Why Swedes was and is still the worst designed civ IMO

Yet when it came out the first months were a pain for players, as they over performed in everything.

Using Swedes was already a win.

What you are describing is “why these upgrades come together and make a really good unit” and we all know that. I’m talking from a design perspective not how effective the unit is.
Maybe “synergize” is not the right word. I should use “relate”.
The unit is from the design perspective a frankenstein’s monster with too many forced but separate roles and strength that it should not have.
You can make a cost effective tank unit that can heal itself and also super fast and also have a long range sniping ability and also neglects its counters. It’s very strong. For sure. But it’s bad.

There is no need for a regular musketeer unit to:
(1) counter cavalry at range
(2) have good melee and can charge
(3) have longer range and better H&R abilities
(4) get a chance against their ranged counters
All at the same time, in the first place.

This unit has no clear design concept or purpose. All other units do. Even the crazy DLC units added later. A meat shield is a meat shield. A raider is a raider. A damage dealer is a damage dealer. A counter is a counter. They do what their supposed role should do. Carolean on the contrary has more than 3 different roles stacked into one and they are very separate.
When you look
If it is a melee specialize musketeer, it should be less effective at range. It shouldn’t also face better against its counters.

It could simply be a tuned down version of fusilier.

This should be the intended design. But the outcome is there is no need for anything else because caroleans do 80% of the job.

The core problem is they get much better mercenaries, age 2 artillery, high damage dragoon, to compensate for the “lack” of certain unit roles, then they filled all those roles into one unit at the same time. That’s why I think it is a really bad design. Both a conflicting concept and a huge waste of creativeness.

From the design of swede I think its meant to be a unit that is the absolute core of your army

which is unique amongst all aoe 3 civs

its caro all day every day and the other units are there to cover the absolute minimum weakness that the unit has to have in order for it to be not completely busted and you get more and more upgrades onto it without having to tag out your comp cause otherwise you are dead.

its a strange design for sure but for the most part it works, but its definitely not something that can be or should be replicated by other civs. If other civs starts behaving like this then I see it as more of a problem

edit: its a civ for the nutters that play one style every time,

1 Like

But in this case, all those buffed mercenaries (still super strong in the late game) and gimmicky upgrades on other units are all wasted.
One unit army is not fun either.

Also, from the whole civ’s perspective:
A rush civ may have poor long-term eco.
A strong eco civ may have average military.
A civ with both strong eco and strong military may have a slow start or be vulnerable to raids.

I don’t see that for Swedes. They are given a lot of bonuses that either contradict or overlap, and in the end one overshadows all the rest. Like they stuffed whatever they came up with into it.

2 Likes

yeah but in this game a tonne of stuff is wasted in a particular game, but you can make it work in other games by going a different path. to me it just has to be not completely overshadowing all the time

Like china, technically the strongest china comp is dynasties reform and you have to make a choice putting upgrades into the age 3 comp or the age 2 comp, doing both is usually a terrible idea

or heck even all the weird builds and path that the US and Mexico and do with their particular combination of age up and revolts, all of which locks you out of other options

Yeah US and Mexicans are more overstuffed for sure.
But the particular issue I have for Swedes is, it looks really forced. US and Mexicans can get a series of gimmicky buffs on several things, but very few of them would first erase a certain aspect of the mechanics completely, then add it to another unrelated unit, then give a strong compensation for that loss at the same time.

It wasn’t the worst designed Civ, That would be one of the asian civs, Asian Dynasties was pretty messed up from the start.

It was interesting being the only civ without Skirmishers or dragoons, with cheap artillery to make for the lack of skirmishers and infantry that took up the dragoon role. But you always had mercenaries that filed those roles anyway if you could pay the steep price. That was good design.

They also had a cavalry that could do hit and hit attacks on musketeers as a sort of short range mounted skirmisher.

It was a well designed Civ if only they stuck to the design. Reverse course on Hakkapelit ASAP.

4 Likes

Asian civs are badly designed from a historical or realism perspective for sure, but their units are still pretty normal and have clear purposes.

But it actually does far more than that. It is also a semi-skirmisher that deals with other musketeers and does not fall as easily to skirmishers. It also counters other infantry at melee.
If leather cannons fill the skirmisher role, carolean should lose its advantage against other musketeers.
And that also leads to hakka jumping back and forth.
Either revert hakka to a heavy cavalry, or make caroleans a more standard musketeer with a high melee.

1 Like

Asian civs were deliberatly designed with severe gaps in their unit roster so they must rely on consulates but consulates themselves are unreliable. That’s pretty much the definition of bad design.

Err not really as a Musketeer it’s bad at being a musketeer low shot damage it’s higher rate of fire doesn’t matter much, it’s still pretty low, and they can be overrun with heavy cavalry (because of their weak anti-cav melee). The only real advantage they have vs musketeer is the late game switch to range resistance. but other musks have other good cards.

And while leather cannons were no skirmishers they do reduce your need for light infantry.

But i’m strongly of the opinion that Hakkapelits should return to being a heavy cavalry unit with short range and high damage.

Mostly artillery, so they got culverin-falconet, or culverin-mortar, or dragoon-culverin.
But these hybrid units have clearly the functions of the unit roles that they are comprised of. I’m okay with carolean being a musketeer-dragoon or a musketeer-skirmisher. But it’s far more than that.
A carolean equivalent of, say, hand mortar would be a culverin-mortar but also with a melee multiplier against cavalry and a speed boost ability.

BTW off topic but I think Asian civs should get easier access to normal artillery.

2 Likes

Japan is ok I think in regards to artillery but china and india should have some way of getting falconets, they suffer vs massed light infantry in late game due to no anti-infantry artillery. Though perhaps the nerf to light infantry against cavalry might make cavalry a much more viable option in the absence of artillery.

Even Flaming arrows aren’t effective anti-infantry artillery, but they’re what you’ve got and you are expected to get real artillery or just use yumis for the most part.

Paying for artillery separately would be nice.

True, though when I play japan I don’t think they struggle as much vs skirm masses as others do. Naginata are quite good and you can get a couple of cards for them 1 of which improves the multiplier vs infantry.

Anyway the musketeer type unit is worst unit in the game, design wise. Being a meat shield and counter to cav shouldn’t be a thing if u ain’t a pikeman just as an example

The game is in an era where heavy cavalry was developing to the point of actually being able to threaten pike squares - the French, Spanish and Poles are a few civs that managed to train horses enough to actually commit to charging pike squares and this would actually work. Musketeer balls obliterated this advanced heavy cavalry - the last time a french cavalry army charged a british musketeer line only one loss was incurred by the brits.

Musks countering cav is in melee is wrong but the overall thought of a genral purpose anti cavalry meatshield is on point. Historically correct musks would have a ranged multiplier vs cav or just alot more ranged damage and be mostly useless in melee. But that would really just destroy everthing but musks/skrim/cannon.

2 Likes

Japan shrines need map control (hunt), same for Swede torps. China wonder is like half a factory, you are not complaining about factory which every European civ have. Only Dutch banks and inca house are the one producing resources with no map control.

Fair enough but i wager u missed my point, that the musk is too versatile for the gameplay

No. Japan shrines take too long to take down. 4.5 Ashi speed they can always make it there before you can tear them down. Torps as well. China wonder is in age 3, factories are in age 4 AND require an age 4 card to send and wait for.

3 Likes

But remember the procelain tower does not have any other age up bonus, to compensate. Every single age up in the game will ship something or give resources or upgrades, procelain tower doesn’t

And for age 3 age up usually player will get 600 to 800 res of army or res crates, which is exactly like half the cost of factory, you don’t get those by aging up with procelain tower.