Id like to swap useless Great Galleas to Armed Cargo ship. I hope in not the only one.
It wouldn't be a bad trade. Either that or give the GG the extra UA to automatically follow a cargo ship. That it was a bug they could both fight mêlée and ranged is too bad, since it was a strength of the unit in history, that and its great maneuverability (can move after a fight, maybe).
But yeah, in its heydays Venice sent armed war galleys with its merchant convoys (it's in its decline it suffered most from piracy), and since the war galleys could be maneuvered so well, capturing Venetian convoys required skills and luck.
The extra trade routes become useless if you lose too many cargo ships too often to pillaging. It's a conundrum because when you have one city that can build and it can't build triremes or galleases because it's too often busy rebuilding lost cargo ships.. you end up making no money from TR to buy anything while you try to build the very units that makes money, and can fall way, way behind.
The GG isn't purely useless, though. As an early ranged unit it's terribly effective to destroy pillaging barbarians or control the camps spawning them. When you spot a coastal camp on a trade route, sending a galley to deal with any sea units it spawns until you can have a unit wipe the camp itself is very useful. It's very hard to get the ball rolling and get nearly enough GG to protect efficiently your trade routes, though.
Another aspect that's not well represented with the UU or UA is that Venice's Arsenal could build war or merchant galleys much, much faster than anyone else (obsolete when caravels enter the game, though perhaps Venice could still build GG after frigates and privateers arrive. The real Venice did). Its fleet was destroyed and wham, another was built in record time. This was done thanks to the superiority of the Arsenal and the standardization of ship models that let the Arsenal have all spare parts in stock for very fast repairs, and because private citizens would often rise up and pay for a new fleet in times of great needs. Perhaps a buff to the GG could be very low maintenance and a a special discount to build them or buy them while at war. This would at least let the player get enough GG to actually protect the extra TR...
Giving its cargo ships a defensive bonus (can only defend, needs 2 or 3 pillage actions to be destroyed) isn't a bad suggestion either. Hard to see how this would work, though... you can't re assign a TR before it's over, so the first turn the pillager would hit it, the cargo ship would move and the pillager would hit it again, capturing it. To prevent it you'd still need a Galley nearby, ready to destroy the pillager. With one unit per tile it's not possible to have two pirates attacking the cargo ship on the same turn.
I guess what you suggest is a unit that doubles up as a GG/trade galley, ie: trade can be interrupted when it's attacked and the Venice player can on the next turn decide to strike against the attacker, or try evasive action by resuming the trade route? That would be cool. It would likely require a few galleys or triremes to destroy a Venetian trade route. Instead of simply being on the same tile to pillage it you'd need to destroy them to capture them, though. Mind you, I think I'd prefer if it worked like that for all cargo ships, not just Venice's..
