You guys murdered the swedish economy. Here are some suggestions on how to fix it

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.

:x: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.

:green_circle: MY SUGGESTIONS

:white_check_mark: 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.

:white_check_mark: 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.

:white_check_mark: 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.

:x: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.

:green_circle: MY SUGGESTIONS

:white_check_mark: 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.
:white_check_mark: 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.

:x: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.

:green_circle: MY SUGGESTIONS

:white_check_mark: 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.

:x:GREAT NORTHERN FORESTS

I’m really not sure how to balance this thing. Honestly I think it’s useless as an age 4 card.

:green_circle: MY SUGGESTIONS

:white_check_mark: 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.

  • 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.

  • Bring back the regular torp bush to 150F, with a gather rate at 0.335/s (half a villager on a bush).

  • 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.

9 Likes

I don’t play enough to be able to comment on specific numbers. I do think the nerf was harsher than necessary, just to appease the loud crowd popularly crying foul.

On Great Northern Forests though, that’s a card I do use. In Age 4 all the nearby trees are gone, so having every Torp spawn one is neat :slight_smile: But I wouldn’t say it’s a very good one.

1 Like

Are the gripes primarily with how they perform in Treaty? Supremacy players, do you feel like the nerfs were equally overdone, or are any of them fair? I agree the spacing on torps seems unnecessary and more of a hindrance to how the game normally works. All I know is that Sweden was pretty brutal to play against in Supremacy pre-nerf because you could not even hurt their eco by attacking torps-I was personally in favor of reducing torp hitpoints and removing the fast age up politician.

1 Like

I feel it’s a bottom tier cause you really can’t click up before 3min with Swede…so hard to rush with them. Against rush civs your in the back foot the whole time and your torps that you try to setup early around the map just gets destroyed. I feel adding a 6th starting villager can fix this.

Also the way blue berries work atm is just so bad that it only spawns blue berries on existing torps that still has starting berries on them…which means you have a limited window to try and max ur torps to get value from blue berries before the initial berries run out.

Again this compounds the problem when u face Aztec, Otto and any other div that try to rush u…or even when u try to rush urself, blue berries become a bit useless.

Suggestions:
-Increase starting vills to 6 from 5
-You can spawn blue berries on existing torps regardless if there is still Bush berries on it or not

These 2 changes will make Swedes playable again. Atm it’s bottom tier

That change will not fix blueberries imo. It needs to be completely reverted.

It will be fine like that. Allows swedes to send iron works after 700 wood followed by blueberries.

It will mean they will have a really good mid game eco and still able to make units to rush or defend at the start.

They do need 6 vills at start to allow them to have the rush option which u can’t really do unless opponent is slow

1 Like

1 villager will not be enough.
Blueberries is an age 1 card and the player should be able to send it in age 1. The change is just terrible design.
700 wood is 5 torps, assuming you use all your starting wood, that’s 8 torps (no market upgrades, no TP, no barracks… unless u chop more wood).
Sending blueberries after 8 torps is like shipping a 3000 food crate that takes 9 to 12 minutes to collect, with a 5,36 food trickle. Essentially is the same as temporarily having 8 villagers in a mill for 9/12 minutes without any upgrades.
How exactly they will have a “really good” mid game eco. It loses its value quickly, unless you send it after you have built all 20 torps, which is very stupid and not realistic because many of the regular torp bushes would be gone at that point (they now take only 6.21 minutes to extinguish). Their eco is completely average now and just a worse version of brits.

i dont think that is necessary, just completely revert the change, no questions asked. if you rebuild your torps to have a “conversion”, then A) it is a lot of micro and B) it takes 750 seconds for it to happen, 12.5 minute. and it is also a wood to food exchange, which is probably the worst 1 you could have.

1 Like

I agree, I was just trying to find a middle ground with the “nerf sweden” hate train.
One could argue that a destroyed torp that could be rebuilt anywhere and get a fresh blueberry was just a way to pay 115 wood (too little cost) to “refresh” the berry villager (essentially a torp blueberry is a villager on a berry) in order to keep it for longer.
So in other words, an enemy sieging down a torp would actually help sweden, because torps were too cheap.

To me, the increased wood cost was the only thing torps needed. It addresses everything. It rewards enemies when they siege down torps, and it slows down the boom significantly. Brits have a card that brings manor cost down to 87 wood. Swedes are locked in a 135 wood cost (if that’s what they decide to set it like)

Please read the 2nd paragraph and can you try to explain how Sweden is the bottom tier facing rush with it has better eco and faster age up compared to China?

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China needs buffs.
Destroying Sweden won’t make playing China more enjoyable.

3 Likes

Sweden nerf was a bit too much, but blueberries had to be nerfed.
With the torps the Swedish eco would just go to the roof if uncontested and they could just easily go industrial before the 15min mark and autowin the game

4 Likes

Sweden just drops from top tier to a comparative normal civ.
It looks like Sweden players can’t be the most OP anymore and complain.

If Sweden now goes to boom torps, they still can do it, only the speed became more normal.
And they get 100w instead of 100f, Carolean adjustment.
How come this civ will directly become dead? may be compared to last patch yes, past Sweden VS now Sweden.

4 Likes

I agree, although since they nerfed blueberries and the torp cost, stuff like englesberg ironworks and the torp radius was unnecessary.
The carolean not counter ranged cav was a great neerf though, if they had only done that maybe that would have been enough as it would force swedes to add mercs instead of canons

1 Like

Why not let Torps grow berries?
Consume 35 lumber to build 150 berries, and then gather it.
It’s like a livestock animal, but the goal becomes a berry

There is really no use to complain this much about Sweden nerf at the moment. It will take about 2-3 weeks before the pro players and players with enough knowledge have come up with a good build and can talk about how good Sweden is. Keep in mind its basically a completely new civ now and its going up against the dreaded France 12/10 which is not only overpowered, but this civ has more than a decade of refined playstyle.

Nevertheless, we all know that Sweden has the same crate start as China, gets to Age 2 with better eco while still being faster. If this isn’t enough to proove everyone that China is in dire need of buffs, then this civ will forever stay dead for 1v1.

You sound very bitter about your civ being bad, and u want to make every other civ miserable to play. Not a good mindset to have in life in general. Focus on suggesting how your civ can improve.

Its not about how much sweden is nerfed. The blueberry nerf was not a good design. Sweden has been nerfed since the beginning with every patch. But there has not been this much backlash before, because the civ was still fun to play. Its not fun anymore. Not because its nerfed, but because its a bad game design.

2 Likes

Blueberries nerf was the worst thing actually. Along with the torp collision.
The ironworks nerf didn’t break the economy flow. It was a fine nerf (it has to be the last nerf to ironworks though).

They used to auto win the game in industrial because of caroleans being able to kill everything. They were nerfed.
Increasing wood cost of torps is enough to slow down the boom significantly too. Blueberries need to be left alone.

Do you play sweden? Judging by what you wrote i don’t think you understand what made this civ strong. Correct me if i’m wrong.

2 Likes

Yep, I understand what make the civ strong.
And caroleans and canons was too hard to counter.
But there is also the fact that they could easily go industrial, even under pressure while keeping unit production because of their insane eco.
I do agree that the swedes might have probably been overnerfed

1 Like