Opening Honor in our Brave New World

[GreenThings]

Is Honor a viable tree in Brave New World? I think so, but I'm definitely not a CiV professional. In fact, I welcome comments that support my statements and go against them. Open dialogue is key. Anyway, here is why I think that Honor works better in BNW than it has in previous versions of Civ V.

Barbarians spawn at an increased rate now. With the Honor opener we can grab more culture from them early game, which can secure social policies better. In one instance I opened with Honor and then hopped to the Liberty tree. I have to compare that to a straight jump into Tradition or Liberty to see which comes faster. However, the bonus to barbarians is never a bad thing, especially now that there are more, the units are varied, and they've become more wily. The Statue of Zeus never hurts if you are playing a Warmonger game. Buying GG's with faith never hurts, but I'd rather buy something better, like GS's.

Warrior Code spawns a GG and gives you enhanced Melee Production (15%) and enhanced GG rate (25% I believe?). The Melee production seems mediocre due to how good ranged units are, but it never hurts. It's better if you play a civ that has a good melee UU that you like to use, such as the Winged Hussar. This perk is more for the free GG and higher spawn rate of the GG. Great for a civ like Mongolia, if you ask me.

Military Tradition gives us a 50% bonus to experience in combat. Obviously this allows you to get the higher level promotions faster, which win wars. I'm practically drooling over Keshiks or Camel Archers at this point. Need I say more?

Discipline gives us a 15% attack bonus on melee units if they have an adjacent tile. Extra damage never hurt. I don't think this is such an offense benefit as it is a defensive one. I like have stronger melee units that can defend the ranged units behind them. And of course, only melee units can take cities, and they deal big damage to other ranged units if things get dirty.

Military Caste gives us one happiness and two culture for every city garrison. When wartime is at an all-time high the extra happiness is always helpfull. Oftentimes I find myself cooling off on the crusade because I have to efficiently manage my happiness. The extra culture doesn't hurt but in a domination campaign culture begins to matter less and less as the threshhold for social policies increase.

Professional Army gives us a 33% decrease on upgrade costs and a 50% production bonus on the Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy. I think this is the worst policy in the tree. On standard setting upgrades seem to come by fairly quickly and I find myself producing units rather than upgrading if I've flown through the tech tree because of all of the advancements. Perhaps this is better in Epic or Marathon, but I haven't tested it yet. I've played GAMES on epic, but not with Honor. I'm too afraid of Marathon... Anyway, why are you building +XP buildings in every city? You only need a couple cities to pump out units, not all of them.

The finisher gives us gold for every enemy we kill. I have to be honest, I've never paid attention to how much gold I get, so I don't have much to say here.

Honor has gotten much better in BNW, but I think it's mostly due to increased barb spawn and the policy specific Wonders, which I always liked Statue of Zeus.

What do you guys think about Honor? Do you agree? Disagree? I think a discussion on this would be great, especially when compared to the other starting trees.

Cheers!

 

[ToothedBomb]

Honor is pretty good, I think. The only policy that kinda sucks is Professional Army IMO. I hardly upgrade units; it's too expensive and more advanced units are usually available in only a few more turns. Instead I just delete them and build new ones. Only units that have extraordinary promotions will be upgraded. By the time this policy comes around the increased build speed for military buildings is close to pointless. They should put this ability in the opener I think.

The finisher that gives gold is actually really good in BNW. Declaring war on others will make other civs suspicious of you, and they'll start denouncing you. When the world congress is founded they may even put an embargo on you. Other civs could have a lot of city state allies, cutting you off from many trade partners. In this case having an alternate source of gold is vital.

I just think other policies are more important for the growth of your empire. If your cities are not growing, producing, if they are unhappy or losing gold you can't keep an army anyways. Having all these bonuses to your military doesn't help much then.

 

[Yzman]

For my domination victory with Assyria I went straight down honor first and it helped tremendously. Also, opening honor is good because of the increased barbs and the problems they can cause with your trade routes. I open honor to get the slight bonus against barbs and so I can see the new camps. Make sure a route is clear, send your trades and then you will be notified if any camp appears. This should give you some time to clear it before it disrupts your trade.

Part of the problem I am having with BNW is there is so many viable starts. I love that there isn't a one size fits all strategy, at least there doesn't seem to be yet.

All of the initial policies seem pretty evenly balanced for different play styles.

 

[I_qua_I]

I agree that Honor is a seriously viable competitor to the other early trees. The increased barb activity and aggressiveness helps A TON. I thought it looked really dopey on paper (considering the awesome wonders the other trees got) but now that the game is out and I've played with it I feel like this is how it was supposed to work all along. I disagree about the cost reduction of unit upgrading being useless though. I find this very helpful in most of my games. What sucks about Professional Army is the reduced cost of military buildings. I really don't get why they are so adverse to just giving 4 free barracks a la Tradition's aqueducts. Even with the reduced cost I never build them and I never really want to build them until very late in the game (and even then only in a select few cities). Honor would be a stronger draw for Russia and the Zulu in the same way that Piety is for Byzantium and would make that national wonder that grants the moral promotion more accessible to warmongers.

 

[Ryoga]

In My opinion

The opener is good if you plan to farm barbarians (not all maps allow that) and especially good if you are Askia or Bismark, however the first phase of the game is usually so vitally important that there is rarely a reason not to focus on tradition or liberty, even a delay of few turns can drastically change your performance in the long run.
The culture bonus is nice but it is based on something that you can't really rely on. You never know where the next camp will spawn, it might be near it might be far, and it might be in an area completely filled with forests or jungles and it'll take you ages to get there. I'd rather have a consistent culture per turn.

Warrior code is only really useful if you plan an early attack which however in BNW has been drastically nerfed. I never find myself in a desperate need of Generals, I only need one, two when I get a larger army late in the game, and in then I end up with a lot of generals that I don't even know what to do with them. This might be good if you are playing as Sweden though.
The melee production, as you said, is kinda meh.

Discipline is moderately useful but not something that you really need. Most people here would agree that combat is where a human can completely outwit and defeat the AI. You can easily win against bigger and more powerful armies. What you really want to avoid is letting the AI getting ahead of you in technology and if it comes at you with muskets when you are still using pikemen, that 15% is going to do very little to help you. So in other words I'd rather focus on something that helps in developing my empire faster.

Military Tradition is the really good one, the best of tree in my opinion. It used to be the second best, but they nerfed the real good one. However you don't really need this in the early game so you can safely take it much later when you have frigates, artillery and aircrafts, This is mainly to get logistics faster, and you are supposed to build your units with brandeburg and heroic epic if possible to get that even faster.

Military Caste is helpful... but while originally it added to the general tremendous boost to happiness of the tree now this is all that is left and 1 happiness per city that comes with that cost is not really that great. There are better options if you are looking for happiness.
The culture is fine, but by the point you are getting this is negligible.
Generally speaking Military Caste works well in conjunction with Holigarchy, which means you need to get Tradition first.

Professional Army used to be an awesome policy, it was so awesome that now you get a nerfed half version of it as a late game tenet for autocracy.
You could get one happiness per city very early at zero maintenance cost. By medieval time it would get to two happiness and that would really help you steadily moving on with your conquest plans. Late game with the arsenal and Military base you had all of you happiness problems solved. Alas this is no more.
Now you only get the decreased upgrade cost, but would I really spend four policies for that? Only if I don't really have anything better, and I do, I can choose commerce and boost my economy to begin with for more flexibility.

Now for what concerns the reduced cost of production for military buildings I originally thought it was a bad joke, but I changed my mind because it happens to work exceptionally well with the autocracy tenet that gives you 2 happiness for each of those. When barracks, armories and military academies give you as much happiness as the buildings that are specifically meant to give you happiness, then you want to have them in all of your cities not a few ones, and if they can be built in even less time all the better. 6 happiness per city on top of all the rest is awesome.
Though I must say that we are talking about something that just helps you in speeding up a game that is already won. By the time you need all that extra happiness you have already conquered half of the world.

The finisher used to be a pretty nice bonus after you got the real good Military tradition and professional army. Late game you can get something like 50 gold per kill. However it seems that the AI spams units a lot less than before, so it's slightly less appealing.
The ability to buy generals with faith is well pretty much meaningless, for the reasons I explained before.


In conclusion the only time I'd spend my culture in Honor at the start of the game is in those special cases where I want the opener. Tradition and Liberty are still much better and now you'd also want to dip into piety a bit if you want to spread your religion. And in fact religion is now the only option you have if you want enough happiness to conquer in early stages.

Honor however is still worthy of being considered for the simple fact that in BNW you get a lot more policies than you used to. As long as you don't ditch your culture, and you definitely don't want to ditch your culture as a conquering civ, you'll get tons of policies and only a few are actually geared for conquest.

Since half of Autocracy is geared for tourism you can consider mixing it up with honor, but not before rationalism.

 

[GreenThings]

I won't have much time to play civ for a couple days, but there is something I'd like to test out. I'll still report my results, but if anybody tests it beforehand it'd be much appreciated. Let's assume you have average barb spawn without a crazy amount of forests or hills. Would opening Liberty or Tradition asap and finishing the tree be faster, or would grabbing the Honor opener, hunting barbs, and then going for the other tree be faster? The costs are higher, but you have the "Barbarian Stipend" to compensate that and maybe even boost your culture where you finish the tree faster. Plus, you obviously can deal with them faster.

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[Liegence]

Still vastly inferior to Tradition/Liberty imho. I just don't feel like you need combat bonuses against the AI to be successful. And if you want economic boosts you have better options. Too many of the Honor policies are just weak.

 

[Yzman]

I won't have much time to play civ for a couple days, but there is something I'd like to test out. I'll still report my results, but if anybody tests it beforehand it'd be much appreciated. Let's assume you have average barb spawn without a crazy amount of forests or hills. Would opening Liberty or Tradition asap and finishing the tree be faster, or would grabbing the Honor opener, hunting barbs, and then going for the other tree be faster? The costs are higher, but you have the "Barbarian Stipend" to compensate that and maybe even boost your culture where you finish the tree faster. Plus, you obviously can deal with them faster.

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I don't see that competing with tradition. Isn't tradition +3 every turn in the capital? Early barbs are going to probably give around double that I would assume, but it would be inconsistent at best. The purpose of going honor would not be for getting culture.

 

[Chiatroll]

More barbs, but they can be easier to deal with using a good infrastructure from tradition, liberty, or even piety.

Military tradition is still really good. It's worth 2 of the policies in tradition.

The rest of it meeeeeeeehhh. Even as a warmonger I'm drastically underwhelmed and feel I can monger better wars with the others.

It can be a nice early start against a neighbor so your wall protecting the archerers came a little faster and lasts a little longer while you take a city down, but it soon becomes outdated and you wish you had liberty, tradition, or peity benefits instead.

 

[FeiLing]

I've seen my myself taking the Opener and only the Opener. Barbs in BNW are annoying as hell, so the combat bonus is nice and the culture gain actually is huge!

You can afford it. Similarly with how I'm also seem to always Open Rationalism and take nothing more but Secularism (+2 per specialist).
Generally dipping in seems like a very good idea (+3 production per coastal city on the nright mapo, I'll take it for 2 SPs even if I do not want the tree at all otherwise).

Haven't played too much yet, but these 3 policies already seem my standard in every game.

 

[mistermoo33]

Still vastly inferior to Tradition/Liberty imho. I just don't feel like you need combat bonuses against the AI to be successful. And if you want economic boosts you have better options. Too many of the Honor policies are just weak.

QFT. Doesn't help that the units they upgrade (melee) don't form the backbone of an early army anyway: ranged units do.

IMO honor needs a revamp.

 

[MetaSkipper]

I don't have BNW just yet, so don't shoot plox, but I remember some upgrades were free, in part I assume due to the Honor tree.

 

[knighterrant81]

Opened Honor on my Zulu game and it was amazing. The production bonus to melee units really synergizes well with Ikhandas, and the promotion bonus...yeah...

Beeline Bronze Working, pick up Archery, build an Ikhanda and spam Spearmen and Archers. You'll get a huge army for cheap. I think this can be replicated with any Civ that has early UUs or military UAs. I don't see it being as useful for Civs that don't have any UA or UU benefit from super early war, but you can catch one or two AIs really fast which leaves you with a lot of room to expand once you're done with your (first) war. You'll have tons of Spearmen to turn into Impi as well, and you can turn the scarred husks of your enemies into trading partners for the rest of the game.

I really like seeing openings that work beyond just Tradition or Liberty that we've seen so often. I think Honor is more generally applicable than a Piety opening.

QFT. Doesn't help that the units they upgrade (melee) don't form the backbone of an early army anyway: ranged units do.

Melee units are important for soaking up your enemy's ranged attacks and for taking the city. With enough of them, you can start putting a serious dent in city on their own. Honor opening is useful because you can rush someone before they've put up the defenses they need to make things so difficult for you later on. Make no mistake - opening Honor is for pumping all your hammers into units and blowing someone up by turn 50 or 60. That GG also buffs your ranged just as much as the melee.

Also, the earlier you take out your rivals, the earlier you can get to building infrastructure in a lot of captured cities and territory.

 

[pthieu1986]

i open honor first in any games too. When there's a barb's camp i'll move some units to surround it and kill barbs when they spawn without clearing the camp. By that way i can earn lots of culture pts

 

[GreenThings]

Yeah, you're totally right knighterrant81. No matter how traditional or libertarian you are and no matter how good those benefits are it won't help them when there is an Honor initiated army standing at their door.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I've been opening honor to know when camps spawn near my trade routes. Saves me a ton in lost routes and sentry units.

 

[doctorfork]

I open with honor if my first SP comes naturally(that is, if I get it after 25 turns) and I've run into a barb or a camp already. If I get a culture bump from finding ruins, I go down the tradition path right away, because chances are I'll get a second SP before barbarians become a factor.

In most games I'm finding that I open the honor tree just to see where camps are, but unless I play as germany, aztec or songhai, seeking out camps is not a priority. In BNW where the AI doesn't try to expand so rapidly, it's always handy to know when a new camp spawns and if it's going to affect my trade routes.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Considering that culture buildings provide a lot less early game culture, the military caste belief is actually quite good. And considering that gold is harder to come by during the early game, the reduced upgrade cost and cold for killed units is quite a boon for a warmonger. Now if that tree would also offer 2 or 3 free units at one point, it would be truly amazing...

As for the wonder...
Meh, I'd rather have a bit more utilty (maybe we can place those 2-3 free units here? ). I like the wonders from the other early game trees a lot more.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Something else to keep in mind: Ranged Barbarian units now give Culture equal to their Ranged strength, not their Melee Strength/Defense.

Thus, a Barbarian Archer gives 7 Culture, not 4.

To answer whether or not Honor opener or Tradition opener makes more culture is fairly simple.

At the beginning of the game, you fight mainly Warriors. A Warrior is 8 Culture. Tradition opener is 3 Culture. Therefore you need to kill 3 Barbarian Warriors every 8 turns to break even with Culture from Honor vs. Tradition.

IME, this is not that difficult to do.

The later the game goes, the more lopsided towards Honor this becomes.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

In my opinion Honor is actually NERFED compared to G&K, because it lost the great ammount of happiness from walls/castles/etc. +25% General generation is not a good replacement for it as they have very limited uses, and +50% production on barracks/+xp buildings is just bad because you typically only need those in 1-3 cities max.

Now Honor is completely worthless to me and a never-pick.