Who's Making Honor Work?

[steveg700]

Ancient-era sopols need to offer pop growth or gold or city expansion.

I actually don't mind the culture from killing barbs. I have seen it generate quite a bit of short-term culture through killing barbs that I'd have to kill anyway. I think it should also provide a reward for destroying the camp, perhaps a chance of getting a random reward akin to a ruin. Or just multiply the amount of gold.

From there, however, I'm kinda disappointed. I don't want the free GG. I'm hermoraging money at this point in the game. I don't really need the extra mouth to feed. I don't need to produce units faster either. More mouths to feed.

The bonus for units fighting side-by-side is nice, but it's not anything I would give priority to in the early game.

Need that gold/growth/hammers. Not want. Need.

How about some bonus gold from CS tribute somewhere in there?

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

Obviously, some civs are better suited to honor, and some for tradition / lib. Most of the time I would open with tradition, but that does not mean I dont play honor at all.
there are obvious difficulties with honor because you miss out on the expansive / productive bonuses from tradition / lib.

Aztecs, german, france, huge maps and long games are where the honor path is best IMHO.

Honor works out better with long games / huge maps. these game types allow for more barb-encounters, so more benefits from dealing with them. Again, both aztec and german empires will benefit from this as well.

I have made honor work extremly well with aztecs, or germany, and france (?!) and maybe the vikings. Big maps / long games are a help as well.

France gets extra culture, wich can help pop some policies in Honor that you might otherwise not spend points on. getting a big army full of promos can be a lot of fun, espcialy if you pop autocracy later. The benefit of having france for this is because they get the extra culture to make it happen, and those foriegn legion units are just boss. autocracy + honor is an un-stoppable combination. You can even be an era behind and still woop the AI (at least while the 30 turns are ticking). The gold you can get from bully/pilaging/looting/killing enemies makes up for not having some other policies and improvements, and I won domination with a massive -20gpt economy and still 1000+ in the bank (difficulty: prince :\ ).

 

[Monthar]

If you want Honor to work you have to go down the right side of the tree first, not the left, at least down to Military Caste before going to the left side. That will help with the happiness and culture from garrisoning a unit in all your cities. Yes, it takes 2 policies to reach it, and it's only 1 happiness but it's 2 culture per city which is more than you get out of Tradition (3 culture in capital only) or Liberty (1 culture per city). Keeping a unit garrisoned in each city is cheaper in the early game than building all the roads needed for the 1 happiness from Liberty's Meritocracy, which is usually the last or next to last policy folks take in that tree.

The culture from killing barbs coupled with monuments in all your cities should be enough to get to Military Caste fairly quickly. After that you should be able to get rest of the policies faster than you would with the Liberty or tradition, as long as you garrison units in your cities.

If you complete the right side before going to the left, then you save money on all those units you plan to upgrade. Plus the last policy on the right also lets you build barracks, armory and military academy 50% faster. That means when building these items the city's production is boosted by 50%, which makes a 100 production city effectively a 150 production city.

You don't need the GG that early and the production boost on units isn't going to help much with the low base production your cities will have early on. You don't need the experience boost for your early units, you need it more for the later units to catch up.

 

[Resipsa]

I get the impression hardly anyone here plays with barbs on, let alone raging barbs (which, to me, is a mandatory setting). I also should say that I use the Unlimited Barb XP mod, which is a big game changer. Also, BNW clearly seems to have tweaked the raging barbs option, so that it now actually does what it's supposed to. In Vanilla and even G&K, raging barbs didn't spawn that many more barbs in my experience. Now, it really, really does spam you with barbs right from the start; every other turn a new camp pops, basically.

Most players use the default barbarian setting not raging although in order to go honor you have to "cook" the settings a bit to keep up with the culture from Tradition and honor

I'm guessing with early builds like "scout-scout-shrine-settler" and mentions of just a few archers, you guys definitely don't activate raging barbs, and even with the default settings, I can't fathom how you can stay alive without honor and an early exploring/defending army to keep the barbs at bay.

Your City attacks and your warrior stays close to home once you have a worker.

I also can't stress Montezuma enough. Montezuma + Honor with raging barbs showers you with Culture.

Without "cooking" the settings which is perfectly fine mind you it can't keep up with the Tradition/Liberty Openers

Having said that, there's obviously something very wrong with my usual build (Honor first, then Trad or a mix of Trad & Liberty) in BNW, because I get negative gold and negative happiness very quickly, even though I tend to rush to Currency/Guilds.

So why is it not working? How can I make it work? Teach me, Masters!

Too many units not enough trade routes

 

[LegendMaker]

Thanks for your reply. I guess it varies a lot on the type of map, mods and settings of course; it seems that I instinctively went for a set-up that Honor makes sense in.

I've been playing mostly Small-sized West vs East and now also Pangea Plus, mostly on King difficulty although I'm trying on Deity too (which I find, unsurprisingly, impossibly hard right now). I typically opt for one or two AIs tops and just a few CS.

I think I'll either have to let go of the raging barbarians or find a different path for it. No way one Warrior and the City attacking can suffice against the hordes of barbs that go my way with raging. Jaguars and Pathfinders are much better, but even then, not just the one and not passively defending.

What I'm trying to achieve is developing through war on barbarians, essentially. I build an early army of 4-6 units who explore and then stick together to hunt down the barbs, which is a full-time job with those settings. Meanwhile, supposedly, my capital can develop peacefully and I can gradually build more cities.

This used to work well for me in earlier versions of the game, but with BNW, I find it nearly impossible to maintain in terms of gold and happiness, until I get Currency and Guilds. This sort of messes up the whole strategy, because by that time, my opponents are way ahead of me in tech, wonders and religion.

I might try with less units, but I only see it working if I remove the raging barbs, and then I'll definitely get a lot less bonuses from Honor. Which defeats the purpose. :-/

 

[Catan_Settler]

If you're the type that builds units early and likes clearing barbs as a way to make city state allies, the opener more than pays for itself. On a barb filled map taking the honor opener as your second or third policy right as you get four archers/chariots/whatever out will in many cases not even slow down filling out your first tree, nevermind you might get even more culture or faith from allying a few city states. I don't usually take anything else in honor though, and I wouldn't put my first point there since it's pretty rare to have much of a fighting force in those first 20-30 turns so better to start liberty or tradition.

 

[casualplayer]

Opening with or taking early Honor does give you a Settler. It's just that the AI decided where to plant it. Sometimes it gives you 2 or 3 Settlers. It also gives you Workers. And infrastructure when you take a developed city. Sometimes it even gives you Wonders. And by give I mean you have to go and take them.

I like Honor with those civs that have an Ancient or Classical UU. Jaguars, Immortals, Hoplites, Cataphracts, War Elephants, etc. People also mentioned Cho-Ko-Nu, using Honor to fatten up their Composite Bowmen so that when they upgrade they are unstoppable.

Right now I'm thinking Poland could blow through the Honor tree and be warring for Gold by Turn 70. Hmmmm......

 

[vanzlmalc]

Honor as your first policy can be very strong in the right situations. I agree that tradition/liberty is stronger in most situations but there are cases where you can capture AIs cap before turn 60 with the help of honor. Like casualplayer said, it's a free built up city.

I believe one should not choose/compare his policies before starting the game.

 

[njmfff]

As an opening policy it doesn't work and is the worst of the opening four. I've tried a few times because I would really like it to work, but its like adding two difficulty levels. You want to go to war to use the features but early war is almost always worse than peaceful expansion.

As a second tree it is not too bad. Not optimal but fun. I like the finisher a lot. My last game with Assyria had me trying to dominate the map when the tech leader on the other continent with 11 city state allies voted a world boycott against me and my gpt dropped to negative 150 per turn. Which sent my army into a furious killing storm through his allies and leaving a blood soaked trail across the world, keeping my economy alive from killing gold and pillaging. Without that extra source of gold it could have been disastrous.

Yeah, as a second tree, it's not bad, especially if you go Tradition first and actually keep your cities to minimum (3-4). Extra culture from kills is nice, extra gold and culture from garrison is also nice and reduced cost of upgrading is also nice to have (no more 220g to upgrade Crossbow into MG )

altho, I've tried Honor start with Montezuma once, and it wasn't that bad. I got lot of culture from barb killing, plus I was in very early war with England, so my culture went over the roof. All the fighting helped me get through Tradition tree quickly.

but yeah, that's Monty. You won't get nearly 30 culture per one barb kill with rest of the civs. (I purposely left one barb camp near my cities, set two crossbows and just shoot every unit that spawn. Free money and culture. )

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why do you want it to work? It's a terrible tree and you know it.. I wouldn't care if each honor policy would give 5 free units. Honestly. I need happiness, culture, food and/or a free settler. I don't want +50% training rate or whatever else that is there. I can train those dudes myself.

People want options in a strategy game to work so that choices are meaningful. If something is so terrible as to be never/rarely better than alternatives, it needs to be altered or there is no balance.

SP trees have had the "one best" option for way too long. We don't need slavery all over again with a different name but same rate-of-use. One way to avoid that would be to have paths such as honor actually be useful...enough to outweigh alternatives a fair amount of the time.

 

[adwcta]

If you want Honor to work you have to go down the right side of the tree first, not the left, at least down to Military Caste before going to the left side.

If you complete the right side before going to the left, then you save money on all those units you plan to upgrade. Plus the last policy on the right also lets you build barracks, armory and military academy 50% faster. That means when building these items the city's production is boosted by 50%, which makes a 100 production city effectively a 150 production city.

You don't need the GG that early and the production boost on units isn't going to help much with the low base production your cities will have early on. You don't need the experience boost for your early units, you need it more for the later units to catch up.

This.

And no early wars, go barb hunting first. Help all the CSs and get some trade routes up. You'll need them.

 

[Silvtown]

It seems to me that going down the left side of Honor first is designed for the fastest possible rush, while going down the right side first is more of a set-up for a later attack. My problem is that whenever I attack at turn 90-100 (with Honor almost finished and and an awesome army), my effort comes to a screeching halt after taking 4-5 cities (razing all but capitals or tactically important cities). If there was a way to launch into an economic recovery more quickly, then I think it could work. A lot of suggestions have been to give Honor an economic or happiness boost, but what if there were more culture boosts so that you could start on another tree after you finish Honor? I did have some success economically by bullying city states as I marched across the map. Happiness seems like the specific designed way to make warring difficult, so I bet that mechanic is here is stay. With a little more culture, you could hit some of Tradition, Patronage, or Commerce to help a little with happiness and finance.

In my most recent game I stopped trying to use Honor and have gone back to my regular peaceful ways and I feel like the game is already in the bag at turn 125. Even though my stints in trying to make Honor work ended in losses and frustration, it was fun to see if there was a way to make it happen. I'm still hoping for a Let's Play that shows Honor is viable, even if not in very many circumstances.

 

[Moriarte]

People want options in a strategy game to work so that choices are meaningful. If something is so terrible as to be never/rarely better than alternatives, it needs to be altered or there is no balance.

SP trees have had the "one best" option for way too long. We don't need slavery all over again with a different name but same rate-of-use. One way to avoid that would be to have paths such as honor actually be useful...enough to outweigh alternatives a fair amount of the time.

That, i think, would be very difficult to implement. With AI's high sensitivity to war and city capture, and player's dependence on AI for trade routes (let's throw nerfed commerce into the mix too) a see zero reason to use early rushes (honor) as a base for economic/diplomatic development. The tree was bad in GK, now it is even worse, especially for high level play. No one in their good mind will use it in MP either.

Maybe we don't need honor at all, but rather an improved piety tree for more competitive religious starts?

Better to have one good tree instead of two mediocre ones, in my opinion ..

 

[Tich]

The problem with Honor and the reason why it'll never be actively good on average is because it's inherently broken. If opening Honor enables you to take a civ out who doesn't open Honor then it becomes the only viable option. Because of this Honor can never be a free win. It can't ensure victory against another civ early on. What this essentially means is that it's useless. If you can beat people who start Honor without Honor then it completely defeats the purpose of the tree. You can still compete early on but your mid to lategame will be vastly superior if you open with Trad/Lib.

The result? Exactly what we have now. Honor is completely worthless the vast majority of the time and it always will be. The alternative of having it be overpowered is much worse (maybe not to everyone but to the vast majority of players it would be). That is why it will never be good/viable and why it's pointless to think/hope that it ever will. It's not going to happen. It can't. You may think that it sucks to be forced to open Tradition/Liberty (even though I think that Liberty is fairly trashy too) but I mean it's better than being forced to open Honor even if you're only doing it so that you don't instantly lose to other people opening Honor. Civ games shouldn't be decided (literally) within the first few turns.

The problem with nerfing Tradition is that you just go straight back to Liberty as being the go-to. Honor and Piety are distant seconds. What should happen, in my mind, is that Honor should be changed to be like a Renaissance policy that you open after starting Tradition. Set the foundation and then war it up. No civ can really afford to open Honor but if it were much stronger and came much later then it might be something.

Piety I think is completely hopeless. Liberty and Tradition focus on developing strong cities that will set your foundation for the game. Piety basically assumes that those are a given which is never going to be the case. The worst part about Piety is that it's randomly hosed by the dumbest things. Someone has Natural Wonders? Desert start? Plenty of Stone/Marble? Some nice pearls and crabs? You're screwed. Getting a dominant religion takes random map luck moreso than anything else. If you have a good religion start then you'll do fine and you won't need terrible Piety. If you don't get one and you open Piety you'll still get rofl stomped by the people with stronger starts. Religion is also Hellish to put up with at Deity since their Missionary spam is absurd and they just plain cheat. Yeah, sure, sometimes you get strong faith starts but I mean if you just open with Piety in the dark you'll probably get smashed in the religion game.

I personally believe that Liberty should get a small buff on one of its later policies (maybe +2 gold for every city connected to the Cap on Representation) and that Honor should be moved to be a "tier 2" Tree because it'll never work as a Tier 1. Piety can just plain be left to die as another unplayable Tier 1 tree I guess. It just doesn't have a home anywhere I don't think.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

it would be nice if having a full honor tree gave you some extra happiness. Say +2 for each enemy capitol occupied. Not sure how that would work out.

There are a lot of good points here, I think one of the recurring ideas is to pick a civ that maximizes honor (aztecs, maybe germany, ect).

I have found that its realy tough to do early rush manuvers to get another civ. you usualy end up sacrificing a lot of production for units, leaving you behind in tech / culture.

This is why I like germany, they can farm up a huge army from barbs and focus production on wonders / buildings. This keeps you in the game longer because your not lacking tech or faith or gold. Aztecs are great for early culture, which has huge policy implications, and jaguars rock early on.

I agree the early GG isnt a big deal unless your rushing early, and even then, the oponent probably wont have one, so its not important.

Hapiness can be managed through religion, at least thats my preference. You will still need happy building later on, especialy circus because its cheap.

 

[Moriarte]

The problem with Honor and the reason why it'll never be actively good on average is because it's inherently broken. If opening Honor enables you to take a civ out who doesn't open Honor then it becomes the only viable option. Because of this Honor can never be a free win. It can't ensure victory against another civ early on. What this essentially means is that it's useless. If you can beat people who start Honor without Honor then it completely defeats the purpose of the tree. You can still compete early on but your mid to lategame will be vastly superior if you open with Trad/Lib.

The result? Exactly what we have now. Honor is completely worthless the vast majority of the time and it always will be. The alternative of having it be overpowered is much worse (maybe not to everyone but to the vast majority of players it would be). That is why it will never be good/viable and why it's pointless to think/hope that it ever will. It's not going to happen. It can't. You may think that it sucks to be forced to open Tradition/Liberty (even though I think that Liberty is fairly trashy too) but I mean it's better than being forced to open Honor even if you're only doing it so that you don't instantly lose to other people opening Honor. Civ games shouldn't be decided (literally) within the first few turns.

The problem with nerfing Tradition is that you just go straight back to Liberty as being the go-to. Honor and Piety are distant seconds. What should happen, in my mind, is that Honor should be changed to be like a Renaissance policy that you open after starting Tradition. Set the foundation and then war it up. No civ can really afford to open Honor but if it were much stronger and came much later then it might be something.

Piety I think is completely hopeless. Liberty and Tradition focus on developing strong cities that will set your foundation for the game. Piety basically assumes that those are a given which is never going to be the case. The worst part about Piety is that it's randomly hosed by the dumbest things. Someone has Natural Wonders? Desert start? Plenty of Stone/Marble? Some nice pearls and crabs? You're screwed. Getting a dominant religion takes random map luck moreso than anything else. If you have a good religion start then you'll do fine and you won't need terrible Piety. If you don't get one and you open Piety you'll still get rofl stomped by the people with stronger starts. Religion is also Hellish to put up with at Deity since their Missionary spam is absurd and they just plain cheat. Yeah, sure, sometimes you get strong faith starts but I mean if you just open with Piety in the dark you'll probably get smashed in the religion game.

I personally believe that Liberty should get a small buff on one of its later policies (maybe +2 gold for every city connected to the Cap on Representation) and that Honor should be moved to be a "tier 2" Tree because it'll never work as a Tier 1. Piety can just plain be left to die as another unplayable Tier 1 tree I guess. It just doesn't have a home anywhere I don't think.

Good points. Having early honor actually hurts AI too, i see many AI start with it or pick few points in it after opening tradition/liberty. Which gets them killed in the long run. Same with piety. 50% of AIs (not an exaggeration) dive into piety at some point during early game, which is part of the reason AI is teching so slow in BNW. In most games i played so far, AI only manages to do 1 in rationalism by late game, if that.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

No, that analysis is absolutely wrong. All honor needs to do to be competitive with tradition or liberty is to make it possible to actually leverage early conquest into a long term economic gain on par with expanding peacefully.

As it stands now, early war just doesn't pay off long term because it gimps your development so hard with a bunch of unhappiness from cities that aren't even doing anything because they are in revolt. So the problem isn't with honor itself, but the thing it lets you do more effectively just happens to be a bad idea under all circumstances

So the question is not how to make honor a beer version of itself, but how to turn those conquered cities around faster?

I think a good start would be to change military tradition to "Conquered cities experience no resistance and reduces chance that buildings are lost". It's deep enough in the tree that you can't just grab it during the I-finished-tradition-but-cant-start-rationalism-yet midgame lull, yet not so far into it that it comes too late to benefit early conquest.

As we all know, culture from the honor opener isn't nearly as effective as the culture from the liberty or tradition openers. On deity, you might not get any barbarians at all past turn 30. It makes me sad inside a little, because it makes my beloved Aztecs less unique but, +2 culture per unit killed on the opener. It absolutely pales in comparison to sacrificial captives, but it doesn't require gimmicky barb farming, and like the liberty and tradition openers, is around all game long.

I'm not sure the no revolt thing is enough to make honor as good as traditions, but it is by far the best idea anyone has had in any of the "honor is useless" threads I hope I have succeeded circulating a new current of thought instead of the usual rearrange the existing policies vs give it ridiculous economic bonuses that still benefit a builder more than a conqueror.

 

[evilcat]

One theoretical advantage of early conquest is that your neighbours are broken, so you can do whatever you fancy for a while, and in most cases they will never stand up. However Honor is not good 1st tree, since everything comes too late. Military Caste would be great if it was 2nd policy. Hammers for melee would be great if it was tied with opener, so you have this units to run after barbarians...
Also funny thing is that there is no single mention of courthouse in Honor. So you are running after barbarians, wagging some wars, but achieving something is not honorable. ;-)

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I breaks your victim but puts you behind everyone else

 

[Tich]

No, that analysis is absolutely wrong. All honor needs to do to be competitive with tradition or liberty is to make it possible to actually leverage early conquest into a long term economic gain on par with expanding peacefully.

What you're saying doesn't actually make any sense. If Honor doesn't improve your ability to wage war then it's still going to be useless. Tradition is always going to be good because it only requires that you play the game. Even if you go up to 5 or 6 cities it's still amazing. If Honor beefs you up for winning early wars then it's still going to be bad because it has a requirement. You have to capture cities early on or else you'll fall behind. Even if we assume that both trees net out to having the same growth benefits one has inherent risks and one doesn't.

Now, you might then argue that Honor should also help to ensure that you win early wars. Now the game is broken. Now you have a Tradition tree that also gives you great generals and faster promotions and such. If that happens then games, especially multiplayer games, degenerate into all out Honor wars. You're forced to open Honor if only so that you don't lose to people who also open it. If someone near you doesn't open Honor then you kill him or her and grow tall and win. If everyone opens Honor then you're all on an even playing field.

Now, how it that any better than say Liberty? For the longest time you basically had to open Liberty (let's ignore BnW and think back to Vanilla Civ 5 days). Why is that ok? Because Liberty doesn't pigeon-hole you into a single strategy. You can go for any VC and any number of cities with it really. If you want to focus on Wonders, go for it. If you want to wage war, go for it. If you want to grow tall, go for it. Do whatever you want. Civ isn't like Command and Conquer. The goal isn't to simply mass an army early on and win. The people who play civ generally don't want the average game to virtually end in the first 50 turns. Given the choice of having Trad/Lib be the OP or having Honor be the OP the former is always going to prevail because that's what more people want.