Khmer is OP.

[The Highwayman]

In the BBG mod, Work Ethic gives production equal to the intrinsic value of the shrines and temples, just like Choral Music. So it is nerfed in competitive MP games. The Khmer are great either way. I quite like Work Ethic the way it is now, because once upon a time most religious beliefs were in a useless state. Now they're pretty good as a whole, although some could use some love.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Merged threads that are about the same subject.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

When i say "OP" I mean "OP like Germany or Russia."

Which are both considered to be S tier by most MP players. My argument is that Khmer is now S tier.

Ok, so I had a go with the new Khmer now.
My conclusion:

The new Khmer isn't near the level of "OP", and comparing it to Russia is just dumb.
Sure, they can get high population and good faith, but that by itself isn't the standard by how you can judge something to be OP.
In my current game (which I cooked quite a bit with several restarts), I got work ethic and currently sit on about 12 cities where most of them have +4 to +7 base adjacency holy sites.
Strong, right?
Well yes, but not really.

The production, food and faith is surely ludicrous, but it takes a lot of RNG to have it set up.
And even with those silly yields, I'm still nowhere near done catching up with the AH (late medieval era).
Worse still, I was nearly taken out in the early game by Georgia, and only some old fashioned save scumming could keep me afloat.

The reason I don't think Khmer deserves to be mentioned as "OP" is easy - it takes a lot of RNG luck to set up properly, and you are very vulnerable while doing so.
You need both great terrain, not get killed early, ideally an early faith source (terrain yields, envoy, tribal village faith or relic) to reliably get a good pantheon (ideally Sacred Path or on of her sisters).
Khmer has no early bonuses to help secure those pantheons (Sacred Path is usually very contested as it's a jungle pantheon which at least a handful of other AI want to go for as well, so you'll rarely get it on the first try), nor does Khmer have other early bonuses to get the ball rolling.
Compare this to Russia, and the comparison is just absolutely stupid.
Russia gets put into tundra most of the time, gets extra faith to nearly guarantee dance of the aurora, a super fast holy site with extra GP points to get the religion up in no time, and on top of that all the GWAMs you can ask for the rest of the game.
With Russia you can almost guarantee a safe start (tundra starts are among the safest in the game due to lack of neighbours on all sides, allowing to to focus on infrastructure), and a pantheon and religion super quick.
At that point you can nearly guarantee the first golden age for monumentality, where Russia snowballs ahead.

TL;DR:
Russia is nearly guaranteed to snowball extremely hard right from the start.
Khmer has no such guarantees and is far too weak early on.
IF you get all stars aligned (gl with that), Khmer becomes strong in the middle game.
But is still behind Russia who has already started snowballing way earlier, for hardly no effort.

Khmer is NOT OP.

 

[civac]

OP was taking about MP. In MP the early weakness is irrelevant and getting a useful Pantheon is much easier. They also specifically mentioned that Work Ethic is not necessary.

 

[PSG]

Ok, so I had a go with the new Khmer now.
My conclusion:

The new Khmer isn't near the level of "OP", and comparing it to Russia is just dumb.
Sure, they can get high population and good faith, but that by itself isn't the standard by how you can judge something to be OP.
In my current game (which I cooked quite a bit with several restarts), I got work ethic and currently sit on about 12 cities where most of them have +4 to +7 base adjacency holy sites.
Strong, right?
Well yes, but not really.

The production, food and faith is surely ludicrous, but it takes a lot of RNG to have it set up.
And even with those silly yields, I'm still nowhere near done catching up with the AH (late medieval era).
Worse still, I was nearly taken out in the early game by Georgia, and only some old fashioned save scumming could keep me afloat.

The reason I don't think Khmer deserves to be mentioned as "OP" is easy - it takes a lot of RNG luck to set up properly, and you are very vulnerable while doing so.
You need both great terrain, not get killed early, ideally an early faith source (terrain yields, envoy, tribal village faith or relic) to reliably get a good pantheon (ideally Sacred Path or on of her sisters).
Khmer has no early bonuses to help secure those pantheons (Sacred Path is usually very contested as it's a jungle pantheon which at least a handful of other AI want to go for as well, so you'll rarely get it on the first try), nor does Khmer have other early bonuses to get the ball rolling.
Compare this to Russia, and the comparison is just absolutely stupid.
Russia gets put into tundra most of the time, gets extra faith to nearly guarantee dance of the aurora, a super fast holy site with extra GP points to get the religion up in no time, and on top of that all the GWAMs you can ask for the rest of the game.
With Russia you can almost guarantee a safe start (tundra starts are among the safest in the game due to lack of neighbours on all sides, allowing to to focus on infrastructure), and a pantheon and religion super quick.
At that point you can nearly guarantee the first golden age for monumentality, where Russia snowballs ahead.

TL;DR:
Russia is nearly guaranteed to snowball extremely hard right from the start.
Khmer has no such guarantees and is far too weak early on.
IF you get all stars aligned (gl with that), Khmer becomes strong in the middle game.
But is still behind Russia who has already started snowballing way earlier, for hardly no effort.

Khmer is NOT OP.

If Russia is OP then Khmer is as well since they are a better tundra Civ than Russia.

 

[Leucarum]

They probably should be OP... If you can tolerate how jaunty their theme song is then you deserve some sort of gameplay boost.

 

[SuperFly47]

If Russia is OP then Khmer is as well since they are a better tundra Civ than Russia.

The biggest weakness for Khmer is getting Dance of the Aurora. The AI likes to take adjacency pantheons. Russia's faith bonus right away gives them a very good chance of getting Dance of the Aurora, Khmer having no bonus makes getting it harder. Without Dance of the Aurora, the tundra is worthless.

If Khmer can get Dance of the Aurora, Khmer food bonus allows cities to get large, which generates even more faith for Khmer. Russia with Lavra has a good chance of getting an early golden age, with monumentality, Russia can get a snowball effect going. Khmer takes longer to get rolling. I think its debatable which is better if both could get Dance of the Aurora, because Dance of the Aurora is essential to use tundra, I give Russia the advantage.

 

[UWHabs]

The biggest weakness for Khmer is getting Dance of the Aurora. The AI likes to take adjacency pantheons. Russia's faith bonus right away gives them a very good chance of getting Dance of the Aurora, Khmer having no bonus makes getting it harder. Without Dance of the Aurora, the tundra is worthless.

If Khmer can get Dance of the Aurora, Khmer food bonus allows cities to get large, which generates even more faith for Khmer. Russia with Lavra has a good chance of getting an early golden age, with monumentality, Russia can get a snowball effect going. Khmer takes longer to get rolling. I think its debatable which is better if both could get Dance of the Aurora, because Dance of the Aurora is essential to use tundra, I give Russia the advantage.

Khmer is obviously also not likely to start near the tundra, since they don't have a tundra bias. So yeah, IF you start near the tundra and IF you get the tundra pantheon, then the Khmer is awesome.

 

[PSG]

They probably should be OP... If you can tolerate how jaunty their theme song is then you deserve some sort of gameplay boost.

Their theme song is way better than any of the indigenous American themes. There are only a few of the themes I really like regardless with Hungary being a clear best.

The biggest weakness for Khmer is getting Dance of the Aurora. The AI likes to take adjacency pantheons. Russia's faith bonus right away gives them a very good chance of getting Dance of the Aurora, Khmer having no bonus makes getting it harder. Without Dance of the Aurora, the tundra is worthless.

If Khmer can get Dance of the Aurora, Khmer food bonus allows cities to get large, which generates even more faith for Khmer. Russia with Lavra has a good chance of getting an early golden age, with monumentality, Russia can get a snowball effect going. Khmer takes longer to get rolling. I think its debatable which is better if both could get Dance of the Aurora, because Dance of the Aurora is essential to use tundra, I give Russia the advantage.

It usually doesn't take that long to get to the tundra if you have to build towards it and Khmer seems to always be able to build a Holy Site for me as fast or faster than any other Civ besides Russia for me. Getting Aurora as Khmer is about the same as getting it as Russia. Sometimes the Ai decides it gets it and there is little you can do.

Things that really give Khmer the advantage is food advantage which essentially gives them two or three more districts than Russia which means they will have more trade routes and with the CS that gives +1 faith per religious population easily adds +200 faith/turn by the end of Classic + all that extra gold. Add the + faith from aqueducts and another +200 faith a turn is added. Even if work ethic is taken away they will still crush. As far as the snowball effect goes with Khmer you can skip Magnus and his population saving promotion. Just use those two promotions and get the Gov that let's you buy districts with faith. Your cities get to pop 2 almost immediately so you wont miss Magnus and you you don't want to chop much so your groves are better and you want forests next to your holy sites....

 

[Leucarum]

Their theme song is way better than any of the indigenous American themes. There are only a few of the themes I really like regardless with Hungary being a clear best.

It's all subjective. I love the first nations soundtracks and Cree in particular is one of my favourites. I love the vocal tracks, but to a lot of people they are grating. I think/hope we can agree that all the sound tracks are clearly amazingly well composed, but despite being well composed Khmer's grates on me like Baby Shark. I normally disable them as a civ so I don't have it playing. I can definitely agree with Hungary being a great theme though.

Overall I'm glad that Khmer has had a more generally applicable and strong strategy given to them. They previously were also a very niche strategy which was fun to try once and then a little boring.

 

[Vargas1]

It's all subjective. I love the first nations soundtracks and Cree in particular is one of my favourites. I love the vocal tracks, but to a lot of people they are grating. I think/hope we can agree that all the sound tracks are clearly amazingly well composed, but despite being well composed Khmer's grates on me like Baby Shark. I normally disable them as a civ so I don't have it playing. I can definitely agree with Hungary being a great theme though.

Overall I'm glad that Khmer has had a more generally applicable and strong strategy given to them. They previously were also a very niche strategy which was fun to try once and then a little boring.

I’m biased in this comment since as I’m typing I literally have the Khmer theme stuck in my head (and can’t get rid of it), but I fully agree. I love the Cree theme and it absolutely contributes to them being my favorite civ. On the flip side, while I love playing as Khmer, the music…

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

3 monumentality GAs, voidsingers and a monopoly (16/22 on furs) later I got a turn 173 culture win (standart speed).

I've seen certain youtubers claim recently that Khmer is the number 1 OP civ now, in that they got sub 200 culture victories on deity.
Turns out, they all played with SS and monopolies turned on.

In my opinion, saying that a certain civ is OP when playing with these new modes enabled, holds no weight at all.
SS, heroes and especially monopolies enabled is OP, not Khmer per se.
Personally I've turned these modes off now, as they just make the game stupid easy when you're a decent deity player.

Example: Half a year ago I played a deity game with SS and monopolies enabled, playing as Arabia for a science victory.
I eventually won a 210-220 something SV, but had to actively sabotage my luxury improvements because I was just winning so hard on culture.
Otherwise I would have won a ~T190-200 CV without trying if I hadnt sabotaged my own tourism from luxuries.

Khmer is strong from the middle game onwards if allowed to set up all the infrastructure, but lacks the most crucial element of being considered OP - snowball potential, consistency and ease og play.
Khmer doesnt have that at all.
On that note, any sub-200 CVs on deity are really not valid if we're gonna assume turning on SS, heroes and especially monopolies.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I've seen certain youtubers claim recently that Khmer is the number 1 OP civ now, in that they got sub 200 culture victories on deity.
Turns out, they all played with SS and monopolies turned on.

In my opinion, saying that a certain civ is OP when playing with these new modes enabled, holds no weight at all.
SS, heroes and especially monopolies enabled is OP, not Khmer per se.
Personally I've turned these modes off now, as they just make the game stupid easy when you're a decent deity player.

Example: Half a year ago I played a deity game with SS and monopolies enabled, playing as Arabia for a science victory.
I eventually won a 210-220 something SV, but had to actively sabotage my luxury improvements because I was just winning so hard on culture.
Otherwise I would have won a ~T190-200 CV without trying if I hadnt sabotaged my own tourism from luxuries.

Khmer is strong from the middle game onwards if allowed to set up all the infrastructure, but lacks the most crucial element of being considered OP - snowball potential, consistency and ease og play.
Khmer doesnt have that at all.
On that note, any sub-200 CVs on deity are really not valid if we're gonna assume turning on SS, heroes and especially monopolies.

Exactly!
Not only do they list them as OP, but they have them as S Tier!
I play on standard everything and no game modes.
Usually, I don't have enough production to get them going till mid/late game.
I dunno, they are somewhere in the middle for me.
I do things much better with Brazil compared to Khmer.
YouTubers and their audience enjoy going 4 cities and Tall.
They also seem to play on Small 6 player maps on YouTube compared to Standard.

 

[reddishrecue]

I kinda saw khmer as a warmonger civ not really that op since I haven't tried them out or landed them on random. Every time I reroll and find neighboring khmer I think they'll attack me specially with their UU.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Exactly!
Not only do they list them as OP, but they have them as S Tier!
I play on standard everything and no game modes.
Usually, I don't have enough production to get them going till mid/late game.
I dunno, they are somewhere in the middle for me.
I do things much better with Brazil compared to Khmer.
YouTubers and their audience enjoy going 4 cities and Tall.
They also seem to play on Small 6 player maps on YouTube compared to Standard.

Definitely annoying when people put their pet civ in the top spot, without justifying it properly.
I saw that Boesthius for instance recently made another tier list, and the guy just keeps repeating the nonsense that Khmer is the top civ (

).
Yes Khmer is strong as hell once you get that snowball up and running, and yes Khmer can leverage monumentality super well.... but so can anyone going for religion with the right pantheon (leveraging Monumentality that is), and Khmer has no real bonus towards getting that snowball running compared to vanilla civs.

I love playing as them personally because of their uniqueness, but you are very reliant on getting the right pantheons to snart snowballing, and you need to cut corners and beeline to secure a religion like any vanilla civ does.
This RNG element (over which you have little to no control) just takes away from it, as the best civs need to be consistently strong regardless of what you do.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

- you have to spend your pantheon on it (so for example you cant spend it on for example river goddess)

Getting river goddess as Khmer is a mistake, if you choose it over an adjacency pantheon.
Yes you get 2 housing and amenities, but these are bonuses that don't kick in (or you don't notice them kicking in) until the middle and later when you start getting housing capped and have the raw yields to benefit from the amenity bonuses.
An adjency pantheon frontloads that food immediately, and will be much more beneficial to start that snowball.
Heck, you can even use that holy site food as "extra work ethic production", because you can ignore farms or other food sources for a long time while you work high production tiles such as mines or lumber mills, that otherwise contain little food.
I've tried both of them and tested around on several playthroughs (because people keep claiming that you should "get river goddess"), and River Goddess always ends up giving me the weakest game out of the two.

 

[sethjohnson]

This thread made me have a game as Khmer. Interesting starting point here - i went against conventional wisdom and didn't build a holy site on a river. Went for dance of the aurora instead plus policy card giving 100% adjacency bonus to holy site.

I think the only thing I've missed out on is the +2 housing, which isn't significant

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

This thread made me have a game as Khmer. Interesting starting point here - i went against conventional wisdom and didn't build a holy site on a river. Went for dance of the aurora instead plus policy card giving 100% adjacency bonus to holy site.

I think the only thing I've missed out on is the +2 housing, which isn't significant

This is an extreme example (Ubsunur Hollow on tundra is absolutely godlike in terms of holy site adjacencies go), but it illustrates the example well.
Why on earth would you trade 16 production, 16 faith and 16 food for a measly 2 housing and 2 amenities? (You'd still get +4 adjacency from the river spot with the pantheon and card slotted).
Makes absolute no sense, this location of yours is just so much better in every way and will skyrocket your city immediately, whereas the benefit of 2 housing and 2 amenities will take a long time to become noticeable.

The "conventional wisdom" you mentioned here is indeed conventional wisdom if you follow the advice of certain youtubers, and even the discord+reddit, but it's just so wrong.
If you can trade 2 housing and 2 amenities for immediately frontloaded high food, production and faith, it's always the better choice because it kicks in now.
And having high food, production and faith now lets you snowball super hard, as you can produce settlers and even wonders to no end, where you are effectively playing several difficulties lower.
People really need to stop automatically accepting that "conventional wisdom" is always the best, and test things out for themselves, like you did here.

Some examples of how the reddit echo chamber with its "conventional wisdom" gets perpetuated, even though it's just flat out wrong:

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/mxyw6y

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/k1rgq5

 

[Vizkan]

River goddess gets recommended for Khmer because it's reliable, not because people think it's better than an adjacency pantheon IF you have the appropriate terrain. Khmer has a start bias towards rivers and is already incentivized to put holy sites next to rivers because they get adjacency from them. Khmer has no start bias towards tundra, desert, or rainforest so it doesn't make sense to generically recommend an adjacency pantheon.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

River goddess gets recommended for Khmer because it's reliable, not because people think it's better than an adjacency pantheon IF you have the appropriate terrain. Khmer has a start bias towards rivers and is already incentivized to put holy sites next to rivers because they get adjacency from them. Khmer has no start bias towards tundra, desert, or rainforest so it doesn't make sense to generically recommend an adjacency pantheon.

Noone is arguing that you shouldn't pick River Goddess if you have nothing else to pick.
But often, you will have better choices, as you will often spawn on either of the three terrain types, or close to it, at which point you should try to pick the adjacency pantheon pretty much every time (unless the terrain is very limited obiously, as 5 tundra tiles don't warrant going Dance), and only then resort to River Goddess if the ideal adjacency pantheon is taken.
But as is clearly evident from the reddit topics I linked above (and several youtubers), they just throw River Goddess out there as if it's the best pick, not delving into the discussion of that one versus an adjacency pantheon.
Heck, some of the them even claim that an adjacency pantheon is worse ("because Khmer needs housing"), which shows a lack of understanding of these game mechanics.