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Tinto Flavour #19 - 20th of May 2025

Hello and Welcome to another Tinto Flavor! This time, I have been forced to write it, as I am the one responsible for the country we will learn about today.

Today, we are going to delve into all the fun flavor that you get from playing Sweden! But prior to that, just remember to wishlist https://store.steampowered.com/app/3450310/Europa_Universalis_V/ !


Sweden is a feudal kingdom under the rule of Magnus Eriksson, who also holds the crown of Norway. Skåne was bought from the impoverished Danes just a few years ago. Our realm is vast, but sparsely populated, and mostly covered by forests. Inside those forests, riches of iron and copper remain hidden, but can soon be exploited to enrich our country.

sweden.png


Mostly Catholic Swedes, but there are plenty of different Finnish people as well. Even a few Norse pagans live in the inland forests.

The King is not only ugly, he also has shitty stats. 33/0/33 is a bit boring numbers though, so feel free to suggest any fitting variants within +/-10 of it.


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Sweden is large on the map, but very different from the modern borders of the country.



Sweden starts with a relatively powerful Commoners estate, as they are both represented in the Riksdag and have the privilege to freely move.

estates.png


They also have a unique privilege for the Commoners:

unique_commoner.png


This one requires quite a lot of crown power to remove, and while it's active, you can not remove free mobility and their representation in parliament either. Luckily, a bit more food and better fighting levies are not all bad..


Sweden also has access to this unique cabinet action that can be done in any province in Norrland or Finland that has a total population of less than 10,000 people. This is to simulate the insane population growth that Finland had during the 14th and 15th century, which was the highest in the world at that time.

cabinet.png


While Sweden does not start with any Works of Art, it has a unique bonus in Falun, where the Great Copper Mountain gives a lot of extra copper per laborer working there.

kopparberget.png


Sweden gets two unique units in the Age of Absolutism:

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This cavalry unit has +5 initiative, +10% movement speed and +1 combat speed compared to the regular cavalry units of this age.


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Caroleans have +2 initiative, do 10% more morale damage and take 20% less morale damage.

These units enable a Swedish army to have the possibility of quickly and decisively winning battles in the Age of Absolutism, which was the time period where Sweden had its military successes historically.


While you get these units from advances, there are also plenty of other advances that Sweden has access to. Some of these include the following..



1_advance.png

The mentality of always attacking is an important one! GÅ PÅ!


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A quality government involved both the King and the Estates.

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This used to be a sign of quality….

4_advance.png

One of the greatest scientists of the Age of Absolutism.



Advances alone do not always give enough flavor, so there are plenty of dynamic historical events as well.

While Sweden starts with a historical saint in Erik the Holy, there are others presented as well in the game.

saints.png


After this event, close to the start of the game, where Bridget of Sweden first appears…

birgitta_1.png


Eventually, after she dies, you get this event.



birgitta_2.png

She will become a saint, and you have the possibility to get a minor holy site for the Catholic Faith in Vadstena!


Some of the other over 60 unique historical events include the following..


sala.png




wallons.png



göteborg.png



rudbeck.png



Tomorrow, @SaintDaveUK will talk about how our unit graphics work..
 
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As canonization was mentioned, can you still canonize saints without approval of the Pope, or only through events?

You need influence in the curia to do it yes.
 
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Shouldn't the peasant privilege also give a monthly shift to Free Subjects (away from Serfdom)? The description states that peasants weren't serfs...


The event "The Walloons in Sweden" talks about how these metalworkers improved the quality of steel, and how Sweden became a major exporter of steel. This is once again a confusion of the terminology - what is meant here is wrought iron or bar iron (after Gustavus Adolphus banned the export of osmond iron in 1620), not steel.
The Walloon Forge was a type of finery forge, which is a part of the indirect ironmaking process. Instead of directly turning iron ore into wrought iron using a bloomery, the indirect process first produces pig iron in a blast furnace, which is then refined into wrought iron in a finery forge.

This wrought iron/bar iron would be called steel according to modern definitions (which is probably where the confusion comes from), but in the time period it was called iron. Steel was the word reserved for especially hard alloys which we could call high-carbon steel today.

(And I also want to mention, although not that important, that the quality of this bar iron was more dependent on the ore than the actual process. The mine in Dannemora had very good ore for pre-industrial iron and steelworking, which was crucial for the success of this operation.)
 
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“This cavalry unit has +5 initiative, +10% movement speed and +1 combat speed compared to the regular cavalry units of this age.”

Could you add this type of information to the tooltip below in a seperate window instead of having to scan all the combat stats

you see it perfectly fine in the UI when you build units..
 
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I think playing Sweden one of the best decisions to make early on is to send the king on a highly dangerous exploration mission and be very sad when he doesn't come back.

you can't send rulers on exploration missions.
 
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Are there many country specific population growth buffs like the one here?

I'm a little concerned about how population growth will look like, making it at least a little historically plausible for such a huge timespan must be tremendous challenge (wasn't easy even for Victoria 3). Country specific buffs might not be a bad idea