Sweden: Blueberries is still a must?

[Mitoe]

So I've been trying to find a way to play Sweden after the changes in the most recent patch, and after many attempts, I think I've settled on blueberries as the best economic card.

This is for a few reasons:

1) It is more consistent income than Ironworks. Ironworks doubles your Torp's coin gather rate from 0.3 to 0.6, making it equivalent to a villager on mines. Blueberries doubles berries from 0.335 to 0.67, making it equivalent to a vill on berries. We all know that food is a less valuable resource, but this actually increases your income, because your berries don't run out for a long time. Normally it takes about 6 minutes 10 seconds for a Torp to gather the whole 125 food from the spawned berry bush, but shipping blueberries adds 375f to the berry bush, for a total of 500f. This increases the lifetime of the Torp bush by almost 10 minutes! This means that while normally your Torp berries are going to run out anywhere between 9:40 - 12:00, instead they will run out between 18 and 20 minutes, and you can have it collecting from a mine the entire time.

Comparatively, if you send Ironworks, you may have a very short time of increased income (in terms of raw villager seconds) for a short time, but as soon as your berry bushes start burning out your income goes way down.

So when do you send it? It seems it need to arrive by about 6:50 - 7:00 to avoid losing the berry bush on the very first Torp. However, depending on how many Torps you have at the time or how aggressive your opponent is going you may not be able to actually send it at this time. In this case, the next window for shipping Blueberries is around ~9:30 (since you start constructing additional Torps around 3:10 - 3:30), meaning you have to have clicked on the card by around 8:50, since it takes 40 seconds to arrive.

The build I have been going for most is 3v 700w 600w Blueberries 700c to age. It's a bit slow, but the extra eco is worth it. If your opponent is being aggressive you can send 8 bows or 2 leather cannons instead of 600w, and delay Blueberries by 1 card if you need to.

2) It enables Blackberries to function. Currently Blackberries seems to be bugged so that it only works if you ship Blueberries first. Shipping Blueberries early means you have a fall-back later on in the game when your economy starts to fall off because mines/berry bushes are running out.

3) Your villagers can remain safer under your TC for longer because they do not need to go out in search of hunt as early.

4) It's more flexible than Ironworks. You don't feel as obligated to build your Torps on mines (though you should still try to build them near mines when you can) because your Torps will all receive the Blueberries benefit anyway:
- Torps can gather from a normal berry bush and a blueberry bush at the same time, so on maps with berry bushes it is very good to build Torps next to them.
- Your Torps are actually very capable of gathering wood quickly if built in the right spots, the most I get is usually 0.25 or 0.3, but I've seen 0.35 if it's placed well. That's really good:

(Also, I swear the UI didn't show gather rates for Torps until this patch?)


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Anyway, try it out and let me know how it goes. Sweden's macro definitely feels very messy at the moment, but when you get away with it it's still quite strong I think. In the right situations you can still send both Blueberries and Ironworks, but it's definitely slow. Main problem right now is that sometimes you're under so much pressure that you feel like you can't even afford to send blueberries either... and that sucks :(

Also, having access to Jaegers every game seems a bit insane sometimes.

[Aussie_Drongo]

I've now played 20 games with the post patch Sweden, using a couple of different builds, but you're definitely right in that sending 700w -> 600w feels best, enabling you to max torps at ~6:20.

Initially tried out governor -> 4 military shipments, which feels good, and can gain map control, but falls off, even gaining early control with 2-3 shipments, you're still outboomed by Brit VC double rax by a mile, even after taking out the two forward raxes and tower, losing barely no units, you're behind.

Currently win rate is 4-16. (2 games vs china 1400 player, so doesn't really count, also this MU is highly favoured toward Sweden IMO, and 2 games vs Dutch, with one vs @I_HaRRiiSoN_I so it doesn't count either <3 )

The semi-FF feels good, but I'm continually outmassed by much lower rated players (perhaps sweden had been inflating my score all this time and I'm 300 points higher than I should be though). It's hard playing this civ now with these changes, I'm going to cease playing it until someone else discovers a more competitive build order, because each time I lose a blueberry torp on a coin mine across the map, it breaks my heart to see it gone forever.

[Mr_Bramboy]

This is almost like a cat and mouse game between developers who keep trying to make Sweden a low-eco, strong-military civ, and players who keep finding ways to break the Swedish economy. Nice write-up!

[deleted_user]

Jeagers

[gamevideo113]

Making a low eco civ with gathering houses

[aaryngend]

Your observations make complete sense to me- blueberries isn't a card you can just send very early, you need a healthy supply of Torps first for it to be worth it.
But now the Swedish have the agony of choice between Engelsberg Ironworks and Blueberries... further delaying military shipments or other cards you want to send.
Then later in the game, they could send Blackberries and the Mine Wagon shipment. So many different shipments with the same objective: prolong Sweden's natural resources.
Ine thing I wonder about is this.. for regular 1v1 games, I use both the 2 and 3 Mine Wagon card, for team games I remove the one in age II and add infinite Mine Wagon instead (age I).
What about Blackberries? Is that a situational card or is it kind of meta now with the nerfs? Is even the Blueberries card always needed now?

[Mitoe]

Your observations make complete sense to me- blueberries isn't a card you can just send very early, you need a healthy supply of Torps first for it to be worth it.
But now the Swedish have the agony of choice between Engelsberg Ironworks and Blueberries.
Then later in the game, they could send Blackberries and the Mine Wagon shipment. So many different shipments with the same objective: prolong Sweden's natural resources.
Ine thing I wonder about is this.. for regular 1v1 games, I use both the 2 and 3 Mine Wagon card, for team games I remove the one in age II and add infinite Mine Wagon instead (age I).
What about Blackberries? Is that a situational card or is it kind of meta now with the nerfs? Is even the Blueberries card always needed now?

Blackberries currently only function if Blueberries has already been sent--if you haven't sent Blueberries then the bush spawned by Blackberries will not be usable (this is a bug). It's kind of a situational card you send around 20 minutes once Blueberries runs out, a bit like Japanese cherry orchards.

[harcha]

I think it's stupid that the card requires a bush in order to transform it into a blueberry bush, no other civ has such inflexibility baked in. I think if this limitation was removed and you could send it at 12 minutes and still get your existing torps to get blueberries, that would make more sense. Otherwise if you miss the window for whatever reason, you just can't boom.

[deleted_user]

Me making jeagers: epic and fun

Other ppl making jeagers: >:(

[[Armag] diarouga]

The big advantage Iron works has is that it also works on your future torps which is big.
You can build 15 torps, lose 5, rebuild 5 and it s still a 7v shipment.
Blueberries, in the same situation, would only affect 10 torps, ie a mediocre 4v shipment.

Basically, you cannot afford to lose Blueberries torps outside your base, which is a big handicap.
I'd still send iron works over Blueberries.

[deleted_user]

The blueberries stay though, and they possess properties individual to the torp, meaning you should be able to lose a BB torp and build a new torp next to the BBB (blueberry bush) and it will be gathered still at twice the speed of a normal bush. However it's unclear if a BBB will be prioritized over the regular bush a torp spawns. You'd think it should but aoe3de has a way of avoiding things that make too much sense.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Still, if you lose control of a mine with 4 BB torps, that's - 1.2 f/s for the rest of the game. While you can rebuild your Ironworks torps.

[deleted_user]

Maybe I'm not understanding.

If you lose the BB torps, the BBs are still there, and they don't decay. You can build torps around them again.

In your example above you are still having 15 torps with BBs next to them.

If you mean you can rebuild ironworks torps elsewhere, sure. It's more flexible that way. But there are probably not a lot places to build if you've lost control of a mine and you're almost max torps.

[knusch]

seems like someone rly didnt like torps and caroleans

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

@Aussie_Drongo jeez 4-16 tough break, and now it's too late to try and climb into top 30-40 with a new civ

[Squamiger]

only too late if you don't use the power of an '80s montage

[Aussie_Drongo]

only too late if you don't use the power of an '80s montage

Tonight's theme. Let's get em.

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

Thanks a lot Mitoe for some advanced theory crafting. I feel like the recent nerf, if a bit too much, will be better for the civ in the long run (once some of them are reverted) as they will for now force players to come up with creative ways to play the civ.

Two questions though :
1) Wouldn't the 4 torp wagon cards be better than 600w ? It's 100w less in value, but you save villager walking and building time and you get the buff to torps HP which may be worth more in the long run.
2) If you are going for a merc build, you will need a lot of gold. Would not then ironwork be better fitted to the build even if it is less value overall ?

[arivus]

I think it's worth more to focus coin early as swedes to ship the fusilier age 2, 70 ranged damage on colonial is super. It have 3 times in damage and cost as musketeers, but twice the hp and population cost as drawback.

[psychonautics]

Are you going for tp + torp from the 100 additional wood?

[Astaroth]

Has anyone tried going for a "jan/abus" with Sweden based on carolean/leather cannon age2? I guess the units might be too weak age2 to pull it off, but I'd like to see someone try.

Something like tower age up (in base or forward, depending on MU), build rax immediately, make full batches of caroleans (chop as much wood meantime as you can afford aside from full caro batches+vill training), send 700w first, make art foundry with it, start training leathers. Next shipments depending on game: 600w (to mass or for torps to boom) and/or 2 leathers/8 bow/8 pike (if aggro/attacked) and/or 700c to age (semi FF).

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

With 5 military shipments in colonial there is certainly room for colonial pressure with Sweden. The problem is they don't age particularly early though.

[chronique]

Has anyone tried going for a "jan/abus" with Sweden based on carolean/leather cannon age2? I guess the units might be too weak age2 to pull it off, but I'd like to see someone try.

Something like tower age up (in base or forward, depending on MU), build rax immediately, make full batches of caroleans (chop as much wood meantime as you can afford aside from full caro batches+vill training), send 700w first, make art foundry with it, start training leathers. Next shipments depending on game: 600w (to mass or for torps to boom) and/or 2 leathers/8 bow/8 pike (if aggro/attacked) and/or 700c to age (semi FF).

Caro are not good enough vs cav in age 2 i think

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

Has anyone tried going for a "jan/abus" with Sweden based on carolean/leather cannon age2? I guess the units might be too weak age2 to pull it off, but I'd like to see someone try.

Something like tower age up (in base or forward, depending on MU), build rax immediately, make full batches of caroleans (chop as much wood meantime as you can afford aside from full caro batches+vill training), send 700w first, make art foundry with it, start training leathers. Next shipments depending on game: 600w (to mass or for torps to boom) and/or 2 leathers/8 bow/8 pike (if aggro/attacked) and/or 700c to age (semi FF).

Caro are not good enough vs cav in age 2 i think

You get an 8 pikes shipment to help if your opponent is going cav heavy.

[chronique]

This need to be tried but if you send 700w for LC and 8 pik, what a shit eco you have ^^, and 2LC is probably the strongest mili shipement in age 2 (in term of res it's even stronger than 5 cosak)