Sweden is actually good now

[MadHaxxor]

With BNW and the easy great writets, artisits, and musicians, Sweden has actually turned into one of my favorite civs. In gnk, who would ever want to gift away a great person? The majority of them were just not worth the influence for the city state. Now, great writers, artists, and musicians are easy to come by and not very useful unless your going for a cultural victory. This makes it easy to ally all city states and claim yourself victor. I tried this out in a standard game on emperor and had all 8 city states on my continent allied right before the renaissance began. The influence in most of them was rather high as well, an average of ~100 per city state. What do you guys think about them now?

 

[Yzman]

I haven't tried them but I see what you mean. I would argue that great admirals and to a lesser extent great generals also make great gifts.

 

[deity12]

Yes, i had great fun playing them when going for my first cultural victory. Obviously found the 'declaration of friendship' part of the UA more useful, but had an excess of faith pre-industrial era (after finding a 2 6 natural wonder) and used that to gift great prophets (which had little use in my inward-facing religion in a tall empire) for my influence used to keep diplomatic victory away from the Romans. I especially found the great musician bonus generation particularly powerful, as it allowed me to nuke the hell out of that ridiculous amount of culture the Romans & Babylonians had amassed.

Well there's the end of my little story, told more for my benefit than yours

 

[Petiscator]

Sweden was actually pretty good when GnK came out, but many people hated them. I posted a bunch of things you could do as them somewhere, maybe I'll edit this later and post it here too. Going the Psycho-Sweden for massive GG and GAdm amounts was a viable strategy. The Messiah Holy Sweden too, using the Messiah Enhancer + Interfaith Dialogue to gift your 3-spreaded GProphets, could also work with Tithe or Pilgrimage. Also, the Buddy Sweden, where you'd focus on the 10%/Friendship modifiers for huge amounts of GPer. I agree, though, that Sweden got a big buff with those Guilds and the friendlier AI.

 

[Elric445]

Becoming friends with every civ on the mape can give you 100%-200%+ bonus to GP generation. Having that is just so amazing, especially if you use GE for the tile improvement. Same with the GS. Now that culture victories require great people, Sweden can get like 300% bonus in a city.

 

[I_qua_I]

Sweden is good though Sweden's always been good. I used to love playing them by going the Honor route and gifting the free great general. There's so much flexibility with that in the early game. Now that DoFs are more common and useful Sweden became even better. Sweden also can effectively convert a culture playstyle into a diplo one like no other civ can.

I have to admit I don't think I've ever really used their UUs but I like the civ just fine without them.

 

[Ikas]

Maybe it's just me, but the AI seems a lot easier to become friends with, and focuses less on military now too. Works pretty well with their UA.

 

[tat501]

Sweden have always been good. They're just even better now.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Sweden have always been good. They're just even better now.

This. Sweden was never not good, just difficult to understand. It forces a strategy change up and a revaluation of Great Persons.

 

[simonthesinner]

Yeah, with slow expansion, it's not unthinkable to have 10 DoF. Now this a sudden doubing in the amout of great people and you still have the option to go renessance warmonger. However, for diplomatic victory, the vote for world leader comes late. With any civ, you should be able to quest, bribe, gunboat diplomacy, rig elections and coup your way to the needed votes, especially if you have dipped into patronage for the +20 resting point and slower decay. Sweden is more flexible and can us CS to get religion early, and lots of other cool things, but I wonder if the way to go is maybe tourism with the bonus to great people generation (ABBA, Roxette, In Flames and Opeth makes people eat knäckebröd and sill and dance "små grodorna" around the may-pole), and have the word leader vote as a backup

 

[Ryoga]

Yeah Sweden now it's even better, but please don't gift your great writers! Use them to get instant culture if you really don't want to get great works, that will net you more policies and better defense against cultural attacks.

Great musicians on the other hand... if you are not going for a cultural victory they are pretty much gift material.