Civilization 5 Honor Social Policies
Strategy Guide for Gods and Kings & Brave New World
| Tradition | Liberty | Honor | Piety | Patronage | Aesthetics | Commerce | Exploration | Rationalism |
Honor contains Social Policies that are very military-centric. You should take this at some point if you will be waging a lot of war, keeping a large military with up-to-date units. Overall, it's very much centered on the offense and will not do much for Peaceful Civs.
Adopting Honor allows you to build the Statue of Zeus, which raises combat strength against Cities for all your Units. You will also be told of new Barbarian Encampment spawn locations and be able to deal with them swiftly, before they ever bother your lands thanks to the 33% combat bonus you'll receive when fighting them. You will also gain Culture for killing Barbarians, based on the Combat Strength of the unit killed. While I almost never open with this, it is sometimes a good idea to choose to Adopt it just to get the Culture from kills on Barbarians in the early-game to speed up the acquisition of other Social Policies. With Raging Barbarians and a solid military, you can even be ahead in Culture generation overall. Just be sure to leave the Encampments until a City-State offers a Quest for their removal, to maximize your benefit.
Finishing the Honor Tree will give you Gold for each enemy unit killed, equal to their Combat Strength, which can be a great help when fighting another Civ with a powerful Military. You will also get to buy Great Generals with Faith starting in the Industrial Era, although that is a rare purchase to make.
Warrior Code: +15% Production when training Melee units and a Great General appears outside the Capital. Great Generals are earned 50% faster.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: Sadly, the +15% Production toward Melee means only units that swing weapons from their two feet. No horsemen or tanks, anything from Warrior/Spearman to Pikeman and Longswordsman - so this is for early production of these Units. Forges (built in City with Iron) DO help increase the production of Land-based military Units forever. Regardless of this weakness, the free Great General can help immensely in an early war, particularly if you also take Discipline to get a bonus for lining up your Units. This makes Warmongering in the early-game viable, so long as you have not met many Civs to witness what you've done.
Military Tradition: Military Units gain 50% more Experience from combat.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: This is an absolutely wonderful policy, particularly for the Zulu, who require less XP to level their units. This will help you get to the best promotions (those that come after Shock/Drill III) much faster. Keeping your forces alive and knowing when to retreat a unit is key to taking advantage of this. If you're only fighting Barbarians, you'll hit the wall after gaining 2 levels much faster, but those units will be ready to wage war on Cities and conquer your Continent. See the Unit Guide for Unit XP requirements to fully understand how helpful this Policy can be.
Discipline: +15% combat strength for melee Units which have another Military Unit in an adjacent tile.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: A +15% Boost to Combat Strength that gets added to everything else (upgrades, and Great General presence) can help you easily overcome the higher attack power of Cities as you approach the Medieval era. Early in the game, this makes all the difference in the world, so grabbing it quickly may be more important than going down the left side for the Experience for your first Conquests. You will also have Happiness problems early in the game and this is a prerequisite for Military Caste.
Military Caste: Each City with a garrison increases Local City Happiness by 1 and Culture by 2.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: A bonus that will help keep Cultural Policies coming and give your Civ a break on the huge Unhappiness penalties for having a wide Empire. This helps, just make certain that you are parking your units in Cities when they're not on the road for combat. A simple Archer will accomplish this for you early-game, but later you'll want the powerful Machine Gun along with Mobile units to defend Cities on your border.
Professional Army: Gold cost of upgrading Military Units reduced by 33% and construct Barracks, Armories, and Military Academies 50% faster.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: An absolutely wonderful Policy, especially if taken early in the game, when you can get the most benefit out of it. Use this tree with Commerce to keep the Gold flowing. Units may even pay for their own upgrades with kills once you've finished all the Policies in the Honor tree. Any Civ waging war will want new units to come with new promotions, and as you unlock the Armory and Military Academy, it will help you place them in your key production Cities much faster, so they can go back to putting out modern military units.
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