Overall I’m pretty neutral about most of this, but a couple of these ideas I’m strongly against.
Hell NO for this one.
Caroleans are pretty much the exact opposite of a skirmisher. They have a solid ranged attack with a shorter reach (at least initially), strong melee, and fought in disciplined formation which is exactly what the musketeer role represents. Their current role is a bit too incoherent and contradictory, but turning them into a skirm and adding musks is not a good fix for that.
Instead, I’d change them to focus on their short range and melee capabilities and get rid of the bonus vs cav at range and million upgraded to their ranged attack. Now that Hakkas are more of a standard goon, there is no need for Caroleans to try to fill the goon role and have weird multipliers and a bunch of extra range. More or less something like this:
To keep a niche open for Pikemen, Carolean siege could be even worse than above. It would also be historically accurate since most of Sweden’s major defeats were from trying to charge on units in entrenched positions. More details in the discussion below:
With Caroleans changed to a more standard musk role, I think Sweden should also have a more capable light infantry unit in the early game. Adding Arquebusiers to the standard European roster (also for Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese) could fill this role to give them a decent early game skirm that lacks some late game upgrades so that Sweden still must supplement with Jaegers in the late game. I didn’t mention it in the original post about it, but a good way to make them unique and incentivize their roll as part of pike and shot formations would be to give them a stat boost for every nearby Pikeman (like State Militia or Poruchiks with the Polk card). Making them a 2 pop unit would also fit with Sweden having a small population and would go along with some of your suggestions.
The last unit I’d change is the Hakkapelit. They went through a ton of iterations before settling on being a normal goon with slightly more melee attack. I think there is room to go back to some of the ideas of previous iterations to give them a more unique role. Firstly, they should get rid of the x0.75 vs infantry and villagers. It is unnecessary when they could just lower the base attack and reduce the other multipliers. Next, they should restore the melee multiplier to be for all cavalry but add the heavy cav tag to compensate (so they would be both heavy and light cav). That would make them get countered by goons from range, but defeat them in melee. It would also let them get the heavy cav arsenal upgrades once again. So overall, something like this:
Reducing the Torp gather rate in exchange for higher yields is something I could get behind. I’d like to see something similar for other gathering buildings like Mountain Monasteries so that they increase yields instead of gather rates. I wouldn’t want them to not use resources at all though, and increasing the yield would be a better approach. A change like this would have to be done carefully since going too far would make the opportunity cost of Torps too great.
Another way to dampen Sweden’s economy could be to emphasize their low population by making their Settlers take longer to train instead of capping the amount at 90. Their economy peaks earlier on because of their Torp boom so having a lower villager cap really does nothing to balance their economy when it is most over tuned.
I agree, they’re a bit too cheap how they are now. Getting an Arquebusier unit that pairs with pikes would be a good way to also keep them relevant without an excessive cost reduction.