They are regular-ish (they move faster) musks with heavy wood cost rather than coin. Don’t put the blame on us this time.
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In the current version of the game, this would pretty much kill any use of Melee Heavy Infantry against Sweden (i.e. Pikes, Halberdiers, Doppel), as Caroleans can shoot and melee Melee Heavy Infantry effectively. Imagine a scenario where Veteran Carolean first fires two volleys against Veteran Halberdiers and then engage in melee. Veteran Caroleans would deal 28.8 (20 * 1.2 * 1.5 * (1-0.2)) melee damage against Halberdier, while a Veteran Halberdier only deals 22.4 (28 * (1-0.2)) damage against the Carolean.
To properly implement a late game pike-carolean or musk-huss strategy, the game would need to review and revise the stats of Heavy Infantry units, particularly Melee units, on how much damage they should tank. Otherwise, making Caroleans work would involve a lost of arm-twisting, breaking a bunch of in-game rule to create a unit that is simultaneously overpowered and underpowered.
I would make Caroleans exactly the same as normal Musketeers, but with the following changes:
-x2 melee bonus against cavalry (Musketeers have x3)
-x1.75 melee bonus against Shock infantry (Musketeers have x2.25)
-x1.25 melee bonus against Heavy Infantry (Because they use sabers instead of bayonets)
-Carolean Charge (Caroleans only move faster with Carolean Charge)
-Change the “Svea Lifeguard” card to give something else instead of changing hand resistance to ranged resistance.
-The cost of Caroleans can be reduced to 65f/35c (because Musketeers currently cost 75f/25c) or kept at 65f/40c.
For the rest (Speed, Resistance, Rate of Fire, Range, Ranged attack against Cavalry, etc.) they are the same as normal Musketeers.
In this way, Caroleans would be Musketeers who can beat other Musketeers in melee (consider that the bonus they would have is small), and have the Carolean Charge, but in exchange they cost more coins and their bonus against cavalry in melee is lower. I understand that the devs tried to do something similar to what I proposed at the beginning, but they failed because they tried to include more changes to differentiate them even more from the Musketeers, when the differences between the Caroleans and the Musketeers should be few for balance reasons.
You haven’t seen Sentinel yet… 
The best skirmisher in the game.
Play through the pikemen and don’t listen to him.
He is a master of disability adaptation.
The poor design of Caroleans is because fitting them into the Swedish civ is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. To compensate for Sweden not having skirms or goons they were made into a do everything unit with excessive range and ranged multipliers. Those features run completely counter to how they actually fought and undermine them having a coherent design.
Their historical fighting style was to march forward and deliver a shot range volley before charging with swords and pikes. So if you want them to emulate their real life role they should be a fast, low range and high melee musketeer. Even the faster RoF kinda fits to represent the point blank volley before charging in.
To get rid of the features that undermine a realistic role for Caroleans, the initial shortcomings of the Swedish civ need to be addressed. Now that Sweden has an actual light cav unit the ranged cav multiplier doesn’t seem necessary at all. It has a secondary function of trying to force them to be paired with pikes to protect them from ranged cav, but that still doesn’t seem like enough to make the pairing viable. Their range could also be significantly and Sweden could have some kind of Arquebusier to properly fill the light infantry role (at least in the early ages).
A more realistically themed Carolean could look something like the following:
Giving ranged resistance instead of melee would compensate for shorter range. It would also reduce their effectiveness against melee cavalry. Resistance could flip to melee while the Carolean Charge ability is active.
The cavalry multiplier could be moved to melee to make it a more standard unit.
Siege attack could be lackluster (potentially even worse than I’ve shown) to give an opening for pairing with pikes. It also has a historical justification since the Caroleans suffered massive losses when they were lured into attacking Russian fortifications in the battle of Poltava.
For the Cards that currently affect them, they could be reworked as follows:
Snaplock: +1 range to Caroleans and Hakkas, and +2 range to Arquebusiers
Platoon Fire: +10% ranged attack, and faster RoF at close range (like Gascenya)
Svea Lifeguard: +15% hitpoints and +10% melee armour to Caroleans and Grenade Troopers
Yes. I used to think it as a “musketeer with ranges multiplier” so I found anything related to melee bonus, range resistance and speed out of place. If I consider it as a “musketeer with high melee” and realize most of its features are consistent, and now the range and ranged multiplier are out of place. The devs could have this design on mind from the very beginning, then it was tweaked to weirder and weirder.
Now there is no such need as hakkapelitt becomes a dragoon. And carolean could stick to a more well-defined role as a musketeer-skirmisher (in melee) hybrid because skirmisher is the only unit Swedes lack now. It could just be a jaguar warrior plus a range attack without any multiplier.
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They have leather canon.
Caroleans should only have multiplier vs heavy cav at range while hakkas should have only melee attack (like TAD ones) with bonus vs light cavalry
This way Sweden would feel different and not just a spam 1 unit civ
Edit: bonus vs cav, not infantry
It is mainly from the Napoleonic Era mod, WOL doesn’t even match the era, and the two main creators of NE are important developers of the Definitive Edition. If you are familiar with NE MOD, you will find that many units have the same image as NE MOD, and many units in NE have been added to the Definitive Edition.
Oh yeah. Got confused between the two.
I think you’re underestimating how strong “JPK with range” would be. Caroleans already have a powerful melee attack and even a small x1.5 multiplier would mean they cost effectively beat almost all heavy infantry while also being a solid generalist unit.
Personally I think the civs that were historically most proficient with pike and shot warfare such as Dutch and Swedes should have Arquebusiers as their archaic light infantry. That would totally eliminate the need for Caroleans to cover any lack from missing light infantry.
Of course it shouldn’t have JPK multipliers. Maybe a 1.2x melee multiplier against heavy inf.
Then ranged resistance by default (or from an early game not late game card), 4.25 speed, charge ability.
It needs to be 10 range to encourage charge and melee, so the above are less of a bonus but an adjustment so that it does not get easily kited to death by other musketeers while maintaining its unique playstyle (Like the penalty to pikeman for heavy ranged cavalry is not a real penalty but an adjustment to prevent them from easily kiting pikemen)
It probably also needs a janissary-level melee multiplier to cavalry, which is the standard for non-polearm musketeers.
Then remove every buff on ranged multiplier and range.
Which makes it all the more ridiculous that they have musks with 15 range and range resist. Caroleans absolutely do not have to be a do everything unit when Sweden has age 2 artillery to back them up.
Did you mean heavy cav instead of heavy inf? Or do you want Caroleans to behave like skirms?
For hakkas I would like to see them have a melee multiplier vs all cav and also have both heavy and light cav tags. That would make them lose to goons at range, but beat them in melee. They should also just lower the base attack and increase the cav and artillery multipliers to get rid of the redundant x0.75 vs infantry and villagers.
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All that can be done more cleanly without any “adjustment” multipliers. If their base resistance was 10% ranged then they could shrug off a few shots while closing the gap. Their resistance could even be dependent on stance and switch to melee when the charge ability is used.
With the below stats, Caroleans would actually beat regular musks in both melee and range, they’d just be better at it in melee.
Any approach like the design of ranged heavy cav is something I’d avoid like the plague. Those are some of the worst designed units in the game.
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10 range resist and a mere 19 with 2.5 ranged would make me never ever field this unit at all for the price.
And the current carolean is overpriced sans cards already.
Oh my bad, yes I wanted say Carols bonus vs heavy cav at range
Totallly agree on the leather canon paragraph
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Caroleans are already 19 damage and 2.5 RoF (which is approximately the same DPS as a normal Musketeer). Adding range resistance by default would only help them more since they have more than enough melee DPS.
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this is hillarious changelog xDDD best comment i have seen in a long time.
and still its a brain dead Units which breaks still a lot of Rules in this game ^^
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I just realised now that Caroliner can’t beat chang dao.
What am I reading?
You got any prove for that like numbers or a recording that shows that Changdao are supreme over Caroleans?
I just finished a game of 1v1