Balancing the new khmer

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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On several forums, threads, streams and games, everyone can see how broken khmer are now, faster farming, no building requirements for castle up, has ended with khmer hitting consistently in good level FC at 12 or 13 minutes and start booming with 2 more town centers immediately, they have more vills at min 19 than cuman 2 town centers feudal boom, their land boom is as strong as viking boom, that is huge, having in consideration the strong army composition they can create in late game and early imperial, no other civ can keep up with them.

Any paladin civ can’t compete with them, maybe only imperial camel, but it takes time to gather enough numbers, current team games are always a khmer pkt with early elite elephants+plums or any other ranged unit, that doesn’t need to be on imperial, since the eles can clean up a player in no time.

Their economy is so strong, even in 1x1, not even trushing or fwd is an option vs a civ that can hit fc in min 12 and build a siege workshop right away or making one stable and get few eles and clean all ur feudal stuff, countering a civ like that ain’t easy, since they can switch to HC, halb, cannons, or just boom with few scorps+monks or eles.

Khmer were a heavy civ, giving economic bonus to a civ like that with fast units was a huge mistake, you just killed paladin line and added a new meta for the game.

Options:

Slow down their farming like the old mayan farming nerf, for those who ignored it mayans had the slower farmers in the game. -Seems like the best nerf to an unintentional buff on their food gathering.

Remove their elephant speed bonus, change tusk swords UT so they add that +15% speed after they research it, decrease attack bonus to +2 and increase price to 300 wood 450 gold. - instead of going full eles from the start they will need to make a castle giving more time to other civs to react.

Remove bombard cannon from their tec tree.- having this unit makes them stronger on a field they are already strong. (scorps+halbs)

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they’re fine. some civs are slightly better, some are slightly worse. khmer are strong but not OP.
if you nefed them you would also have to nerf aztecs, mayans, britons, persians, chinese and slavs along the way

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Well hitting castle in 12 min with instant 2 more tc ???
How ? Do you have any vid or replay? Cause i doubt they can do that maybe 13 min with 2 more TCs but i dont belive 12 min + TCs is possible

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I’ve tried to adress the problem here:

https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/14611/

Among other balance changes, I took away crop rotation and gold shaft mining.
Please, take a look to the whole mode and give me a feedback

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fclol
fclol1280Ă—264 83.2 KB

There are faster times, just because you can’t do it, it doesn’t mean its impossible, there are plenty recs, take ur time and spec some games with 24++ level to see whats what, it wont take that much time since everyone is picking khmer non stop.

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That doesn’t slow down their boom, it just makes them renewing farms faster in late game, at that point most of the games are done or decided.

The main point is to reduce their strength in early imp, since their boom is faster than all the 33 civs left, in fact vikings would perish against them, since they have no unit to counter elite eles, zeker does not do that bad but it needs 6 mins more in boom time.

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First: it’s already the case Two: the fact it buffed Khmer farming overall was 100% intended.

And yet despite the new trend of everyone making tier lists, absolutely no one put them in S tier, not deemed them overpowered.

I doubt people go “full ele” because it would be asking for the enemy to wololo everything. Also, your change would kill Khmer eles and make them only usable much later, while being barely better than Viet ones.

Ah, if you only there was a dude with a long stick to skewer the eles, you could call that a pikeman, the game would be so much more balanced right?

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I am talking mostly about team games, so ur top tier list has no room here. You should also go and spec or actually play the game to know how khmer are dominating in +2200 level games.

One thing is not walking to the mill and other is gathering and storing the food instantly, that is what actually makes their farms OP, usually its about timing, khmer farmers allow you to keep the production without waiting for the normal timing other farmers work, so they have actually 2 farming bonuses.

Then again i am talking about team games, monks are trash when they have ranged units to support, like i said the ranged units doesn’t even need to be elite or imperial. And last viking pikes doesn’t defeat khmer elephants not even with chieftains, also few cheap scorps and there you go, you don’t even need heavy scorp at that point.

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Civs are only ever balanced for 1v1, and Team balance is only ever considered if it will not impact 1v1.

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ALL battle elephants got a -2 attack nerf in DE specifically because of that.

All due respect but given how stupid the team matchmaking is I doubt that Khmer bonuses (or anything else for that matter) is to be held more responsible than the fact people are basically forced to smurf by the game. If we talk about those done through the game browser, then I don’t see more Khmer than usual. You even get to see people tha go Burmese to make eles.

Yes, and that’s why there is a built-in farming penalty to compensate.

Hmmm your team can help too. And if monks are that bad why do I still see them in tg? Why does the Teuton team bonus exists?

That’s new. Especially since both the HP boost and Chieftain makes them close to Halbs. I know trash units aren’t the best in tg but they are miles better than losing right? (and anyway palas too are pop efficient against halbs)

But if you’re slav then you don’t get eles :slight_smile:

Don’t completely agree with that but anyway you can see the reason the khmer bonus wasn’t deemed too impactful: team games tend to go to post-imp, when the no drop off upside becomes better than the SLav bonus since there will be T90 farm everywhere… but it’s the point of the game where everyone is drowning in food anyway.It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got 1 bajilion or 2 bajilion of food, your pop cap will prevent you from spending everything.

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they miss 8 bonus against elephants compared to halbs while also have 2 less base attack

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i play at ~2k2 tg as well and its so anoying to play vs khmer every team game. If you cant kill him before he reaches late imp you have no counter to it. ~20 xbows are enough to kill any halb spam and elephants are way too tanky for them anyway.

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Khmer are indeed OP, the only change IMO they need is that the farm rate should be adjusted such that it collects as fast as the average of 8 perfectly placed farms around 1 TC, but not any faster. Perhaps get rid of the instant drop-off, such that farmers drop off every 10 food.

I think they might have been buffed too soon, before DE they were only bad on arabia 1v1, but haven’t been explored well enough. They were (and still are) a great pocket civ especially lategame.

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That’s right, I forgot that it only gives more bonuses vs cav and camels, not eles. However it’s literally the first time I see people complaining about a civ being weak to elephants. For instance Turks with just spears and camels would be free ele food and yet it doesn’t seem to be the case. So the Viking pikeman really sounds good enough to deal with eles.

I have no trouble finding games where no one picks Khmer even though they could:

Games with Khmer in them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZX7iAj3tho The Max random into Khmer. He doesn’t topscore and he is even the one who collected the least food (at 1:20:44)
After a series of games where we don’t get to see Khmer, in the last game we indeed see the situation you describe, and both pockets are Khmer. The game doesn’t go late so we don’t get to see what would have happened, what we did see is that Nicov went straight for knights, which proved better than Mr Yo’s decision to do a few elephants, that barely caught up to anything.

In this one Nili randoms into Khmer and builds a full cavalier army. If eles were so over the top, who in their right mind would make an average unit instead?

Then what is the point of the change? They are just going to be a crutch for people who don’t know how to place farms and that’s all.

3 years = too soon?

It was because eles had such good damage, and it’s for these reasons they were nerfed to have the same attack as palas. The balance has already been made.

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the problem with khmer is that their deathball is too strong, far stronger than any other in the game.
This isnt a big deal for better players as it can be prevented, but it seriuosly degrades those lower elo boom fest games taking all the fun away from those newer players because any late game fight will be crushed by the khmer army comp.

assume everyone booms for 30 min, then suddenly 30 elefants backed by 20 scrobs arrive. They destroy ANY army in the game. Even if your halbs traded cost efficiently, it doesnt matter when you lose your hole base because it is impossible to fight this army popeffienctly. You get promtly swept of the map in 5 minute and the game ends.

If it was mognols their mangudai would atleast be stopped by defensive buildings, not so elefants.
Siege cant help against the khmer scrobs because those tank elefentans will chase them down and the scorps slaughter anything else.

All these points do barely matter in competitive play. They matter alot for the thousands of casuals. Khmer need a nerf because they are too devastating in noob vs noob games only.

Khmer should lose hunsbadry

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That is because Monks hard counter Elephants so hard, that once your enemy has enough Monks (around 5), it becomes cost-inefficient to even train Elephants.

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thats the worst khmer nerf idea I’ve ever read

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The problem is that even if you get rid of the Khmer deathball, you will still have to deal with the Korean, Celt, Ethiopian, Persian, Portuguese, Burmese deathball… (and I’m forgetting some)

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I don’t want to get rid of it, just want their deathball more in line with the power of other strong contenders.Portuguese deathball is a joke Pop efficiently wise in comparison.

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The Port deathball also includes mass bombard tower spam so it compensate for the fact their units indeed aren’t the best use of your pop slots. To come back into subject: why husbandry? I guess a deathball of ballista eles will still rekt everything and that you will just have 10% more time before they reach your base, but it doesn’t sounds meaningful to me…

1 Like