Hey! Here is my draft on the Khmer Empire.
And I actually enjoy doing these, as it lets me dig through some history texts and learn more about these Civs than I knew before.
Tried to keep the AoE2 flare they have but also add their own AoE4 flare to it.
Khmer
Canal Infrastructure, Elephants, Economy
Difficulty: 2/3
+Bonuses
- Forestry already unlocked for Villagers
- Has a unique building; Baray
- Has a unique building; Canals
- Temples cost 100 stone instead of 200 wood.
- University cost 225 stone instead of 450 wood.
- Has Unique Unit: Worker Elephants instead of Battering Rams.
- Has Unique Unit: Ballista Elephants instead of Springals.
- Landmarks are not restricted to age but are limited to 3 landmarks.
+ Canal Infrastructure:
- Canals can be built by Worker Elephants (Cost same as palisade, taking up 2x2 Tile space)
- Farms built within canal influence make Farmers not carry food but rather add it directly to the stockpile without any drop-off but work 5% slower.
- Villagers drop off 4% more resources at Mining/Lumber camp under canal influence.
- Canals connecting the Market with a Resource, makes the market generate +1 extra resource each time villager drops off their resource to a connected Farm, Mill, Lumber Camp, or Mining camp.
- Houses connected to Canals give +2 population.
- Research and Production buildings connected to canals have research and production time reduced by 10%
- Canals need to be connected to a Baray to have any effect.
+Unique Landmarks
- Koh Ker: Increases movement speed for all Worker elephants and functions as a Monestary from Castle Age.
- Baray Teuk Thla; Reduces cost of villagers by 25%, also functions as Bayar
- Bayon Temple: All unit and buildings’ vision range increased by 30% (except for scout and towers increased by 15%)
- Prasat Preah Vihear: All resources gathered within its influence give Gold equal to 10% of the resource dropped off.
- Wat Phnom: Religious building that grants you 1 relic, produces a relic every 10 minutes to a maximum of 3.
- Banteay Chhmar: Functions as a Barrack and Archery range with reduced cost on units by 35%
+Wonder: Angkor Wat
+Buildings
- Baray (I, 100S): Unique building that provides farms under its influence increased gathering rate 5% (Reservoirs upgrade increases this to 10%)
- Canals (I, 15W): Unique building that provides bonuses to buildings within its influence. Additional segment cost 5 wood. (Constructed the same way as Walls)
- Canal Bridge (I, 25W): Allows units to pass through canals. (Constructed the same way as gates, but anyone can cross it)
+Units
- Worker Elephant (I, 300F): A Unique unit that can construct canals, and double as a battering ram with its Siege damage and its extra hp pool. It can also be used to tear down a group of trees with a single hit, to assist villagers with logging, or make paths through a forest. Has no armor and is weak against Villagers and Spears. (counts as Cavalry unit, and villagers do Spear damage against it).
- Ballista Elephant (III, 600F 250W 250G): Specialised Heavy armor anti-siege Cavalry, that has a springald mounted to it. Can be upgraded to double springalds
+Technologies
- Khmer Bokator (II, 100F 100G): Villagers and Spearmen do +2 Damage. Researched at Barracks.
- Angkor Masonry (II, 100S 250G): Stone structures are built 30% faster with 50% more health. Researched at Mining Camp.
- Reservoirs (III, 150S, 350G): Increases Baray influence effect and range by 5%. Researched at Baray
- Elephant Handling (III, 100F 250G): Increases the movement speed of Elephant units by 15%. Researched at Stables
- Improved Waterways (III, 150W 100G): Reduces cost of Canals by 50%. Researched at Town Center
- Pradal Serey (III, 200F 275G): Villagers do +6 melee damage against Infantry and Wild Animals. Researched at Town Center.
- Stronger Shovels (III, 300W 250G): Villagers can now construct canals and Canal bridges. Researched at Blacksmith
- Siege Elephants (III, 750F 500G): Worker elephants gain 50% more HP and +15 Ranged Armor
- Tusk Swords (IV, 200W, 300G): +3 attack to Elephant melee damage. Researched at Stables.
- Elephant Handling (IV, 500G): Siege and Worker Elephants movement speed increased by 13% Researched at University.
- Double Springald (IV, 700F 400G): Ballista Elephant fires 2 projectiles instead of 1. Researched at University.
- Reinforced Canals (IV, 500S 500G): Canals now cost stone instead of wood. (10S + 3S for additional segments) Has 100% more Health and has Torch damage resistance by +10. Increases the radius of Canal influence. Researched at University.
Additional Notes:
The architecture should be similar to what we already have in AoE 2, with exception of Houses and Military buildings being made of wood. The houses are typical of those you find in South East Asia, even today. Being elevated from the ground
Naval units would be similar to how they look in AoE 2, the Junk-style ships.
Language progression: They would mostly hold the Old Khmer language, which is divided into 2, Pre-Angkorian (611-802) and Angkorian (802-1431) to the eventual pre-colonial Khmer Language. The difference between Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian is hardly noticeable, as they were pretty much the same. Developing into the more familiar modern pre-colonial Khmer Language in the imperial age.
Landmark references:
Koh Ker: Was briefly the capital of the Khmer Empire. At its peak, a great variety of statues were chiseled, many being plundered and stolen sold as stolen art in modern times.
Baray Teuk Thla: Also known as The West Baray**,** is one of the largest hand-cut reservoirs on the planet. These were not dug down as a whole but rather built up as tall earthen dikes. Played an important role for the Khmer to control the irrigation for farming.
Bayon Temple: Plays an important role in Khmer culture, it marks the shift from Hindu and Indian style culture, into a Buddhist one. The king at the time was a staunch Buddhist and started a process of shifting the religion into Buddhism. He build this temple unlike most temples of the time, without any walls, to signify that anyone, noble or peasant alike is welcomed. In contrast to the Hindu caste and class system.
Prasat Preah Vihear: This is a temple that has been fought over between modern Thailand and Cambodia for many years. A temple dedicated to the Hindu god of Shiva. Finished around the 11th century.
Wat Phnom: A wealthy old lady named Penh happened to find a floating koki tree in the river, when she and the villagers recovered the tree they found four Buddha statues and another statue in the form of Vishnu. She assigned the villagers to build a small hill and a wooden temple on top. This eventually grew and got built into the grand temple of today
Banteay Chhmar: This temple holds the story of how Prince Srindrakumara was protected two times by four companions in arms, against Rahu and another on a military campaign against Champa, The Four statues, with one of the princes that was placed centrally in the chapel.
Wonder: Angkor Wat: literal meaning being Temple City, is the iconic temple complex that marked the height of the Khmer empire. The temple is designed to represent Mount Meru, an important mountain the Hindu mythology similar to Mount Olympus in Greek mythology. With a large moat of more than 5km represents the Hindu mythological sea of milk. The temple held a very important role in Khmer governance as the Khmer king was seen as a God-king, and the construction of this temple was to firmly place the image of the God-King unto its people.
Buildings:
Canals:
* Health: 200
Canal Bridge:
* Health: 200
Units
Worker Elephant:
* Health: 700/1050
* Attack: 8 melee; bonus against Buildings +70 (Tusks)
* Range: 1 tiles.
* Rate of fire: 2.75s (Tusks)
* Armor: 0/15 Speed: 1 tiles/s
Worker Elephants Function as a light-battering ram and can be Upgraded into Siege Elephants in Castle Age to better stand against defensive buildings such as castles.
Ballista Elephant stats:
* Health: 250/290
* Attack: 30 melee; 30 ranged; Bonus against Siege +90 (Springald)
* Rate of fire: 1.7s melee; 4s ranged;
* Range: 1tiles (tusks), 10 Tiles (Springald)
* Armor: 3/4
* Speed: 0.88 tiles/s
Ballista Elephants are counted as Cavalry, so they suffer the same penalties as cavalry against spears and benefit from the same Cavalry upgrades. This makes them more vulnerable against Ranged units as they don’t have extra range armor, but don’t take bonus damage against anti-siege weapons.
Write-up:
The Khmer are an economy-focused civilization that plays around a lot almost like a city builder. Where Canals play an important role in infrastructure. If you ever played old RTS, such as Warcraft 1, one used to have to build Roads and make space for new Buildings. While Khmer doesn’t necessarily need Canals to be able to build buildings, they provide a beneficial boon to all building types. Khmer was called a Hydraulic state, for the reason that they mastered water and irrigation to an extraordinary level.
Building canals shouldn’t be any more complicated than building walls, only here they have a small radius which any building connect to gets a beneficiary boon and needs to be connected to a Baray. The canals do block unit movement but are rather easy to destroy and do not function well as walls, with low HP pool and no resistance to siege initially.
The canal bridges are also always open for any friendly or opponent units to cross. The Canals themselves would interact pretty much how walls interact with the terrain and are about the size of a stone wall (Imagine somewhat akin to a stonewall foundation), so it does require some planning to construct them optimally.
Elephants also play a huge role in SouthEast Asian culture, and were used heavily as a beast of burden, assisting in Construction works, Quarries, but also more noticeably at Foresty, commonly used to haul logs and bring down trees. Hence I wanted them to be able to tear down trees but at a far more effective rate than a single villager.
This also gives the Khmer a unique trait, allowing them to make paths through forests rather quickly if the opponent relies too heavily on them for defense.
Khmer is a fascinating empire that rose quickly in the early middle ages and disappeared into history leaving some of the magnificent stone structures of mankind, after its slow collapse over the late middle-age. It once boasted the highest population in the world at that point in time, due to the great city of Angkor, and their mastery of the waterworks, which allowed them to quadruply the yield of crops, booming their population. I also wanted to replicate their AoE2 feature where they do not require buildings to age up, in the form of freely choosing between the 6 landmarks to a total of 3. Allowing them some flexibility in their build orders depending on what their planning to go for.
If you liked reading through this, I also made one for the Japanese [Suggestion] AoE4 New Civilization concept: Japanese
Next up: Korea
