Khmer First Look

[Datian]

I've played the Khmer a few times and I kind of like their features and the synergy between them.

They depend heavily on the terrain and your luck, but you can make your own luck with the holy site culture bomb : in my last game, I felt cramped between city states, I settled near them and grabbed all the forested land I needed.
Indeed, the holy site adjacency bonus is often weak unless you find mountains near a river, but since you're incited to build temples, you still find yourself with a solid amount of faith.
The aqueducts are not overwhelming, but you're incited to build them, and can make a nice aqueduct/holy site/commercial hub adjacency near a river.

After a while, you find yourself with big cities, hence able to build a lot of districts (including a holy site that you might reconsider with another civ), without fear of discontent thanks to the amenity provided by the aqueduct. It's a pretty, if not overwhelming, synergy.

I find the missionaries rather funny. If your opponents do not chase them, you go for a religious victory... if they kill them, you go for a cultural one. Either way, they spell bad news for the heathen !

 

[sonicmyst]

I am having this game now where I ended up being neighbor with Poland. My mistake was putting up the holy site next to a couple of lux only to be bombed later by Poland's encampment. Silly but fun. Thanks AI.

 

[Guandao]

I actually won my Khmer game yesterday (the one with runaway Brazil), only because Brazil's spaceport got pillaged and he never repaired it. I won a Science Victory. My cities grew to a decent size (largest was 23 Pop), and I sent missionaries to get killed by Brazilian inquisitors, generating relics for most of my prasats. It wasn't enough to win a cultural victory by itself. Greece took most of the Great Works of writing/art/music. And Brazil was generating a lot of tourism from its wonders (it took them forever to build Theatre squares).

 

[Morningcalm]

I actually won my Khmer game yesterday (the one with runaway Brazil), only because Brazil's spaceport got pillaged and he never repaired it. I won a Science Victory. My cities grew to a decent size (largest was 23 Pop), and I sent missionaries to get killed by Brazilian inquisitors, generating relics for most of my prasats. It wasn't enough to win a cultural victory by itself. Greece took most of the Great Works of writing/art/music. And Brazil was generating a lot of tourism from its wonders (it took them forever to build Theatre squares).

Sounds like a reasonably tight game; what difficulty was this on?

 

[Guandao]

Sounds like a reasonably tight game; what difficulty was this on?

I feel ashamed to admit it, but it was on Prince difficulty.

 

[Morningcalm]

I feel ashamed to admit it, but it was on Prince difficulty.

Peaceful builder spotted

 

[Kimiimaro]

Peaceful builder spotted

I'm too a peaceful builder, and I play on King

 

[Morningcalm]

I'm murderous, and I always wipe out at least one neighbor in all my games. Kind of required on the higher difficulty levels, unfortunately, which can make early gameplay very predictable. Maybe I should return to King.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I generally play peacefully, but I often take advantage of the absence of warmonger penalty in the ancient era in order to make a little breathing room early on.

 

[Sagax]

I'm murderous, and I always wipe out at least one neighbor in all my games. Kind of required on the higher difficulty levels, unfortunately, which can make early gameplay very predictable. Maybe I should return to King.

Early warmongering is just as satisfying on lower difficulties. It’s not about power level, it’s about that punchable face of the neighboring leader that you want to see gone

 

[Guandao]

Peaceful builder spotted

I did feel tempted to attack Indonesia, which forward settled me. Also Egypt, since they conquered two of my City-State allies.
Does the AI always declare war on you in the higher difficulties? I'm planning on moving up to King difficulty.

 

[Morningcalm]

I did feel tempted to attack Indonesia, which forward settled me. Also Egypt, since they conquered two of my City-State allies.
Does the AI always declare war on you in the higher difficulties? I'm planning on moving up to King difficulty.

I've never had a game on King+ difficulty where the AI doesn't DOW me. In the ancient era there are no warmonger penalties, so even Gandhi has attacked me, lol.

 

[Kimiimaro]

I've never had a game on King+ difficulty where the AI doesn't DOW me. In the ancient era there are no warmonger penalties, so even Gandhi has attacked me, lol.

I did, but that was in Civ V

However, I've never had a game without war with someone in Civ VI.

 

[Ondolindë]

I generally play peacefully, but I often take advantage of the absence of warmonger penalty in the ancient era in order to make a little breathing room early on.

I did that very thing in my current game. I was trying to be friendly, really, but Pericles just declares war on me so I had to shove him out of existence. Got myself 4 cities and I had 2 of my own. Talk about breathing room!

 

[King William I]

I had one as Australia right after its release and one as Arabia after the game first dropped

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I just got done with my Khmer game. I know I'm a bit late for a review, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in.

The Khmer are well suited to pursuing either a Cultural or Religious victory, as others have noted. They also have a tendency to be fast growers with tall cities, but I found that can be alternately used to be good producers too, if the map allows. The downside is that you are going to be putting a lot of production into Holy Sites and Aqueducts, which will delay expansion and makes a difficult decision about balancing them against more important districts like commercial hubs and industrial zones. I chose the City Patron Goddess pantheon to help build districts, since I was going to be doing that a lot.

Grand Barays: The Faith bonus is fairly useful as you will be buying a lot of units with Faith, for one reason or another. The Amenity is helpful for growing tall and complements the existing housing on aqueducts. The Food on adjacent farms is really great, especially for a well-situated aqueduct. Either you can grow fast, or you can have normal growth while working fewer farms and use those freed up citizens as miners to amp up your production.

Monasteries of the King: The Food bonus for the Holy Sites works like the farm boost on the aqueducts. You can either use it to grow fast or to offset a focus on production and keep growing. The Housing lets your city get a little bigger. Unfortunately, the Holy Sites have to be situated on rivers to get the Food and Housing, which often leads to sacrificing adjacency bonus yields to get this done. It's nice then that you get that Faith from aqueducts mentioned above. The culture bomb is as useful for the Khmer as it is for the Australians and Polish. Hopefully you can pick up some riverside resources when you finish your Holy Sites.

Prasat: For me, this building is the biggest reason to even bother building so many Holy Sites. I'm big on Cultural Victories, so I can't ignore the double relic slots and Martyr on relatively cheap missionaries. You definitely want to pick Reliquaries. I very nearly had an early Cultural Victory in the bag before a lot of my rivals got the partial immunity to relic tourism. I then had to change gears and start pumping out Theater Squares to finish the job. Fortunately, my Faith output was huge after so many relics, so buying GWAMs to fill my Great Works slots wasn't hard. Definitely try to build the Cristo Redentor to bring your relics back to prominence and hasten your Cultural Victory.

Domrey: I was not initially impressed with this unit. While it can move and shoot, allowing it to get in and fire at a city before getting fired upon, it's still as fragile for its era as any siege unit. Having to jockey around a protective escort for them doesn't make your medieval onslaughts as particularly blitz-y as I had imagined. However, my outlook on Domreys improved on the discovery of Flight and the Observation Balloons. My nemesis in this game was China, and they declared on me repeatedly. Since I was going for a Culture Victory, I wasn't interested in a late-game conquest, so I stuck to pillaging China's tiles. Several Domrey+Balloons could move in and nullify city defensive fire (and China's ubiquitous Crouching Tigers) from the safety of range. Thus allowing me to pillage unmolested. Mounted units were still dangerous, but now my Domreys could react more effectively and focus fire them from up to 3 tiles away.

 

[Uberfrog]

I just got done with my Khmer game. I know I'm a bit late for a review, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in.
[...]

I'm blundering towards the end of a Khmer game - I didn't manage to get a religion on Emperor because I didn't beeline the Holy Sites enough. Still managed to get some relics when I got converted, but there's obviously nothing in the Khmer package that gives you an edge in getting that religion before they're gone (as there would be with Indonesia).

The Domrey I found to be real glass cannons. Phenomenally powerful with their move and shoot ability, but they died very quickly to city bombardments as soon as gunpowder entered the scene. I think you need to make them en masse to shoulder the inevitable losses, but that trick with the observation balloons sounds fun! Unfortunately I'e upgraded all mine to Artillery now...

 

[Rosty K]

I'm nearing the end of the Khmer game now. I've got some mixed feelings about their abilities. The abilities kind of set you up for a slow start with a late-game snowball - after you've got the Holy Sites and Aqueducts where you want them, you can proceed to spam every district in every city (as the population will allow that) while grabbing all the GP with that faith. However, the UU and the history suggest that the mid-game should be the Khmer time, but due to the above you spend the mid-game setting up your breakthrough... I'm not quite sure that was the design intention. Or am I doing something wrong?

Adding to a slow start is the fact that sometimes you want to plan the city with the Aqueduct in mind, which often means deliberately not starting next to the river, which slows down the early growth...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I'm nearing the end of the Khmer game now. I've got some mixed feelings about their abilities. The abilities kind of set you up for a slow start with a late-game snowball - after you've got the Holy Sites and Aqueducts where you want them, you can proceed to spam every district in every city (as the population will allow that) while grabbing all the GP with that faith. However, the UU and the history suggest that the mid-game should be the Khmer time, but due to the above you spend the mid-game setting up your breakthrough... I'm not quite sure that was the design intention. Or am I doing something wrong?

Adding to a slow start is the fact that sometimes you want to plan the city with the Aqueduct in mind, which often means deliberately not starting next to the river, which slows down the early growth...

You can place a city right on a river and still have an aqueduct, you just aren't getting its full potential.

 

[Rosty K]

You can place a city right on a river and still have an aqueduct, you just aren't getting its full potential.

I know, but not always (e.g. when there are floodplains everywhere).