Change My Mind - Swedes are NOT overpowered.

Having spent about 40-50 hours on games as Sweden, primarily team games with a mix of 1v1's, I would put forward that they are not an overpowered civilization. They primarily shine in the early-mid game when their torps are all up and have yet to exhaust their resource caches. But despite lots of complaining from people that they're overpowered, I would argue that they are in fact forcing people to change the way they play.

If you want to fight Sweden by trying to FF or FI before Swedes, it's unlikely you'll succeed. The early boom is where Sweden reigns supreme, at least right now. Being able to hit Industrial in under 10 minutes, if left alone, is outrageous. Period.

But that fast economy and early boom relies very heavily on torps. At most, a player will spawn with 2 mines in their base. This leaves 3 mines outside of their base that the Swedish player has to occupy with torps if he wants to maximize his economy.

I find players so frequently rushing a Swedish players base and his villagers whilst leaving his torps completely alone. Then their rush, inevitably, gets held off by the Swedish economy and they complain "overpowered", "noob", "low iq plays!".

What these players are failing to understand is that by letting a Swedish player build all of his torps and attacking his base, you are essentially leaving 12-16 torps (30-40 villagers worth of gathering) out on the map, out of TC range.

I don't understand why more players don't siege the torps with multiple small armies in the 5-10 minute range when the Swedish player is likely trying to boom and will have to either let the torps fall or scramble to build an army to counter them.

Instead they rush the base only to encounter an Age II leather cannon shipment or Age III falconet shipment and have to retreat, leaving the Swede player time to boom because none of his torps have been touched. And even then, I find most "rushes" are half-assed attempts with a non-committal approach. Sweden is very susceptible to early all-in rushes. Not the "safe" rush where you push at 7 or 8 minutes and have already allowed the Swedish player to place all his torps.

I've played matches where I was reduced to 7 villagers in my base at 11 minutes and was still able to build an army of 20 Caroleans + 2 falconets and fight off the rush, FI and proceed to take the fight to the enemy.

The secret to that success? The torp.

So, can you change my mind? Are Swedes overpowered OR are they challenging the conventions of the rush (similarly to Japan and their shrines) by forcing players to think outside the box, beyond the "attack the villagers" mindset that works with other Civs.

I'd love to hear the community's thoughts!