Swedish (Civ6)

The Swedish people (or Swedes) represent a civilization in Civilization VI: Gathering Storm. They are led by Kristina, under whom their default colors are light blue and yellow.
The Swedes' civilization ability is Nobel Prize, which grants them additional and points from Universities and Factories, generates 50 for each they recruit and adds three unique World Congress competitions from the Industrial Era onwards. Their unique unit is the Carolean (which replaces the Pike and Shot), and their unique tile improvement is the Open-Air Museum.
== Strategy ==
Starting bias: None
Sweden is equipped with a powerful arsenal of bonuses that allow them to sprint towards both a Cultural and a Diplomatic Victory. Since they can earn so many Great People they can make even Brazil envious, and can generate much more reliably than Canada, it is quite difficult to stop the Swedish machine when they are in motion.
=== Nobel Prize ===
This is a weird ability, nothing in the game functions quite like it. It can be somewhat of a "win-more" ability, as it rewards you handsomely if you are already leading the game in some facets, but it will backfire incredibly hard by handing a lot of advantages over to your competitors if you lag behind.
==== Extra per earned ====
Unlike many other civilizations who are geared towards more than one type of victory, Sweden does not have to make a lot of different gameplay choices about which victory you should go for and which you should have as a backup only, as diplomacy and culture really go hand in hand. You can easily win a cultural Victory inadvertently when trying to go for a diplomatic one, and vice versa. 
The Swedish civilization's ability increases the rate of earning Great Scientists and Great Engineers when the Medieval Era comes, and whenever Sweden earns a Great Person of any kind, they are rewarded with . 50 is quite a lot in the early game, especially if you manage to found a religion as Sweden, you will gain a hefty amount of , before anyone else even manages to earn their first point of (for more information on Sweden, religion and a Relic rush strategy, read below). Since Sweden, under Kristina, is a force to be reckoned with on the path to a cultural victory, this ability grants some prowess to Sweden in the diplomatic game as well, without them having to do anything outside of their comfort zone created by their leader.
==== Extra and points from Universities and Factories ====
This is a very minor bonus, but it ties in well with the previous aspect and the new Nobel Prize competitions. Combined with Kristina's ability, Swedish toolkits encourage players to go as wide as possible, and diversify their generation by building Campuses, Industrial Zones and Theater Squares. 
This ability may be comparable to Scottish civilization ability, but it is a lot weaker, since it won't be activated until Education (Medieval Era) and Industrialization (Industrial Era). And because of this, Sweden is very often put in a bad spot in the early game. They need to prioritize too many things, without any bonus toward to realize all of their goals. They need at least 3 types of s to activate all of their bonuses, early wonders with Great Work slots, tier 2 buildings in Campus and Industrial Zone, maybe a few Aqueducts and Dams for extra Industrial Zone adjacencies, even in rare cases, a religion (so they can pick Reliquaries Follower belief). Therefore, it is crucial that you sort out your priorities without having your empire stretched thinly in too many directions:
* Your most important from the start of the game is the Theater Square. Your diplomatic game is tied into your cultural game, which is in turn made possible by the Theater Square.
* If you want to go for a Relic rush, dedicate to just one Holy Site and Shrine. 
* Build an early Government Plaza and Ancestral Hall for early expansion.
* Your Campuses and Industrial Zones can wait. Their bonuses kick in later, and the Nobel Prize competitions won't start until Industrial Era. 
==== The 3 new Nobel Prize competitions ====
All three Nobel Prize competitions benefit Sweden heavily, especially Literature and Peace when going for a diplomatic or a cultural Victory, and Physics when going for a scientific victory. Having a wide empire is an absolute must is you want to be competitive in these competitions. Only your civilization ability supplies a little bit extra points, but it is too minor to be useful if you only have a few cities, and you won't be able to get if you can't remain competitive in the race. All 3 of these competitions ask you to generate either // (Physics), or // (Literature), or (Peace). To give yourself an additional edge, you may find the Divine Spark pantheon a little bit helpful, especially if you try to found a religion for your Relic game. 
Overall, this ability is the classical case of being "feast-or-famine." It either helps Sweden cruise along toward a very fast victory if they manage to claim land, have productive cities with many diverse s, or if you cannot make your land become productive and fall behind, you will fall further and further behind starting in Industrial Era when your "ability" starts to hand over more and more advantages to your opponents. For a cultural civilization with no extra or defensive capability, Sweden is pushed into a very tough spot in the first few eras, since they require too much preparation for Industrial Era, without any major bonus to meet those requirements. Keep in mind: Theater Squares should be the number 1 priority , build Ancestral Hall early and start setting many cities, then focus on Campuses, Industrial Zones and maybe Commercial Hubs later.
=== Minerva of the North ===
Kristina's leader ability is an absolutely powerful bonus to help with the cultural victory. Every cultural player knows that in order to get the most out of your Archaeological Museums and your Art Museums, you need to move your Great Works around or exchange with other empires to satisfy a theming bonus, which, in all honesty, is a hassle. With Kristina, every wonder with 2 or more slots and building with 3 or more slots automatically themes when filled, meaning she will always receive double and out of her Great Works. You now can just activate all 3 charges of a Great Artist in the same Museum, and voila, it is now themed, just as easy as that; hence this is not only a great ability but also a great quality of life aspect when playing for a Cultural Victory. Not to mention it gives you the ability to theme the previously non-themeable buildings (including Wonders).
The following buildings and wonders benefit from this ability (excluding the two types of Museums, which are themeable to everyone):
* Queen's Bibliotheque
* National History Museum
* Apadana
* Bolshoi Theatre
* Broadway
* Great Library
* Hermitage
* Mont St. Michel
* Oxford University
* St. Basil's Cathedral
* Sydney Opera House
* Old God Obelisk (with both the Secret Societies and Heroes & Legends game modes enabled, after summoning a Hero)
* Stock Exchange (with the Monopolies and Corporations game mode enabled)
* Seaport (with the Monopolies and Corporations game mode enabled)
With the sole exception of the Oxford University, everything else is unlocked with the civic tree. Since Sweden has strong incentives to build Theater Squares in every city, keeping up on the civic tree and earning to fill Great Work slots should not be a problem.
Although Kristina prefers a smaller empire with few strong core cities and a lot of wonders, the Swedish ability forces her to expand widely. Ignore the early wonders in favor of expansion (to be fair, you will only lose out on Apadana and the Great Library). Only start diverting your resources into wonders when you don't have a good spot for a city. Preferably, build your wonders with Great Work slots in the same city with the Government Plaza, since the Queen's Bibliotheque and the National History Museum combined will have 10 slots of Great Works, which can all be amplified with Pingala's Curator. Note that Pingala's title only works on Great Works of Writing, Arts and Music, so choose Art Museum over Archaeological Museum in that city.
With the Monopolies and Corporations game mode enabled, Stock Exchanges and Seaports filled with Products will also be themed.
==== Relic method ====
Kristina's ability does work with Relics, which allows a new way to play the game. This Relic method is especially powerful if you spawn near Yerevan, or to a lesser extent, Kandy. Yerevan allows all of your Apostles to start with the Martyr promotion, so you can start farming Relics reliably before building Mont St. Michel. Kandy can also grant you Relics here and there whenever you discover a natural wonder.
 Relics are known for their huge output in the early game, which will be cut short when other civilizations research The Enlightenment. To set up for this strategy, you need a religion with the Reliquaries belief. Each Relic in a city with this belief grants 24 , and 12 . Right after founding your religion, rush toward Theology and Monarchy to unlock Temple and Mont St. Michel. Build the Temple in a city (most likely your Holy City) and start buying Apostles. Of course, before Mont St. Michel and without Yerevan, your Apostles are not guaranteed to have Martyr, but you can increase this chance by promoting Moksha to Patron Saint. Note that this can be very costly, since you will have to invest 4 Governor titles into Moksha instead of Pingala, so the safer route is to wait until you complete Mont St. Michel. 
Themed Relics with Reliquaries generate 32 each. Later, build the St. Basil's Cathedral in the same city as your Mont St. Michel, preferably your Holy City, and it will add another 100% modifier to religious , making all Relics in this city generate 40 . If you also manage to pass the Heritage Organization for Relics, each one will generate 48 . Even if you cannot win a cultural victory just purely based on Relics, they can supply a huge amount of that is still helpful for other cultural endeavors and recruitment. You should also build Cristo Redentor to avoid your religious efficiency from being cut in half by The Enlightenment. 
Later in the game, the National History Museum can also host Relics, and is themeable, since it has 4 slots. Also, the Apadana can also host themeable Relics, but as outlined above, you have way too many important priorities in the early game to pay attention to this wonder.
With both the Secret Societies and Heroes & Legends game modes enabled, any Old God Obelisk can also be themed by filling it with one Great Work of any type and two Heroic Relics, which will generate extremely high in the early game.
=== Queen's Bibliotheque ===
When playing as Kristina, Great Work slots become even more valuable, and the Queen's Bibliotheque plays to this strength better than any of the other buildings or wonders in the game. Not only can you automatically theme this building once it is filled, it contains a whopping six slots, the most in the game. Your goal is to earn a , a , and a as fast as possible to fill this building first, as it will become your main and hub for the entire game. It comes with a 25% discount compared to other tier 2 Government Plaza buildings, and of course, it unlocks a Legacy card. Generally speaking, pick Monarchy if you're playing a normal cultural/diplomatic game, or Theocracy if you're playing a Relic game.
It doesn't come without its downsides, however. If you want to prioritize building this, you will have to give up the ever so wonderful Intelligence Agency, making Sweden's espionage a bit weaker, but the sacrifice is definitely worth it. Great Works placed inside the Queen's Bibliotheque are not vulnerable to espionage missions, so they can never be stolen. Combined with the automatic theming, the and bonus is equal to that of 12 Great Works, or 4 full non-themed Museums of other civilizations. The main challenge in using this building is to be able to earn a Great Musician as quickly as possible to fill in the 2 Great Work of Music slots, but once this is done, Pingala can turn it into the central hub of the entire world, before any other cultural civilizations.
=== Open-Air Museum ===
The +2 and +2 bonus per terrain type is substantial, making it worthwhile to spread out a bit to found cities on the various terrain types. This improvement does not count terrains and their Hills separately, so settling, for example, on both Snow and Snow Hills does not give you more . In other words, the maximum yield you can get is 10 per Open-Air Museum.
This improvement urges Sweden to explore for city spots in all biomes. While it is easy to have a good city spot on Plains and Grassland, it is a lot harder to find one on Desert and Snow. For Desert, you can try to settle on the edge of a vast desert where you can still have access to fertile land, or on a Desert Floodplains tile, or in a vast open desert with a lot of Desert Hills tiles and then try to build Petra. It is substantially more difficult with Snow. Your best bet is either on a Snow tile adjacent to Tundra regions, or on a coastal Snow tile next to a river with a lot of sea resources. You can try to build the Amundsen-Scott Research Station later in this city. As for the Tundra city, it is not as easy as Grassland or Plains, but not as hard as Snow or Desert, since Tundra can still host a lot of resources, and also Woods, which can be made productive with Lumber Mills. As for the St. Basil's Cathedral, you have to choose if you want to maximize the yields by putting it in a Tundra city, or maximize the output in your Relic game by putting it in your Holy City with the Mont St. Michel.
The good thing is since Tundra, Snow and Desert spots are most likely subprime, they are almost always available. If there is a spot you want to settle, but is subject to strong foreign Loyalty, although the innate Loyalty bonus of this improvement does help a bit, you can try to form a Cultural Alliance with the nearby empire to negate their pressure.
Note that you do not need to unlock Flight for the bonus to kick in, unlike every other -generating improvement, further amplifying the early potential over every other cultural empires. Also, despite the tooltips saying that this improvement only takes into account cities "founded" by Sweden, it actually counts captured cities as well. Therefore, if you've managed to conquer some cities that were founded on certain types of terrain, you won't need to settle new cities there to get the maximum yield out of your Open-Air Museums.
=== Carolean ===
The Carolean can be equally strong whether on defense or when attacking (though nowhere near as good as its Civilization V counterpart). It is a good idea to prepare for the use of this unit early by training Spearmen or Pikemen, preferably at an Encampment containing a Barracks, and leveling them up to earn the Redeploy , which will increase both their strength and mobility when they upgrade to Caroleans. Other abilities which increase rate of units should also be put to use, such as the Logistics policy card (available with Mercantilism) and Great Generals.
The Carolean is, however, far from invincible, especially if overextended. Musketmen are entirely capable of standing up against them due to their bonus against anti-cavalry units. To alleviate this, Caroleans should be backed up by some kind of ranged units, for which they can also provide protection from enemy cavalry. Swedish players should also pay attention to terrain on the battlefield and how many points the Carolean can retain before making the move to attack and keep in mind that pillaging as the Carolean can deprive them of nearly a sixth of their full Combat Strength due to expending points. This is necessary due to the fact that by default it doesn't quite have the mobility of its previous incarnation; for instance it doesn't have the old March promotion, generally forcing it to either use points to pillage or else forgo movement altogether and hold in place if it hasn't just leveled up in combat, in order to heal.
Keep in mind that Roads benefit the Caroleans a lot since points left always get rounded up when calculating for Combat Strength bonuses. It means just a 0.25 points left can still grant your unit 3 Combat Strength bonus like normal. Also, the extra Combat Strength does apply on defense, if the unit didn't attack last turn and didn't use all of its (if it attacked the turn before, its would drop to 0, resulting in no extra Combat Strength on defense).
=== Victory Types ===
Once it reaches the Medieval Era unpunished, Sweden feels like an unstoppable machine marching towards either a Cultural or a Diplomatic Victory. Thanks to the Nobel Prize ability, a Scientific Victory is not out of the question either, thus should serve as a great backup, although if you determine to go down the Cultural and Diplomatic route, you most likely will win it without needing a backup.
=== Counter Strategy ===
Sweden has a very weak presence on the map in the early game, as they are literally a vanilla civilization with few to no functioning bonuses in the first two eras of the game, which makes them especially vulnerable to warmongers. Also, their early game tends to be very sluggish, with too many districts to build to maximize their bonuses, meaning they may not dedicate a lot of into training an army. However, Sweden is a civilization that you do not need to wipe completely off the map, since as long as you can keep her territory in check, the ability to vie for is almost non-existent. The extra point and point are very minor if they do not have a lot of cities, and they distract Sweden from their main strength. Keeping Sweden in the game allows you to still compete in their Nobel Prize competitions where they have no chance of winning if you cripple them enough. These competitions can help you tremendously on a lot of Victory paths that you are pursuing.
When the bonuses start to go online, the strongest ability of Sweden is Kristina's leader ability. This is an incredibly strong ability that can push Sweden towards a Cultural Victory faster than almost any other leaders. Sweden under Kristina loves Great Work slots more than anything else, as she can make use of even terrible Wonders like the Hermitage, so your priority as a player is to deny, or at least try to, deny Wonders with Great Work slots from Sweden. It is very easy to see if Sweden is in the game or not, especially when Industrial Era comes and the three Nobel Prize competitions show up. Also, with the Queen's Bibliotheque and the National History Museum, Swedish Government Plaza can host 10 Great Works, and with the governor Pingala, the city with this district will become a dangerous hub that you need to stop. Either trying to conquer it or sending Spies to neutralize Pingala is a great option. You do not have to keep that city, since that city is most likely her , you just need to quickly capture it to steal the Great Works in that city from her. Since this is the hub, it is the one with most Great Works, it will be impossible to quickly move all of them before the point of capturing.
== Civilopedia entry ==
== Cities ==
== Citizens ==
Males 	Females 	Modern males	Modern females
Axel 	Astridh 	Anders 	Amanda
Erik 	Barbro 	Anton 	Anna
Gunnar	Ebba 	Björn 	Elin
Gustav	Filippa 	Filip 	Elsa
Håkan 	Greta 	Johan 	Emelie
Henric	Ida 	Marcus 	Emma
Ingvar	Öllegård	Olof 	Hanna
Karl 	Ragna 	Oskar 	Josefin
Magnus	Sigrid 	Simon 	Julia
Sven 	Thora 	Viktor 	Sara
== Trivia ==
* The Swedish civilization's symbol is the Three Crowns, which appear on the Swedish coat of arms.
* The Swedish civilization ability is named after the prizes established by the 19th-century Swedish scientist to reward those considered to have made great contributions to humanity in different fields during the preceding year.
* Before the Swedish civilization was released, the Swedish city of Stockholm was a city-state. After Sweden's release, Stockholm became one of the Swedish cities, and it was replaced by Bologna.
* Sweden first appeared as a playable civilization in the Vikings, Traders, and Raiders! scenario, in which it is led by Olof Skötkonung.
==Soundtrack==
== Gallery ==
File:Civ6 Carolean In-Game.jpg|The Carolean, Sweden's unique unit
File:Civ6 Open-Air Museum In-Game.jpg|The Open-Air Museum, Sweden's unique improvement
File:Swedish capital in Classical Era.png|Swedish capital in Classical Era
== Videos ==
File:Civilization VI- Gathering Storm - First Look- Sweden|First Look: Sweden
File:Civilization VI- Gathering Storm - Sweden Gameplay Premiere|Sweden gameplay premiere with Pete Murray, Ed Beach, and Dennis Shirk (beginning at 28:25)
== Related achievements ==
== See also ==
* Swedish (Civ6)/Vikings, Traders, and Raiders!
* Swedish in other games
== External links ==
* https://civilization.com/news/entries/civilization-vi-gathering-storm-first-look-sweden-kristina-pc-release-date-february-14-2019/
ru:Швеция (Civ6)
Category:Swedish
Category:Civilization VI: Gathering Storm