Redo Honor

[Olleus]

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.

I have some quibbles with your other points, but this I agree whole heartedly with. The best way to balance honour is to make the AI stronger at war so you need the military bonuses to conquer them. The problem is that this is an incredibly hard thing to do. To hard for anything but a competent and dedicated Firaxis or a huge group of modders. What I'd like, and I wager many others, is a slight hack which slightly changes honour to make it useful in the current AI environment.

 

[player1 fanatic]

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!

The thing is there is nothing helping you keep your army between wars and while preparing for wars. Its situational since it only matters during war.

Also its at the end of the tree and honor players need something different in order to support their army before that.

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

How is better? Its the same.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

Honor is decent if you only pick the policies up to military caste and combine it With the right side of Liberty.
3 culture per city is pretty nice and allows you to fill out traditon later on to get alot of happiness.

 

[Ninakoru]

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.

Actually the only one witch provides outstanding happiness is tradition, liberty mean more cities and that is more base unhappiness. Providing a conquered city 1 less unhappiness rightaway is not a great bonus, you can have way more happiness waiting to be filled with the other policies.

Tradition happiness can double the number of cities by the capital happiness alone, with a fully developed liberty you get 1 per city plus 1 per 20 citizens. With honor you get one per city, but at the cost of maintaining part of your army stationary in your cities.

The problem I see is that honor provided the best happiness, maxing at 5 happiness per city in late game, witch is huge. Early on you could just build walls to not depend on garrisoned men, and then the bonus on conquest had some meaning. Now you will not have the economy to mantain an army early, plus 0 happiness bonuses if you actually use it for conquest, so you better get lots of different luxuries and CS quests to make it up for it, something extremely luck-based.

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.

Faulty logic, puppets are there to give player an additional option: puppet, annex, raze, witch depending on situation you will decide for one, so is an intended mechanic. 5% penalty per city help about massive puppet empires, witch was abusable, but still puppets are a viable option.

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.

I understand the reasons, and I'm agree you shouldn't conquer the world by turn 100, but you should be able to smash a neighbour if you focus on it and get the right policy, witch is right now liberty.

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.

A strategy game is about options. You have your grand strategy, and the oportunity cost of each actions, you have your preferences, what works better with your play style, many variables. The problem right now Honor is not a best option in any situation right now. True that honor is better in multiplayer, where the enemy is not as useless in combat, but still a good early setup is more important.

 

[MarshalN]

I just played a game as Monty on immortal filling out honor really fast while killing my next door Sweden. Problem is without the buffs from liberty or tradition my core cities were weak and I can see my production and science slowing down. Honor as a standalone tree is not workable at all, unlike tradition or liberty. Piety is in the same boat as honor, maybe even worse

As for the unit killing gold - it's a paltry sum. You barely pay for upkeep with that stuff

I'm thinking the following might be a way to rework honor

Open - keep the current bonuses, plus builds barracks/armouries 50% faster

Warrior code - Perhaps change it to +15% land units, instead of just melee

Discipline - no change

Military caste - same, plus no maintenance when garrisoned

Military tradition - no change

Professional army - same discount on upgrades, and free maintenance when in enemy territory (only when at war - open borders don't count).

Finisher - current bonuses (the money is really not a lot, and nobody in their right mind will faith buy generals) plus +1 for barracks, armouries, academies (yes, this stacks with autocracy tenet)

I think this will give honor a bit of a buff without too much overpower for the military civs. Even then the buffs are small and will probably still pale in comparison with tradition, but I think this might at least make it more viable as an alternative path, especially for the warmongers. Right now honor's comes at a high price, and also comes in small amounts. A passive + with military buildings would help alleviate that - and barracks are not buildings you would build otherwise anyway, not in all the cities at least.

The free maintenance when in enemy territory is not as OP as it sounds, because early on borders are small - so you're mostly right around enemy cities, taking fire. Later on it does get easier to park a few units in enemy lands, but either way, this requires you to be at war - and I don't think many players would try to "abuse" this by staying at war with an AI just to get a few free maintenance units (that they have to park in the same place).

It may also have the slightly perverse function of forcing players to go to war when they can't pay for their armies - which is sort of how pre-modern conquest states worked. You had a big army, you had to constantly war to gain booty and stuff, or your army gets mad and they disband/revolt. When the gravy train is over your empire is also over.

 

[Antarion]

too many ppl with no knowlegde of multiplayer arguing here, but the real point about honor being weak is their experience only vs the AI as some posters (but sadly the minority) have stated already. the tree itselfs is STRONG. someone asked who buys generals by faith? every good warmonger before you get airplanes and tanks will do this.

countless citadels are only possible if u run with honor, and this is what it makes it outstanding. honor is great for warmongers and still works even as tier1 tree without any help from one of the three others. while tradition or liberty work on their own kinda easy, piety and honor need much more thinking to use them alone (and often i mix one of the two first into it for culture gain).

honor works well if u manage to save some barb camps just for culture win and you are allowed to develop a good eco without big disadvantage in comparison to the tradition and liberty. this often means you need alot of money from city states by tribute and not killin camps just killing the garrisons (using range units for this purpose). if you can do this you can easy fill out honor on quick speed in 50-60 turns.

although this thread is not about piety, this tree has the same restrictions. piety on its own works best imho if you just found wine, gold, incense or silver with the associated panthenon. the reason is u will find yourself kinda quickly in heavy culture deficits if you dont do it and you need alot to finish 2 useless early on picks in piety (theocracy and religious tolerance).

ppl have really adopt to the game and map to think outside the box.

there are restrictions to liberty and tradition too imho, but they are not that big deal. to fill tradition completly early on is only usefull if u stay small and your capital can grow (which gets easier because of food caravans). liberty works not at is best if you cant settle 5 or more cities, else you should rather pick tradition first.

 

[Podtxt]

I didnt read trough all topic, but i thought of lack of maintenance on barracks idea, which is +gold and one less thing on players head.

 

[Olleus]

too many ppl with no knowlegde of multiplayer arguing here, but the real point about honor being weak is their experience only vs the AI as some posters (but sadly the minority) have stated already. the tree itselfs is STRONG. someone asked who buys generals by faith? every good warmonger before you get airplanes and tanks will do this.

Yes, but for those of us who play single player, we want the game to be balanced for single player, and are happy to mod it just for that. While this may not be the case for multiplayer I, quite frankly, don't care.

This point has been made at least 3 times already in this thread.

 

[Peng Qi]

Had this discussion on another thread. I came up with three different Honor concepts there. Personally I like concept 2 the best. Note this was pre-BNW so "same as now" refers to the G&K version of the abilities:

Concept 1: Generic aggression.
Adopt: Just give up and make it the Aztec ability + the bonus fighting barbs.
Warrior Code: +15% production when training melee units. Build barracks at double speed.
Military Tradition: All units get one free promotion.
Discipline: Same as now.
Military Caste: Barracks provide +2 culture and +1 happiness.
Professional Army: Same as now. (G&K version)
Finisher: Same as now.

Concept 2: EARLY aggression.
Adopt: A free scout appears in the capitol. Culture for barb kills/bonus vs barbs.
Warrior Code: A great general appears. +1 per in your empire.
Military Tradition: Melee and siege units gain +1.
Discipline: Your units gain double flanking bonuses.
Military Caste: Barracks gain +1. Build military buildings at double speed (anything that gives +XP or + when building military units such as forge/stable).
Professional Army: Same as now. (G&K)
Finisher: Same as now.

Concept 3: Strong Units All-Game
Adopt: Same as now.
Warrior Code: New units start with +15XP. +1 per Barracks.
Military Tradition: Same as now.
Discipline: Same as now.
Military Caste: Replace with G&K Professional Army bonus.
Professional Army: Fortified units gain +10%. +20% when building military units.
Finisher: Same as now.

 

[CivilianSam]

Honor definitely needs some changing and I'm liking these ideas.

An idea i've been tossing around is possibly making Honor the ONLY social policy tree available from the beginning of the game (you would need to research pottery to adopt piety, calendar to adopt tradition, and writing to adopt liberty). Each individual policy you adopt (including the opener) would give you a free military unit of some kind. This would give all players the option of powerful military boost early on in the game, which I feel is a badly needed option to spice up the early game, especially since BNW came out. (minor issue I've got with the game: as if humans waited until 500 BC to start warring against each other!) This would give players a powerful incentive to go the honor route at first, at least partially, with going straight to tradition or liberty a little more tricky way to go. I also feel this would more accurately reflect history (I'm pretty sure we started killing each other before we did the other stuff)

This, in addition to tweaking the policies to better suit conquering and puppetting cities as others have suggested, I think might go a long way towards fixing honor. One particular thing I'd like to see worked into the policy tree somewhere is 50% production bonus towards courthouses, and maybe have them generate a little gold instead of having a maintenance cost (definitely conceivable that a courthouse could generate money, right? not unrealistic?)

 

[Peng Qi]

An idea i've been tossing around is possibly making Honor the ONLY social policy tree available from the beginning of the game (you would need to research pottery to adopt piety, calendar to adopt tradition, and writing to adopt liberty). Each individual policy you adopt (including the opener) would give you a free military unit of some kind. This would give all players the option of powerful military boost early on in the game, which I feel is a badly needed option to spice up the early game, especially since BNW came out.

Rule number one of good game design: Give players as many options as you can without being redundant or overwhelming them. This does not follow that rule.

 

[Ninakoru]

too many ppl with no knowlegde of multiplayer arguing here, but the real point about honor being weak is their experience only vs the AI as some posters (but sadly the minority) have stated already. the tree itselfs is STRONG. someone asked who buys generals by faith? every good warmonger before you get airplanes and tanks will do this.

I played some multiplayer games, the only rush I tried was done with liberty, you can skip worker, pop instead units, and in the way to your only settler, you get a production boost.

Is true that the extra power units get with honor is much more valuable vs a human player, but still is of no use if that player gone tradition and broadly outpaces you in production and science. This is true in both MP and SP games...

there are restrictions to liberty and tradition too imho, but they are not that big deal.

Yeah, tradition doesn't give free settler and worker and liberty doesn't give free monuments and aqueducts after all.

I've done a little mod without LUA coding that works fine with honor, tried tyesterday and works great:

Opening: Same
Warrior Code: Same for GG pop and generation, but instead of 15% melee, +2 prod in capital and +10% to all military units.
Military Tradition: Same, plus +1 local happiness from forge and stable
Discipline: Same promotion, plus 4 units maintenance free.
Military Caste: Walls provide +2 culture and +1 local happiness.
Professional Army: Same.
Finisher: Same.

I've done it different but LUA coding is required and I don't want to spend much time with the fall patch coming anytime with expected balance changes.

 

[Cbman]

In what conquest situation is honor ever better than tradition? Late game? It's an ancient era policy! Shouldn't it, ya know, help in the ancient era? Honor gives you +15 to melee production and +15 to melee strength if you position your units correctly. The way Trad works with the free hammers and the bonus growth it's going to work out to ~+15 to ANY production, and it gives you the gold to actually support those extra units. 33% more siege towers >>> siege towers that are situationally 15% stronger.

The only part of trad that is even remotely bad for conquest is landed elite. You can easily delay that until specialists, dip into honor after legalism, or peity if catch a lucky faith ruin, or patronage if you have a bunch of city states around.

For war I like legalism > honor, gives me the free hammers, free buildings, flat bonus while I explore the map, then it reveals all the barb camps... Lots of gold. Then I have options. I'm using melee, I take discipline. Gold, happy running low, monarchy. Barbs assaulting my cap... Oligarchy. Everything's good and I want more culture, military caste.

Straight honor by comparison, just blows. I can make it work with America, England and Mongolia, but those are special cases. Extremely good UUs that you have a chance to get barracks/heroic up in time to take advantage of. Extremely fast/good sight units that let you scout the map quickly so you can push hard science/growth/economy before unleashing your hordes.

BNW ruined early war, at least in the single player game. Right now it is barely worth using pre-medieval UUs, with a few exceptions. Immortals, picts, rams, towers. In the case of rams and towers more is better than stronger in any case I can think of. Immortals and picts are beefy enough that I suppose a couple less of them might be worth it if you can get the ones you have highly promoted. Even then I'm hard pressed to imagine a scenario in which honor actually outperforms Trad.

Only the Zulu really benefit from early honor as it is. And that's because Ikanda is WAY OP, and they can already support a HUGE army of spears, nothing to do with honor really.

 

[crabe]

If Honor is strong enough, but the problem is that the AI is so stupid that you don't need it, what exactly is strengthening the tree going to do? This game is highly asymmetrical as it is, but you may find the balance shifting further than you expect. However, some posters in this thread are saying that taking honor is essentially a handicap. That they can't do what they want without taking Tradition or Liberty. Well, for one thing you just need to adjust your gameplan. You can't warmonger in some of the ways you used to be able to, but if some people are saying it's still possible, then maybe you can do it too? Then you can think about how to make the most of the Honor tree (for the most obvious applications try Songhai or Aztecs). Furthermore we already accept a handicap when we spot the terrible AI's a head start.

I still think that all other things being equal Tradition should be the safest pick, that's why it's Tradition. Sometimes you have to make the decision about what tree to open on turn 5! Honor and Liberty are more situational and IMO should be. Honor should be the most situational, but it should never actually screw you over unless you aren't conquering. And in my opinion, it doesn't.

 

[rev063]

One buff I'd like to see to the Honor tree is to give Great Generals the ability to build citadels one tile away from your lands (instead of just directly adjacent). Probably shouldn't be the finisher since it's situational (e.g. archipelago maps), but coupled with the great general in Military Tradition it could enable some powerful warring strategies -- with a peacetime bonus of being able to capture more far-flung luxes.

 

[Peng Qi]

One buff I'd like to see to the Honor tree is to give Great Generals the ability to build citadels one tile away from your lands (instead of just directly adjacent). Probably shouldn't be the finisher since it's situational (e.g. archipelago maps), but coupled with the great general in Military Tradition it could enable some powerful warring strategies -- with a peacetime bonus of being able to capture more far-flung luxes.

Uh, this is totally random and I don't see the point of it.

 

[Santa Maria]

I think it screws me when taking Honor and I am not warmongering. I fall behind too much.

And Honor still doesn't help a bit to maintain a military so you get a -20gpt when early warmongering. Honor should help to create and maintain an army to make early war possible.

 

[Optional]

An old suggestion that I once posted in the Germany thread and that many people seemed to like: make the German trait part of the Honour tree. The Germans should then get something different, but that was the outset of that Germany thread (I said it would be a shame if the barbarian join mechanic would get lost if Germany were to be changed, so therefore suggested it could get recycled as part of the Honour tree in that case).
In itself the German trait could indeed be a very logical part of the tree.

If it was the only change made, I would put it in place of the free general and move the general a step deeper, where the XP bonus already is.

I don't find the Honour tree bad, by the way. There's a lot of happiness to be gained from a well placed citadel and Military Caste; with 4 towns that's some 8-10 happiness that you won't get from any other tree.
You can expand and grow well with that. The problem is the play style of many people, not valuing growth and expansion enough, I'm seeing that all the time in team games I'm playing. What by far the majority of players is doing is chopping wood and improving mining resources as a priority, making and working farms is hardly happening. If you're not growing well through what you're doing with your workers and citizens, Tradition and Liberty offer quite a lot of compensation. Honour doesn't give you this, so that's what you will be missing then.
You must go at least moderately wide and concentrate on growth tiles with Honour, and having some neighbours around you. Then the tree can be quite beneficial. Tradition suits about every game, and Honour will never reach that, but that's okay. From a game design point of view it's better to have bonuses that are somewhat situational. If you can take bonuses without thinking, that's worse. That is somewhat the problem with Tradition. It's meant for going tall, but none of the bonuses get lost when you're going wider, so you don't have to think much about taking it.

And the worst policy from the point of view of game design is probably Consulates (Patronage tree). Be eternal friends once you've pledged protection. Someone put this policy in its current form in the bug reports and I agree with that.

 

[fyar]

Olleus, honest question... If your goal is to reward successful warmonger, why should I lose my reward if I want to annex the city? I agree with those posters who have said that the proposed finisher which rewards you ONLY for puppet cities isn't a good idea.

 

[Winston]

I don't think honor needs that much improvement though admittedly I never complete the tree but I'll often pick up military caste.
Maybe to make the other side of the tree more enticing it could give +3 happy for the heroic epic national wonder, 4 units maintenance free, and +25% gold from capturing cities and barb camps and razing tiles.