Going early Honor with Sweden for Warrior Code general?

Athenaeum

Prince
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Here's the thing.

If you finish Tradition with Sweden and have a couple extra policies before the Renaissance Era, you'd probably rather go Patronage then waste two policies on Honor just for one great person.

However, if you were to go straight Honor right off the bat, you could gift that general to a cultural city-state and finish Honor quite quickly, or a faith city-state to speed up religion progress (although faith city-states don't seem to give much faith early-game).

Do you think a case could be made for going straight Honor with Sweden for the main purposes of getting that Warrior Code general?
 
I think Honor works well for Sweden because GG are a very good option for gifting to CS. The early freebie is just the start of it. You get the other GG faster, and then later you can faith purchase them.
 
While I agree it is generally good to finish your first policy tree, I think it is completely unreasonable to expect to finish every policy tree that you open.
 
Do you think a case could be made for going straight Honor with Sweden for the main purposes of getting that Warrior Code general?

Wait, are you asking about (1) going full Honor (instead of Tradition), or (2) opening Honor then filling out Tradition?

Because (1) can work for any civ, but offers particular synergy for Sweden. The strongest policy in Tradition is the finisher. So (2) is weak play for any civ, including Sweden.

A Liberty/Honor hybrid might work, but I don’t have much experience with that.
 
I think that depends on how much war you're planning on waging. Opening up Honor just for that one GG seems like a bit of a waste. However, the +50% bonus could be a huge difference if you keep warring, spawning GGs and gifting them to CS to get permanent ally status.
 
While I agree it is generally good to finish your first policy tree, I think it is completely unreasonable to expect to finish every policy tree that you open.

It's suboptimal play, by far.

You will have WAY worse results with putting 6 policies into 6 trees than putting 6 policies into one.
 
That isn't quite true. It is good play to spend 2 points in rationalism for secularism without finishing up the tree. Same for 3 into commerce for mercantilism or 3 into patronage for scholasticism. Problem is honor is a weak tree and I don't think you should even spend any points in it unless you intend to finish honor for the gold on high difficulty.
 
It's suboptimal play, by far.

You will have WAY worse results with putting 6 policies into 6 trees than putting 6 policies into one.

That's the other extreme though, usually somewhere in the middle is better. Finish one tree and then cherry pick a couple of policies from two or three other trees
 
Honor is very good for Sweden. But to benefit from it you need to be at war most of the game. You don't need to full honor but I prefer going into patronage instead of Tradition. Super early cultural cs-ally + possible barb farming can give you very nice culture flow. Opening tradition first can be wise in some situations. Ex if you not find any nice cs to ally or you want to give first general to faith-cs for religion.

I just finished the old Sweden icl using honor. Allthough i played suboptimal going wide (not good for early honor rush) i had a strong game and strong start with help of city state buffs. You should not be afraid of gifting all great persons with Sweden, even scientists. They let you war with peace of mind. Almost hard not to win diplo before domination.

Also don't forget to build units early! Very important!
 
That isn't quite true. It is good play to spend 2 points in rationalism for secularism without finishing up the tree. Same for 3 into commerce for mercantilism or 3 into patronage for scholasticism. Problem is honor is a weak tree and I don't think you should even spend any points in it unless you intend to finish honor for the gold on high difficulty.

This.

@Chum: There are way more ways to spend 6 policies than spending them all on one tree, or spreading them among 6 different trees. Many times after finishing Liberty/Tradition, you will have 1 or 2 policies to spend on another tree, but then you want to open Rationalism as soon as Renaissance comes around.

It is not always wisest to finish every tree that you open in its entirety.
 
Open Tradition, fill left side Honor, pick a whipping boy from whom to farm XP, build an army of Range Logistics whilst gaining CS appliances. Maybe use one GG to steal the victim's lux and prevent them killing your current XP farmer with an inconveniently finished crossbow.
 
If you're Huns, Mongols, Zulu etc. or Aztecs (barbarian farming for culture) pick Honor. Otherwise, it's pretty useless, IMHO.
 
Open Tradition, fill left side Honor, pick a whipping boy from whom to farm XP, build an army of Range Logistics whilst gaining CS appliances. Maybe use one GG to steal the victim's lux and prevent them killing your current XP farmer with an inconveniently finished crossbow.


Due to your response, let's talk a little bit about CS EXP farming.

I have tried to train catapults with city-states before but sometimes they dont have more than one or two units, and they keep them too close to their city (or inside the city) to really train safely.

Any advice on how to lure CS units away from city, and perhaps lure them into building more units for faster training?
 
You should not be afraid of gifting all great persons with Sweden, even scientists. They let you war with peace of mind. Almost hard not to win diplo before domination.

This is bad advice and doesn't really make much sense either. Scientists should always be used to bulb in this case, it's never worth it for the influence boost for CS and it's not hard to ally every CS surrounding your home territory and they're the only one that needs to be allied. I don't even think GA or GW are worth gifting either. You can definitely win domination way before atomic era when diplo is enabled.
 
Due to your response, let's talk a little bit about CS EXP farming.

I have tried to train catapults with city-states before but sometimes they dont have more than one or two units, and they keep them too close to their city (or inside the city) to really train safely.

Any advice on how to lure CS units away from city, and perhaps lure them into building more units for faster training?

Yeah I always struggle with this, a CS will always move a range unit into the city so I can maybe get two city attacks off before I need to retreat and wait several turns before I can go back in and get one or two attacks off. A very slow process.
 
Yeah I always struggle with this, a CS will always move a range unit into the city so I can maybe get two city attacks off before I need to retreat and wait several turns before I can go back in and get one or two attacks off. A very slow process.

You need to learn how to worker bait. Move a worker next to a CS and as long as there aren't any other units in shoot-able range, the AI will try to capture the worker, and you can easily kill that unit that left the city.
 
Warrior Code offers a good synergy with Sweden, but I don't think it's worth opening honor against a Tradition or Liberty opening. You lose so much more from not going tradition or liberty, and it may only be worth it if you plan a domination win anyway, but even then it may still be better to start with tradition or liberty.

The real question would be if you should use your filler policies for warrior code, or something else. If you estimate that you only get 2 filler policies I think that with Sweden going for Warrior Code will be the best option. But if you estimate 3 filler policies there are different options: 3 in patronage up to Scholasticism, 3 in commerce up to Mercantilism, 2 in honor for Warrior Code and patronage Opener or even 3 in Piety up to Theocracy are all good choices depending on the strategy.
 
I have tried to train catapults with city-states before but sometimes they dont have more than one or two units, and they keep them too close to their city (or inside the city) to really train safely.
I have used CS to train up archers and even CBs, but as you observe, they don't really spam units fast enough for the technique to be very effective for cats.

Yeah I always struggle with this, a CS will always move a range unit into the city so I can maybe get two city attacks off before I need to retreat and wait several turns before I can go back in and get one or two attacks off. A very slow process.
I think you should be trying to train up a couple or three units at time -- so you can be constantly rotating in fresh targets. If you put a melee unit in the mix, they can get to Cover 2 pretty quickly because they can just soak up the city hits.

But frankly, training up against a CS is so tedious I have shifted to just warring earlier and more often with an AI. I still struggle to have XB trained up fast enough to be really useful for more than a single city or two.
 
This.

@Chum: There are way more ways to spend 6 policies than spending them all on one tree, or spreading them among 6 different trees. Many times after finishing Liberty/Tradition, you will have 1 or 2 policies to spend on another tree, but then you want to open Rationalism as soon as Renaissance comes around.

It is not always wisest to finish every tree that you open in its entirety.

So what are you doing then? Opening honor first for a GG or are you finishing Tradition or Liberty? It can't be both ways.
 
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