This is not personal feeling to their strength.
I never spoke “I feel Sweden is powerful or unbeatable” something personal feelings, all points are based on reasons, facts, datas.
1. Carolean:
From original AOE3 until TAD, all range heavy inf have the same characteristic.
No multiplier to the cav, rate of fire is 3 and melee resistance is 2.0
Because Carolean is new and has to be special, now they have faster shot, easier to kill the cav and better resistance than all civs range heavy inf, and even they are have carolean charge to boost their speed to catch skirms.
Shipment Snaplock (III) and Svea lifeguard (IV): with better status than other musk, they still can boost their attack range and change resistance to range meanwhile +25% hp. Especially Svea lifeguard is completely a god shipment, melee cav and melee are countered by carolean and won’t directly face carolean in fighting, the effective counter unit skirms is range attack, carolean changes to range resistance means they can resist skirms 30% more and that shipment even gives carolean 25% more hp!?
With multiplier carolean has the best range attack to fight against CAV, India sepoy/Japan ashi/ Otto jani are even more expensive than carolean.
Japanese ashi was complaint for long time because their speed is 4.5 and that cause skirms harder to hit and run them and ashi can always catch the melee inf.
Tomahawk was existed since original AOE3 as native, with speed 5, range resistance and range (hand) damage. However when WC was released, ES didn’t give Haud(previous Iroq) tomahawk the same features and made them become same as musk. Because THIS WILL CAUSE UNBALANCE and can’t be “they are new and have to be special”.
2. Torp:
Only 25w extra wood, Torps get:
around 1~1.5 villager gather rate (without any shipment)
300 more HP
Faster booming rate
Unraidable
Shipment Dominions (II)
First, Torps only cost 25w for an additional vil gather rate is very effective;
Second, they are unraidable, killing a villager is much easier than destroy a torp; Villager can be trained in TC one by one ONLY and Torp can be built when player has resource; Until Torp is destroyed the enemy gets nothing, but villagers once escape they stop gathering, once enemy gets killed 1~2 pikes or cav during destroying torps, enemy totally lose, what is effective to siege torp are basically easy killed by carolean - main Sweden unit.
Third, Shipment dominion giving 4 torps means around 4~6 vils meanwhile adding them 30% hp, can other civs send 5 vils also adds 30% hp?
3. Variety of age2 military shipment:
After Sweden got buffing many times for age2, now they have pikes, hussars, xbows, leather cannons.
So Sweden can send 3 hussars for raiding, 2 leather cannons with caroleans in wall can safety defend. Their vils are only send several to outside for torps to make them happy turtle.
4. Military:
Merces
Is able to enable jaeger and black rider hiring from regular military building and gets 25% HP and damage in age4 shipment. German was known as merces civ also only gets 20%, also German is not able to train in saloon.
Advanced Arsenal
No need shipment because they are new and need to be speical?
5. Eco:
Early-mid game they have torps, late game they have 99 vils + 2 factories + torps.
Which Dutch only gets 50 vils and Japan gets 75 vils for having eco buildings.
Even Sweden vil is not costing gold or wood, they can herd and not force to gather cherry orchard.
This is so simple.
6. Conclusion:
No matter eco or military, Sweden gets many bonus without any cost, any of this bouns are special and almost on above of other civs. Why is this not considering OP?
Some people are expressing their feeling and just say they are feeling Sweden is just fine and balance, only.
Let their special unit be special, it requires multiple cards to reach its full potential anyway. Svea Lifeguard is powerfull but also an age IV card.
Torps will be difficult to balance properly, I can’t say what a proper fix is. Perhaps raise the wood cost even further?
Im in full agreement with you here. I don’t know why that hussar card was added and don’t see why they needed an extra barracks option in xbows.
Germans getting screwed in favour of the new toy. The improved Arsenal is listed as a civ bonus, took me a while too even notice that tbh. Don’t know why they thought Sweden needed another little extra.
Torps run out of rescources at some point though. Still they could do with a decreased vill pop cap, the Dutch could use an increase though.
I’m actually personally okay with most of them despite two (frequently discussed) ones:
Caroleans:
The “new and special” concept for unique units does not always apply to AOE3. Many unique units in AOE3 are just replacements of regular units and they can be trained as easily as regular units. Thus despite some difference in stats they should fulfill a similar role as the unit they replace.
Before the second last patch Caroleans used to be musketeers + melee skirmishers + dragoons with very long range + counter dragoons. Now they thankfully removed the “counter dragoons” part.
Most AOE2 UUs are trained from the Castle (limited accessibility) and do not replace anything. Because of this they can work more like special units. Carolean, however, is a regular unit.
We still have “special” units in AOE3, like Cuirassiers or Urumis, but they either have limited accessibility, or do not replace any regular units.
This is not saying they are necessarily OP or not. You can still have an UP civ with an absurd unit.
Torps:
Torps are hard to balance, especially in the early game, and we’ll eventually reach a point where they are more acceptable. BUT I think it is intuitive that Swedes need a lower villager cap because of the Torps.
Every other civ with additional resource-generating buildings have a lower villager cap. Exception being Incas, but I can even argue for them because they don’t have factories.
Swedes have the exact same economy as every other European civ, including two factories. Poor Dutch receive only 50 villagers thanks to banks, which are very costly, take long to construct, require several cards to reach their full limit, and are actually not any more efficient than 49 villagers with all upgrades. Even French with extra-strong villagers have a lower cap. How are Swedes supposed to get 99 villagers + 2 factories + 20 torps?
By the time sweden reaches all 99 vills all the torps should have runned out of ressources, so having a lower vill cap would make the civ really bad at late game
I agree you point but why I said Carolean is one of Sweden OP point, is:
Rapidly catch up the enemy. The units those counter caroleans are weak at melee.
Same resource as normal musk but highest attack (x1.5 multiplier to cav) to cav, compared to all heavy range inf (even units are more expensive than carolean)
Able to boost Range and huge boost with range resistance when facing the units what caroleans should be countered.
Regarding to the range resistance, why I consider this shipment is incredible, despite it adds 25% HP to caroleans , it also change their resistance to range. That makes skirms much more difficult to kill caroleans, 30% resistance is apply to all HP. Take an example, carolean has 150 HP, +25% HP means 187.5 HP, plus 30% resistance is 267.8 HP, and the resistance bonus will also apply to guard upgrade, imperial upgrade, shipment upgrade.
I totally agree there are “special” units in AOE3, but ES didn’t adjust main units or combine several function from different main units into one. That why I take tomahawk as an example, and you will not see pure cuirassiers are being so hard to counter.
Torp’s part is just additional eco bonus for Sweden, As long as they have eco bonus, they will be better than other Europe civs.
However this can be/should be considered as a special way to speed up their mid game eco (like port extra TC, Spain faster shipment, Otto free vils), but this shouldn’t be treated as main eco income. The current situation is torp are too powerful and without any negative bonus.
I swear this dude hates Sweden. Everything he said is true, but everything he said is FINE.
Caroleans lose hard to Sepoy/Ashi before the age 4 card and they tie with musketeers. They lose to brit musk spam early on.
The civilization is fine in the current patch.
Just like Indian Sepoy rush is meant to be impossible to counter with HI, Caroleans are meant to be impossible to counter with HI after age 4. It’s their design. You need skirmishes to kill Caroleans.
The issue with Caroleans was that their range was way too big and they could kill goons. That’s fixed.
Svea Lifeguard shouldn’t be changed because that’s the whole design of Sweden.
Torps are also fine.
Swedish boom works like British boom. You can test in game, the timing is similar.
The difference is that Sweden has a transition period.
Just move on to be honest.
The general opinion is that Sweden has reached its sweet spot.
Your other post saying Russia should be able to train villagers in blockhouses in order to compete with “trickle boom civs” was also not a good idea.
Why you wanna make EVERY civ able to boom fast? Civs have different designs and playstyles. This is not AOE2.
Russia can’t have fast boom because their army is cheap. It’s their design. They just need better cards to boost their units a little bit more. Horse Archer base values should be reworked in general i would say, but needs some testing.
Sheep? What do you mean?
Using trees with torps is not a good idea, only in treaty. And the only map where that’s worth it is Himalaya (tight trees).
Shipping mines only aids your awkward transition period. U want to remove that from Sweden too?
Torp gather rate for mines is 0.6.
Estate gather rate is 0.5 (in reality it’s ~0.35 due to villagers walk time).
If you research all estate techs and ship royal mint, you will gather at estates at a 0.64 rate, which is more than a torp on a mine).
When u send your copper mines, you don’t have 99 vills and fully running estates yet.
If U do, sending 3/4 copper mines is just not the best shipment to do. You should just send more estate cards.
U can’t take away villagers from Sweden because torps don’t have infinite trickles.
How will they be able to compete against Brits in the late game, for instance? Don’t say ‘tree’ card cause that’s not practical. Blackberries trickle is bad for supremacy. It’s just the equivalent of 10 vills gathering a berry.
Dutch late game economy has been weak for ages WAY before Sweden has arrived. Their whole design is having 150 pop cannon spam. I think they really need some adjustments (which would also make them viable to treaty games).
My idea is that the capitol upgrade for coin should also impact banks.
Why everyone wants to make the new civilization garbage just because “xyz” civiliazation is bad at “xyz”. Fix the flaws of other civs instead of making the new civ unplayable.
Military wise swedes now have a really tough time breaking a skirm goon composition as caroleans not longer counters goon and they actually cant go skirm goon themselves since Hakkapelit have very low range and is actually classified as a heavy cav so they are countered by goons as well.
Their xbow cant go guard so that also means they have no cost effective counter to goon, Jeagers are not effective either since they cost 200 gold to train, meaning that you need 1000k gold just to get a single batch. Not to mention even if you get the upgrades for them as Aussie Drongo mentioned in a stream, they tend to overkill.
As it stands the only thing left that needs tweaking to me is maybe the timing for blueberries to delay the boom to when the opponent can have a viable comp against them. I have seen people suggest to make blueberries an age 2 card to basically overload their age 2 choices so they have to choose between blueberries and military shipments.
As for Svea, its an age 4 card, the composition that would break them there is skirm goon Heavy Cannons.
They are not fine, fine is you or your guys own feeling.
You can also refer to kaiser opinion in esoc after he played against drongo Sweden, its totally not fine.
Sweden still has the best eco but cheaper cost musk than India, otto. So your case is not established.
Whole Sweden design is basically failed, from carolean to torp. Almost everytime balance patch are focusing on them and never make people happy.
Compared to being said hate Sweden, I prefer to hate the guys protecting Sweden without any proof only showing their feeling and says Sweden is balance and fine. I repeat here again what I dislike is generating resources buildings and I consider this is fail design in RTS game, not Sweden. You can go back for my first post in this forum.
Torp doesn’t like British manor. Torp is much better than manor.
Manor need give one vils for pop means they have only 9 free pop for each manor.
Manor vils will get raided, manor can’t send shipment.
Again I don’t know why you guys always need to take aoe2 to compare. Did I say TAD has such Sweden this big problem and does this mean TAD is same as aoe2?
Don’t find an feeling excuse to mess the balance.
In you guys opinion is TAD= aoe2, only Sweden can show that this is completely special and new?
So tomahawk is aoe2? Sepoy is aoe2? Because they doesn’t have special ability except damage and hp different.
It is also funny that some Sweden protector started saying top player don’t know how to fight against Sweden.
I mean all civs have weaknesses, if we are saying that a weakness is a failure then are you saying that we need to buff them?
Their weakness is fair given their strength as a musk huss civ and the caroleans and it makes them counterable, which is anything but OP
China has a weakness to cav as people often say but its not like its insurmountable.
as it stands caroleans have clear weaknesses. They have lower HP, lower attack and cannot counter cav in close melee like musks can. While they have a multiplier at range due to their lower atk they essentially do the same damage. Their good points is that they have higher ROF and slightly higher speed. They lose to other musks in straight fights until Svea comes in and by then the opponent has cav to tank, or cannons. If they are try to get into melee against other musks then have cav.
Its not that Caroleans have multiple roles, its that they have the roles of a musk reversed, they do higher damaged to cav at range rather than in melee and vice versa vs musks.
If we want to talk about things with other civs with weird effects that change counters, then:
China have double sided armour which makes cav viable in chasing goons.
Germany has enough speed and HP upgrades too make dopps a super counter to cav and skirms
ERK counters everything at mass
India have 21 range skirms in age 4, Haud has 22 range skirms in age 3 and those arent even cards.
4.5 speed ashi which can counter skirms , 20 range yumi with can decimate cav and nagis with 30 range resist and +25% hp card
Port has 18 range goons( used to be 20 lol) that can counter other goons and also skirms sometime
Yeomen Lbs have 26 range, allowing them to snipe cav and artillery if they have the mass.
Lakota have Bow Riders which can counter skirm at low mass.
French have Cuirs which counters basically all melee units due to the splash damage and that is without a card
Indian urumis which is a true melee skirm that also kills other skirms due to their speed and HP.
I agree the melee for carolean is weak compared to range attack.
However, if a musk can kill cav with range, why do they need to change to melee? goons will not change to melee also.
Moreover due to Sweden has the most powerful eco, they can always mass caroleans, which their cost is also low. With massive but not weak quantity, that’s the point. Even more they have “special” shipment.
Combine to all points I stated in the post. Caused Sweden are OP.
If you just put single free advanced arsenal and ask me why this is OP just a shipment, it is the same idea.
Others units I have no comment and I know what they suppose to.
I will not say Russia Oprichnik is weak they can’t put in the normal battle.
Talking about balance is pretty tiring. Anyway, neither myself nor they both agree with the other person’s opinion at all. Killing All of this is due to the developer’s lack of competence, but I have no idea why series’s fans should suffer so much. They seem to be encouraging fights between users to stop criticizing them.
The point is that you force them to switch to melee, since you know units automatically switch to melee when they are engaged with melee units unless microed.
While they are engaged in melee, snared trying to kill the cav, you push your own range units forward to fire at them.
I still push changdaos and pikes forward towards skirms and archers for the same reason. This is why chinese monks in cover mode is considered annoying. You can do these things.
In aoe 3 you have to use combined arms.
I am not saying they can’t be tweaked, the swedish eco can be nerfed a bit, maybe delay their timing. But as a whole they are no more strange to me compared to what other civs can accomplish.
Edit: you also mention that the free advanced arsenal is OP, ok its strange but note that caroleans only have 1 atk card and 2 HP cards and no combat cards. Prominent musk civs have 3 cards usually, one of which is a combat card. Then you also have to build the arsenal and research the tech which is worth considerable resources. In addition other civs can also send advanced arsenal and get the tech themselves if they want to so on balance it doesn’t sound that OP to me