Finally got around to actually playing "Rise of the Khmer" and... wow
Only fault I found with the whole thing was that the tech tree didn't reflect Herbal medicine as researched when I completed the appropriate quest. Just checked my save, and Chemistry didn't work either. (But Theocracy did, even while I was still in Castle Age).
Beyond that, I had a fairly decent game. Picked Brahma and Lakshmi as my gods, allied Thai as quickly as possible, and focused on recruiting elephants and annihilating the Champa. Unfortunately, I didn't actually make a dent in their castle until after I went Imp and got capped rams, b/c a war elephant rush was not enough to deal with that castle (I tried)
I was unable to save the Pagan, but I walled one of the fords, and led the invading Mongols into the firepath of my castle.... with my war elephants waiting for the Boyars in a choke point.
Beyond the initial "set up defenses against Champa and amass enough gold to buy off the Thai" scramble, the game was fairly easy. By the time the Cholas showed up, I had enough resources to buy them off.
Ended up fulfilling the Brahmins, Traders and Untouchables objectives. I was declared winner before I could destroy the Chola docks for the Workers, and the Thai were my best ally (on Moderate, they demolished half of Srivijaya's base without me interfering in anyy way) so the Warriors challenge was left unfulfilled.
Already gave my thoughts on Steam, but I feel I'd need to try a few more combos of Gods and diplomatic choices before I can do a proper Blacksmith review.
Edit, since I can't double-post:
1) finished and reviewed the "Dawn of a New Dynasty" campaign. Above-average B&D with a mechanical twist (severely limited eco options), that was challenging, but didn't do much for me with presentation.
2) tried playing "Gyda's Challenge" , but encountered a bug. Ingo was nice enough to respond and so I'll be trying to narrow down how HD edition managed to break the game in the next few days.
[This message has been edited by kud13 (edited 06-21-2017 @ 01:36 PM).]