FU Caravels cost 8 more gold, have 17 less hp, and deal less 4 damage per shot to ships than FU galleons. The very only thing caravels are better at than galleons is their pass trough damage (all other stats being equall) .
This unit only gets userfull at battles 30+ vs 30+. The units lack character, it isnt weak, but only good in pure water maps, which are rare.
I wouldnt mind if the caravles gold cost was increase even further and the wood cost a bit reduced, just to make it less similiar to galleons and give it some more uniqueness.
–> 8. Increase the caravel gold cost from 34 to 40=47x0.85 (galleons cost 26=30x0.85) and decrease the wood cost from 90 (same as galleons) to 80.
That’s the whole point of the unit tho. Once massed they can murder Saracen Galleons or Longboats ez.
When we look at naval UU, we have:
Longboats, meant to be better Galleys
Turtle ships, that are good when both navies are small
Caravels, that are good in huge mass battles
So regarding character I think all these units are distinct enough between each other.
I guess they didn’t call that Galeass or else Italians or even Turks would have been valid civs for it I guess? Or because Caravel is the cliché “discovery boat”? No idea. I guess it’s not worse than Korean (seriously, representing H’wachas with chinese civil chariots and catapults 11)
I am not complaining, and it is a fun unit to use, even if only when the enemy has a lot of boats, which you never want to let happen anyway.
It is, however, not at all a Caravel.
They should have called it a Nau, which was a smaller and more heavily armed Carrack, that was also unique to the Portuguese.
That’s the point of the unit though. Especially on custom diplomacy maps caravel is just OP lol. And I can imagine an islands DM game in the same manner.
i think we have a misunderstanding here. i am not complaining that the units is not good enoug. i think it is not different from the galleon enough, stat wise
To be honest, Caravels are never OP, and you are always better off just going for Galleons.
You need a 30 vs 30 Battle for Caravel AoE Damage to even be effective.
With a Gold discount on Galleons and Fire Ships, thre is never a reason to even make Caravels, specially when you are likely to wrestle your opponent out of the Water early on, and Galleons with Carrack are better even lategame for guarding your Elite Cannon Galleons.
Caravels are a strange unit that, while fun to use, are not really a good unit all, nor do they need to be.
No, I really was talking about custom diplomacy maps. The battles are more like, 300 ships vs 300 ships. ;o
Caravels also get the carrack in absolutely the same way. When you have a good mass of caravels, they just dominate. Also ports don’t get fast fire ships. Of course, galleon ought to have it’s usefulness and it’s good that it does, in the smaller scale battles where the caravels extra damage doesn’t really matter yet.
Well, Portuguese can’t do that since they are a slow civ. The Caravel allows them to play defensively and mass a deathball that give them sea control back.
They do not, but Fire Ships with +10% HP and +1/+1 Armour is even better in some scenarios.
Caravels do not replace either Galleons or Fire Ships, and a Castle Age Navy push to get your opponent out of the Water, would be disserviced by Caravels.
War Galleys + Fire Ships is a better combo.
I don’t know what you are talking about, but a portuguese fire ship, with 8 less hp, 33% less damage and 1 less pierce armor and a slower movement speed than a fast fire ship, is never going to be better in any scenario imaginable.
Actually caravel is supposed to complement galleons so you mix them in with galleons and take a few galleons away. Obviously this can work well in the castle age, but in imp you basically don’t want to get too many different units upgraded, so you either go one or the other, depending on how large the water fights are. At a point the galleon becomes totally obsolete, since they have basically identical stats but as the numbers get higher, their value diminishes and caravel extra damage gets more and more useful.