“Common Failure in Thinking Highlighted by Dismissal of Khmer M@A-Play: This Week’s Strategy Thesis”
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The writer argues that despite its lack of popularity, using a Men-at-Arms (M@A) strategy with the Khmer civilization in Age of Empires II is actually very strong. The Khmer have a strong M@A play, and their farming bonus makes it easier to keep up their food economy. They also have a great Castle time for the Xbow powerspike, and can avoid counter-attacks easily. The downside is that players can’t save 175 wood for the barracks in the Dark Age, which makes their start less unique. However, this isn’t really a disadvantage and should not prevent players from using the strategy. The bias to use civ bonuses all the time affects other civilizations too. The M@A strategy is great against Scout-plays, which many civs want to use against Khmer, and is fantastic with Khmer because of the ability to teleport villagers with houses. Despite being relatively unpopular, 5% of 287k Khmer games involve a M@A opening, compared to 33% for Scout-openings.
The problem with khmer m@a is that it’s not a ballista elephant (preferable) or a battle elephant (if i must).
And if I’m playing khmer, it’s because I want to spam chonky elephantos, not use generic units like a common peasant.
So i will greed my way up to castle age and live or die by the elephants. And I’m probably a big reason why they have a bad Winrate 🙁
Guys, Klick Video 5.
>But this is not a disadvantage. It’s just not using this specific advantage like literally every other civ
actually do with them is either 17 pop Scouts with no Loom or like 22 pop Fast Castle, because those things are awesome and just overall better than a vanilla M@ABig sigh
Statistically, scouts openings win more vs m@a.
The theory behinds this lies in the fact that m@a isn’t a great opening at the top level: you handicap you eco to try and get damage, but if you don’t get damage, then what? Scouts have a fantastic balance of being good on eco and good in map control, along with being flexible in following openings. You cannot say the same about m@a.
In sum, if ur map/matchup allows you to be greedy with the eco and go for scouts, why would you want to go m@a?
You assume I have the macro to manage an M@A rush at the same time as doing the deer farm trick and managing my eco well.
If you ask me, I’d say that the best openings for Khmer involve skipping Barracks. I wouldn’t say that they have a strong m@a opening (I have lately agreed with another redditor that the 2nd patch of deer being exploited depends on the safety of its location, and that is the condition for you using the Khmer House bonus and the Farm trick), but I’m a fan of more off-meta strats, and a m@a opening with Khmer can be surprising
Going m@a as khmer ignores their main strength of having early scouts or knights, as for your argument of having better defense vs archers and better food eco.
Even if the pros out weigh the cons why not play incas and use an early tower (you can build another tc anyways) and use the house bonus for extra wood on an early farm or 2 for faster food collection? As an Inca fan yourself why not mention them first?
Also they don’t have a great win rate going maa so it’s not like this is an underground secretly good strat.
Lastly is this gonna be weekly?! I want more even if they’re ridiculous.
Yo, this is sick! Imma try this next time I play, if the opportunity arises.
>A key with Scouts against M@A is to go for a counter-raid.
This should never work. Sure even pros sometimes get lazy and fail to small wall because they enjoy losing villagers, but for like 30 wood the scouts should never be able to kill anything at that point in the game. There aren’t enough vills on farms to actually pick off farmers away from the TC (once you get to 8+ farms the house garrisoning really does help a lot though).
For this same reason, civs that want a scout war with Khmer.. don’t make a lot of sense. The Khmer player could go super greedy and get to castle age vs scouts, what are the scouts gonna do? Deny your gold? Nope, small walled. Pick off farmers? Nope, houses. They can idle some but if Khmer can get some knights out then that should deal with that. I think people give the enemy scouts far too much respect as Khmer.
Point 4 is a fantastic point though! The other issue with MaA + towers is that well you still need a second building to go up that isn’t really helping you a whole lot. Not with Khmer! Base is exposed at home? Khmer are pretty good with that!
This mad lad was given 4-5 business days and knocked it out in 2hrs
I’m not going to comment on why I disagree with most points, because other people have already done so, but you got an upvote anyway because of the last clip. I sure hope this reaches Dave!
Although I disagree with your post, I do enjoy the high-quality content.
Building Burmese elephants early….I’m guilty as charged. And I always lose when I do that.
Is Khmer castle age timing really better after MAA archer play? For fast castle they are amazing because you can skip buildings. But if you have range-blacksmith built anyways I feel they are quite generic. Maybe a hair better because eco, but a lot of other civs have better eco bonuses
I usually agree with you, but this time I do not.
If you play M@A with Khmer, then you are not playing them with very meaningful bonuses. If your opponent plays towards their civs strengths, they will have an advantage over you. You gave an example of Cumans who do not *have* to use their second Town Center in Feudal Age, but the difference here is that if Cumans don’t do that, they can make use of their other big bonus in Feudal Age, which is cheaper military buildings. Before they got that additional bonus, Cumans would be pretty much generic if you didn’t use their second Town Center in Feudal Age and were bad as a result. Similarly, if you go M@A as Khmer, you play pretty much generic.
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