I agree on the face of things, but i think that as the variant gets more history behind it and more strategies are tried out, you will increasingly find that people do well as slavic sveriege pairs. It is easy to crush sve in early gave as slavic, or at least easier than almost any other pair of countries i can think of in the well put together variants, but it is almost impossible for slavic to finish of sve, because of the lands sve holds elsewhere, and so slavic finds itself bogged down and out of position for rapid growth if it dedicates itself solely to sveriegian destruction. So like italy and austria, italy can almost always ruin austria's day by attacking early on with conviction, but the rest of the map usually out grows italy, and italy rarely ends up doing well with an anti austrian opening without strong allies and some degree of luck/austrian incompetency. But italy and austria working together, esp against turkey, often works quite well (Although it has gotten to be a rather predictable opening and so has developed some dangers). Likewise, i think if slavic and sve trust eachother in the early game and shift their attentions to work together in opposite or divergent directions, they could become one of the most powerful pairs of the map, easily equivalent to the jugg. Especially if they can convert the Caliph to their side, in which case their southern flank is virtually guaranteed, sve can secure the north west, they have the edge of the map to the east, and slavic can control the southern/southwester european front