Social Policy Openers

[adwcta]

I don't feel like honor has enough happiness to do well in science and still conquer, nor the ability to build up war infrastructure and units very well. (I find liberty helps better with this by far) In my experience Liberty-commerce-rat-autocracy is good for dom especially as poland or aztecs. Other civs I think can do well with minimal early war and alot of late game war, tradition can help with this better than honor I think.

That why I have problems with full Honor. When you forgo infrastructure bonuses (Tradition/Liberty), you need a payoff. Piety lets you spread a religion wide. Honor lets you... fight wars early. Fighting early wars lets you promote your units, and/or take cities. The problem is that Liberty and Tradition both let you take early cities better, due to immediate hammer/gold bonuses, unless you're building an absurd army of melee units (Aztec). Then, you're left with promoting your units, as your only real bonus versus going tradition/liberty. So, you're basically looking at the Piety tree here, with bad diplo, a necessity of constant unit farming, but an ability to expand.

Your military benefits come together early-mid game, but that's the absolute worst time to attack anything on higher difficulties, and you're not given any tools to help catch up in science until late game (when your conquests start paying their way in science), but if you're waiting for late game, why not just start there (use the nice autocracy bonuses) and have better diplo and be an era ahead in tech? Further, because of the 5% penalty during resistance, conquests freeze your tech in whichever era you decide to take cities, so its actually not just a lack of bonuses, but an active penalty.

The thing is, I don't think there IS a way to make full Honor work generally (using a civ with no bonuses) in a way that isn't always inferior to Tradition/Liberty. You would have to commit to an early era (pre-renaissance) aggression, and not be reliant on technology advancing significantly (never plan to upgrade anything more than twice), or having a tech edge. You're usually better off not building universities, and certainly no schools. Any deep waters means you're automatically better off starting with another tree. Any rough terrain means you're fighting an uphill battle. Off the top of my head, we're talking Aztec (for culture), Zulu, Assyria, Huns, Denmark, Persia, Celts (for faith). For those civs, an Honor opener may be better than Liberty. Maybe.

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[Asklepios]

I don't feel like honor has enough happiness to do well in science and still conquer, nor the ability to build up war infrastructure and units very well. (I find liberty helps better with this by far) In my experience Liberty-commerce-rat-autocracy is good for dom especially as poland or aztecs. Other civs I think can do well with minimal early war and alot of late game war, tradition can help with this better than honor I think.

Agree with that, though Honour's happiness bonuses aren't negligible, and synergise quite nicely with Tradition. Its a lot of their units sat on their asses generating 1 happiness and 2 culture but costing no maintenance: not very hammers efficient, but nice enough if you're looking to keep mid game happiness positive on a nine to ten city empire between your early and late wars, and the big happiness boosts that come with Autocracy.

Played through a Shaka game (Emperor level, Continents) and went full Tradition, honour opener, Liberty up to happiness boost, then went back to Honour for the Happiness, before zooming towards autocracy. Kinda telling that my science was only holding rough parity for most of the game, and that I had time for so many policies before Rationalism. Finally though, the tech curve arced upwards and Prora sorted out happiness, leaving me free to finish the game with Artillery. Definitely not my strongest game science or speed wise, but it worked well enough and got me to a win.

 

[neilkaz]

One problem with Honor is that if you engage in an early war and take a couple of cities to expand, the entire world will hate you and then you can't get good deals to trade lux etc etc. If you engage in later wars the same thing happens. Warmonger hate really reduces the value of Honor for most civs.

In a recent Immortal challange game that had raging barbs I tried opening Honor after Legalism and this was almost a complete waste as since the fall patch, the AI's go ater barbs more aggressively and as a result there were only several to kill for me and it clearly took longer to complete Tradition. I replayed the start just staying in Tradition and was clearly doing better being stronger and faster to develop.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[Resipsa]

Honor is not as good as Tradition or Liberty but it does have its uses; you can keep your puppets puppets for a longer period of time and still spread borders due to the +2 local culture per garrision, you can run a significantly negative gpt as long as you war constantly war, high level Xmen are good up to the end of the renaissance, you can better protect your spaced out empire by finding the barb camps waiting to kill your caravans. So it has some uses and those uses are consistent every game.

Id be up for a debate on Honor being better than Piety because at the very least Honor's benefits are consistent and you aren't reliant on your starting dirt.

 

[Calouste]

That why I have problems with full Honor. When you forgo infrastructure bonuses (Tradition/Liberty), you need a payoff. Piety lets you spread a religion wide. Honor lets you... fight wars early. Fighting early wars lets you promote your units, and/or take cities. The problem is that Liberty and Tradition both let you take early cities better, due to immediate hammer/gold bonuses, unless you're building an absurd army of melee units (Aztec). Then, you're left with promoting your units, as your only real bonus versus going tradition/liberty. So, you're basically looking at the Piety tree here, with bad diplo, a necessity of constant unit farming, but an ability to expand.

Your military benefits come together early-mid game, but that's the absolute worst time to attack anything on higher difficulties, and you're not given any tools to help catch up in science until late game (when your conquests start paying their way in science), but if you're waiting for late game, why not just start there (use the nice autocracy bonuses) and have better diplo and be an era ahead in tech? Further, because of the 5% penalty during resistance, conquests freeze your tech in whichever era you decide to take cities, so its actually not just a lack of bonuses, but an active penalty.

The thing is, I don't think there IS a way to make full Honor work generally (using a civ with no bonuses) in a way that isn't always inferior to Tradition/Liberty. You would have to commit to an early era (pre-renaissance) aggression, and not be reliant on technology advancing significantly (never plan to upgrade anything more than twice), or having a tech edge. You're usually better off not building universities, and certainly no schools. Any deep waters means you're automatically better off starting with another tree. Any rough terrain means you're fighting an uphill battle. Off the top of my head, we're talking Aztec (for culture), Zulu, Assyria, Huns, Denmark, Persia, Celts (for faith). For those civs, an Honor opener may be better than Liberty. Maybe.

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Assyrian Siege Towers are also melee. Or more accurately, Melee Siege, they have two unit types. Although you don't need more than three or so of them to capture a city.

Sweden is also a candidate for Honor. It's about those Great Generals you can gift to city states. The Honor opener can be useful in a number of situations, it's mainly about knowing where the barb camps pop up. Very useful for Germany and Songhai and anyone who has some trade routes to protect. And you don't have to worry much about protecting your Settlers and Workers, as the first barb in a camp doesn't venture out unless there's something he can attack in one turn. Of course, the utility depends on how much open space there is around you.

 

[adwcta]

The opener is fine, its the tree that's awkward. The left side and first right side encourage war, immediately, and are not terribly necessary or helpful for barb-hunting after the opener (which lets you go one on one with barbs). The rest of the right side encourages you to settle down and build (trade tempo for resource advantage in the war game). The finisher requires war, against units only.

So, you end up with a hodgepodge of policies that are disjointed for anything you might want to do at the time these policies are taken. Its all tied together by a powerful finisher that you can't reach without taking at least 2 policies that won't benefit you immediately (when early Honor is all about tempo). Piety is the same way. In both trees, you want to go 2-3 down max and then switch course to something else before coming back to finish. When Piety does this, it loses nothing, because its still using its policies. When Honor trades away its tempo, its actively losing its earlier acquired bonuses. You need to attack and defend at the same time, while pumping out both barracks and military units (exp bonus also works against barracks-line in effectiveness). For a tree dedicated to warfare, it is very unfocused.

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[Resipsa]

I'm thinking about doing tradition to monarchy and then trying to finish Patronage with Siam prior to the rennassaince does anyone have have experience with this?