Hey everyone, What are your thoughts on Swede’s torps? Seems like every time I face them, I either spend way too much time sieging torps down, or I ignore them and can’t keep up with their eco. With 4 torps at 1500 health each, it takes too long to clear out one mine. Then since they only cost 115 wood, it’s easy for Sweden to replace the torps on a different mine.
I have 3 ideas to balance this:
Reduce Torp health from 1500 HP to 1000 HP.
This makes it worth the opponent’s time to burn them down and makes the Swedish player think twice before placing torps near his opponent’s base. Clearing one mine would be similar to destroying one Dutch bank and would still cost 240 fewer resources for the Swede to replace.
Increase the cost of Torps from 115 wood to 130-140 wood.
Currently, for only 15 extra wood, you’re getting 1-2 vills of production and 300 extra HP. Meanwhile, the Japanese spend 20 extra wood for .2-.5 vills of production and 400 extra HP. Additionally, Shrines only trickle one resource at a time, rather than both Gold and Food.
Move the Englesburg Ironworks card to Age III.
With just this card, a Swedish player can have full unit production and gather enough gold to age up without a single Vil on gold. Even the Dutch with 3 banks (Which cost more than 18 torps) can’t keep up unit production and aging into Fortress.
Can be built by explorers, they can escape by using the Smoke bomb ability when under threat.
Can produce one resource at a time which can be switched as per the preference but the resource under it does not exhaust, permanent in this case until it is sieged down.
Opponents are restricted from being able to gather from the hunts under them.
Easily defendable with ashis when they’re sieged by pikes or musks.
Torps:
Can be built only by vills, risk of being out in the map and getting killed.
Can produce 3 resources at a time (Including wood if built near trees, but very slowly compared to food and coin). The resources under torp does exhaust over time.
Opponents can still gather from berries, hunts, mines and trees that are closer to torps.
Caroleans are weak in age 2 and have 10 range. So, it’s not a niche work to defend torps.
Considering these, I like your first idea. Their HP has to be nerfed from 1500 to 1250 or 1000.
Well in that case,
For extra 35 w, Brits get a vill and if you send Virginia Company, it’s almost free (88 w).
For extra 35 w, Inca gets mini food factories that does not need any resources around it, they act like a defensive wall structure due to their size and then they have a Chinca Brewing.
For extra 90 w, Chinese get extra 10 pop, mini livestock pen, a shipment and garrison point.
For extra 20 w, Japan gets shrines, don’t have to explain what it does. They have Heavenly Kami and ports consulate which brings down the cost to 72 w. And then they have an age 4 upgrade which turns them into actual vills, a gather rate which is way better than torps and it’s permanent.
Torps need 2 cards to be invested to excel, the resources near them run out eventually and they become useless. They have to be deleted and rebuilt near coin mines from the prospector wagons in late game, which would be avoided if you siege them down and win the game early. Thus, a HP nerf would be appropriate. Some might think of even nerfing blueberries and ironworks but maybe not their base gather rate because they’re actually gathering natural resources. That has to be faster.
Considering how good they’re right now and how little investment needed for them to work, a big adjustment is needed to make them on par with other civilization. Currently 15 torp + 20 villager on wood can maintain fortress economy on all 3 resources even with destroyed town center just to show how op they are. My proposed change is as follow:
If the gather rate and gather mechanic stay the same:
Increase Torp Population from 10 to 20
Reduce it build limit from 20 to 10
Increase cost from 115W to 150W 100G
If the price stay the same:
Make it to only gather from 1 resource at a time
Reduce HP from 1500 to 1000
The Ironwork card moved to Age 3 and now enable Torp to gather from 2 resource at once
Either way to compensate the nerf, the Swedes military non Carolean get buffed; like Leather Cannon price reduced to 200F 75G.
Overall every resource trickle or gathering building should get their rates nerfed.
If player make 20 of them on age 2, that’s an equal of 12.6 total gather rate before upgrade and 26.7 after. That’s about 3.7 fully upgraded factory that available on age 4 as 1 factory have trickle rate of 5.5 and 7.15 after upgrade.
That’s a lot for only 2300W investment. Compared to Dutch Bank that need 3850F and 3850W to get 11 Bank which combined trickle rate is equal to about 21-22 settler working on fully upgraded Estate with Capitol upgrade, 3 estate card, mint and eco theory card.
And Torps may get more by being near trees and huntable. On the other hand, Bank has build limit and no population cap, plus Dutch don’t have better army units or upgrade.
Topic required nerfing torps and shrines keep being posted since DE and every patch were released.
However the reason why they didn’t get nerfed is their winrate is balance.
I agree that torps are a bit too strong a the moment!!
I am fine with Japan as they are rather slow and their boom can be punished if you play correctly!
Sweden however is like Japan but way faster and it is a lot harder to punish a greedy play.
I think removing their fast age option for fortress would be an option. There is a reason why brits don’t have a fast age option and Sweden has even more booming potential then brits.
I think swedes in 1v1 are not that broken. And torps in team games should be nerfed much more than in 1v1. So my suggestions:
Torp supports 12 population
Torp costs 135w (+20w for +2 pop)
Starting crates: replace 100c with 100w (swedes have 5 vills from the start and need to build 2 torps to get 1 extra vill on food for age up, so if torp cost is increased they need extra wood from the start)
Torps build limit reduced to 16 (192 in total, but with TCs it will be ok)
Ironworks adds +100% (from 125%) to gathering rate from mines, but also increases gathering range for wood (instead of Great Northern Forest card)
Torps can’t gather from more than 10 trees (Great Northern Forest card removes that limitation instead of range increase)
Torp can’t gather from both mines and trees at the same time and prioritizes mines
Remove +30% hp from dominions and replace it with 1 extra wagon (5 in total)
In 1v1 anyway hard to place all 20 torps at the time, so the limit won’t hit that hard, and the only nerfs are price (+20w for pop you don’t even need) and ironworks, but instead, you can gather wood instead of coins at the same 1 vill rate (10 trees = 1 unupgraded villager). In team games building 20 torps a lot easier, and reducing the limit will be pure 20% nerf.
All torps will be equal to +32 villagers (with 2 cards) but without upgrades, so it is comparable with brits +28 (+20 from manors and +8 from 2 cards) villagers with upgrades (brits boom actually stronger, but they have their own weaknesses to compensate it).
Perhaps an indirect nerf related to torps. I think sweden should have their settler limit capped at 80 maybe 70 villagers. I get the the torps aren’t a true unlimited source of resources, but japan and dutch both have vill limits to offset their banks and shrines.
A change like this lets sweden keep their powerful mid game eco but have them fall off hard late game. Would be somewhat historically accurate too as Sweden in this time period only tried to fight wars they could end quickly due to their small army and population.
Something like this would fix Sweden being too strong in NR40 games and incentivize use of the mine and forest cards to re-up torp production. No nerf to their military and no nerf to torps. They keep all of their strong points but are now on a timer to end the game.
Only unlimited trickles should be balanced by reducing settlers build limit. For torps boom it makes no sense. This will do nothing to the current problem, and also will create problems in the future.
Torps are just ridiculous. I can let them mine alone while I have all vills on food and get the fastest boom of all the game while I’m stopping a rush and aging up freely
this seems like a great way to balance it, reducing the build limit will probably fix the treaty40 problem, and a bit of cost increase will help nerf on Supremacy games (also nerfing on team trought build limit)
Torps after Blueberries and Engelberg are way too powerful. They return their investment too quickly and the Sweden player can keep building them on the map like cockroaches.
Sweden has no problem producing Caroleans from 3 Barracks with 0 villagers on Food and Coin from max torps, which is ridicolous. After these 2 shipments of course. Sweden retains constant coin income due to being able to ship 3 additional mines, similar to how Japan can ship more cherry orchard. This does cost a shipment, but everyone will agree the eco of both civs is very strong.
Source: See any videos/games from Aussie_Drongo. He has provided enough proof that Sweden can win games while down to 6 villagers because the ressources from Torp gathering is just insane.
My suggestions:
Nerf the gather rate of blueberries.
Nerf the gather rate of Hunts and Livestock. (talking about Torps)
Increase torp cost to 130 wood.
Increase torp build time by 30-40%.
Decrease Torp HP.
Increase exp gain from destroying torps.
Decrease the amount of Villagers from 99 to 75.
Carolean upgrade cards need to be nerfed, in particular Svea Lifeguard, which offers an insane 25% bonus HP and 30% ranged resist. Caroleans are simply way too powerful after their 3 big ugprade cards have been shipped.
Not all of the above should be applied, but some or a combination of this. Sweden economy is simply ridicolous, especially because they can still have 99 villagers ontop of the torps. I don’t know all their cards from the top of my head, but to make them be able to keep gathering, they could get an unlimited Mine card shipment in Age IV.
Imo, torps should have a ‘reactivate’ mechanic. Torps should gather only for 5 minutes at a time. To activate it again, player would need to invest in some wood and gold. This way, the OP torp boom around 15 - 20 min mark can be checked. Each torp will have a reactivate button costing 100w 100g. Players will be forced to make new torps, even away from coin mines because the cost to reactivate is huge. To activate all 10 torps, 1000w and 1000g cost should be enough.
This way, Sweden has short term boost, but has to decide whether to invest in boom or army after 5 minutes.
First, I agree 100% w/ an HP nerf. torp HP 1500 -> 1000 seems like a no-brainer. AND 125w instead of 115 makes sense to me as well.
Economically, torps will only be overpowered once there’s a hunt herded onto a mine. Currently sweden is too linear, and they lack options because their skirm is the jaeger and their good is the black rider, but they actually can’t collect enough coin to build these units reliably. So they just make caroleans, which a lot of people dislike.
My opinion is that the most recent ironworks nerf should be reverted, but torps should not be able to gather from multiple food sources at once. so one torp cant collect a cow, a deer, and berries all at the same time. this way blue berries doesn’t get nerfed, mercs become viable again, and we flatten the curve of the swedish economy.
I don’t think blueberries should be nerfed, as it’s good game design to have an age 1 shipment that’s competitive with 3 vills.