happiness gains.

Synergies with other social policies

The effectiveness of the Honor policy tree greatly depends on terrain, maps 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 lot of armies and station them in cities. However, your unit maintenance cost will scale up very quickly so Oligarchy is able to save a lot of money throughout 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
  Looks like Autocracy and Honor are 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 UUs are well-suited to Honor. But there are five civilizations that could leverage Honor's bonuses like no other.

• Aztec
  With Sacrificial Captives, 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.
  
  
• Songhai
  Because of tripled gold from barb camps, the extra rewards from each barb killed and the 33% bonus against barbs will be extremely useful. Honor matches the play style of Songhai.
  
  
• Germany
  Almost same as Songhai. Honor branch's idea of attacking barb camps matches Germany play style extremely well. With more brutes captured, your cities will always be able have a garrison, which will increase happiness by one and culture by two.
  
  
• China
  I can't stress how important it is to get an early general from Honor when playing China. Adding up the 15% bonus from discipline, you will see how warriors could completely defeat spearmen.
  
  
• Japan
  Like China, Japanese soldiers will also defeat enemies easily with bonuses from Honor.

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 by Bibor, this article is the G&K version.