BTW: I finally added “eco balance” to my graph! Now civs like Teutons, Aztecs (and even Khmer) are better represented as they need less investment to “balance” the buildorder I used for my calc. Note that it is for most civs actually a negative investment, as they still benefit from the free food harvested before. Therefore they can have more TCs which are the biggest eco investment - this way at this stage of the game they have actually a better than “balanced” eco because of the use of previously collected ressources.
Thanks for the detailed answer!
I guess that’s the only option to make such a list without putting months of work into it (and you probably already invested a lot of time for this) but at the same time I wonder how representative that is. For a lot of civs would use specific BOs for their boom. For instance besides the already mentioned Khmer you have Malay with a very different one (and I mean regular fc not the feudal mini boom one), Ehtiopians (since you don’t need to mine gold you can go 23+2), Italians/Tartars/Lithuanians (you need less farms) and many more.
And the crucial point here is that what these civs are different isn’t simply that you save res overall but the timings of these which allow you to execute different builds. Ofc the circumstances play an important role here. I’m not sure what your reason for putting 4tc boom as baseline bc you’d need to mine or buy stone for that. This will favor civs like saracens, sicilians or bulgarians and disfavor others. While that’s not a problem as such imo they best way to approach is to keep as close as possible to standard game scenarios (3 tc boom). The map probably should be something like arena (you’re obviously right that black forest doesnt make sense here) as that’s a boom map that features standard resources.
Sure so let’s take that specifc example. Granted if you assume 4 tc boom that’s a bit more difficult with khmer as you don’t build a market to buy stone. But straight off 4tc boom isn’t the most efficient boom setup either way. You have to go late to castle age to afford constant production and eco upgrades. What people usually do for 4 tc boom is build the third tc on stone and make 4th one after that.
So you say as Khmer you make the buildings later on instead of earlier so you delay the resource investment. While that’s true note that this is about timing. Saving 350 wood in the early game is huge whereas investing that when you have 30 vils on wood anyways (for instance when you are on the way to imp) isn’t a lot. This bonus combined with instant food trickle/faster farmers does not only allow you to save this min feudal and castle age it also allows you to go faster or as fast up to feudal as any other civ.
That’s why the 24+0 boom is kinda unmatched (except for Malay). This even outbooms cumans. Ofc cumans have more res when they arrive in castle to make a push or go fast imp but that’s another topic. However, with that khmer build you’ll have three tcs up before cumans click up to castle age even with that market abuse BO you mentioned. And you can totally sustain the production from 3 tcs. What you do here is you basically have 3 vils on wood until you click up to castle (apart from some extra vils on stragglers here and there) and after that you send vils from under tc and gold to second woodline. This let’s you get to castle age really quick and you have plenty of wood to get 2 tcs and enough food to sustain constant vil production. Ofc, you need deer for that but I guess if we talk boom scenario we can assume you push your standard 3 or 4 deers.
You mentioned chinese would be equally strong. The point here again is what scenario we are talking. On arena for instance chinese boom is okayish but really nothing compared to the top boom civs bc you lack food to have a sharp uptime (ie cancelling out the extra vil bonus) and the cheaper techs is decent but nothing more for booming. Or take vikings. Sometimes considered the best booming civ that also wouldn’t apply for this scenario. For the fc yourself youll have basically zero advantage as you only make like 3 farms for this kind of fc before click up to castle age. You’ll gather a lot of food in castle age which makes your boom pretty good but the main advantage would be being faster to imp while other civs will be able to get more vils or whatever. On the other hand in fast feudal into castle age boom scenarios (eg arabia and the like) chinese and vikings are probably the strongest boom civs. So in the end it all depends on how you approach the boom. Khmer better for pure boom, chinese and vikings for booming while producing army at the same time.
So in the end this is not to undermine your approach. It’s really only writing a long text to say: it depends 