A few suggestions for Sweden

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Here are some of my ideas on how to change Sweden. Let me know what you think!

Cards:

Dominions:

  • Enable torps to shoot hunts

Svea lifeguard:

  • turns Caroleans 30% melee resistance (see changes to carolean below) into 20% range resist (no change)

This is how it is right now but since i propose a change to Carolean melee resistance I thought it would be important to point out that i do not think their svea lifeguard range resist should get buffed

Units:
Carolean:

  • Increase melee armor by 10% (from 20% :arrow_forward: 30%).
  • Decrease melee damage by 1 (from 20 :arrow_forward: 19).
    • This reverts the most recent changes to the carolean from a few patches ago.

Thoughts on the Carolean: Ever since the launch of DE the carolean unit had 30% melee resistance but this was changed a few patches ago which brought them down to the 20% melee resistance of other musketeers. I think this took away some of what made the carolean unique and in my opinion, one of their few early game advantages, that of being able to win engagements if you used your melee advantage.

Caroleans lose almost every single 1v1 ranged fight against musketeers due to them having lower ranged attack than other musk. This made charging into melee (something the caroleans were actually famous for in real life) a risk worth taking. Due to pathing issues when units try to get into melee it is very risky and a lot of the time simply not worth it as your units will get shot down before they can even get close enough to use their melee attack. I believe the nerfing of the 30% resistance down to 20% makes this tactic even less viable. Those 10% extra give the caroleans the chance to survive. I think uniqueness is something we should promote, not move away from. It seems like the dev team tried to make up for this by adding 1 melee attack but I feel this is not sufficient to justify such a big nerf.

Hakkapelit: In my opinion the Hakkapelit is the most interesting unit the swedes have. But there are a few problems. The Hakkapelit is simply too expensive for it to be worth using on a regular basis. It gets countered by dragoons so cannot (without good macro and melee catching) win goon wars. Right now it’s basically just an expensive Uhlan.

  • increase range resistance by 10% (from 20% :arrow_forward: 30%).

Or

  • Increase damage area by 1 for the ranged attack (from 1 :arrow_forward: 2).

Or

  • Added 1.25x bonus multiplier for ranged attack against artillery (up from no bonus)

Thoughts: I think one of these changes would make the Hakkapelit more viable. It is by far their most unique unit and I would love for them to become a bigger part of the Swedish unit composition. But right now I feel like this unit is simply too expensive to be worth using in most cases. It is almost always better to go with cannons. And since people always complain about how Sweden only makes cannons and caroleans, making the hakkapelit more viable could be a way to make Sweden more interesting to play as and against.

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Isn’t it better with more attack?

Sweden is my favorite civ, but I’ll admit that it’s months that I don’t play it, so I don’t know how good they are now. And I’m not that good player either…

Still, in my humble opinion, caroleans are used in melee when facing units like other muskets or skirms, which doesn’t have strong melee attack or multiples. So I prefer more attack, that can be buffed with the arsenal upgrade, to kill them faster. I guess that melee resistance do the job either, but slower.

Anyway, until sweden will have leather cannons in the second age, I think that it’ll be fine.

The lack of that ability is annoying, but still I wouldn’t include it into the deck.

Yeah, I agree on them. I always find difficult to use hakkapelits, they are expensive and fragile. The best use that I personally found (again in my humble experience) is to ship some of them to keep hidden and snipe artillery, or to sneak them into the enemy base and try to be annoying and killing vills. But hussars does the same and are also a better support for caroleans.

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Hackapelits are a micro intensive cav unit but not weak.

Honestly I say, they’re a great unit but you have to switch modes often.

stagger mode works great vs ranged heavy infantry like Musketeers, but otherwise you can use them like every other type of melee cavalry, that are only a bit more frail.

they also have the trample tactics card which also gives them new micro and mode switching abilities.

Of course you should never keep your cav on trample mode indefintiely but for quick bursts it’s super useful.

Basically;

  • Shoot Musketeers from range, since musks have melee resist and hackapelit have range resist and have higher speed this is a good matchup.
  • trample to snare groups of skirmishers before you surround and cut them off
  • destroy artillery in melee mode
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Isn’t it better with more attack?

My thought was that the 30% melee resistance would also help sweden survive early cav pushes, as the caroleans are very vulnerable to a mass of cav until you can send the platoon fire card.

I think I would much rather take extra survivability than more attack tbh. Skirms also do have a multiplier against caroleans even in melee, althought they do less damage overall.

The lack of that ability is annoying, but still I wouldn’t include it into the deck.

Where would you re-introduce this ability somewhere else? Perhaps as an upgrade? I really miss this feature.

Yeah, I agree on them. I always find difficult to use hakkapelits, they are expensive and fragile. The best use that I personally found (again in my humble experience) is to ship some of them to keep hidden and snipe artillery, or to sneak them into the enemy base and try to be annoying and killing vills. But hussars does the same and are also a better support for caroleans.

This is usually how I do it too. Ship them in age 3 and then use them to try and kill the enemy artillery or raid. But I don’t often find myself actually training them from the stable. You can’t really afford training hakkapelit and cannons at the same time.

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I still play sweden and think they’re fine, maybe slightly on the weaker side but it’s better than how they were before, caroleans were broken with svea.

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Hackapelits are a micro intensive cav unit but not weak.

I admit they are not weak, but they are not particularly worth using imo.
Wouldn’t you rather just have a bunch of falconets instead?

They are great at killing skirmishers for sure, but they cannot win against dragoons and sweden has no skirm unit to counter the enemy dragoons. So why not just go caroleans and lots of cannons instead? it seems like it is always the safer option.

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I miss it too, but I think that it was for avoiding a player to just exterminate a lot of deers and just have tons of food for a lot of time.

Maybe re-introduce the feature, but have that if a deer is shot by a torp, the dacay rate is faster, so it force you to be more micro intensive.

Yeah, but caroleans fight them at distance quite well, and with torps you can mass them quite fast. You also have the 8 pike shipment, and the church upgrade (even if I’m not always sure if to include it into the deck).

Maybe… I prefer to kill them faster personally.

Time to time I train 5 of them for the same reasons if I have spare resources. But the point stay, with hussars, I get the same results with hussars.

I don’t know… you can’t give them multiplies against cav because they have caroleans, but at least something against artillery, or something else… or give them a bit more ranged resistance.

The march of the hakkapelit card too I don’t feel like it’s that useful. I mean, even if I can ship them into the second age, they don’t fell that good.

But maybe I simply don’t use them that well, massing caroleans is way easier and rewarding.

I’ll follow your suggestions the next time, I would like to use hakkapelits more.

Just for curiosity, what build order do you use in general with them?

Yeah swedes are still strong. What I don’t like is that they just stick with caroleans and leather cannons.

Hakkapelits, pikes, and all other units aren’t that used.

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They should definitely do something with hakkapelits, it’s a cool unique unit but quite useless atm.
I doubt pikes will ever be used really, doesn’t make sense when you have a musk that can counter cavalry at range.

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I mean, they aren’t useless, but they aren’t dragoons, and they aren’t uhlans. They aren’t something in between that doesn’t quite have a role to fit.

It’s a pity, because swedes have pike upgradable to imp and unique upgrades at the church for them. I tried sometimes to use pikes and leathers, but it’s too wood intensive and not that rewarding.

Literally swedes are just caroleans. Their hussars too aren’t that bad, but not a default option, and I wouldn’t go for them right away in the second age.

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They’re Uhlans that counter musketeers (but not hand infantry). So they’re not weak to skirmishers like rifle riders…

Swede’s don’t have skirmishers but they do have crossbows which should be exclusively for anti-goon duty, (along with any jeagers) use Hackapell (range vs musk, melee vs skirm) instead. If they transition into mass hand infantry use artillery. If they switch to hussar/goon use pikeman.

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But I still don’t see the benefits of using hakkapelits with pikes over caroleans. It’s a 2 units combo vs just 1.

I mean, I will always have to add artillery, both with caroleans and pikes+hakkapelits.

Caroleans+artillery counter cav and infantry. I’m just vulnerable to enemy artillery, but at that point, I see more useful to add some hussars, not hakkapelits.

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I’ve always preferred a more mobile force, and i’m not the only one. Skirm+goons is what a lot of games turn out, but sweden doesn’t have dragoons nor does it have skirmishers.

Carolean are also pretty vulnerable when the cavalry actually connect with them, even if the initial clash vs cav is more costly for the cav player if the cavalry player wins…they keep winning. Caraleans bonus damage vs cav is only slight and only at range (and melee cav have RR). So if I was against Carolean and artilery i’d go all in on hand cavalry especially if I was a civ with a lancer type unit like france or spain.

Hackapelit perform double duty being anti-musk while doin the same things as hussar for the most part but you don’t eschew hussar (they share cards) you mix them when you have more coin you make hackapelits when you have more food you more hussar.

I don’t think you appreciate how good hackapell are at dealing with musketeers and musketeer like units (except ironically Caroleans).