Khmer and the Baray

[ShadowKatana]

I only played at noble with Khmer so far - at first just looking at the leader for Khmer, whose Expansive + Creative, that I just overlooked them. But yesterday I took a look at their UB - the Baray, and I noticed that its an Aquaduct with +1 food.

Then I realized how to play him - huge land grab in the beginning, and whip/chop up granary/library/baray/courthouse in all of them + HR for happy (Oracle chop for HR/CL/Cons since they're in different tech paths). At first with the cities, have them run 1/2 scientists, with 1/2 farms, and cottage everything else. You end up with very good hybrid economy, the +1 food and expansive trait means you can push out those workers fast and the cities can get huge with HR, even with 1/2 scientists being run, to work those cottages fast. And creative means that those cities pop borders fast so you never have to worry about a monument.

And if you want to run a full SE, +1 food means more whipping and more specialists sooner. Its a real long term thing, +1 food Baray built in the first ~100 turns means 200-400 food more than any other civ (depending on game length of course), and potentially +1 more specialist over that time (so one more 3 beaker scientist over ~200 turns in every city). But if you do a Pyramid with representation, you lose out on HR making your cities huge, which is why I went with hybrid.

Admittingly, the UU is pretty iffy, but elephants can be upgraded to cav if you get the chance to make a lot of them.

[Diamondeye]

Notice how the UU will always attack mounted units in an enemy stack. Still think it's shabby? I think Genghis or Cyrus will hate you for these.

[ShadowKatana]

Yeah, but you don't always fight large amounts of cavalry, and elephants are relatively rare compared to copper/iron. Elephants are always good though.

Then again, the AI does make much much bigger stacks now, and you do want your elephants killing mounted units first.