The Carrack can carry 2 units of any type and enter cultural borders without open borders.

Besides an EarthX map where you rush to the new world, are there other ways to abuse this UU? Does a DoW on an AI force it out of his borders?

Does the AI ever lightly defend coastal cities at the back of their empire? (in other words, is it useful to ambush an AI on your own continent by hitting his back cities?)

Anyone ever build enough Carracks to carry a sizable army for an invasion on an AI?

What are some strategies you've employed to abuse this UU in some of your games?

humans usually defend their coastal cities lightly...

Seems best for a new world rush.

If you're either isolated, or more likely, you already have a sizeable chunk of land on your continent and are friendly with your neighbours, you can use it to mount an overseas medieval invasion (amphibious elephants?) of a backwards power. Or you could even use it for a completely evil mission: send a crossbow, a pike, a knight, and a maceman in 2 carracks, and declare war overseas and just pillage lands. They won't be able to attack your mainland for a long time, so you can just take your pillage party and have some fun. I find that I never make friends with people overseas anyways (different religion, usually), so may as well plunder a bit while you can't be countered.

humans usually defend their coastal cities lightly...

Love Joao on Multiplayer Custom Continents games. Beeline Optics and amphibiously capture all of an opponent's warrior defended coastal cities with axemen or Xbows.

I once made a massive mistake with the Carrack. I was playing an Islands map, and decided to whip out a pile of settlers to grab all the islands I could. Well, I did so, but forgot that until Astro, none of my distant cities could trade. So they had no happiness or health resources, no TRs at all (and I had the GLH), it was ROUGH.

Just a anecdote about my experience with this unit. Its outstanding for war, and great for settling distant lands, but beware of the dangers.

Great for carrying spies too - strategy against the AI can be immensely different from humans as what others have said. I honestly don't know enough of what they do at lower difficulties, but at higher ones I often see the AI build such ridiculous numbers of ships that it's not worth trying to fight (hence settling/exploration are the only real uses of my ships). Just had an interesting revelation in this one game of mine about naval war and amphibious landings too... but it's very tough unless you have clearly superior units (due to landing penalty). About being kicked out of borders (the only question someone else hasn't really answered) I believe caravels can stay in their borders, just like submarines.

It's great for pre-renaissance wars that require you to ferry troops since your ferries also happen to be the strongest combat ships available. The key is to hit optics before anyone else so that your ferries own their combat ships.

Personally, however, I tend not to get much use out of this UU. I think you really have to work the settings in your favour to leverage it. If you are playing an islands map (e.g., archipelago) then it may be useful for your early wars or expansion. However, if you start on any kind of land mass where you can expand peacefully or via war to a mid-to-large-sized empire than you are likely better off going that route. On top of that, once you hit optics, astronomy is really not that far away...

Carracks with marines......

Carracks are really game/map specific. They are usually the Atomic bomb for it's era or a Ballista Elephant equivalent in my experience.

In one game I played an archipelago as willem of portugal, skipping Astronomy and going straight for Combustion for ocean warfare. Until Astronomy my water tiles were bringing in 5 commerce with the Colossus, so the Carracks were useful for settling cities across ocean that would get connected by culture later. On standard-sized maps you don't usually need Astronomy to open up trade routes with everyone.

I made Bleys mistake once too. It sounds like a powerful land grabbing unit on the right map but maintaining such cities is really crimped until you get ASTRO.

Perhaps it would be best to leave a settler/worker/2 military garrison pair near a city site so that when you do get Astronomy, you can settle those cities instantly with a profit.

The problem is, though, that those units are basically useless until then.

I'm having a hard time finding out how to use this UU well. I've never played as Portugal before.

Well, they're pretty much godmode on Terra maps, just ship over a couple workers to the new world and you can usually pick up enough resources over there to get your colonies running, and you get a HUGE jumpstart on your opponents on colonizing the new world, it is expensive but if you ship workers over there and don't get involved in any big wars it is the best UU in the game for terra maps. It is however pretty much worthless on most other maps, it's at least better than a ballista elephant but not by much.

@DMOC:
I don't know by heart the cost of maintaining 4 units outside your cultural borders, but that isn't free either. Sure it's cheaper than the extra city upkeep, but I would not purposefully put such landing parties waiting for a long time. You might want to drop them when researching astronomy, but it still seems a rather weak application of carracks.

Without Astro it does make it tougher, since even stealing a resource won't help until you get astro to use it back home. Probably the best bet with carracks is go overseas and quickly set up 2-3 cities, and then release them immediately. The colony won't suffer from crippling maintenance costs, and will be able to build up. By the time you get astronomy to set up yourself, you'll have yourself a strong overseas partner.

I haven't tried this yet, but someone suggested to just plop 2 settlers down, create a colony, then rinse and repeat.

The colonies would be nice, but you still would have maintenance costs and you also wouldn't get trade routes from them until Astronomy anyway.

Colonies also complicate diplomacy. If Shaka's friendly with you but furious with your colony and the Zulu are the points leader with the most technology and military, we all know what is going to happen. :cry: