Khmer is OP.

[Buktu]

Khmer is the best tundra civ now (if you get dance of the aurora)

I guess Canada has something to say about this.

 

[Pietato]

Khmer is the best tundra civ now (if you get dance of the aurora)

No.

 

[PSG]

No.

I guess every city having at least a passive production of 18food/18faith/18production doesn't cut it for you.

 

[Buktu]

I guess every city having at least a passive production of 18food/18faith/18production doesn't cut it for you.

Those are nice yields but
- you have to go holy site in every city
- you have to spend your pantheon on it (so for example you cant spend it on for example river goddess)
- you have to get a religion (which Khmer dont have a bonus torwards while still suffering from bad food/produciton early from tundra tiles) and spend a belief on this (so for example no feed the world for extra housing, food alone does not grow your cities when they dont have housing)
- for the +9 base you need to terrain to be in your favour or alot of build up
- you have to spend a card slot for double HS adjacency
- apart form the food every other civ in the game can do a similiar start as well
- you are still working weak tiles mostly until you can place woods in the late game
- its unflexible

I dont think thats nowhere near Canada who get extra yields on tundra. Take the food, for Canada a farm on tundra is 4 food on its own. Make it a triangle and get feudalism and you get 15 food from just 3 tiles. You just need a single builder for this instead of a district, a religion, a pantheon and a policy card. You can ofc get the same religon with canada as well if you want to to generate lots of faith and production. You can however chose other ways to play and still get all the extra yields. Its also not that big of a deal for Canada to miss DoA/work ethic.

 

[agonistes]

Probably should have led with this statement. Khmer are definitely strong now, but strong doesn’t mean overpowered. They are a lot of fun though, and also quite versatile, which is great - since old Khmer was basically locked in to one way to play.

Old Khmer was certainly not locked into one way play. Like Russia, it is one of the most versatile civs in the game.

Also, it has always been pretty strong.

Its not just the size of the cities, its how fast you can get them big, and the synergy it has with certain religious abilities.

 

[PSG]

Those are nice yields but
- you have to go holy site in every city
- you have to spend your pantheon on it (so for example you cant spend it on for example river goddess)
- you have to get a religion (which Khmer dont have a bonus torwards while still suffering from bad food/produciton early from tundra tiles) and spend a belief on this (so for example no feed the world for extra housing, food alone does not grow your cities when they dont have housing)
- for the +9 base you need to terrain to be in your favour or alot of build up
- you have to spend a card slot for double HS adjacency
- apart form the food every other civ in the game can do a similiar start as well
- you are still working weak tiles mostly until you can place woods in the late game
- its unflexible

I dont think thats nowhere near Canada who get extra yields on tundra. Take the food, for Canada a farm on tundra is 4 food on its own. Make it a triangle and get feudalism and you get 15 food from just 3 tiles. You just need a single builder for this instead of a district, a religion, a pantheon and a policy card. You can ofc get the same religon with canada as well if you want to to generate lots of faith and production. You can however chose other ways to play and still get all the extra yields. Its also not that big of a deal for Canada to miss DoA/work ethic.

You have to work for Khmer to get the Aurora Pantheon, but you have to with Canada as well. Russia certainly has a easy path to one of the first three religions, but of the three times I have tested out Khmer-Tundra I was able to get Aurora twice and there have been times I was unable to get Aurora with Russia. Getting a religion with Khmer is not a problem since your faith production with 2 holy sites should crush any other civ besides maybe Mali. Just brute force buy a Great Prophet with faith and get work ethic churning as early as possible.

As far as other tiles go I stack Groves one tile apart as much as possible. The bonuses from a grove stack and the food/culture and faith from generic wooded tundra tiles gets to be insane especially when it's combined with the Khmer temple building and the dark gods governor. Don't have to build much other than holy sites, aqueducts & sanctuaries (and their buildings) to crush. In fact other districts can get in the way so plan well. Don't bash me until you try it.

 

[Buktu]

You have to work for Khmer to get the Aurora Pantheon, but you have to with Canada as well.

Thats true BUT canada does not need that pantheon to have a great tundra game. They get nice yields on basically every tunda tile once they imrpove it. Who cares if you have 1 food as base yield when you get +3 with a farm? Who cares if a woods tile has just 1 production when you get +4 production from a lumber mill?

Getting a religion with Khmer is not a problem since your faith production with 2 holy sites should crush any other civ besides maybe Mali. Just brute force buy a Great Prophet with faith and get work ethic churning as early as possible.

To be fair every civ with tundra, DoA and 2 holy sites has alot of faith and can buy a prophet. It takes longer to build those 2 HS in Tundra though since there is pretty low base production, low food (so you can work even less tiles) and more barbs (so you need more military). Canada gets bonus food/production with their first improvements so they can build their HS faster than Khmer in Tundra. Russia gets bonus production and half price HS with more prophet points so they will have theirs even faster than Canada or Khmer (and they also get more bonus faith than khmer). So there is nothing that makes Khemer better than Russia or Canada in this regard.

As far as other tiles go I stack Groves one tile apart as much as possible. The bonuses from a grove stack and the food/culture and faith from generic wooded tundra tiles gets to be insane especially when it's combined with the Khmer temple building and the dark gods governor. Don't have to build much other than holy sites, aqueducts & sanctuaries (and their buildings) to crush.

Preserve do provide nice yields but you can just get one per city. So the amount of good tiles is quite limited in number. And its quite expensive to set up. A perserve with a grove gets you a maximum of 12 food - thats exactly the same amount of food you get from a farm triangle as canada once you have feudalism with only the cost of a builder. Also preserves dont give any production until you get sanctuaries in the late game (modern era) canada however gets 2 bonus production on every single mine or lumber will which you unlock way earlier in the game.
The prasat gets you nice culture thats true. But Canada can also generate nice culture with their UI in tundra. And you dont need to build up a HS and two buildings in it to get it. A single builder charge is enough to get you 6 culture per city. You can raise it to 10 with an adjacent stadium. (If you plan it right you can get 3 or 4 UIs adjacent to a single stadium plus you can get great .) If we just stick with the base 6 culture ou needed 12 pops to be at an equal level, 20 pops if you add a stadium. Even your HS and grove provide only 30 food which equals only 15 pops. You also need time and housing to grow. (Lets neglect the fact that you need tons of amenities to keep 20 pops content so you dont loose any of the culture yields and you didnt even mention
The voidsingers push every faith civ hard and compensate for the lack of campusses and theater squares in your build. But its hard to say that Khmer is best civ for tundra in general if it requiers a special mode to be active and several conditions to be met if other civs dont need any of these to shine in tundra games.

Don't bash me until you try it.

I'm not trying to bash you. Infact this strategy can work really well. The first game I played after the april patch was kind of a tundra Khmer game (I even streamed the game on youtube) since I spawned near Siberia on the new earth map. Even without DoA it was quite a good game and a fast victory.
I still think at least Canada and probably Russia are better tundra civs than the Khmer because they are way more flexible and need less things to work out in your favour when it comes to tundra games.

 

[Pietato]

Old Khmer was certainly not locked into one way play. Like Russia, it is one of the most versatile civs in the game.

Also, it has always been pretty strong.

Its not just the size of the cities, its how fast you can get them big, and the synergy it has with certain religious abilities.

Old Khmer was the weakest civ AND was locked into moronic suicide missionary play.

 

[Vargas1]

Old Khmer was certainly not locked into one way play. Like Russia, it is one of the most versatile civs in the game.

Also, it has always been pretty strong.

Its not just the size of the cities, its how fast you can get them big, and the synergy it has with certain religious abilities.

I really don't see this. My impression was that Khmer was generally thought of as among the weakest civs, and with good reason. There was no synergy with its old abilities; that was the primary criticism of them and the reason the changes were so welcomed.

 

[PSG]

Thats true BUT canada does not need that pantheon to have a great tundra game. They get nice yields on basically every tunda tile once they imrpove it. Who cares if you have 1 food as base yield when you get +3 with a farm? Who cares if a woods tile has just 1 production when you get +4 production from a lumber mill?



To be fair every civ with tundra, DoA and 2 holy sites has alot of faith and can buy a prophet. It takes longer to build those 2 HS in Tundra though since there is pretty low base production, low food (so you can work even less tiles) and more barbs (so you need more military). Canada gets bonus food/production with their first improvements so they can build their HS faster than Khmer in Tundra. Russia gets bonus production and half price HS with more prophet points so they will have theirs even faster than Canada or Khmer (and they also get more bonus faith than khmer). So there is nothing that makes Khemer better than Russia or Canada in this regard.



Preserve do provide nice yields but you can just get one per city. So the amount of good tiles is quite limited in number. And its quite expensive to set up. A perserve with a grove gets you a maximum of 12 food - thats exactly the same amount of food you get from a farm triangle as canada once you have feudalism with only the cost of a builder. Also preserves dont give any production until you get sanctuaries in the late game (modern era) canada however gets 2 bonus production on every single mine or lumber will which you unlock way earlier in the game.
The prasat gets you nice culture thats true. But Canada can also generate nice culture with their UI in tundra. And you dont need to build up a HS and two buildings in it to get it. A single builder charge is enough to get you 6 culture per city. You can raise it to 10 with an adjacent stadium. (If you plan it right you can get 3 or 4 UIs adjacent to a single stadium plus you can get great .) If we just stick with the base 6 culture ou needed 12 pops to be at an equal level, 20 pops if you add a stadium. Even your HS and grove provide only 30 food which equals only 15 pops. You also need time and housing to grow. (Lets neglect the fact that you need tons of amenities to keep 20 pops content so you dont loose any of the culture yields and you didnt even mention
The voidsingers push every faith civ hard and compensate for the lack of campusses and theater squares in your build. But its hard to say that Khmer is best civ for tundra in general if it requiers a special mode to be active and several conditions to be met if other civs dont need any of these to shine in tundra games.



I'm not trying to bash you. Infact this strategy can work really well. The first game I played after the april patch was kind of a tundra Khmer game (I even streamed the game on youtube) since I spawned near Siberia on the new earth map. Even without DoA it was quite a good game and a fast victory.
I still think at least Canada and probably Russia are better tundra civs than the Khmer because they are way more flexible and need less things to work out in your favour when it comes to tundra games.

Thank you for your comments and I agree with much of what you said, but something I left out and has not been considered is with stacking stacking preserves in Tundra. Once you have groves stacked well you will want to get rid of most of your lumber mills, mines and camps and this disfavors Canada more than other civs. With that said Canada is more resilient, but Khmer is better if everything goes right and I am at the stage of playing where I am more about seeing how fast I can win rather than playing a game of constant struggles.

 

[Buktu]

I left out and has not been considered is with stacking stacking preserves in Tundra. Once you have groves stacked well you will want to get rid of most of your lumber mills, mines and camps and this disfavors Canada more than other civs.

Stacking preserves is great, especially in trundra where you have bad yields and less options. But then again if you stack preserves you have 4 to 5 tiles per city that you cant improve (a preserve triangle has 13 tiles next to preserves for 3 cities, a diamond has 16 to 18 for 4). And there may be tiles without forrest or hills. If you have 18 to 36 tiles per city 4 to 5 still leave lots of tiles where you can place improvements. Also for all the tiles with just 1 grove adjacent I might perfer the improvements yields over the groves ones. +4 production from a lumbermill or mine can have a bigger impact in your game than +2 food, culture and faith. This is especially true if there is a strategic (Canada extracts 100% more of these per turn on Tundra so its extra profitable for Canada) or luxury resource (maybe even one you have a monopoly on?) on the tile that I can sell to the AI to generate bonus gold. Once you get sanctuaries this might change but thats also the point in the game where you can start to spam forrests everywhere and get a ton of new lumbermills up.

Also since Canada does not need the food from preserves as much as every one else in tundra I would skip these early in order to get my TS up earlier. You get culture from these as well, depending on the CS you find probably even more than from preserves. A nice side effect here is that you start to ramp up tourism which you convert into diplomatic favour while also denying great works to the AI. Less great works means leass cultre for them so in the end you need less tourism to win the game. So with this you have a good set up for a culture or diplomatic victory (and you can even sell the diplomatic favour for gold if you focus on a CV to speed up your game even more). Since I can get my national parks from mounties I dont need the faith from preserves either if I play this way.
You can also choose to go for mass campusses instead of TS and play a science game (or just a build a few to compensate for the lack of science you have in any game you play without the voidsingers).

With that said Canada is more resilient, but Khmer is better if everything goes right and I am at the stage of playing where I am more about seeing how fast I can win rather than playing a game of constant struggles.

Khmer might have a slight edge in win times when SS are enabled, I am not 100% sure about this. (I would really like to see a test about this. Sadly I dont have time to play multiple maps twice though. Maybe even 3 times as I would like to see Russia in there as well. I think there are reported SVs in the 120s or 130s (Standart speed) with them and SS enabled in this forum (pre patch though) which seem really hard to beat tbh.)
But to be the best civ in a terrain I would 100% choose the one that does not rely on additional modes and some luck to shine even if there are Civs who can win faster under special conditions.

 

[agonistes]

I really don't see this. My impression was that Khmer was generally thought of as among the weakest civs, and with good reason. There was no synergy with its old abilities; that was the primary criticism of them and the reason the changes were so welcomed.

Khmer has a brick ton of synergy.

Russia used to be thought of as weak too.*
*edit: but never by me - I've been espousing Russia as a monster since the game came out

Old Khmer was the weakest civ AND was locked into moronic suicide missionary play.

Strongly disagree. Khmer's growth rate is probably even faster than Russia's. And was. Khmer is Russia's little brother.

I have no idea why people would suicide missionaries as Khmer. That's like suggesting that when playing as Russia, you should be behind in techs and culture to fully utilize the trade routes.

Abilities are options, they aren't directions on how to play.

edit: khmer has long been on my list of civs to avoid playing as because they are too strong.

 

[Vargas1]

Khmer has a brick ton of synergy.

Russia used to be thought of as weak too.*
*edit: but never by me - I've been espousing Russia as a monster since the game came out




Strongly disagree. Khmer's growth rate is probably even faster than Russia's. And was. Khmer is Russia's little brother.

I have no idea why people would suicide missionaries as Khmer. That's like suggesting that when playing as Russia, you should be behind in techs and culture to fully utilize the trade routes.

Abilities are options, they aren't directions on how to play.

edit: khmer has long been on my list of civs to avoid playing as because they are too strong.

What synergies do you think they had, and why did you think them too strong?

And when has anyone thought Russia weak, especially after the changes to Work Ethic? They have consistently been viewed as a top civ.

Russia’s trade route ability can be ignored because the rest of their kit is so strong. It’s weird to compare that to what was clearly Khmer’s most impactful ability - the rest of their kit amounted to a slightly better siege unit (lol), modest additional growth, and an incentive that actively worked against good holy site adjacencies.

Abilities are options; that’s the whole point of discussing them. Any civ can play any style, but that doesn’t mean they are equally suited to them. If I spawn Gandhi on a plains hill next to two horses, I can rush my neighbor and snowball from there - that doesn’t mean Gandhi has a bonus towards domination.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

And when has anyone thought Russia weak, especially after the changes to Work Ethic? They have consistently been viewed as a top civ.

The only time I've ever seen anyone suggest that was way way back in the day before the game was released and they introduced the original civs in their first looks. People assumed Russia would be one of the weaker civs, but upon release, Russia has always been considered one of the top civs. Even back in vanilla they were so formidable, and it seems with every expansion and update they kept getting better and better (barring this last update of course).

 

[Pietato]

Khmer has a brick ton of synergy.

Russia used to be thought of as weak too.*
*edit: but never by me - I've been espousing Russia as a monster since the game came out




Strongly disagree. Khmer's growth rate is probably even faster than Russia's. And was. Khmer is Russia's little brother.

I have no idea why people would suicide missionaries as Khmer. That's like suggesting that when playing as Russia, you should be behind in techs and culture to fully utilize the trade routes.

Abilities are options, they aren't directions on how to play.

edit: khmer has long been on my list of civs to avoid playing as because they are too strong.

Russia has been considered the top civ (or very near it) since the game came out...

 

[Ollof]

I've played a few games with both Khmer & Russia recently, only one time with Khmer spawning on tundra. I've found that the cheaper Lavra trumps Khmer when it comes to victory speed as I've been set up for the game much quicker. And Khmer tends to spawn more near rainforest, I find sacred path a bit ineffective as rainforest placement can be a bit inconsistent so work ethic is usually more powerful for tundra/desert civs.

 

[Datian]

I don't understand why there should be one civ above all others, is there a special prize for the one who identified the fotm civ and convinced everyone he was right ?

I'm not a part of it anyway and that's why I play a civ to its strengths, even when it might not be optimal. Hence Mali with desert folklore, and not religious settlements.
With Khmer, I pick river goddess : the fun for me is having giant happy cities, with unending growth, and see faith and culture come with them.

Maybe it's not super optimal, maybe tundra pantheon can be stronger in the right configuration, but I don't care, I have more fun with my 30+ cities (and I tend to believe it is very, very strong)

 

[MarigoldRan]

I've played a few games with both Khmer & Russia recently, only one time with Khmer spawning on tundra. I've found that the cheaper Lavra trumps Khmer when it comes to victory speed as I've been set up for the game much quicker. And Khmer tends to spawn more near rainforest, I find sacred path a bit ineffective as rainforest placement can be a bit inconsistent so work ethic is usually more powerful for tundra/desert civs.

Yeah, but rainforest tiles are just better than desert or tundra. Your Holy Sites might be +5, instead of +7, but you get a lot more food from the rainforest, which means more pop, which means more prod.

BBG immediately balanced Khmer for MP by making their food bonus a fixed +2 instead of based on adjacency.

 

[Ollof]

Yeah, but rainforest tiles are just better than desert or tundra. Your Holy Sites might be +5, instead of +7, but you get a lot more food from the rainforest, which means more pop, which means more prod.

BBG immediately balanced Khmer for MP by making their food bonus a fixed +2 instead of based on adjacency.

True, but you don't need big pop in most cities only enough for 2/3 districts as the game is still favourable to wide empires.

 

[PSG]

Yeah, but rainforest tiles are just better than desert or tundra. Your Holy Sites might be +5, instead of +7, but you get a lot more food from the rainforest, which means more pop, which means more prod.

BBG immediately balanced Khmer for MP by making their food bonus a fixed +2 instead of based on adjacency.

If Khmer lost the adjacency for food then the tundra strat goes out the window. For the record you are going to get a minimum of 8 adj on a tundra river and can easily get 9 with just 2 forests or 11 if you get the full 6 so you are going to have +16 to +22 adj aka prod/food/faith (instead of the +10 to +14 you seem to be expecting) and then getting groves up and positioning so you get stacked effects happens fast. You can also build a line of cities at the tundra line so your main cities still have plenty of "normal" times to use. Tundra + forests also is typically breathtaking as well.