[R&F] Civ of the Week: Khmer

[acluewithout]

• Leader: Jayavarman VII.
  
  
• Leader Ability: Monasteries of the King. Holy Sites provide +2 Food and +1 Housing if adjacent to a River. Building a Holy Site triggers a Culture Bomb capturing surrounding tiles.

• Civ Ability: Grand Barays. Aqueducts provide +3 Faith and +1 Amenity (in addition to their housing bonus). Adjacent Farms receive +1 Food.
  
  
• Unique Unit: Domrey. Well, if you liked India's Giant Heffalumps, how about Giant Heffalumps with Cannons? Unique Seige Unit. Unlocks at Military Engineering. Melee Strength 33, Bombard Strength 45 (Range 2), Movement 2, Production 220, Maintenance 3 Gold and Lots of Peanuts and Niter*. Upgrades to Artillery.
  
  
• Unique Infrastructure: Prasat. Unique Temple (Unlocks at Theology).+4 Faith, +1 Citizen Slot, +1 Great Prophet Point, +2 Relic Slots. Missionaries in this City automatically get the Martyr Promotion.

• Leader Agenda: An End to Suffering. Likes Civilizations with lots of Holy Sites and high Pop cities, and dislikes the converse.

• Interesting links: [Sorry, running late this week again. I'll get there eventually.]

*Domrey does not actually require Niter.

 

[Disgustipated]

Ahhh, holy sites and aqueducts, my least built districts other than encampments. Still they can be fun to play since they force you into a different playstyle. Don't really care for the uu though.

 

[acluewithout]

Khmer feel a bit like India through the looking glass. Housing and food for high pop cities, lots of extra faith, and an Elephant themed UU. But India does the pop and faith with a unique improvement whereas Khmer does it with districts.

I don’t play Khmer, so my views are necessarily uninformed. But I do think these guys are crying out for a +% bonus for building districts. Like, maybe a bonus for building Holy Sites and Aqueducts specifically, or for being on a river, or maybe if you’ve already built an aqueduct. Something like that.

I don’t like Khmer’s UB or Missionaries and relics thing. I have some specific problems with his Khmer go about this (how do you reliably get Missionaries killed?). But my wider issues is that I just don’t think relics should come from promotions. I really dislike the idea that you know ahead of time that unit x, when killed, will give you a relic. To me, relics should be something all religious units can randomly spawn when killed, with maybe some being generated by religious great people.

 

[liv]

Nothing from me either. I do not play them. I will try though. Hopefully someone will post a good religious win strategy since I have yet to try that out.
But seriously one great prophet point from temples must be one of the most useless things ever???

 

[Disgustipated]

I actually started a game a couple weeks ago expecting Khmer to be civ of the week. Actually not a bad little game. One thing I've noticed in my games is I almost never start near natural wonders. Anyone have this problem? So I really pushed hard to get over to a wonder a moderate distance away. I won't spoil which wonder it is, but it's appropriate for the Khmer.

Game is going well. But to really get the most out of Khmer, it helps to micromanage district placement, specifically holy site and aqueducts. This is my weak are of Civ games. Still I'm not doing too bad getting aqueducts built. I couldn't get any farms next to my aqueduct in my capital I just noticed, but at least I'm getting the faith and amenity.

All hail the desert Khmer:

Spoiler :

post a good religious win strategy

I still think they are well suited for cultural win, it's what I'm going for. Getting my missionaries killed certainly wouldn't help with religious victory, that's for sure. This ability of Khmer missionaries seems incompatible with religious victory.

 

[Disgustipated]

Spoilers if anyone is playing that save in post #5. I had already played a lot of that game, and finished things up.

I ended up at rank #8: Marcus Aurelius, can't expect much more for such an early victory. I still thought I would win earlier. At one point my tourism dropped from 205 (out of like 228) to 190. Has anyone seen that before? I don't remember ever seeing my tourist towards another civilization fall like that. What causes that? I was really hoping for a very early cultural victory, but it wasn't to be. But I should have sent missionaries across the sea earlier. I'm not sure why I didn't last session. Still, it's an industrial era (world era) win, so there's that. Still might be interesting to try for a very early cultural victory with these guys, I just didn't focus on it, sorry.

I easily beat my Gandhi cultural victory time, and also beat my Persia cultural victory time. But my Kongo cultural victory was faster and my Pericles game of course which is my fastest cultural victory. I still think there's the possibility I can beat my Pericles time with Java-man. I ended up with 14 relics, and I notice I still had space for 2 more. For cultural victory I rank these guys as an even A score. Hard to say how I'd rank them for religious victory, as I've never done that with this civ. Keep in mind according to the end game graphs, I was only 3rd in faith output. Overall I'll give them a B+ score. Still a pretty high ranking because the amenities were actually kind of nice at the end game. I never even finished the soccer stadium wonder.

Monasteries of the King: Probably his weakest ability. My game ended so fast, I believe size 20 city was the biggest I got. Culture bomb is okay I guess. I'm just not sure the food and housing had any real effect.

Grand Barays: I like this one better, as I mentioned above, I was doing quite well in amenities in the end game despite only having like 2 or 3 entertainment districts, and only 1 with all the buildings.

Domrey: I never really used it my game, at least not for their intended use. I did attack one unit with it (not that great to do for a siege unit) during an emergency against Germany, it did pitiful damage as expected. If you are conquering cities at this point of the game, you aren't really concentrating on a religious or cultural victory, so it seems pointless to me. Maybe someone else here will get more use out of it. Terrible UU for me. I also tend to stay on the top part of the tech tree at this stage of the game (except for Printing). Comes real late for me.

Prasat: The extra relic slot and the missionary ability is the big thing. It's what makes those early cultural victories possible. It's Khmer's best ability. Of course if you don't get a religion, things aren't as good. You have to hope one spreads to you.

An End to Suffering (AI reaction), I very rarely can satisfy his agenda when playing against him. Usually only when I go on conquest mode and have lots of cities.

how do you reliably get Missionaries killed?

Works best with continents map, but should work well enough on any map if you send them deep enough in you don't convert your own cities when they die. I just sent them over to Rome, China, and Brazil (before they were wiped out) and park them in an adjacent tile to a rival civilization's holy site. I had no problem getting 14 relics.

And my beautiful desert capital. I couldn't resist going for Petra. As I've usually been doing lately, I get Reyna full promoted, build National history museum along with art museum and Hermitage.

Spoiler :

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I easily beat my Gandhi cultural victory time, and also beat my Persia cultural victory time. But my Kongo cultural victory was faster and my Pericles game of course which is my fastest cultural victory. I still think there's the possibility I can beat my Pericles time with Java-man. I ended up with 14 relics, and I notice I still had space for 2 more. For cultural victory I rank these guys as an even A score. Hard to say how I'd rank them for religious victory, as I've never done that with this civ.

I think that's one thing that distinguishes Khmer as a higher tier civ. You can play the peaceful, defensive "tall" game and have two very viable avenues to victory that are essentially 100% synergistic. Send missionaries off to convert cities near you. If they succeed, think about sending more and perhaps even apostles really start converting with the proselytizer and translator promotions. If it doesn't go so well, then save a charge with the missionaries and send them off towards martyrdom (well actually do that anyway). In reality, I think the cultural victory almost always ends up being the best choice, but at least there's an option for a religious victory if things go well. Shrug.

 

[acluewithout]

City Patron Goddess and River Goddess might be interesting pantheons for Khmer. Feed the World and Religious Communities might be good too. (Although hard to go past Earth Goddess and Reliquaries).

I find it a bit weird Khmer is incentivised to put Holy Sites next to rivers, but doesn’t get an adjacency bonus for doing so. Doesn’t that just force them to have weaker Holy Sites, given their Holy Sites a less likely to get adjacency from Mountains (even Woods might be hard to find).

Lastly, does anyone know historically why they get Missionaires with Matyr promotions?

 

[BarbarianHunter]

City Patron Goddess and River Goddess might be interesting pantheons for Khmer. Feed the World and Religious Communities might be good too. (Although hard to go past Earth Goddess and Reliquaries).

I find it a bit weird Khmer is incentivised to put Holy Sites next to rivers, but doesn’t get an adjacency bonus for doing so. Doesn’t that just force them to have weaker Holy Sites, given their Holy Sites a less likely to get adjacency from Mountains (even Woods might be hard to find).

Lastly, does anyone know historically why they get Missionaires with Matyr promotions?

They do get bonuses but they're atypical. I built a holy site in 8 of my 9 cities in the game I played and simply didn't need the extra faith from adjacency. The relics were netting 156 faith by the end as well. The food can leverage into production hammers for a "tall" strategy instead of faith (which can be quite abundant).

 

[BarbarianHunter]

It would seem from the posts so far, that the Khmer are not all that popular. I rather like them as they offer a very effective peaceful alternative to warmongering, religion + reliquaries.

I ran a game through on emperor in honor of the game of the week. I wanted to be sure to found a religion and hopefully get reliquaries, so I chose emperor and built 2 holy sites right off 1st thing. It worked. By the end of the game my relic farming netted me 13 relics yielding a staggering 312 tourism per turn. Who needs archeological museums with that kind of religious tourism? The penalty was finding myself behind on science entering the mid game, but that made things interesting ;-). Shaka just finished his spaceport as I crossed over the line to a cultural victory. Not a particularly quick victory, but a victory none the less.

I think the online speed made me think I was expanding faster and extracting more science and growth than I actually was relative to the AI’s, shrug. With the low science per turn and cultural/religious win strategy, I couldn’t advance when a neighboring AI (Aztecs) declared on me (twice), but with Khmer’s higher population cities, who needs to?


The condensed version:
Pantheon: River Goddess (+1 amenity for holy sites adjacent to a river).
Founded religion: BARKALOS!!!
Follower belief: Reliquaries
Holy building: Stupa (+3 faith / +1 amenity)
T1 Govt. building: Audience chamber (+1Amenity and +4 Housing in cities with governors).
T2 Govt. building: Grand master’s chapel.

This mix made +3 district “tall” Khmer cities both highly productive and manageable due to plentiful amenities.

This is one of the smallest clusters of cities I’ve ever finished with. 9 total, 8 of which I think were completed before year 0. I annexed the 9th, Tlacopan, from the Aztecs in 300AD with a defensive knight rush.

Spoiler :

I had never really had allot of success with purposefully trying to get a missionary or apostle killed in the past, but found myself pleasantly surprised when my missionaries were engaged and eliminated by AI apostles on a fairly regular and repeatable basis. Monastic isolation also helped with the religious victory hedge, should a cultural victory prove elusive.

I made a video series for the Let’s Play section of the board yesterday with Montezuma and thought, why not do one with the Game of the Week as well? No narration, just gameplay (4 hours approximately). I think the first clip could be considered interesting as it’s all settlers and holy sites with a splash of war at the end. Perhaps it’s something more akin to the saying “that kid has a face only a mother could love.” Shrug.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/face+only+a+mother+could+love

The changing slogans of Jayavarman VII.
“A chicken in every pot, a holy site on every river,” morphs to “CHARGE!!!” as Montezuma takes Bandar Brunei and menaces Angkor Thom with multiple sword units.

BARKSLOS!!! Spreads throughout the land, Dreadlord Montezuma sues for peace, and the knights of Khmer distinguish themselves in battle!
Khmer media sources are reporting the unusually longwinded Aztec leader was stupafied as to how the people of Khmer could carry on with such a long and arduous war and still be happier than his own subjects.

Do it for for BARKALOS!!! my son.
The relics start coming in.

BARKALOS!!! reliquaries triumph Over Zulu spaceports!!!

 

[acluewithout]

How do people think Khmer’s aqueduct (and holy sites) bonuses compare with Rome’s UD?

 

[KayAU]

The Khmer is one of those civs which I think are somewhat underpowered, but still enjoy to play.

• Leader Ability - Monasteries of the King:

So right off, this one is clearly aimed at making the Khmer tall. The extra food and housing are useful, and an added incentive to building more Holy Sites in the first place. Holy sites can be a decent source of Housing or food already, with the right beliefs. The culture bomb is situational, but as I tend to put my Sites in the second or third ring, chances are this will at least save me some gold and time on tile acquisition. It's a pretty good ability.​

• Civ Ability - Grand Barays:

I rarely build Aqueducts, so this is an ability which forces me to think a bit differently. The extra faith is nice since I am probably already trying to do stuff with faith, the extra amenity is just a small aid in keeping my tall cities happy. Bonus food (it is +2, by the way) for adjacent farms is again something which is not very powerful, but which makes me think differently about city planning. It's a weak ability overall, but I like it anyway. I think this ability synergizes nicely with the leader ability.​

• Unique Unit - Domrey:

I think this would have been a decent unit if it had an extra movement point. As it stands, I don't care that much for it. It is basically a siege unit to go in between the Catapult and the Bombard, which cannot be upgraded into a Bombard. I don't feel like that is something I have much use for.​

• Unique Infrastructure - Prasat:

This is quite weak. It relies on a specific strategy where you are intentionally getting your Missionaries killed off to get more relics. I suppose that is doable, but it relies on your opponent doing what you want.​

Overall, as I said initially, I don't think the Khmer are powerful in Civ 6, but I do find them interesting and fun to play, primarily because of their civ and leader abilities.

@acluewithout
I think Rome's Baths are better. Straight up 2 extra housing and 1 amenity is nice, but what makes the Baths shine is the much lower production cost. If the Khmer had the ability to build Aqueducts faster, it would have been a lot better.

 

[Disgustipated]

yeah I really wish they had half priced aqueducts. Most of my cities could build them fast, but the outlier cities struggled to build them. Bath hands down is better. And while I loved some 6 food farmed tiles, my game didn't last long enough to get much population growth out of the extra food.

 

[acluewithout]

yeah I really wish they had half priced aqueducts. Most of my cities could build them fast, but the outlier cities struggled to build them. Bath hands down is better. And while I loved some 6 food farmed tiles, my game didn't last long enough to get much population growth out of the extra food.

Getting a buff the Holy Sites and a unique Holy Site building should be awesome, and I like the idea of another Civ apart from Rome that encourages you to experiment with Aqueducts. But I don’t think it actually works.

Khmer’s strongest ability is its Martyr ability (which is technically tied to the UB), but I really don’t think it’s a fun ability. It locks you into such a narrow gameplay focus, the whole relic thing is already very gamey and Khmer’s approach makes it worse, and having to deliberately get units killed to use the ability feels anti-fun. It’s also got this nasty anti-synergy. If you’re going for a religious victory, then getting your Missionaries killed is unproductive because it’s reducing your religious pressure. If you’re not going RV (ie just using faith for a yield), then you’re using faith (which you’d otherwise use to get useful things like Builders, settlers, units or GP ) to build a unit that is useless to you except as maybe a scout (or maybe if you really want to spread a foreign religion to your own cities, which is marginal benefit currently), and to what end? To get it killed to get more faith and some tourism? And if you don’t have a religion, you’re not getting reliquaries anyway.

I also don’t think their bonus to Holy Sites and Aqueducts is as good as Rome’s bath, which makes the Civ feel very underwhelming - Khmer have to build two districts at full price (and one with placement restrictions) to do what Rome does with one half price district. Worse, there is already so much congestion around rivers, so requiring Khmer to build two districts right on a river is a real pain. There is something very cool about how their Holy Site and Aqueducts work - and the bonus to adjacent farms is interesting and different. But the whole thing feels like it’s missing some “oomph”.

Khmer just seem like a half-cocked idea.

My suggestion? Meh. If Khmer got a production bonus for districts that’d be more fun, although they might then be too close to Egypt or Dutch; eg. bonus to Holy Sites and Aqueducts, or to districts built on a river, or Holy Sites, Aqueducts and Theatre Squares built on a river, or all districts if you have an Aqueduct. Something like that.

I think the whole Missionary / Relic thing is just terrible. I’d maybe make the UB give some bonus based on your population - or, I don’t know, just something else. Maybe Khmer’s UB could give culture or gold instead of relic slots and missionary promotions? The gold would help offset having it harder to get Commercial Hubs on rivers; eg maybe your UB gives you gold equal to Holy Site faith adjacency. But I think Culture would synergise better with high pop and culture bombs; e.g. maybe +2 culture flat, +1 culture but it's regional, or maybe relics give culture (if relics are still a “thing”)?

 

[MarigoldRan]

The key to Khmer is a rainforest start (which isn't hard to do with their start bias) and get the +1 Adjacency Bonus for Holy Sites next to Rainforests Pantheon. With that pantheon, each of your Holy Sites are generating like 2 food, 1 housing, and a 5-6 faith per turn. If you are the Suzerain of a Religious City State, a Holy Site with the Prasat generates 12 faith/turn. Martyr an Apostle, get a relic, and the result is 16 faith/turn. Martyr 2 apostles and the result is 20 faith/turn.

Add in Choral Music (if you can get your own religion) and you're generating a 5-6 culture/turn from each of your Holy Sites, too. Also, if you're in the rainforest, you can also easily spam campuses. A Holy Site with the Prasat and an adjacent campus and Library generates something like 16-24 faith/turn (before relics!), 5-6 culture/turn, and 8-12 science/turn with the 100% Campus and Holy Site Adjacency Card.

It can get pretty ridiculous.

Then get a Golden Age in either the classical or Medieval Era. Go Monumentality and buy all of your settlers and builders with faith.

Also, if you've been sacrificing martyrs in the mid game, you'll have enough relics that by the Renaissance or Industrial era you can buy all of your military with Faith.

Khmer is almost entirely a faith-based economy. They're not top tier like Nubia, but they're definitely underrated.

Also, as Khmer you can potentially go for a religious victory in MP. If the other human players kill your apostles, they're just increasing your faith generation.

 

[Lord Lakely]

The Khmer are a mediocre civ and slightly above average if you play on a hilly map.

I've had games where the Khmer AI just completely dominated the culture game, mostly thanks to their insane relic tourism spam. I love having them in the game as Kongo or Georgia, so i can just steal their relics with spies for my own gains. The enhancer belief that renders their religion immune to theological combat losses (Monastic Isolation?) is immensely potent in their hands, or just send the missionaries to the nearest enemy holy city and kamikaze them. I've also had a game where I rushed them in early medieval and eliminated them completely (as Tundra Mapuche of all things, lol)

That said, I kinda hate rolling Khmer; they're probably my least favourite civ to play. They have a crappy starting location (jungle) , a fairly mediocre food and faith bonus and a UU that is just okay. Really, the only thing they excel at are holy sites, which culture bomb and provide housing if next to a river and enable Khmer's relic economy. The problem is that Khmer usually have bad production, thanks to their starting location and not getting half-priced districts as part of their ability. Good luck setting up all these holy sites without any bonuses to production though or crippling your economy

AND APPARENTLY IT'S PRONOUNCED "KMAI"????

 

[Mojo85]

I really enjoy the Khmer. Their ability to grow insanely large pop quite early is a lot of fun using the aquaduct/farm circle and nothing beats sending an army of missionaries to their deaths for those sweet sweet relics.

 

[Softly]

The Khmer are a mediocre civ and slightly above average if you play on a hilly map.

I've had games where the Khmer AI just completely dominated the culture game, mostly thanks to their insane relic tourism spam. I love having them in the game as Kongo or Georgia, so i can just steal their relics with spies for my own gains.

How do you steal relics with spies? As I understand it spies can only steal great works housed in theater squares.

 

[acluewithout]

The key to Khmer is a rainforest start (which isn't hard to do with their start bias) and get the +1 Adjacency Bonus for Holy Sites next to Rainforests Pantheon. With that pantheon, each of your Holy Sites are generating like 2 food, 1 housing, and a 5-6 faith per turn. If you are the Suzerain of a Religious City State, a Holy Site with the Prasat generates 12 faith/turn. Martyr an Apostle, get a relic, and the result is 16 faith/turn. Martyr 2 apostles and the result is 20 faith/turn.

Add in Choral Music (if you can get your own religion) and you're generating a 5-6 culture/turn from each of your Holy Sites, too. Also, if you're in the rainforest, you can also easily spam campuses. A Holy Site with the Prasat and an adjacent campus and Library generates something like 16-24 faith/turn (before relics!), 5-6 culture/turn, and 8-12 science/turn with the 100% Campus and Holy Site Adjacency Card.

It can get pretty ridiculous.

Then get a Golden Age in either the classical or Medieval Era. Go Monumentality and buy all of your settlers and builders with faith.

Also, if you've been sacrificing martyrs in the mid game, you'll have enough relics that by the Renaissance or Industrial era you can buy all of your military with Faith.

Khmer is almost entirely a faith-based economy. They're not top tier like Nubia, but they're definitely underrated.

Also, as Khmer you can potentially go for a religious victory in MP. If the other human players kill your apostles, they're just increasing your faith generation.

You know, I still don’t like Khmer. But it’s really interesting that there are so many ideas about how their terrible power set might synergise with this pantheon or that belief.

... maybe they’re the new most underrated Civ in Civ.

 

[liv]

The key to Khmer is a rainforest start (which isn't hard to do with their start bias

What is their start bias. I have tried some starts I have a hard time spotting a bias and if there is one I do not think it is rainforest.