Rebuild Honor

[GoStu]

Hello Readers! I've been thinking a lot about the Honor tree, and how it's one of the weaker Social Policy trees available. As someone enjoys mongering a bit of War, I'm disappointed that so often the other trees are actually better for this purpose, as they give you a stronger industry to work from. I'll be looking at the Opener, the five Policies, the finisher, and the Wonder. My goal is to build Honor into something that makes fighting and winning early-game viable, without necessarily pigeonholing you into domination victory. Autocracy is for Domination, but Honor is for people who just want to brawl a bit.


Honor Opener
30% Combat Bonus against Barbarians, get notified when Encampments spawn in your Territory, gain Culture for killing Barbarians.

Suggested Revision: None.

This is one of my favorite parts of Honor. The culture is good, the barbarian-hunting is interesting and gains you XP, and it gives your civ as a whole an edge in keeping your barbarian issues down while others may struggle.


Warrior Code
+15% when building Melee units. Free Great General. Great Generals are earned 50% faster. No prerequisite.

Suggested Revision:
+10% when building Military units. Great Generals and Admirals are earned 50% faster. Great Generals may create Great Works of Writing. Requires Professional Army

Sadly, "Melee" only applies to non-ranged units that actually bash things in the face. Musketmen and up may make "Melee" attacks but they do not benefit from this production bonus. Also, Melee units only make up a fraction of your forces, and it's not usually the majority fraction either. I want this bonus to remain relevant later in the game, and to be overall more useful.

About the Great General: I'm fine with the increased spawn rate, but at the time when this is available the General isn't really worth much. The extra 15% combat strength is okay, except that an extra unit would be worth more in the fight as a whole. Also, your first Great General can be earned pretty quick through actual combat: this one isn't really much of a prize.

I've added the Great Work of Writing from Great Generals to make them more flexible. Having more than 1 or 2 is totally unnecessary, and one will last you all game if you're careful. On the same side, Citadels are situational: often the Citadel won't grab you anything great or your neighbor has nothing really worth stealing (or not worth the penalty!). Great Generals however have created some of the longest-lasting writings or greatest speeches in our history: the Art of War by Sun Tzu comes to mind, Rommel's War without Hate, or Patton's speech to the Third Army. These are highly influential people, and this reflects their importance to a society (especially a militaristic one).



Discipline
+15% combat strength for Melee Units that have another Melee unit in an adjacent tile. No prerequisite.

Suggested Revision:
Same as above, but the bonus is not lost at Gunpowder units. No prerequisite.

I want to keep this policy relevant later in the game. It's nice to beef up your front line early-game, but is bad that it's lost later.



Military Caste
+1 and +2 for every city with a garrison. Requires Discipline.

Suggested Revision:
+1 Happiness and +1 Culture per Barracks and Armory. No prerequisite.

This is one of the biggest issues I have with the tree. This tree is a boost to your military units while they're out and working, but to keep the happiness you need to survive you have to keep your armies at home. Tying the happiness to the Barracks at least keeps the Happiness at home. It also makes going for your Heroic Epic more reasonable. I am aware this overlaps with an Autocracy tenet: I propose that it be replaced with something else.




Military Tradition
+50% Experience from Combat. Requires Warrior Code.

Suggested Revision:
Eliminate prerequisite, policy is now third available first-tier.

This policy is all around solid and leads to a better military overall. No change needed in my books.



Professional Army
Cost of upgrading units reduced by 33%. Construct Barracks, Armories, and Military Academies 50% faster. Requires Military Caste.

Suggested Revision:
None. Requires Military Tradition.

Now that there's a reason to build a lot of Barracks and Armories, this policy makes a little more sense. Previously, Barracks and Armories were nigh-pointless to spam as most unit production takes place in a specific city. The Heroic Epic in particular makes it best to focus your production in a certain place.



Honor Finisher:
Gain Gold from killing units. May purchase Great Generals with Faith.

Suggested Revision:
Gain Gold from killing units. May purchase Great Generals and Great Admirals with Faith.

I'm overall pretty happy with the finisher. I've moved all Great Admiral bonuses to Honor however, as this lets Exploration focus a little better. (I'd let Exploration buy Archaeologists with Faith instead.)



Statue of Zeus
+15% Combat Strength for all Units when attacking Cities.

Suggested Revision:
+15% Combat Strength for all Units when attacking Cities. Gains 1 Happiness per enemy city Annexed, Puppeted, or Razed. May only occur one time per city. Does not apply to cities gained by trade or peace agreements.

Zeus is a weak wonder right now. Now he's got a stacking happiness bonus that means burning down your enemy's cities actually has a point. While there is some potential for exploitation, you've got to kill or capture a LOT of cities to make it work, and you suffer the consequences appropriately.





So, thoughts?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I see no problem with two policies giving bonuses to the same building. These changes, while nice, I don't think really address the core issue with honor. Namely, that it is not tradition

 

[Bulldog Bats]

How about something that reduces the "warmongering" penalties? Kind of a - yeah, this guy has a big army, and we all know it, but you can still trade with him.

 

[MKDELTA3]

Honor mostly needs a maintenance reduction mechanic, some way to address conquest happiness issues and the culture from barb kills could be culture from all kills. The old autocracy opener effect (loot culture from city capture) could be worked here. Honor is sooosloow unless you play with raging barbs and these would speed things along. Honor's potential for culture acquisition starts to run pretty dry after a handfull of policies even on raging barbs.

Military Caste is just fine since it can be used to control happiness issues in occupied cities. Kinda. Bump it up to 2 Happiness instead and it's golden. Moving the happiness/culture bonus to buildings would be a ner for Honor. There needs to be some way to controll the conquest happiness issues here.

Yeah, Discipline should probably apply to gun units too. Generic military unit production bonus is better than pure melee production bonus.

Gold from kills is a pretty forgettable throway effect for a finisher. I guess it's not bad in itself but you get it around the time when economies start to stabilize. If it was one of the early policies which you'd get when the gold income is +-0 it would be very usefull. You could potentialy maintain your early army by killing barbarians. Maybe too good.

GG's writing political treatises seems like a fun idea. If this was possible to work in then the culture from barbarians and military caste could be enough. I myself miss the Great General EXP bomb from Civ IV.

Citadels are mega situational but when they are useful they are extremely useful. I myself toyed with the idea of honor giving them +2 to boost early military production and something else, or or maybe even .

 

[Infantry#14]

How about the finisher bonus for Honor is this: no more Warmonger Penalty for Declaration of War.

 

[phaethon16]

You can't really regulate war-monger penalties considering that it would have no effect in a game with other players. My proposal is the finisher could be something where newly spawned units gain a free, unique promotion out of a choice of three. Those promotions couldn't be picked later, so you could have elite units with flexibility. Maybe one of the promotions would be gold for kills? I don't know what the individual promotions would be or how many necessarily, but there should be a choice.

 

[GoStu]

Honor mostly needs a maintenance reduction mechanic, some way to address conquest happiness issues and the culture from barb kills could be culture from all kills. The old autocracy opener effect (loot culture from city capture) could be worked here. Honor is sooosloow unless you play with raging barbs and these would speed things along. Honor's potential for culture acquisition starts to run pretty dry after a handfull of policies even on raging barbs.

Military Caste is just fine since it can be used to control happiness issues in occupied cities. Kinda. Bump it up to 2 Happiness instead and it's golden. Moving the happiness/culture bonus to buildings would be a ner for Honor. There needs to be some way to controll the conquest happiness issues here.

Yeah, Discipline should probably apply to gun units too. Generic military unit production bonus is better than pure melee production bonus.

Gold from kills is a pretty forgettable throway effect for a finisher. I guess it's not bad in itself but you get it around the time when economies start to stabilize. If it was one of the early policies which you'd get when the gold income is +-0 it would be very usefull. You could potentialy maintain your early army by killing barbarians. Maybe too good.

GG's writing political treatises seems like a fun idea. If this was possible to work in then the culture from barbarians and military caste could be enough. I myself miss the Great General EXP bomb from Civ IV.

Citadels are mega situational but when they are useful they are extremely useful. I myself toyed with the idea of honor giving them +2 to boost early military production and something else, or or maybe even .

I'm glad you took the time to write back in detail.

Culture from all kills would replace the Aztec UA... we'd need to look at either a new UA for the Aztecs or some other way of generating culture. Looting culture from city capture was dependent on the culture generated, and sadly I don't think it'd work as well in BNW. Plus, with some difficulties diplomatically, it'd be tough to capture enough cities to make it work.

I'm not certain about reducing maintenance costs being an Honor-only thing. I think the real problem is gold starvation in general: I know that when I try Liberty openers gold is still a real issue too. While I did mull it over, I think the issue really ought to be addressed elsewhere, such as cost of Trade units.

You've got a point on Gold for Kills. It does show up a bit too late to be really useful in stabilizing your early economy, although in my point above I think it's more a fault against early economy.

You can't really regulate war-monger penalties considering that it would have no effect in a game with other players.

This is part of why I didn't put anything to that effect in. Perhaps Firaxis should really look more at capping how unreasonable an AI gets. It's flat-out ludicrous when they want six or seven luxuries for one of yours.

Getting off-topic. The other reason I didn't address warmonger penalties is that I'm actually kind of fine with them except in very specific cases. I like that the early Domination game is more a battle of intrigue to convince others you're not entirely evil... and then you either play it out some other way, or you drop the facade sometime around Autocracy and just start putting the boots in. My objections are mostly with
1) how sacred city-states are (hurt one, ever, and prepare to be public enemy #1)
2) War is the only answer to some things, like being aggressively forward settled.

 

[Kallowe]

From what I understand one major penalty for warmongers in the game is that they want to go up the right side of the tech tree, but all of the science based buildings are on the left. What if one of Honors bonuses was +1 per barracks? It should be late in the tech tree so you would have to invest in honor to actually get it. It would sort of represent a warrior culture improving their technology and military tactics through constant use.

 

[Wojciech Rodzik]

1. Honor should be renamed to Warfare, or Warrior society.
2. It should have nothing in common with barbarians. It is supposed to represent warrior society. One possible exception should be that German and UU should be moved there somehow (chance to convert barbarian unit).

Opener:
This is basically start, your civilization is just dipping it's toe here. Bonuses to unit building (from Warrior Code) would be the best. Nothing crazy - 10% for every unit type.

First tenets:
Something for war, Discipline: how about 10% to every unit power (no requirements), bonus to great general generation.
Pillage - you get small culture and possibly tech bonus from tile pillaging (obviously that requires ability to fix enemy improvements with your workers to be removed, possibly not applied to city states). More money when capturing city, also getting culture&tech from that.

Second - your society is rather militarized at this point:
Military tradition - add GG generation bonus, further minor (5%) production bonus.
Military caste - barrack, armories, military academies give you culture, tech, and possibly happiness.

Professional army - existing bonuses + bonus to army efficiency. Alternatively I would move that somewhere else (more civilized trees) and add something for mass army ("Every male is a warrior") which would make units free of maintenance, but I think this is way to strong.

Finisher - 50% shortened resistance period, military unit garrisoned in the conquered city acts as courthouse (you can still build one). After conquest you can sacrifice one unit of population in captured city to bypass resistance whatsoever. Each captured city (not important if razed) gives you permanent +1 happiness.

 

[Quineloe]

So, thoughts?

How does using GGs for Great Works of Writing improve Honor as a war tree? That's what Aesthetics is for.

The main issue with large armies is their cost, and honor does nothing about that.

the other issue, amplified even by your change to garrison, is that the last policy is + construction speed for the buildings. Buildings you should already have by the time you finish Honor. Barracks speed should be swapped with +15% build speed for melee units.

Tradition gets 4 free Monuments. Why can't honor get 4 free barracks?

 

[phaethon16]

What about if you complete honor, you're allowed to create someone else's UU? It would be done randomly so you couldn't pick, and it would have to be a unit whose tech hasn't be researched yet, but the random element could keep it from being OP.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I'd like to see a much more radical redesign of honor that changes the metagame. Happy and culture from walls and barracks would be a good start. Military caste absolutely has to go. But I'd really like if it gave the reduced-pop-loss-on-city-capture currently associated with tourism, or reduce the chance that buildings are destroyed on capture. Professional army would be a good spot for that, abstractly. Instead of a bunch of jerks with clubs who get drunk and start raping and pillaging after taking the town, they are professionals about it.

 

[Quineloe]

Another thing I just thought that what if Building exp wouldn't count against Barbarian exp? So if you had an armory, you could still get 30 exp on barbarians, for a total of 60 exp.

 

[BillDon]

The real problem with honor is how unit centric it is. That seems really obvious but the point I'm trying to make is that if you take honor you are forced to build units really early. What do you skip and for how long do you skip it? Do you skip your worker and steal one later? Ok. How bout your library? Shrine? Monument?
These are really basic things your empire probably needs to get going and I didn't even include caravan, settler, granary, fishing boat, or BARRACKS of all things.

Sure you can just kinda alternate unit, building, unit and so on, but if you do prepare for "losing gold."

You guys can look up my posts, I have alot of ideas for honor. Maybe you disagree with them but check it out for brainstorming. I really wish you could have a doctrine sort of thing which mirrors the reformation belief in piety, but that would be a radical change.

Here are the changes I would make if I were to try a nutshell quick fix of the tree.

Opener, Discipline, and Finisher remain the same.

Warrior Code- Remove free GG. Replace production bonus with 2 Free Archers. Sure it is a one time deal but it is a massive help at that point in the game.

Military Tradition- A Great General appears and GG's spawn 50% faster. Replace exp boost with "select one unit-selected unit receives 2 immediate promotions."

At this point you have invested 3 polices (if you went left side first) and you have a fighting force that can defend your cap and hunt barbs, and you probably have one extra building you wouldn't have had otherwise. I think that's a fair change.

Military Caste- Receive 3 culture from each garrison in home city. Receive 2 happiness from each garrison in puppeted or annexed city.

Professional Army- Upgrade cost reducer remains. Units within range of GG gain experience 50% faster.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Honor is meant to benefit early conquest, therefore:

Any production boosts need to be in the opener or right after the opener (early!)
Military caste must go (garrisoning is not conquest!)

Using great generals to create great works is an interesting idea. Professional army (or the location is currently occupies) is a good place for this because any policy with a bonus to gg generation should come before it and you will have several by then.

I think the culture from city capture should be in the location of military caste, so the tree can be completed in a timely manner.

 

[GoStu]

Honor is meant to benefit early conquest, therefore:

Any production boosts need to be in the opener or right after the opener (early!)
Military caste must go (garrisoning is not conquest!)

Using great generals to create great works is an interesting idea. Professional army (or the location is currently occupies) is a good place for this because any policy with a bonus to gg generation should come before it and you will have several by then.

I think the culture from city capture should be in the location of military caste, so the tree can be completed in a timely manner.

I think we see eye-to-eye on this: the timing of the boosts is every bit as important as what the boost is! Getting the army out quickly is more important early than getting that 200xp General a touch earlier. In my experience the first one isn't hard to get and lasts quite a while.

What about if you complete honor, you're allowed to create someone else's UU? It would be done randomly so you couldn't pick, and it would have to be a unit whose tech hasn't be researched yet, but the random element could keep it from being OP.

I think your idea is interesting and unique, but ultimately I can't support it. The randomness would mean that it'd be totally broken only some of the time, and utterly worthless some other times. Imagine the thrill of getting Mandekalu Cavalry as the Mongolians, or the horrible disappointment of getting Slingers or Jaguars.... after you've teched them to obsolescence.

How does using GGs for Great Works of Writing improve Honor as a war tree? That's what Aesthetics is for.

The main issue with large armies is their cost, and honor does nothing about that.

the other issue, amplified even by your change to garrison, is that the last policy is + construction speed for the buildings. Buildings you should already have by the time you finish Honor. Barracks speed should be swapped with +15% build speed for melee units.

Tradition gets 4 free Monuments. Why can't honor get 4 free barracks?

Creating Great Works with Generals adds more Culture to the tree (even if they can only write a Political Treatise, that's still a good alternate source of Culture). Mainly I'm trying to address the issue that multiple Great Generals are often quite redundant. Claiming land with Citadels MAY be useful or it may not be. Having more than one per army is often pointless, and purchasing Admirals/Generals is almost always worthless.

This allows you to do something else useful with all those Generals. I'd even consider the idea of allowing them to be used like Great Scientists for a science boost. As for the basis of this, I'm thinking of real-life examples where Generals go into politics, or write well-known books (Art of War, anyone?), or war generates innovation (look into Cellulocotton for one, or any innovation in rocketry and aviation). A military culture can draw inspiration from its leaders.

As to the cost of maintaining an army, I'm not completely against a maintenance reduction, but I believe the true problem is that the early game is too cash-strapped for everyone. This is best addressed another way, not solely through the Honor tree.

 

[phaethon16]

I think your idea is interesting and unique, but ultimately I can't support it. The randomness would mean that it'd be totally broken only some of the time, and utterly worthless some other times. Imagine the thrill of getting Mandekalu Cavalry as the Mongolians, or the horrible disappointment of getting Slingers or Jaguars.... after you've teched them to obsolescence.

But like I said, you could only get a unique unit that requires a tech that hasn't been researched yet. That way, if you were in the medieval era you could get a Panzer but not a slinger.

 

[MKDELTA3]

I'd like to see a much more radical redesign of honor that changes the metagame. Happy and culture from walls and barracks would be a good start. Military caste absolutely has to go. But I'd really like if it gave the reduced-pop-loss-on-city-capture currently associated with tourism, or reduce the chance that buildings are destroyed on capture. Professional army would be a good spot for that, abstractly. Instead of a bunch of jerks with clubs who get drunk and start raping and pillaging after taking the town, they are professionals about it.

Losing population on city conquest is beneficial unless you're running with enormous excess happiness. If I'm fighting a war I sure don't want to take some 10 or 20 or 30 pop city and take a huge happiness hit for forever.

Unless Honor gets a significant reduction in unhappiness from puppets taking cities intact would be a huge nerf the way warfare works now. Early wars would likely get you into a death spiral of unhappiness.

 

[GoStu]

But like I said, you could only get a unique unit that requires a tech that hasn't been researched yet. That way, if you were in the medieval era you could get a Panzer but not a slinger.

My apologies, I must have skimmed over that part. I still can't really get behind the idea though; the benefit of someone else's UU could be so large or so inconsequential that I'd rather not leave it to chance. For a different example, imagine getting the Pracinha... Only four or five eras to go until you can build it! Other way around, it could still end up really OP.

Losing population on city conquest is beneficial unless you're running with enormous excess happiness. If I'm fighting a war I sure don't want to take some 10 or 20 or 30 pop city and take a huge happiness hit for forever.

Unless Honor gets a significant reduction in unhappiness from puppets taking cities intact would be a huge nerf the way warfare works now. Early wars would likely get you into a death spiral of unhappiness.

I do agree that taking the populations intact is a big bite of unhappiness, but I do really like the idea of reducing damage to the buildings of the city. This makes a captured city a much bigger prize than one that needs to rebuild.