Redo Honor

[crawf0rd]

I think the issue with honor is its lack of general empire bonuses. Liberty and tradition give production gold and food bonuses in a manner that doesn't require you to make or kill units to benefit from. Military caste is a good example for what honor should have. There should be a swords into plowshares policy, which is like the belief, but perhaps gives you the food bonus while at war.
In my game as the ottomans, I went honor, and by the renaissance I had 4 cities, a low pop capital, and production poor surrounding cities. Needless to say I was done for. My bonuses just couldn't keep up with other civs'.

 

[ShunNakamura]

I personally would like to see some changes.

I would like to see the opener increase the number of levels one can obtain from barbs by 1.

Opener - 33% against barbs, culture for killed barbs, can gain 1 more level from barbs

Tier 1
- Discipline : Leave the proximity bonus as is but give the additional effect of reducing the impact of negative cash flow. Less chance of disbanding and lesser penalties to science. Or some such. After all a disciplined people would probably keep working hard even if they got a pay cut(or were promised later compensation for working free now).

- Warrior Code : Make the production good towards all Military units and we got a keeper(+15% Military Production/25% faster generals/Free Great General).

- Professional Army : The big trouble with this policy is that it is a build bonus as a tier 3 trait. I think moving it to tier one to compete with the other two is all the buff it really needs.

Tier 2 : the 2nd tier traits are actually fairly solid and probably don't need changed much.
- Military Tradition : Leave it as is; though I would make it require two of the first tier picks. Probably Discipline and Warrior Code.

- Military Caste : Leave it as is; though I would make it require two of the first tier picks. Probably Professional Army and Warrior Code.

Finisher : I would add to it that the healing promotion heals more health than it currently does. Say 25%. Letting it work like it originally did(full heal) would probably be too much when combined with the 50% more xp that honor gets.

 

[crabe]

I think the issue with honor is its lack of general empire bonuses. Liberty and tradition give production gold and food bonuses in a manner that doesn't require you to make or kill units to benefit from. Military caste is a good example for what honor should have. There should be a swords into plowshares policy, which is like the belief, but perhaps gives you the food bonus while at war.
In my game as the ottomans, I went honor, and by the renaissance I had 4 cities, a low pop capital, and production poor surrounding cities. Needless to say I was done for. My bonuses just couldn't keep up with other civs'.

How many of your four cities were other civs' capitals? Honor will never allow your cities to compete with the cities of civs who take Tradition or Liberty. The only way it will ever not suck for you is if you are benefiting from the work others have put into their capitals...by stealing them!!

 

[Babri]

I really like the warrior code & discipline ideas given by the OP. Early warfare is not hampered by low production in cities but by low sources of income in BNW. Having free barracks & few free units would greatly offset that problem & make warmongering a valid choice in early game.

And regarding the Finisher, I think policies shouldn't encourage you to puppet cities. You should annex as soon as you can. Puppeting is just a transitioning stage which you only keep temporarily (or at least how it is intended to be).

 

[JamesCivFan]

A lot of discussion has been done about the Honor Policy Tree. I saw the changes in BNW (Never played it yet), and I still believe that Honor needs some more love. The fact that Tradition and Liberty are so superior, objectively, really leaves Honor as a secondary Tree right now. Maybe that's what the developers were aiming for?

 

[Cbman]

Opener is extremely solid. Leave it.

Left side

I'd change warrior code to +10% when training any units, free barracks in your first two cities, +50% when building military buildings.

Move the free GG and bonus to GG production to Military tradition in addition to the +50% xp.

Right side

Add 4 maintenance free units to Discipline's usual bonus.

Add +1 happy from walls to Military Caste

Professional Army loses the bonus to military buildings, since it was moved to the left side. Maybe the maintenance free units belong here instead of at Discipline.

Indirect buff

Reduce Oligarchy's bonus to city attack from +50% to +30% like the pantheon and freedom tenent.

 

[crabe]

Seriously, what would Attila and his crew do with four maintenance-free units? That's just way too powerful IMO. Even a free Barracks that early (so that you can get away with waiting until your free Barracks before getting to train anything) is a little much. Since Honor helps provide the means to extort gold, I think you have to be careful about giving too much gold in the tree. Running a powerful Army, the kind that all but guarantees the AI's (civs and city-states alike) cannot resist your demands should mean spending time at negative GPT.

 

[Babri]

Seriously, what would Attila and his crew do with four maintenance-free units? That's just way too powerful IMO. Even a free Barracks that early (so that you can get away with waiting until your free Barracks before getting to train anything) is a little much. Since Honor helps provide the means to extort gold, I think you have to be careful about giving too much gold in the tree. Running a powerful Army, the kind that all but guarantees the AI's (civs and city-states alike) cannot resist your demands should mean spending time at negative GPT.

The free maintenance units can be tweaked but it is a solid idea. The most brutal limitation right now on conquest & war is lack of gold. Secondly building barracks early as a warmonger is a suicide due to it costing precious gold. This doesn't make any sense as warmongers are supposed to go through that path .
If honour is able to somewhat support early army growth then it would be a very useful tree. Just think about growth boosts by tradition or free settler by liberty. Aren't they allowing civs to grow/expand beyond their capacity.

And the point regarding Attila is that they only have advantage: WAR. If you nerf it so hard then they would become kind of boring other than luckily getting a warrior upgraded to ram & taking down your neighbour.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 4

 

[Singulare]

You complain about honor tree? Look at commerce. Got me really mad when i played venice archipelago map

Strange right!?! I'm doing a single city challenge with Venice on Archipelago right now and I'll probably go exploration. Seems to provide much better bonuses. Especially if you're not stuck at a single city like me.

 

[Cbman]

Seriously, what would Attila and his crew do with four maintenance-free units? That's just way too powerful IMO. Even a free Barracks that early (so that you can get away with waiting until your free Barracks before getting to train anything) is a little much. Since Honor helps provide the means to extort gold, I think you have to be careful about giving too much gold in the tree. Running a powerful Army, the kind that all but guarantees the AI's (civs and city-states alike) cannot resist your demands should mean spending time at negative GPT.

You are absolutely right. I actually tried it out on a couple quick games, and it was way OP. Moreso that the free barracks was extremely powerful for Assyria and especially Zulu... Ashur liked the no maintenance, Shaka didn't really care so much. Didn't try the Huns, but yea I could see Attila taking over his whole continent before the end of the classical.

How about either a free barracks, or two maintenance free units, plus the happy from walls. Free barracks is only 1 gold, but it saves a lot of hammers and lets you get out good units almost immediately. The free units are about 1 gold to start, but it grows and adds up over the course of the game.

 

[MarshalN]

But saying it's OP for one civ doesn't mean a tree should be left weak for all the other civs. By that logic tradition is really strong for India and thus should be nerfed severely.

 

[crabe]

I am inclined to look for ways to "break" things. Look for who benefits the most from a proposed change and see if its too strong. Right now none of the trees are really OP in my opinion, but bonuses related to conquest are the most easily broken, since conquest destroys other civs utterly, and is currently not difficult. Attila Early warmongering doesn't need any kind of boost right now at all IMO, but if it does, it definitely doesn't need to be in the first 70 turns.

Moving the discount on Barracks (free Barracks is too much) a little bit up the tree isn't a bad idea...but again, it's just nonsense to say that building a Barracks is suicide. Going to war has costs and Honor shouldn't negate them...you're supposed to bleed gold. Non-warmongers get to use their gold for rush purchasing, you don't, you have to use it to support your army, at least until you can get a few payouts (from peace terms, tribute and pillaging).

 

[Ninakoru]

About attila being too powerful: sincerely, did anyone seen attila anywere close to what shaka can do with honor as it is now? the result is that shaka is the only AI that is successful at warmongering at any game stage. Attila should be as frightening as Shaka is, after all its all about early gaming. I am agree that horse archers are abusable, but there are many other civ uniques easily abusable and no one complains about it. Chu-ko-nus and Bazaars are clear examples.

I find this main problems with honor:

- Early free units/buildings from liberty/tradition provides a much better setup for early game, you really save many turns with the extra hammer on new cities under liberty, 50% extra prod on settler, even if you don't do more than a pair of settler with such bonus, it saves quite some turns on the capital on the early stage. A way to fix this is through less time training units, so you can invest the extra turns to build the much-needed infrastructure earlier. You will be getting still way worse early setup, only close up the gap a bit. I would give a plain 20% extra production when building pre-renaissance military units (instead of the near useless 15% to melee units that chances you won't build more than a pair or three in the entire game), so the thing doesn't stack with autocracy bonus, and doesn't add up to the already good long term bonuses honor has IMO.

- Due to no more gold from rivers and other penalties to economy, I would definitively go with some free units. It doesn't scale well as the game progresses, but gives an edge on early army massing. I would say three units is a nice spot.

- Honor was the best at hapiness with happiness from walls, now is the worst one. You have to pay unkeep for units in order to get the only extra happiness source the branch has, witch is pretty ridiculous, as you can be easily stuck with half of your army at home only to maintain happiness on the green zone. My remedy would be as simple as giving those bonuses to walls instead, so you can actually use your army and don't depend on tradition oligarchy sinergy.

- Then you need some extra happiness boost in order to be able to do some conquest, or just for the sake to not be too much behind on the happiness department. I would give +2 happiness for each unique strategic resource you own (even if all resources are spent). That's 4 happiness with horses and iron, enough to offset ONE extra city on early game, and the 2 extra happiness per resource is not that important later when next resources are available. Another good option would be to give one happiness with each stable and forge built, they are military buildings after all, and the bonus go close as one happiness per city.

 

[Vidszhite]

You complain about honor tree? Look at commerce. Got me really mad when i played venice archipelago map

Commerce is quite powerful, actually. +25% gold in the capital includes sea trade routes, and happiness from luxes and gold from trading posts make Venice all the better when using a MoV, so on archipelago, literally the only thing you miss out on is extra gold from caravans.

 

[player1 fanatic]

My personal oppinion is honor needs more gold (not situational like finisher) and happiness to balance out with other policy trees.

That means some free unit maintenance (or even % discout or both). And some happiness effect that can help in early conquest. I realy like strat. resourse idea. Another idea would be flat out hapiness bonus for some key military techs.

Another issue I have with honor is that it has oppener that is stong in early game but useless later. That means that usually early honor adopers will be the only ones that will consider using this tree. Others will skip it since it means wasting one policy slot to be able to get anything good from honor.

 

[Cbman]

The more I look at this the more I think Oligarchy is the main problem. If you go tall builder/wonderhog, and an honor/liberty fueled army shows up on your doorstep you ought to be in a lot of trouble. But as it stands, you aren't because between the free culture/growth/city garrisons, you can turn back all but the most able armies with a lone comp bow garrison...

It's like whoever programmed this game is a wonderhog, and they wanted to be able to wonderhog without worrying about marauding barbarians looking to destroy their stuff and competitors looking to steal their stuff. Tactics, proper troop movement, placement and fortification, who needs that noise when you can just place an invulnerable bow in a nearly invulnerable city. Would certainly explain the incompetent combat AI. Intricate micromanagement of a sprawling liberty empire... Sounds like a grind. Much less tedious to wonderspam in the capital, while catching up in infrastructure in a few satellites, then they can wonderspam too. Zomg England showed up with longbows, I'm gonna have to buy a Knight. Dammit, That money was for a rush bought observatory in my invulnerable size 900 science city whatever will I do? Hard build it? Are you nuts, those hammers have been allocated for every wonder in game!

I get the distinct impression that "balance" in this game means that the local chess club champion of tall Babylon play can (out)compete the Kasparov of wide Celtic play. Now I don't play multi-player, and that could very well be a very good thing, in the sense that it makes for competitive multi-player games that would otherwise be lopsided and not much fun. But the way that went about making tall, not just viable, but the defacto strategy of choice for almost any win condition is just cheesy.

The liberty settler should come before the hammer. Period! There is no excuse for putting the hammer first, you need that hammer in your second city, not your capital. You need to get those settlers out before the Trad player has time to gobble up that land with rapid border growth and rush bought/built settlers that they can generate roughly as quickly as the liberty player can due to all the Trad gold bonuses and the fact that they can work more hammer tiles. As it stands if liberty is ANY faster to 4 cities, the difference is moot because of the growth and culture bonuses of Trad. Sure liberty is much faster to 12 cities, but that they gimped with the science penalty.

Drop Oligarchy and freedom bonus to city attack to 25 each. The pantheon can stay at 30 since it doesn't come with the growth and culture bonuses that make +50 really out of line.

Flip the liberty settler with the hammer.

I think that's a good place to start. I think those two are on pretty even footing with those simple changes. If the free early MOV unbalances Venice (I don't think it would, I usually like to buy city states after they build me an army, library, etc.), then move the optics MOV to guilds. Probably makes more sense anyway.

Is there any reason that the piety opener couldn't give you a free shrine in your capital in addition to the build bonus in satellite cities? In light of Celts/Maya/Ethiopia/Faith ruins, I really don't think that would be too much. I suppose a free mayan pyramid could be a bit OP, but Maya is OP as it is and they were going to build the thing ASAP anyway, plus religion is a gamble at high difficulty anyway, even if you are Maya.

I hadn't tried out Zulu until yesterday. They're crazy good. They can field 16 spears and a couple workers for the same price anybody other than Germany can field 8 CBs and a couple workers. Oh and those aren't ordinary spears, they're psycho hunter killer spears that can hunt down barbs and enemy AI units with ease, racking up a crazy bankroll and softening up opponents in advance of coming invasions. In light of Ikanda + Zulu UA, I actually think Honor needs to be reworked. It should be nerfed in relation to Zulu, though still their obvious goto, and strengthened in relation to most other civs in the game. Not quite sure how to go about it though.

 

[Olleus]

Update first post to take into accounts comments and new ideas. If people are generally happy with this, I'll try and release it as a mod by the end of the week.

 

[crabe]

I think a lot of the complains people are having just stem from not playing the game enough, really. It's much easier to win science going wide than tall, in my experience. The tech cost penalty per city is small and is more than overcome if you build the science buildings in each of those cities. Going wide slows you down tech-wise in the short run, but not in the long run. If you don't build the science buildings, then yeah, you will be penalized, but going wide doesn't mean ICS. I read similar comments from folks asking "why would anyone ever take Order?" Derp!

Player1 Fanatic says that Honor needs to provide gold that isn't situational like the finisher. Really?? "Gold for kills" is situational? Not if you're taking Honor! Honor is supposed to be the most situational tree - you take it if you want to conquer, but if you don't, it SHOULD be a vastly inferior selection. Read: you're doin' it wrong!

I do agree that the Honor opener becomes less effective further into the game, but this is better in BNW than ever before.

 

[Strategist83]

I think there is some fundamental misunderstanding Strategist. I think that honor shouldn't just give you a benefit to combat, it should give some benefits to conquering. Sure, honor makes it easier to take over another capital, but having that city doesn't help you if you dont have the happiness that liberty/tradition gives you to maintain it. What you say about the AI is completely true, but I am trying to balance the game for SP (which is what I play and am most interested in, and thats true for most people i wager), rather than MP. And as for puppet cities, I think you *are* meant to keep them like that the entire game. The game designers specifically introduced them to reduce the micromanagement of selecting buildings for hundreds of cities in the game.

That said, what honour should do is mostly a matter of preference. I think it should compete with the other ancient era trees as a respectable choice for a first tree to fill out if going for a specific game strategy.

If the policies suggested above are too strong, I could see a case for changing warrior code to 1 free GG and 2 free units (1 melee and 1 archer). And to clarify, under military cast, each defensive building gives +1 happiness only, rather than additional culture, and its to the cities local happiness (rather than global) so it's capped at the city pop. That means that for the cost of building a unit, paying maintenance on it, building walls and building a castle you get +2 happiness and +1 culture. Seems reasonably balanced to me if you compare it to liberty which gives +1 happiness but only requires 1 road as investment. The numbers for vassalage and the finisher can be tweaked one way or the other for balance. One free unit per 10 pop might be better.

I must still disagree.

1) Honor does give you the best happiness options for conquest: Simply move a military unit into a city and it instantly yields both happiness and a large amount of culture. Liberty and Tradition are both much worse of in terms of this so it isn't true Honor doesn't support the infrastructure for conquest. Still, Honor is one of the three ancient era policy trees and isn't supposed to leave you swimming in happiness: Notice how all three trees basically give you +1 happiness per city - they just have different ways of doing it, same as how they increase your production in different fields.

2) No, you are not supposed to keep puppets as such permanently. The Courthouse is there for a reason. I realize a lot of people probably do keep puppets, and again: against the pseudo-balance that is vs-AI single player, you can certainly get away with it and it can even be the best option but overall, it really isn't efficient and isn't what the game is balanced around. To hammer the point home, on top of the puppet maluses they've even introduced a tenet that offers a free Courthouse on city capture with BNW, which would be meaningless if eternal puppet empires were indeed ever intended or even desirable.

3) There's a reason the +happy-per-fortification bonuses were moved into the lategame Autocracy. As per above, you are supposed to be greatly constrained by happiness. Reintroducing these bonuses into Honor would go precisely against the direction Firaxis has taken the game with the BNW expansion. You simply aren't supposed to be able to rule over a vast empire pre-industrial.

Of course, we can probably never agree if you wish to balance the game around 'the single-player experience'. This is precisely one of the biggest failings of Civ V: It's 99% a single-player game, but because of the AI's ineptitude there's a gap between the way the game is balanced and the way it actually plays. I've just explained how the game is actually balanced, and even if it's mostly theoretical because the AI can't live up to these rules, this is how things were actually intended by Firaxis. Other than Honor, there are a number of other prominent examples of the same, such as the Japanese Zero which gets mocked for being a bad unique unit despite the reality being that it's quite powerful - just this power mostly doesn't apply against the AI where it isn't needed. You can mod the game to suit your tastes and perhaps create a better single-player balance, but I'd hate to see Firaxis cave in and balance the game with the abysmal AI in mind rather than keep the current strong balance and improve the AI instead.

 

[Cbman]

1) Honor does give you the best happiness options for conquest: Simply move a military unit into a city and it instantly yields both happiness and a large amount of culture. Liberty and Tradition are both much worse of in terms of this so it isn't true Honor doesn't support the infrastructure for conquest. Still, Honor is one of the three ancient era policy trees and isn't supposed to leave you swimming in happiness: Notice how all three trees basically give you +1 happiness per city - they just have different ways of doing it, same as how they increase your production in different fields.

Great points overall, but I have to quibble with this one. Trad gives you 1 happy per 2 pop in the cap and you can take it immediately after legalism, so you can take it right around the time you'd be thinking about settling a second or third city. In the late game that's going to equate to at least 10 happy and usually more like 15. And more importantly I usually take it early game at about size 6-8 for 3 or 4 plus the gold. Then it also has happy per 10 pop for aristocracy.

So late game you might have a size 26 cap and 3 size 20 cities, that's 13+8=21 happy. Or 30,24,20,12 which would give you 22 happy. Liberty gets numities-1 happy, and you need to connect those cities, honor gets numcities happy but you need to leave your army there...