Khmer (Civ6)

The Khmer people represent a civilization in Civilization VI. They are led by Jayavarman VII, under whom their default colors are dark magenta and orange. They are available with the Khmer and Indonesia Civilization & Scenario Pack, which was released on October 19, 2017.
The Khmer's civilization ability is Grand Barays, which allows their Aqueducts to provide 1 , and 1 for every Population in their cities. Also, Farms receive extra if adjacent to an Aqueduct and if adjacent to a Holy Site. Their unique unit is the Domrey (which replaces the Trebuchet), and their unique building is the Prasat (which replaces the Temple).
== Strategy ==
Starting bias: Tier 3 towards Rivers
Conventional wisdom says that the way to play Civilization VI is to expand wide across the map with smaller cities, but one look at the enormous and bustling cities of the Khmer would make anyone think otherwise. Armed with explosive Population growth, efficient economy, and even good generation, the Khmer are well-prepared to define the tall civilization, and win a Religious or Cultural Victory in style.
=== Monasteries of the King ===
After the April 2021 Update, the Khmer no longer have any incentive to push for a religion, since none of the bonuses' efficacy depends on a religion anymore. However, thanks to the changes to Jayavarman's ability and the Prasat, the Holy Site has become an absolute integral part in the Khmer's strategy that pushing for an early religion no longer comes at a cost of early development.
There is no doubt that both the civilization ability and the leader ability encourage you to settle near a river, since riverside tiles are where you can put down your Aqueduct and also where you want your Holy Site. You want at least one tile that can host an Aqueduct (has to be a tile connecting the City Center to a Mountain, or a source of freshwater, like a river, oasis, lake, or a natural wonder that supplies freshwater), and at least one river tile for your Holy Site. Since the Aqueduct has a stricter placement rule, prioritize it before the Holy Site.
This ability boosts the overall capabilities of your Holy Sites, granting them not just more but also a sizable quantity of and . Therefore, it is much more important to put your Holy Site next to a river than to put it where it has the best adjacency bonus.
There is no doubt that this ability has phenomenal synergy with the River Goddess pantheon. With this pantheon, a Holy Site on a river will provide 4 , 2 , with at least 2 and 2 from its adjacency bonus. Just this one alone can make your job of growing cities in the early game a piece of cake.
Also, Jayavarman's Holy Sites trigger a Culture Bomb when completed. Although this is one of those typical Culture Bombs which can claim tiles owned by other civilizations if those tiles do not host a completed or wonder, it is very hard to strategically use it offensively against your neighbors considering it is already a hard job to find an ideal place to put your Holy Sites. This ability is best used when you build your Holy Sites in the second ring of your cities, allowing its completion to claim the tiles in the third ring for free, but again, although any Holy Site can trigger a Culture Bomb, even ones that are not next to a river, it is of utmost importance that you prioritize its riverside placement above all else.
When you found your religion:
* Pick Work Ethic as your Follower Belief. Since the Holy Site is a must in every single city of yours, and each Holy Site will guarantee at least a +2 adjacency bonus if you place it next to a river, Work Ethic will add an extra 2 for each of them, which is not a small amount of in the early game.
* Pick either Cross-Cultural Dialogue or World Church as the Founder Belief, as both of these beliefs reward and based on the number of followers, so large cities will naturally benefit more. However, between the two, Cross-Cultural Dialogue is the slightly better choice, as the Prasat already grants based on your Population. Also, you need to research the Flight technology quickly so that the Prasat can start generating , so it is better to pick a belief that speeds you towards that goal.
In Gathering Storm, Pingala, with his first two Governor titles, Researcher and Connoisseur, is very powerful as the opening Governor of the Khmer, since he will get more and more impactful with each Population in the city. You can spend all of the first 3 Governor titles on Pingala to unlock him, pick Researcher or Connoisseur, and then Grants (to earn your a little bit faster), and then come back for the other tier 1 title later.
===Grand Barays ===
==== Extra for Farms next to a Holy Site ====
This is the weakest part of the ability and the only part that has nothing to do with the Aqueduct. Farms built next to a Holy Site gain 1 (non-stackable when built next to multiple Holy Sites) in addition to the normal and . This is a welcome bonus, since the Khmer would want to build Farms anyway to bolster their cities' growth, but it is not strong enough to strategize just around it. A Holy Site with its location optimized for its adjacency bonus already provides and , so there is never really a case where you want to build a Holy Site in open land just to maximize the number of Farms that can be built around it.
==== Bonuses to Aqueducts ====
The Aqueduct is normally a decent district built, perhaps, to give a city some , or provide a major adjacency bonus to an Industrial Zone. Under the Khmer, however, it becomes the centerpiece of your cities, providing all the ingredients you need to grow them to massive sizes. You will want to place it such that it ends in a river, if possible, since you already want to be settling by rivers and it provides the most free tiles to place Farms adjacent to the Aqueduct. Ideally, you'll be able to set it up such that two Farms are sandwiched in between the Aqueduct and a Holy Site, and more are situated on the four other tiles adjacent to the Aqueduct. This may not always be possible, and it is important when playing as the Khmer to judge with a critical eye how your riverside setup will look to maximize yields. If placing an Aqueduct adjacent to other sources of Fresh Water, it's fine to just encircle the Aqueduct with Farms and throw your Holy Site down wherever it'll get the best adjacency bonuses.
However, this ability does not only provide you with the means to grow gigantic cities, it also bears one of the two ways the Khmer reward you for doing so. The ability to produce a lot of has only become more valuable over the years, with additions such as the Grand Master's Chapel and Rock Bands, and in cities with Aqueducts, your generation will be nothing short of prodigious. A Khmer city with some turns to develop will usually be fairly quick to hit 10 Population, and 10 per turn is nothing to sneeze at. Ethiopia, the civilization considered to have the best generation, makes comparable per turn from having 2 copies of the same resource improved 3 times, or 3 copies of the same resource improved, in one city, which is something of a rare occurrence. And Ethiopia may barely have to lift a finger to produce this much , but the difference is that they will usually have shrimpy cities with low Population perched up in the infertile Hills they prefer, and have to use to purchase everything. The Khmer's generation is only supplementary to the bonuses provided naturally by their huge city sizes.
However, remember that as powerful as the Khmer's city growth is, it cannot solve everything. Unlike in Civilization V, getting ahead in and just by having gigantic cities is no longer possible (except for Yongle). You will still have to obey the meta to some extent, found a fair number of cities, and build some Campuses and Theater Squares.
=== Domrey ===
The Domrey is the only unique siege unit in the game, and its ability to move and shoot in the same turn without a makes it much less clunky than a typical siege unit. It also exerts zone of control, which means that three of them can place a city under siege unless the City Center is next to a water tile, or there is a river involved to complicate the matter. Two to three Domrey, together with some melee or cavalry units to back them up, can quickly punch through medieval city defenses, allowing their user to expand their empire through conquest in the middle stages of the game. Moreover, Domrey are unlocked with Military Engineering, the for which is triggered by building an Aqueduct (which the Khmer have excellent incentives to do).
Unfortunately, this unit is not without its downsides. First and foremost, the fact that a unique siege unit belongs to a civilization without any bonuses towards war is perplexing. Despite its strength, the Khmer can't use the Domrey without shifting the focus of their empire from infrastructure to building an army, and the outcome of a war will depend heavily on who their neighbor is and how prepared they are. Additionally, since the Domrey is a siege unit, there are no policy cards to aid in building an army of them any faster, and if you don't capture any cities during a war, you will have wasted a lot of on units that are borderline useless. (Siege units, being slow and suffering penalties when attacking land units, cannot be used for land defense, though Domrey are decent at naval defense.) The Khmer are a civilization that already has trouble with since they require a lot of infrastructure pieces (Holy Sites, Aqueducts, etc.) to utilize their bonuses, so the Domrey is strong yet hard to use in a lot of situations. You should focus to build this unit en masse only if your neighbors are civilizations without significant defensive bonuses or have very small armies. Otherwise, if you just want a regular game aiming for a Cultural Victory with a Religious Victory backup, there isn't much justification for building a lot of Domrey.
The Domrey can be better in combination with the Grand Master's Chapel. The Khmer have strong bonuses to their output, meaning that they can utilize this building to quickly purchase multiple Domrey and a supporting army with . Pair this with Theocracy to make said purchases cheaper, as well as gaining extra from cities with Governors to spend on more units. Again, whether or not you should use this unit depends heavily on the game's landscape, and random factors (such as how favorable your starting location is, who your neighbors are, how much territory you already own and whether you need any more) should be considered before you pour resources into this unit. If you have no intention of going to war, it should act only as a source of 4 Era Score.
=== Prasat ===
The Prasat is an incredible replacement for the Temple, as it provides an extra layer of rewards whenever a Khmer city reaches a Population checkpoint while supplying an excellent output of and in the meantime.
First, the Prasat's base yield is 6, compared to the standard 4 of the Temple. As a civilization with victory skews towards a religious or a cultural victory, this is useful right off the bat. This advantage over the regular Temple is amplified further when the Simultaneum policy card is run, and the Khmer is the one civilization who has no problem satisfying both the adjacency bonus condition and the Population condition set by the card.
Second, and more importantly, it grants 0.5 for every Population in the city. Normally, each point of Population grants 0.3 , the Prasat lifts this number up to 0.8, more than double what it used to be. A city with 10 Population generates 8 per turn, just from this building alone, that is twice the amount of granted by a Temple with Choral Music belief. The interesting aspect of this bonus is that the Prasat itself does not provide any means to boost growth, but only more incentives for you to grow populous cities. Although the Khmer can enjoy a healthy level of from their Holy Sites combined with the River Goddess pantheon and Aqueducts, the amount of bonus from Farms next to Aqueducts may not be sufficient to reliably raise the Population of every city to 20. Here are some other sources that may be useful:
* Hanging Gardens wonder
* Wisselbanken policy card
* Democracy government
* Collectivization policy card (requires Communism)
* Migration Treaty World Congress resolution
* Gurdwara as the worship belief
With Flight, the Prasat also supplies 10 to any city with at least 10 Population or 20 to cities with at least 20. This huge burst of will help usher the Khmer toward a cultural victory a lot faster. Therefore, once a city reaches the milestone of 20 Population, consider focus your growth power somewhere else, like swapping tiles, moving Magnus with the Surplus Logistics title and s to other cities. It is also worth noting that the Stadium also grants a bit of based on cities' Population, making it a useful complementary piece to the Prasat, even without taking into consideration that Stadiums and Entertainment Complexes help alleviate issues the Khmer is guaranteed to run into.
=== Victory Types ===
After the buffs, the Khmer are a really powerful civilization that can perform well for both a Religious Victory and a Cultural Victory. High Population may also allow Scientific Victory to a certain degree, but only if the of some core cities isn't too low. This shouldn't be a huge problem, though, because you'll most likely have strong Industrial Zones thanks to the prevalence of Aqueducts.
Strangely enough, the Khmer are quite good at a Domination Victory. The strategy for them is similar to that of Ethiopia, as they rely on the Grand Master's Chapel and a generous output combined with Theocracy to be able to crank out military units fast. The Khmer are even better than Ethiopia, since the Domrey is a devastating unit if there's enough preparation for it to shine. Furthermore, the Khmer have extra to keep their new territories content with a new rule. To be fair, while other unit classes can be used offensively or defensively, siege units are just not the same - there are no other ways to meaningfully make use of a unique siege unit other than going on a full conquest mode.
=== Counter Strategy ===
The Khmer do not have the typical defense mechanic other Cultural civilizations have. Their unique unit is expensive and quite clunky to use effectively, and definitely is not a good unit for defensive purposes, so invading them successfully when they start to pose a threat is not difficult (though be careful invading them by sea if they have a lot of Domrey; siege units don't have penalties against naval units). Furthermore, the Khmer needs a lot of pieces of infrastructure to fully utilize their toolkit, including Holy Sites, Aqueducts, and sometimes Theater Squares and Campuses, without having direct bonuses for anything, so even if you are not in full conquest mode, just pay them a visit once in a while to pillage all of their related improvements and districts and it will greatly hamper their progress.
== Civilopedia entry ==
== Cities ==
== Citizens ==
Males 	Females 	Modern males	Modern females
Balarama 	Bormey 	Chakra 	Bopha
Boran 	Indradevi 	Chhay 	Chantha
Damkhat 	Jayarajadevi	Heng 	Dara
Indravarman	Lakshmi 	Kiri 	Jorani
Laksmana 	Parvati 	Maly 	Leakena
Nimol 	Romchang 	Nimol 	Phhoung
Rama 	Sorpheny 	Phala 	Poeu
Suryavarman	Suryavana 	Rathanak 	Rachana
Thomma 	Tevoda 	Serey 	Sophon
Yasovarman 	Viralakshmi 	Sophal 	Thyda
== Trivia ==
* The Khmer's colors went through numerous changes. At first, they were yellow and dark blue, then changed to olive and dark blue, then purple and orange. With the release of Gathering Storm, they were changed one last time to dark magenta and orange, which now applies to all rulesets.
* The Khmer civilization's symbol is the spire of a wat.
* The Khmer civilization ability references the water reservoirs built throughout the Khmer Empire.
* The Khmer are also playable in the Path to Nirvana scenario.
==Soundtrack==
== Gallery ==
File:Domrey in-game (Civ6).jpg|The Domrey, the Khmer's unique unit
File:Prasat in-game (Civ6).jpg|The Prasat, the Khmer's unique building
File:Khmer capital.JPG|Khmer capital in Medieval Era
== Videos ==
thumb|center|300px|First Look: Khmer
== Related achievements ==
== See also ==
* Khmer (Civ6)/Path to Nirvana
* Khmer in other games
== External links ==
* https://civilization.com/news/entries/civilization-vi-jayavarman-vii-leads-khmer
ru:Кхмеры (Civ6)
Category:Khmer