Overview
For those who want a fun game of “your stuff is mine now”.
Jayavarman VII and the Khmer
The Khmer have some very unfocused bonuses, but that doesn’t mean they’re weak. The man himself, Jayavarman VII, focuses on holy sites, providing them +2 food and +1 housing if they’re on a river, and culture bombing with them. This basically inreases the pop cap of the city by 1 on its own.
The civ bonus gives +3 faith and +1 amenity for cities with an Aquaduct, and +2 food for farms adjacent to an aquaduct. The amenity is crucial for helping keep your pops happy, and the faith is a lovely bonuns, but the really tasty part is the +2 food for farms. It isn’t unusual to see +10 food tiles in a well-planned Khmer city. Forget your grandma’s farm triangle, this is the real breadbasket.
Their unique building, the Prasat, is.. well, it’s okay. It has an extra relic slot, and causes missionaries to get Martyr. Find Kandy, and you’re golden. Get into some wizard wars? Free relics. It could do with the relatively common “50% cheaper to produce” line, but it’s not a terrible thing; you’re going to want to build temples anyway, may as well get a bonus out of it.
The unique unit, the Domrey, is something of a secret weapon. We’ll save that for later..
What you want out of the map
Rivers. Rivers, and open space. Every city you settle should be on fresh water, every city shoud have an aquaduct with as many farmable tiles as possible around it, and every city should have a holy site on a river. Get as many different luxuries as possible, you’ll need the amenities.
What districts are we building?
You need a Holy Site. You will almost certainly want an Industrial Zone, because you’ll need production. You’ll need an Aquaduct, and Neighbourhoods when you get to them. You’ll want Entertainment Complexes enough to cover your cities, too. You’ll want some Commercials, or a Harbour or two, to keep your gold up; all this internal infrastructure is expensive!
After that, you can absolutely take your pick. You will have enough pop to build every district; my first game trying this, Angkor Thom ended up at size 38 by 1887AD, with +11 amenities, 10 spare housing, and enough food to support 80 pop. 48 pop (the soft cap without building more Neighbourhoods) allows you to build 16 districts, and work every workable tile for the city, plus 10 to work the extra district jobs.
What about religion?
You’re looking for River Goddess as a pantheon, to help your early cities expand past their age-limited boundaries.
Religious Communities or Zen Meditation are good picks for your Follower Belief. Feed the World is probably not necessary, as you *will* have sufficient food.
Pagoda or Stupa for your Worship Belief. Again, Gurdwara probably isn’t necessary.
Tithe is amazing as a Founder Belief, as it counts for your incredible thiccness. Most of these options scale off of your presence in other civs, which isn’t really what we’re going for here.
Your Enhancer Belief is dealer’s choice. I like Scripture, as it helps keep Khmer’s cities worshipping the ***correct*** religion, but Holy Order is great if you want to go for a religious victory, Crusade is amazing if you’re going to elephant your way across the world, etc. Just don’t take Burial Grounds; you already do that.
Any specific governments?
Classical Republic gives you housing and amenities in each city with a district. They all have a district, because Holy Sites. The legacy card does much the same.
Monarchy, again, improves your housing by up to 3, and helps you get some strategic defensive suzerainities to help defend you from your hungry neighbours.
Both Communism and Democracy are attractive, on the Modern governments. +0.6 production per citizen can be more than an Industrial Zone at that point, and the defensive strength helps you keep your territory. Democracy is amazing if you’re going for that cultural vic, and massively improves trade routes to allies.
For the Futuristic 10-slot governments, my pick is Digital Democracy. More amenities is all the goodness you need (though, in truth, will be wholely unnecessary by the time you get there; you might want to pick Synthetyic Technocracy just to ease power woes).
As for the cards themselves, go for anything that improves housing or amenities. Even with neighbourhoods, you’ll be pushed until the very late game.
There’s gotta be some wonders, right?
The Great Bath, the Hanging Gardens, the Temple of Artemis, and Angkor Wat (bonus points if you build it in Angkor Wat) all give housing, which you’ll want early. Angkor Wat, especially, is a flavour win for both the build *and* the civ, and can add a dozen pops to your civ.
The Coloseum, Estadio do Maracana, and Alhambra give amenities, which is also lovely (tho not a pressure until a bit later).
Huey Teocalli is good if you’ve got a good lake, and Petra and St Basil’s Cathedral can save an inherited/loyalty pressured desert or tundra city, respectively.
There’s a lot of pressure on your policy cards, so Alhambra, the Forbidden City, Potala Palace, and Big Ben are a great boon.
Aside that, anything that’ll help you win. You’ll likely have your pick of the later wonders.
That’s all well and good, but how does thiccness win?
Any damn way you want.
Playing on King (does it surprise you that this isn’t a diety-viable strat?), I doubled Robert the Bruce’s science and Gitarja’s culture from the Rennaisance onwards.
You’re so big that your defenses are so high that you don’t really care about war. Just hold out until you have a tech advantage, get the Grand Master’s Chapel, spaff out some faith-bought units, and roll your next door neighbour.
Faith is an obvious pick. Between the bonus faith from your aquaducts, the focus on holy sites, and the sheer number of relics you can house if you get involved in wizard wars, you should have enough of that creamy white to muscle your way through.
Diplomacy works nicely, too. You can tailor your religion to help get envoys in city states, suzerain them for the delicious diplo favour, and do whatever you want. You’ll also be sufficiently big by the end-game that your cities will just be able to build wonders for the bonus points in reasonable time.
Score, if that’s your flavour, is basically a free win. You get so much from having massive cities and big area that you can’t fail.
Why should I do this other than play other, better civs?
Mostly the gimmick. There are a few consequences of such massive cities.
One, you have massive passive incomes of culture and science. You’ll keep up well enough with a focused civ that you can resist them well enough to persue your own victory.
Two, you exert **massive** loyalty pressure on neighbouring foreign cities, from sheer size. The first time I tried this, I converted 27 cities via loyalty pressure, including 4 capitals. Loyalty flipping a city gives 3 era score, which means you can chain golden eras once you get rolling, increasing the pressure even further. Your massive number of amenities and pops keeps you safe from the same, and a tactical Amani placement can cause a cascade that flips an entire empire.
Three, and this is where the Domrey comes in; you can shape the world as you see fit. When a city flips to a Free City, you can refuse it, siege it, and raze it, without pissing anyone off. After all, they’re a free city, who cares about them? This lets you place your cities where you’d prefer, with the correct configuration of districts and improvements! The reason the Domrey is important for this is because, if all goes well, this’ll start happening around the same time you unlock them, and what’s a better look than your elephant artillery rampaging through the cities you’ve deemed unworthy of becoming one with the great Khmer thiccness?
Nothing, that’s what.