When do you open with the honor tree?

[sufficiency]

I did some calculations. Hopefully I did it right. Please take it with a grain of salt and correct my calculations as needed.

Assume (for now) that:

1. You build Monument first and that takes 10 turns.
2. You do not pick up ruins nor kill barbs.
3. You do not expand.
4. You are not playing France.

Then, beelining to Military Caste takes 62 turns (165 total culture required, so 10 + (165-10)/3 ~ 62 turns (this number may be off by 1 turn because I don't know if a built Monument will immediately provide you with culture). Note that each barb you do kill (after turn 15) lower this number by 2.67 turns.

If you open Tradition first then beeline to Military Caste, it takes 65 turns (325 total culture required, so 10 + 5 + (325 - 10 - 15)/6 = 65). Note that each barb you do kill (after turn 23) lower this number by 1.33 turns.

It seems pretty clear that opening Tradition first will only marginally slow down your progress to Military Caste. In exchange, you will get a huge amount of culture to work toward your next policy.

 

[beezany]

So imo in terms of happiness and culture, it's actually a bit better than Liberty. But it is a lot more costly in SP and it's hard to pull off (I basically have never succeeded in running like this unless I am Ethiopia or the Maya).

Thanks for the analysis. I'm curious why you think Ethiopia and Maya are better suited? Is it because they have super-monuments and cheap archers?

 

[sufficiency]

Thanks for the analysis. I'm curious why you think Ethiopia and Maya are better suited? Is it because they have super-monuments and cheap archers?

While you do want to play like ICS with Liberty, there are some issues compared to Liberty ICS:

1. You don't get free worker/settler, so you expand slowly.
2. You don't get free hammer from Republic, so you build slowly.

So at the end of the day, you are very limited by science and you grow/expand slowly(good luck getting your NC). With Ethiopia and the Maya, you don't need to build too many buildings, and you can safely get Messenger to the Gods to compensate for your science (which is a huge problem with this kind of start).

I think France is also pretty decent with this. I've tried (and failed) this many times with Egypt on Immortal.

 

[beezany]

Ah, I get what you're saying now. Thanks.

 

[sufficiency]

Ah, I get what you're saying now. Thanks.

As far as military is concerned, Honor vs Liberty is a quality vs quantity thing. IMO Quality is more important in wars which you are the aggressor, but like I have mentioned, you grow rather slowly and if you don't have neighbours to take over you are kind of screwed on the long term.

 

[DrZ]

I was also very interested in an efficient honor rush, as i like my warmongering very much.

Maddjinn has mentioned in several occasions that you can use honor in an efficient manner and actually tried to show off how it works in Beyond the monument.

If you would like to see how he tries watch episode : 3 (spear rush), 9 (horsemen rush) (there may be other attempts but i didn't see all of the episodes).


My conclusion is that honor works very nice as a first social policy tree only if you have close neighbors and nowhere really nice to expand. Then the best thing is to just go take their stuff with honor. Otherwise go tradition -> honor.

 

[Sidor1982]

I've also tried a militaristic/cultural strategy with Honor + Liberty. Some nations (like Mongolia) are really good for this. In particular you conquer and puppet a lot of cities quickly with the help of honor, then switch to cultural game. The combination of a lot of cities generating a little, but in case of a long game relevant, culture + not having the policy cost go up due to puppeting of cities can be an effective victory strategy. I don't think it will work on deity, but properly executed will work up till immortal. The main disadvantages are - due to beeing aggressive you'll be considered a warmongoer and switching to peaceful cultural game might not be easy, puppetted cities will spawn random great people (instead of only artists), depending on map size from a certain point of conqeuring a domination or scientific victory will be way easier than a cultural one.

 

[Light Cleric]

Maddjinn has mentioned in several occasions that you can use honor in an efficient manner and actually tried to show off how it works in Beyond the monument.

He has tried in the past with several starts and each time usually ended with "this is bad place to go Honor".

That's how I feel about Honor in general. There are only two times I consider Honor:
-The map is so horribly, unplayably bad that I just go with an Honor bumrush to see if I can salvage it. Such maps are exceedingly rare.
or
-I am planning on warmongering anyway, my neighbor is an aggressive leader and he also went Honor. You can use it to counterattack.

Otherwise I can't justify it. Even certain civs that can make Honor "work" do just as well with Liberty or Tradition.

TBH I would prefer to see it reworked a bit(namely the opener and Warrior Code) and moved to Classical with Piety. It is a really nice 2nd tree but it really has no business trying to compete with Liberty and Tradition as an opening tree.

 

[Matthew.]

TBH I would prefer to see it reworked a bit(namely the opener and Warrior Code) and moved to Classical with Piety. It is a really nice 2nd tree but it really has no business trying to compete with Liberty and Tradition as an opening tree.

Also consider you are only going to have a finite amount of total policies; any policy you spend in Tradition/Liberty is a policy not spent in other trees. Honor is clearly for war-mongering, and several of the Tradition/Liberty policies do nothing to help.

Again, I also don't see how people are rating Liberty so much better than Honor. I understand Tradition--the amount of growth bonuses and gold (directly or indirectly through freebies) is huge. But Liberty? Free settle/faster settlers--you are conquering cities and shouldn't be settling many of your own. Worker--get plenty from conquered cities. One happiness per trade route--pales in comparison to one per garrison and defensive building. Reduced policy cost--keep most conquered cities as puppets, not needed. The only thing worthy of mention is the free GP and certainly not worth spending 6 policies to get.

For ICS, Liberty makes sense. For conquering the map... why?

No need to move it to Classical (if you don't want to open with Honor... then don't open with Honor). Honor could use some sort of gold boost in addition to finisher, and it wouldn't be a bad tree to open with. My struggle with Honor as starter is that the tree implies you are going to have a massive army (not only full garrisons, but more for hunting out barbs and conquering enemies) and yet no policies to help support this army. It is like Tradition giving you growth bonuses without any happiness to support it.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Honor could use some sort of gold boost in addition to finisher, and it wouldn't be a bad tree to open with. My struggle with Honor as starter is that the tree implies you are going to have a massive army (not only full garrisons, but more for hunting out barbs and conquering enemies) and yet no policies to help support this army. It is like Tradition giving you growth bonuses without any happiness to support it.

Exactly. At least these days you can bully city-states for money before running them over, though.

 

[Light Cleric]

Liberty doesn't give you direct bonuses to growth, it gives you a very solid foundation for an empire that will be used to warmonger. Consider:

-+1 culture per city
-Free Settler + faster Settler production
-Free Worker + 25% faster improvements
-+1 hammer and +5% to buildings everywhere
-Free Golden Age + reduced policy costs
-Free Great Person (probably Scientist/Prophet/Engineer)

All those freebies let you put your gold and hammers elsewhere, not to mention the uniqueness of the free GP. Consider how much easier it is early game to get a free Settler, free Worker and then build the rest twice as fast rather than having to buy/build all of them with Tradition. Also, Meritocracy can be very useful for warmongering, both with the overall -5% unhappiness as well as +1 for each trade route from your puppets. Liberty is also helpful when annexing cities, which you should because some AIs can have ridiculously OP capitals.

Honor really doesn't do anything to help you *build* that army in the early game. You get the +15% to melee units when the main backbone of your army is likely to be ranged units.

It's all very map dependent, but 99% of the time I look at a map and Honor is the bottom option of the three.

 

[steveg700]

Honor is the best tree out there for happiness. You have two separate smiley-generating policies. Who else can claim that? And with that you get +2 culture per city, half cost on upgrades, and a nice combat bonus. Good stuff.

Honor's opener helps incorporate barb camps into my defenses, intercepting rivals and capturing their pesky little settlers. It should probably offer gold as well as culture for killing barbarians, because that would offer growth in the form of helping you afford to purchase settlers. But it doesn't, so I can see the beef with it.

For Tradition, I really only want the opener and Monarchy. Liberty is...well, it's rather overrated. OK, you get a GP if you finish it. Fine. Great. That's five sopols away. In the meantime, there's no gold and there's minimal happiness.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Liberty doesn't give you direct bonuses to growth, it gives you a very solid foundation for an empire that will be used to warmonger. Consider:

He did. Didn't you read his post? He addressed the culture, happiness, Settler, and Worker bonuses of Liberty.

Honor really doesn't do anything to help you *build* that army in the early game. You get the +15% to melee units when the main backbone of your army is likely to be ranged units.

It's all very map dependent, but 99% of the time I look at a map and Honor is the bottom option of the three.

On the other hand, Honor makes that Army much more effective; a Great General and the Discipline bonus is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Matthew.]

He has a point though. He is correct that as far as the first 60 turns of the game are concerned, Liberty offers more. This is why I mentioned Honor as an investment. I don't think his view on Liberty is wrong, rather it is just a different focus. He values the free settler/worker/GP in the extreme early game where as I look at the big picture and would rather have policies help me in the long-term, as far as domination. Considering the first 60 turns of the game greatly affect the course of the rest of the game, it is a valid opinion.

Actually in that sense, Liberty is the most flexible tree, which is one of the reasons why it works for domination just as well. I think though if Honor had better policies towards gold/economy, Honor would be difficult to pass up as a starter tree for war-mongering. The number one thing limiting military aggression in early game is unit maintenance, which ironically Tradition helps with more than Honor.

 

[Light Cleric]

I guess what I should clarify is that I am advocating against a *pure* Honor start where you just ignore Tradition/Liberty entirely.

He did. Didn't you read his post? He addressed the culture, happiness, Settler, and Worker bonuses of Liberty.

On the other hand, Honor makes that Army much more effective; a Great General and the Discipline bonus is nothing to sneeze at.

Yes. How does one reply to something they didn't read?

I was simply laying everything out for the sake of comparison. Also, again, in the early game, when one pretty much every strategy involves Composites(or a ranged UU) on some level, there's not a whole lot of point to investing in a policy that only affects melee units. Unless maybe you're using a civ like Persia or Greece for their early melee UUs, but even then, is it actually worth giving up one of the other trees?

The Great General is useful, but you can reliably rush early in the game without the Great General and you can generate enough experience to get a GG FAIRLY quickly anyway.

He has a point though. He is correct that as far as the first 60 turns of the game are concerned, Liberty offers more. This is why I mentioned Honor as an investment. I don't think his view on Liberty is wrong, rather it is just a different focus. He values the free settler/worker/GP in the extreme early game where as I look at the big picture and would rather have policies help me in the long-term, as far as domination. Considering the first 60 turns of the game greatly affect the course of the rest of the game, it is a valid opinion.

Actually in that sense, Liberty is the most flexible tree, which is one of the reasons why it works for domination just as well. I think though if Honor had better policies towards gold/economy, Honor would be difficult to pass up as a starter tree for war-mongering. The number one thing limiting military aggression in early game is unit maintenance, which ironically Tradition helps with more than Honor.

Liberty *is* long term, just in a different sense. You got out there early, ate a bunch of land, getting your resources connected, and are cranking out more units to start beating people up. All that leads to the long term payoff of a strong empire, just with a different look than Tradition.

I certainly value Honor, but those policies are MUCH more powerful in the later game than early on. For instance, Professional Army is a god-tier policy, but it shines far more in the mid to late game when upgrade costs are much higher, much like Military Caste. In Deity Challenge 2(someone remind me to finish this, if nothing else I should launch a spaceship and win ) I picked up Honor after Tradition, and Professional Army was so amazing when it came to upgrading XBows ->Gats and Gats -> Machine Guns. Military Caste is in that same vein, it's much more useful down the road when you're going to run into big happiness issues(like when you have to take friggin' 30-35 population AI cities ) whereas earlier in the game you're not going to be running into -10 all that often. Military Tradition is cool, but is it worth 3 policies in the early game? Remember just how long it takes to get that fourth policy even if you're beating up on Barbs.

Honor is very powerful in the long-term, but if you open with it, what are you doing in the meantime? The culture from Barbs burns out pretty fast especially once they quit spawning fast. Honor gives you very few bonuses for an actual empire, which you need later in the game.

 

[Matthew.]

Liberty *is* long term, just in a different sense.

Right, which why in my earlier reply, I pointed out that as far as pure domination goes, anything Liberty does, Honor does better. More happiness per city, more culture per city.

Liberty is great for ICS/rapid expansion. It also can be great if you switch over to domination after the map is filled, since many of the bonuses carry over. If you only settle 3-4 cities yourself, then rely on the AI for additional cities (essentially playing connect the dot across the map), then Liberty loses much of its appeal. 50% on settlers is wasted, much of your empire is smaller puppet trading post spam so Republic/Citizenship is not as useful, and puppets don't add to policy cost so Representation is less useful.

Combining Liberty and Honor is completely valid; I've done so plenty of games. But like I mentioned above, you only have a finite number of policies to work with. Every policy you put into Liberty is another you don't get to put into Rationalism or other trees until later.

 

[bamdorf]

The other night I started a game as Americans, and quickly discovered that my neighbor was Mongolia, who immediately plopped their second city down on my front porch. Just as quickly I started down the Honor path, and I switched from trying an NC start to an Iron Working sling shot. As soon as I could get a couple warriors and three archers I started on Khan. As I finished him I found my neighbors in the other direction were French, who DoWed on me out of the blue. right after agreeing to an RA. So I had to finish them also, not too hard, but in the process the only liberty policy I got was the free worker thing. Of course, by this time I realized I was on a medium size continent...and the other AI on it was Siam. And because I killed the two idiots, he is insisting on war. I hope to come out on top when minutemen appear but he has been stalemating me with elephants.

Anyway, I have finished the Honor tree meantime. I don't think that was wrong in the circumstances, but I am a hack player. Perhaps someone could suggest an alternative general idea in this kind of circumstance.

And BTW, the vanilla (at least I gather it is vanilla from forums) worker bug is horrid in this game, because nearly all my workers are captured from barbs and AI.

 

[DrZ]

He has tried in the past with several starts and each time usually ended with "this is bad place to go Honor".

Yes pretty much is what i thought about his tries, but he probably doesn't just advocate it without reason, he just didn't had a map prepared so it will work as intended... In right conditions it should work.

It seems pretty clear that opening Tradition first will only marginally slow down your progress to Military Caste. In exchange, you will get a huge amount of culture to work toward your next policy.

Yes, before i was opening Liberty and then Honor because while conquering you tend to have a lot of cities and it makes sense because you will be wide. But if you want to plow through Honor as fast as possible opening Tradition is the way to go. As a small bonus it opens up the no unit maintenance while the unit is ganrnisoned in city which is a nice synergy to Honor. The Legalism 'abuse' also is a nice bonus to help you with culture later on.

But still... with no close neighbor it is a huge investment that does not pay up.

 

[ense7en]

I went Honor left side then all right side to finisher (no need to upgrade units till later) yesterday night in MP.

I wish i hadn't.

It's just such a crap tree for getting going in a hurry, which is by far the most important thing in MP.
Yes, you are strong against barbs, and yes, you get unit upgrades in a hurry.
Upgrades are cheaper. This the the single big thing in the Honor tree that actually matters.

Otherwise it's just not great as first tree no matter how you want to argue it.
Every time i try it i am reminded of this.
In SP you can get away with this moreso, true. Not so much in MP. Getting behind is a tough hole to dig out of.

As the Huns, I wiped out my silly wonder-spamming neighbor easily, but the next target was Babylon, and they'd teched up far too fast for me to do much other than raze one of their weak cities, which they promptly resettled, as i had to run my horse archers/rams/pikes away from their crossbowmen/pikes or lose them all.

By the time i had to leave i had actually managed to gain the tech lead, but this was only because i'd focused hard on growing my cities and slotting in scientists while waiting for a chance to strike at Babs again.

Growth/science = wins.
Better upgraded units doesn't.

In a purely competitive best optimal results scenario, it's not a good tree. Period.

 

[Light Cleric]

ense7en's post kind of sums up my feelings about the tree pretty well. Professional Army is amazing, but it's pretty useless if you can't get to the technologies needed to upgrade in the first place. With an Honor opening you need to take from someone else what you didn't build yourself, otherwise you're going to get left in the dust tech-wise, and that's very difficult to do. On Emperor and below tbh you can build a better empire than the AI does, and on +Immortal it's very difficult to take out more than 1 neighbor before you run into someone with tech parity/superiority.