So sometimes I go Honor

[Chum]

Yeah but Archers are quite useless compared to Horse Archers/Chariots

Uhh, only horse archers.

Chariots have an extremely limited lifespan, after which they upgrade to a melee unit if you're not Mongolia/Arabia and lose all their relevant promotions, and they're highly terrain dependent.

If you're not one of the above civs, Chariots are sub optimal in most terrain.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Yeah but Archers are quite useless compared to Horse Archers/Chariots

Oh for sure but they soon upgrade to composites and then to Xbows. Hence it is still worth getting those units out asap and training them if you are doing an dom victory

Who gave you this idea? Archers are really strong early on. Read the DCL Sweden Thread where Acken explains en detail how he beat Shaka, probably the scariest neighbour of all the Civs on Deity, with just a few Archers even though his capital was coastal with close to no production. The Archer line units are always insanely strong compared to the rest. They only start to fade once you get Artillery, though by that time you usually have Logistics and Range, which makes even the sub-par Gatling Gun a decent unit.

Chariots have an extremely limited lifespan, after which they upgrade to a melee unit if you're not Mongolia/Arabia and lose all their relevant promotions, and they're highly terrain dependent.

If you're not one of the above civs, Chariots are sub optimal in most terrain.

That does not make them bad though. They have exactly one use: capture a grassland/plains capital early on and then gift them to City States. That's not a bad investment at all. Typically you won't field a huge army of Chariots anyway, but rather some Composites, some Chariots and a few blocker units.

Alternatively you can get Logistics on them and then upgrade to Knights, by the time you're at Cavalry they might even have Logistics and Blitz, giving them three attacks per turn.

 

[Seoul]

Speaking of Horse Archers, imagine if Mongolia had them and upgraded them into Keshiks...

I tried a mod of that once. It was so overpowered words couldn't begin to describe it.

Although it would make a lot of sense for Mongolia to have Horse Archers upgrade to Keshiks, just history wise anyways...

 

[consentient]

Still, Commerce is by far the strongest second Policy tree, even for warring, in my opinion. The best thing about Honor is the finisher, the best thing about Commerce is the discount and Big Ben.

I'm one of the rare birds on this forum that is actually willing to come right out and say that Commerce is the best tree, period. I've heard all manner of arguments against this, most of which I find ludicrous. I even heard from someone that each of the policies on their own are not very good. I'd say that each of them on their own are great but together they are excellent. Many turtlers complain that the benefits are aimed at conquest, and I agree they are better if you're using conquest, but many of them still open Commerce for Big Ben, and/or for Mercantilism.

I'd say that if you're playing Conquest and you finish Commerce that it's pretty hard to lose from then on in. If you're playing conquest and you don't finish Commerce, you probably won before the end.

Definitely the best thing about Honor is the finisher, so you want to get to it ASAP. Honor as a second tree is a pale imitation.

When you ARE going conquest, the happiness boost just sets you up for the win, really.

I'm intrigued by this post. I want to get better as a player, but try to enjoy the game also. You mentioned 3 cities; Is this what you've found to be ideal? How do you decide in terms of how it might be different from opening Trad/Lib?

Please see my thread on Domination in general, and if you have any more questions, happy for you to PM me, or ask on that thread.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I'm one of the rare birds on this forum that is actually willing to come right out and say that Commerce is the best tree, period. I've heard all manner of arguments against this, most of which I find ludicrous. I even heard from someone that each of the policies on their own are not very good. I'd say that each of them on their own are great but together they are excellent. Many turtlers complain that the benefits are aimed at conquest, and I agree they are better if you're using conquest, but many of them still open Commerce for Big Ben, and/or for Mercantilism.

I agree 100%. I almost always go Commerce as filler between Trad/Lib and Rat, even when going for a Spaceship victory, because Mercantilism is just that good. Personally I think Rationalism is by far the best tree, but that's a thing so obvious it's almost not worth mentioning.

Protectionism might just be the single strongest policy in the game, finishers excluded. Maybe even stronger than Secularism, I'm not sure.

 

[consentient]

Rationalism Opener, Secularism and the bonus tech for finishing are nice, but the rest are meh, IMO. I don't usually finish Rationalism unless I'm going for a SV. You don't need anything beyond the opener in most games.

 

[Heathcliff]

It is okey to get a few policies in honor after tradition is finished until you can go rationalism.
But there is zero reason to go honor once you can go rationalism.

 

[Dushku]

Please see my thread on Domination in general, and if you have any more questions, happy for you to PM me, or ask on that thread.

Thanks. A wealth of information. I've now read it all, but have lots of external resources to partake of.

Last night, when I posed the question, I had checked out your sig for possible links to LPs/guides. Something you might want to consider. Also, for what it's worth, from the moment I joined CFC, I've noticed you've consistently sang the praises of Honor and domination. I just wanted to let you know that your enthusiasm is part of what makes it appealing to me.

I think I'm going to step up to Immortal now and give Honor a try. I really REALLY like the point about how it's the one opener that's not very dependent on what your opponents are (not) doing. Quick question though, once you get the 2nd policy on the right side, how much effort do you put into keeping a unit garrisoned? While the +2 CPT per city is awesome, how does this compare to leaving a unit sitting around doing nothing? Do you later build Scouts just to park in cities you've conquered?

 

[GenuineRisk]

If you go right side Honor, you're probably going to be building units but not immediately going to war, so you won't have a problem finding units to garrison. The faster cultural border expansion from these "human monuments" is definitely noticeable in the early game. Later, you'll probably have some obsolete units or CS gifts that you don't need, so you can just use those as Military Caste garrisons.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Uhh, only horse archers.

Chariots have an extremely limited lifespan, after which they upgrade to a melee unit if you're not Mongolia/Arabia and lose all their relevant promotions, and they're highly terrain dependent.

If you're not one of the above civs, Chariots are sub optimal in most terrain.

That's the whole point, I was doing a direct comparison, since Horse Archers are on the same level as Archers technology wise, you'd go to war with them, so more experience.

Whereas, you're not really going to want to Archer rush anyone as they are a bit on the squishy side, so go right hand side first for cheaper upgrade to stronger CBs and then start to work on the left side and more experience as that will count more.

Obviously the Chariot -> Keshik combo is just unfair

 

[Valmighty]

I sometimes take honor before liberty to get culture from barbarian. And discipline apply to all your melee unit until the end. That means Destroyer and Gunship get that bonus too.

Military tradition can get your range unit logistic and range quite fast. Professional Army with pentagon help really well. And don't forget the finisher is quite good. You get gold, possibly 250-500 per turn when on war.

 

[Dushku]

I have a question for the Honor, Commerce, Autocracy crowd: What order do you take Commerce policies when using the Honor tree for domination and why? I look forward to learning from you.

 

[consentient]

It depends how quickly you need to get to Mercantilism. Left side is a big money saver/money earner. Right side has Landsknechts first, which are devastating on like King and below, but on Deity, they're not great, so I usually go Left side first. But then I don't care about happiness, provided it's above -10, and am pretty skilled at keeping it hovering around 0.

 

[GenuineRisk]

Basically ditto. If GPT is strong and I'm ready to go to war soon, I'll go right side first to get Mercantilism ASAP. Otherwise, I'll take Wagon Trains before going down the right side. My GMs in H-C-A games are usually faith-bought so I always take Entrepreneurship as my fourth policy.

 

[Sherlock]

Honor and Germany is a great combo.

 

[Dushku]

Honor and Germany is a great combo.

Funny you should say this. My first game where I stepped up into Immortal to try Honor out, I randomly got Germany and snowballed almost instantly. It actually sucks because I'm learning very little considering I'm having all these free units and money (UA and the resulting tributes) handed to me.

 

[consentient]

Basically ditto. If GPT is strong and I'm ready to go to war soon, I'll go right side first to get Mercantilism ASAP. Otherwise, I'll take Wagon Trains before going down the right side. My GMs in H-C-A games are usually faith-bought so I always take Entrepreneurship as my fourth policy.

I work all GM slots from the moment they appear, and GMs are a major source of money as a result, so that's another reason I go left-side first a lot. If you have say 3-self built and 3-5 AI cities, that's a lot of GMs.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Honor does go with Germany, but also Liberty and Tradition. In fact, a three city Tradition Germany can make real use of their UB, because with 3 cities you don't need much caravans to keep all of your cities fed. Around banking, you should have at least 6 total routes, and if you send half to city states, your cities still grow and have production bonus, which can get to silly levels once you have Factories. Domination is incredibly easy when you set all them, in fact I recommend as a learning experience, it certainly was one for me

 

[nimling]

IIRC promoted chariot archers receive a relevant bonus for flat/rough terrain in melee. Might be wrong. Another thing is that chariot archers can take promos like Cover and March, and those will transfer over to Knights.

The basic promos aren't that big a deal anyway. If you want to promo the Chariots then get March or Cover. Chariots are good even in the medieval era, though they get one-shotted by a lot of units.

Because the AI can't counter ranged combat, it's pathetically easy to raid a city with chariots, rough terrain or no. Even in MP this can work, sometimes.

Anyway - getting honor as a secondary tree is way better than taking honor first, and opening honor while filling out tradition or liberty is bad because you'd generally want the tradition/liberty policies sooner rather than later. Waiting too long for Legalism really hurts your long-term culture generation, and of course Liberty wants the free Settler and Worker. The finisher for either is also far too good to delay, though you might justify delaying the tradition finisher if you're happycapped.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Right side has Landsknechts first, which are devastating on like King and below, but on Deity, they're not great, so I usually go Left side first.

Agree that Landsknechts aren't game-changing at higher levels for the purpose of conquest, but they are a very useful addition for peaceful games, ironically enough, on deity level. This reinforces your other comment that I agree with, that commerce has significant application to games that are not conquest oriented. A concept that Filthy Robot often emphasizes is that your warring and military production in peaceful games needs to be as efficient as possible because it usually interferes with your infrastructure development - you're spending hammers or gold on units rather than on food/science buildings and influence and other boosters. Pikes as a base unit are one of the most efficient melee units to build or buy in terms of hammer/gold cost:unit strength, especially considering resource use (since they're resource free, the extra horses or iron translate to +2GPT). Landsknechts are twice as efficient as they're half the gold cost. So while upgrade paths aren't that great, they provide an efficient method of boosting your power score to deter aggressors or the strength to deal with them when the deterrent fails. The other thing that I absolutely love about landsknechts is the back-door to your empire: In peaceful games you often want to put most or all of your units in a wall formation on the border of an aggressive neighbor, a "don't mess with me" stance. Consequently, when a single barb creeps into the opposite end of your empire, you need time to react, or even spend some resources on new units to intervene. Landsknechts are the perfect intervention to back-door barb problems.