Carolean discussion has flared up in the main forum. I had some thoughts I wanted to share, but I'm bringing it here which is at least nominally the place we are supposed to argue about Sweden's balance.
Caroleans were pretty decent in vanilla Civ V, but a lot of people think they are quite bad in VP. I have to say I agree. Basically, a Carolean is a Tercio with March, since the CS boost is so small as to make very little difference at the time you're actually using them. This means that the Carolean's fortunes rise and fall with March, and March has been heavily nerfed in VP. First off, there's the defensive strength reduction, which is not very big but large enough to erase the Carolean's CS boost. Second, there's the reduction in healing from being in enemy lands. Third, there's the improved AI which is more likely to land killing blows. All of these effects make March much more evenly balanced with other possible promotions, but also make it less attractive as a selling point.
Which is to say, I think the Carolean problem can be solved quite effectively by giving them Survivalism 1. Or, alternatively, a nonce promotion that does the same thing, but which doesn't lead to Survivalism 2 etc, doesn't stick around after upgrading to avoid Gazebo's "unique units not unique unit lines" objection, and possibly increases defense strength less. This addresses all of the ways they're weaker than they "should" be: the defense boost negates the penalty from March, the healing boost gets them back up to neutral strength healing, and the increased longevity means they're more likely to survive a couple of turns and then get out of active combat long enough to heal.
