Pre-DE they were one of the worst 1v1 civ along with Vietnamese, Portugese, Koreans etc. Very low win rate, almost never picked by players except Viper. Even in TG, only in late imp fight games they were doing good. Even in DE before the Jan patch they were rarely used.
I was talking about saving 175 wood from the barracks.
Noone gets heavy plow immediately. And Khmer have another advantage : you can go straight to castle. No delay in feudal. You save also the wood from the market.
Only blacksmith and stable.
Seriously. They have the best fc in the game. 375 save wood that early is INSANE. And, of course, the best farmers in the game (or top 3, if you want)
Khmer were not designed (initially at least) to be strong in open maps, but they had really strong late game (very good in deathmatch for example). I agree that they needed a buff, but what they got is something completely broken which shouldn’t even exist in AoE. A core part of the gameplay is having an efficient and optimized eco, but devs decided to just ignore that. Khmer got nerfed repeatedly after the farm buff, yet they are still one of the best civs in most of the maps. Even elephants trample damage was nerfed ultimately only due to khmer stupidly good eco, which allowed to keep up a production rate otherwise impossible.
Arena-RF bonus. Plenty of civs with bonuses comparable - Malay 21+12 build order, Cumans 2nd tc up at 10th min, Celts, Britons can do 4th tc and take villager lead, Ethiopians get 400 extra resources, Burmese free wood upgrades saves 400.
Heavy plow increases rate of farming by a 3-4% margin. So if you don’t get that early all those Frankish farmers in castle age will work a bit faster and depending on when u get it, the khmer bonus remains less stronger.
If you do blacksmith+stable, then you’re saving just 175 wood. Farmers is exactly 3rd fastest after Aztecs and Slavs in early game. All these are very good but nothing “OP” about it to the point that they need to be “addressed” or “nerfed”
Probably I am a conservative but I just think teleporting food is an awkward mechanic. It works for Khmer does not seem OP. Khmer definitely needed a buff earlier. However something more inline with the game mechanic was needed - just my opinion.
yes my speech- khmer too strong - nerf!
Based on this I used to think the bonus is manageable but when I realized how so many players just spam farms without caring about the placement I can get why they hate having to face Khmer efficiency 11
TBH the bonus is fine, their BEs attack and speed are the true problems
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And they can only afford those because their eco, though I agree that having both extra speed and extra attack is a bit too much.
Just reduce the speed bonus a bit and increase the Tusk swords cost
Yes the farm placement advantage is quite time saving in castle age.
With the spash damage reduced, attack is not an issue. Speed is the only big bonus. I guess if they make it something like Elephants get +1 attack as civ bonus and make Tusk swords as Elephants move 12% faster and get +1 attack that would even it out. But then again Khmer would be far less used in open map TGs after that and discussion on how to nerf Indian camels would start.
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Not a fan of reworking that thing, and also you pointed that then Khmer could be overnerfed in TGs
And honestly I think that the balance right now is quite good, no evidence of civs overperfoming each other so this is why Fe stopped with the balance by now, outside of being bussy with 3DE.
@Pulikesi25 i am a really good boomer and i can prove you wrong anytime you want, don’t use reddit stuff do it urself.
Khmer boom is beyond other boom civs, khmer boom is ahead than cuman boom starting from feudal, vikings are close but they don’t have the same OP units that khmer has on imperial so no, there is no comparison in real game scenarios.
Khmer farming bonus actually gets stronger in real game scenarios in late game, cause you don’t waste time placing efficient farms and addding mills all over the farms, that mechanic by itself is not fair for the other 34 civs, now dropping food instantly kicks in really strong at early stages to give you perfect timing to queue villagers or units, while other civs have to wait until the vills drop the food.
Try 200 vills contest with boom civs to verify it by urself.
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The person on the reddit thread used a pre-built farm layout in a scenario editor and tested the raw farming rates. So I was explaining that the early farms of Khmer aren’t going to be producing an extraordinarily large amount of food as exaggerated by some people. The only way you can prove me wrong about raw farming rates is by repeat that experiment and showing a significantly different amount of food collected. In real game food collected would definitely depend on exactly when you build farms, when you get upgrades and army compositions. If someone is Burmese or Mayans, they’re probably not going to try to build that many farms and rather try to make use of their unique unit to damage their opponent.
This is a statement that I disagree. A boom is meant to transition into some massive army production and not to hit 200 villagers or collect the maximum resources. Cumans get Kipchaks, fast moving knights, capped rams etc. So you can make use of the early villager lead and the extra resources to push your opponent. Vikings, Malay would have superior economy (for their ideal army composition), getting a 5-6 villager lead very early in the game. Aztecs have great monk and relic bonus and some good eco bonus as well. And these civs have good cheap military compositions in maps like Arena for early aggression. Khmer don’t have OP units that are easy to mass produce in 1v1s. The 1v1 combos are going to be Hussar-arbalests/hand canoneers or halb+scorps depending on opponent’s civ. They can be deadly against mid-tier civs but definitely many top-tier civs can easily handle them in 1v1.
If you get Handcart, even the second layer of Khmer farms only produces 3% extra food. You don’t have to build a mill for every 7-8 farms. You’ll naturally have 4 or 5 town centers and 1 mill with 5-6 1st layer and about 7-8 second layer farms. Unless you’re doing war elephants, you don’t need so many more mills. In cases where there’s severe space constraint the bonus pays off well but again that’s situational.
Like I said before Khmer is certainly a very strong civ both for booming as well as aggressive gameplay. But its not OP to the extent that calls for a nerf. Any “OP” ness would reflect in the pick rate and win rate. Right now its only for Arena like maps in Tgs. Nerfing them more would only push them back to the voobly days where they were one of the worst civs, rarely ever picked. For 20 years, Aztecs, Huns, Mayans, Chinese, Vikings have been the meta. Only now we’re seeing the new civs like Khmer, Lithuanians also being picked fairly often.
I agree! The whole trickling idea was inspired from AoE III where all civs trickle resources. But here in AoE2 only Khmer which is sort of unfair for the rest of the civs. Either trickling for all or none. I’m sure there are better bonuses to give Khmer
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I agree completely. The mechanic seems alien to AOE 2. AOE 2 is about collecting resources and walking back to drop them off. Only once the resource is dropped to the corresponding building then the resource appears for investment. I think no other civ does anything similar.
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has not been the meta for very long. People picking up vikings and realizing the civ is really solid is a very new phenomena. They practically cratered in play rate after tournaments started restricting sling in team games, before that they were only used as a second economy for a high value army.
They were a pretty decent civ for 1v1 and picked a lot of times on land map tournaments. And for mixed land, hybrid and water maps tournaments, they were a top pick. Back during the aoc days they didn’t have the fixed position maps for TGs. So Vikings as pocket would be quite mediocre compared to opponents having Huns or Franks pocket. And in 1v1 they didn’t have chieftains before HD. But ever since they were quite a popular civ at the top level.
Fixed positions in DE changed it. That’s maybe a year or so of relevance.
Compare to any other civ you’ve mentioned and it hasn’t been changes in DE that’s improved them, they’ve just always been good. Khmer and Vikings practically came into relevance together. That’s how recent the surge of Vikings has been and that’s why I specifically bit on them. They are not to be in the same breath as Aztecs (top tier since release) Huns (top tier since release) Mayans (top tier since release) or Chinese (top tier since at least early HD)
To put it in perspective, HC1 didn’t have a single Viking game in Grand Finals.