Currently there is no point to play vs sweden in certain matchups. As an Inca player, all my units are countered by one single unit from age 2. The carolean is rediculous.
Chimus count as cav/shock infantry. Carolean counters them both on range and in melee.
Bowmen and Spears have low hp and simply get deleted no matter the difference in mass.
Then again, they have age 2 cannons, which judiging by any standard, seem to be easy to obtain.
How the heck is anyone supposed to beat sweden. You can’t destroy the torps, they are up within a heartbeat again and caroleans amass so quickly it’s impossible to gain map control.
You can’t ingore the torps since they get built in age 1 already and even a spear mass can’t take them down, let alone due to the fact that you shouldn’t mass them since caroleans delete them easily.
It’s killing the fun currently to play vs japan or sweden these days.
Sweden was designed to be a civilization that uses many mercenaries in its composition, but as the Carolinean is too strong, most of the time it is not necessary to use mercenaries beyond the 6 Mamelukes card.
Not that mercenaries are bad, quite the contrary, they’re great, I remember when I played Germany in RE the big luck was to have Jaegers and Black Riders in the saloon, which is what Sweden has by default.
In my opinion what needs to be adjusted is that the Carolinean shouldn’t counter the heavy infantry, that role should be the leather cannons, crossbowman and jaegers.
I agree 100%, I play a lot less these days just because of sweden it’s just broken eco and op caroleans.
Sweden needs a nerf to svea lifeguard so it’s just a 25% hp card, no increase to range resist, 6 mamelukes needs to be a 1 time card, torps need a nerf to gold and food gather rate, caroleans need to have the charge ability changed or just reduce their speed to that of a standard musk.
What I can recommend to you with Incas, is that you send yourself curare and support Cañari as soon as possible, with those two cards, the carols cannot do anything against those units.
Take advantage of the speed improvements and if the Swede climbs to fortresses, you follow him and he begins to take map control with the TCs and the pukara.
And well, use many archers with boleadoras, use the huaracas to kill artillery and the pikemen to besiege torps. Your only disadvantage is that you use more than 3 types of different control groups and only one.
Therefore, for me, the Swedes should get a guerrilla and the Carolines should be more of a dragon on foot than an all-terrain unit like the Japanese Ashigaru used to be.
Only way I’ve found to compete with sweden as inca is as you said send curare, the speed card and try and stack as many bowmen upgrades as possible, there’s an attack and hp upgrade in age 3, you can send native embassy and ally with caribs and there’s a 10% archer and melee upgrade there’s also an age 3 card that gives them an extra multiplier vs heavy infantry which is a card I’d normally never send as you mostly see skirms age 3 but vs sweden this is your card to beat caroleans with svea lifeguard.
I agree. Sweden should just be removed from the game. Caroleans are beyond broken, especially in Age IV with the Svea Lifeguard card. You can’t effectively kill them with skirms after this card has been sent and you will always lose in artillery wars to Sweden.
Interestingly, several nerfs (and reversal of nerfs) have been done since the release, and there were people yelling Swedes became unplayable every time. However the evaluation of Swedes’ strength even from Aussie Drongo himself, who main Swedes and once thought they were not good, has been kept rising (mid-tier before a lot of nerfs, now top-top tier).
Swedes have obviously been nerfed since release, but they have been considered as even overall stronger because there are so many “overshadowed” op options that keep popping up.
People got used to Sweden too OP strength, every nerf for Sweden needed at least months but just 2 weeks to buff back to more OP.
Some people were shouting they want something new and unique, ignoring all the game principle, so when new DLC comes out, fresh feeling for old civ has gone and only a trash design civ remained.
The reality is, this game has almost infinite possibilities to spawn OP strategies out of seemingly balanced/UP civs. It will never be really truly balanced.
IMHO, hakkas are a much bigger problem than caroleans, but I guess spamming caroleans is easier.
Then the response should be nerfing any broken strategy when they pop out. The goal of balancing is never perfect balancing in the first place.
And this definitely does not apply to every civ. Russia for example has been complained since DE and very few op strategies have been developed. Dutch didn’t get any better before they received a big buff. Meme strategies that are only possible in very limited circumstances do not count.
Sweden on the contrary obviously has a lot of potential even by just looking at it. Even if you nerf caroleans to the ground, they still have the best and most accessible mercenaries at the same time, and even better artillery (yes every time people say you can STILL counter caroleans with artillery tend to forget Swedes also have better artillery), and pretty decent cavalry (I’m not sure about hakka but their hussars are already good enough).
On top of all that, TORPS.
Monthly update (two months since the last update now) is not that frequent. People already have a month to enjoy and exploit some broken strategies, before they get nerfed.
BTW, going back to Swedes, they are unlike many other civs. You can see a lot more potential even by looking at their cards.