Let me start this in a positive way by saying that the Carolean rework was good. You guys nailed that.
But the swedish economy took a huge hit with this patch. And not in a balanced way. Swedes have become a worse version of brits with a slower and more micro intensive economy. I have spoken to a lot of people in these two days and not a single person agreed with the torp nerfs. Let’s dive in.
BLUEBERRIES
The nerf completely broke the flow of the swedish eco. The only balance torps needed was increased wood cost. I hate that blueberries now just add 375 food to existing torp bushes, instead of replacing the regular 150F bush spawn with the 500F blueberry bush. Before, it was basically a villager spawn that would last 12 minutes. Now it’s basically a food crate that you can scale how much you get based on how many torps you build. Terrible design. The fish card is like that and no one uses it because it’s terrible design. Now instead of fixing the fish card, you copied and pasted that terrible design to blueberries. Please change it back.
And in treaty, oh lord… You can’t take full advantage of blueberries in treaty because they do not spawn if the regular torp bushes are extinguished (since they just check for existing torp bushes and add 375F to them). You don’t use wood crates in treaty so by the time you finish buildings torps, most of the regular berries are already gone. Worthless.
MY SUGGESTIONS
Make the base cost of torps 135 wood.
Reason: Torps can potentially produce more resources than kancha houses (135W), manors (1 settler for 135W) or shrines (125W), but their trickle doesn’t last forever. Kancha house and shrines have infinite trickles, and british settler spawn too (they can be raided, but they also have an age 1 card that brings down manor cost to 87 wood).
A british manor spawns one settler that is affected by market upgrades. A torp equals 2 settlers with the base gather rate (no upgrades). It’s balanced.
Increase the regular torp bush to 135F or revert back o 150F.
If the torp will cost 135W, it’s expected to be at least 1:1 conversion to food by default.
Completely revert Blueberries to how it was. Reward opponents for burning down torps
This means: every ** newly constructed ** torp will again spawn a 500 food blueberry bush that gathers at the speed of one settler (0.67/s).
The increased build cost to 135w is enough to slow down the boom significantly. No need to nerf this card. The nerf broke the flow of the economy because you can’t send the blueberries card in age 1 anymore (I mean, it is an age 1 card after all, so you should be able to send it in age 1 lol). In this patch you have to wait until you have enough torps before you send it, which is not a good design.
Furthermore, make it so there’s a hard limit of 20 blueberries that can be spawned by the player. This means that when your torps get raided, building new ones won’t spawn a new blueberry once a total of 20 has been spawned already. This means you will have to rebuild the torp in the same spot where the previous one was, in order to reuse that blueberry.
In conclusion, this (in combination with increased wood cost) will force sweden to turtle a little more. They will think twice before building torps in distant mines without putting an effort to guard them (just like a regular civ would do with distant villagers). This change will reward the opponent for burning down their torps.
ENGELSBERG IRONWORKS
This patch made them even more useless in treaty games.
Another nerf to gather rate I could take (please this has to be the last one), but why change the collision? Please revert this collision change asap. I don’t know a single person who thinks this was justified. How am I supposed to organize my base in treaty? Nothing fits.
Also, as Sweden in treaty you are already very much vulnerable to RNG because you are not guaranteed to have mines close enough to your base. This change made everything worse cause you can only build 4. Basically, this card does not belong in treaty decks anymore. Thanks for that.
MY SUGGESTIONS
No more nerfs
Please let this be the last nerf. It’s now 0.6 coin/s, which is exactly like a settler with no upgrades.It’s fair.
Revert the increased collision nonsense
Limiting 4 torps per mine makes this card useless for treaty. Assuming you guys are aware of that, and you still want to keep this change, it needs to be done without involving collision. The increased collision has made impossible to make a tight base for treaty and this impacts the whole team of players because it’s hard to build walls. Overall terrible change for treaty, that affects everyone, not only sweden.
BLACKBERRIES
Considering blueberries and ironworks are now both worthless for treaty and sweden has one of the slowest treaty economies, I wonder what economic card you guys want us to use? My guess is that it would be blackberries.
Well if that’s the case, think again, cause the card is still useless. And by the way it is currently bugged in this patch, torps don’t collect them.
This card was designed for treaty, right? Let me tell you that it’s terrible.
What’s the point of being able to send it again in imperial age? No one will ever send it before that. This card takes 50 minutes to fully collect the bush and only spawns in existing torps and not newly constructed ones. Guess what, people delete their torps in treaty so they can reorganize their base for walls, especially now that the collision is SO big. Am I supposed to send blackberries at the 30 minutes mark when I have reorganized my torps? What a joke this card is. It will finish collecting the bush at the 1 hour and 20 minutes mark. If it’s NR40 (majority of treaty matches), game will be most likely over.
MY SUGGESTIONS
Blackberry Orchards
This card was probably designed for treaty and so the main problem to solve here is to remove the need of having to delete and rebuild torps at one point, in order to organize the base for walls.
My suggestion is that this card is moved to age 1. It would send 5 Blackberry Orchard wagons. A blackberry orchard is, obviously, similar to the japanese one, with 4000 food each (japanese cherry orchard has 5000 food). By deciding in age 1 where these orchards are going to be placed, planning your base layout will be easier, and Sweden won’t have to delete and rebuild torps when building walls, which is annoying.
But why 4000 food? You may ask. Well because you can build 4 torps around it. 5 orchards with 4 torps around them = 20 torps. The way it is now, each blackberry is 1000F and is collected individually by each torp where they spawn. The orchard is essentialy 4 blackberries collected simultaneously by the torps around them.
It is balanced for supremacy too because it won’t be as good as blueberries. Blueberries collect at double the speed (in this patch it takes about 9 to 12 minutes to fully collect, depending on how much food the regular bush had at the moment the card was sent). And also you have wood crates in your supremacy deck, making blueberries more valuable than blackberries, by a lot. Supremacy matches almost never last that long in order to fully extinguish a blackberry orchard (it takes 50 minutes).
Also, a torp with blueberries won’t collect a blackberry orchard for as long as the blueberry is still present. It will prioritize the blueberry. So sending both cards in age 1 would be a waste, cause they won’t “stack”. But it could still be handy for treaty since you would be able to plan ahead your torp positions for perfect base layout.
GREAT NORTHERN FORESTS
I’m really not sure how to balance this thing. Honestly I think it’s useless as an age 4 card.
MY SUGGESTIONS
Bring it to age 2
It could be useful in 1v1 supremacy as an age 2 card if the map has few mines or too distant/unsafe ones. I haven’t even tested this card a lot, but it needs to make sure the torp has enough range to reach 10 trees, while also making 10 the limit of trees each torp can collect (which equals 0.5 wood/s, which is exactly one settler without market upgrades).
If you have read all of it, thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
A very pissed off age of empires player.
EDIT
The user @FastAuthor96737 suggested something interesting to balance blueberries, and I decided to change some of his concept and add to the OG post.
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Leave the torp cost at 125 wood. Same price as a shrine. A torp can produce a trickle of 0.6/s on a mine, which is more than a shrine but needs a card.
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Bring back the regular torp bush to 150F, with a gather rate at 0.335/s (half a villager on a bush).
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Blueberries could be a card that allows the swedish player to pay 50 food in order to spawn a 150F berry bush that auto gathers at 0.67/s (one villager in a bush). Thats like paying 50 food for having 1 villager in a mill with no upgrades, during 3,73 minutes.
If the goal is to make it work like a livestock, let’s consider a sheep. A sheep returns 300% of its initial price when fully fat. 300% of 50 is 150. The sheep is gathered quicker but it needs time to “bake”, while the berry bush gathers much slower but can be gathered right way and doesn’t need a villager. So it’s pretty balanced.
The only downside is that blackberries would definitely not be used in treaty. Unless they are reworked in a way to make it possible for a torp to gather blueberries and blackberries simultaneously.
EDIT II
Alternative solution:
Maintain blueberry nerf (or remove the card), but significantly buff ironworks in order to support a more merc oriented army composition. Add 6 villager start and an age2 villager shipment.
The user @luciofrancosi suggested:
" I think giving them a 5 vill shipment on age 2 and 6 vill start would be a good start.
I am against reverting blueberries nerf, but I think englesberg ironworks could be reverted to 125% or even buffed to 150% as it would help them to get mercs out faster.
My notes: This could be an alternative to make the swedish economy competitive again, since blueberries now work as a food crate instead of a villager spawn and it loses its value quickly. Reverting Ironworks to its previous state would cover that and synergize well with the new merc-heavy composition. Although I have to add that it doesn’t address treaty problems (refer to my opinion on blackberries).
My suggestion:
Settler base gather rate for mine: 0.6 coin/s
Settler gather rate for mine with both market upgrades (+30%): 0.78 coin/s
Torp base gather rate for mine: 0.3 coin/s
Torp gather rate for mine with ironworks (+160%): 0.78 coin/s
In conclusion: Reverting Ironworks to 160% boost could be a solution.
If that’s the case, perhaps we could even consider removing blueberries entirely since the swedish economy is way more reliant on coin in this current patch (outside of hussars). Just some food for thought. Leave the berry thing for treaty, as it helps to boost the early economy for treaty decks (which have no crates or villager shipment) and aids a fast industrial.
So, repeating, an alternative solution could be:
Ironworks boosted to 160% (one villager on mine with both market upgrades)
Torp wood cost could be kept at 125w, needs testing.
MAYBE, consider making the age 2 card “2 copper mines shipment” also increase gather yield for mine.