Das Boot!

Well got the game installed, start a new game, things are a bit laggy but that's my hardware, movies are running great, & I can handle small battles so all's wonderful in the world. Then I noticed the "boats", I use that term loosely, because to be honest they look like very dodgy shoes, what gives?

The games falling over itself with eye-candy then there are these clogs with sticks in them, anyway my question is do they look better as you upgrade them? Not that its exactly a game killer but they seem oddly out of place.

Ehm... are we talking about ships on the strategic map?

There is a reason why they are not terribly beautiful. I have a feeling you are playing with a nothern European faction (French, English, HRE...), their ships are Cogs and Holks in general. Those ships were indeed not the beauties of the sea.
As one of my lecturers called them, 'the sailing wooden shoes' (think Dutch wooded shoes, we have them here in Denmark too). So your classification of tem as being dodgy shoes, is actually very fitting.

Good point, forgot about "slab sided"...Also I was premature in my condemnation, I was looking at them front on, or pointing down, (as it were), when I actually moved one, saw it had a little poop deck tacked on the back.