the Caravel: supposed to be deep water?

I have been playing a game as the english and have of course tried to get a fleet.
After building a Dockyard in wessex I was able to start producing Caravels. When I studdied the text about the caravel in the game it starts with saying its a deep water ship.
But when you study the stats its not. the only factions that get deepwaater ships with the dockyard is the muslims with their baggala.
Is this the way it is supposed to be?

I've had the same problem with the Brits. Its a pain in the ass. I'm trying to setup trade routes in the Med and I need a deep water ship, so I built Caravels and sent em all the way down there only to find out they wont go in deep water.

Argh. I share your pain bro.

You won't need to occupy deep water regions because they don't give any economy value (there is no port in deep water). They only have some limited strategy value (where deep water ships can hide out or regroup before attacking a near by shalow water fleet). There are only 2 or 3 deep water regions. The sea map is a little confusing at first. There are a couple of tiny islands that are magnified (island is inside a small circle connected to a rectangular box that contains the province). The magnified island is shown on one sea region but the actual island is on another sea region.

Deep water ship such as cog and carrack will be available after the invention of gun pounder (and of course some more building upgrades)

Actually deep water is an extremly important part. This means if you go to war and one of the small coastal fleets get destroyed the one farther down the line are still connected to the deep water and the trade route still continues. This means you dont go bankrupt supporting you far away fleet which was cut off at just section of coast.

Also, deep water is a very good shortcut for ships. Using the Egyptians, I rushed some baggalas to the Western Mediterrenean and Atlantic Ocean and connected them to the regions with more ports first so my trading empire was set up more quickly as I got to the better regions first.

edit: Also, deep water is good for support costs. Support cost is a certain number multiplied by the number of turns it takes to get from the closest port to the sea zone with a max of 4. Baggalas have a move rate of 2 so they get 1/2 of 25 for every sea zone they have to move into. Deep water like the Atlantic Ocean means fewer moves for deep water ships which means lower support costs.

[This message has been edited by andrewt (edited 09-11-2002).]

Caravels will be made into deepwater ship for the patch.

Deep water caravels are good news.

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