^ So Caravel combat strengh of 50 at a default speed of 4 is overrated?
in Civ5 downloadable unit list, Carrack is ranged (for GK and BNW).
And with this you disagreed with Warfare Expanded 4 Moar navy? (consists of N. Melee, N. Ranged. N Bombard (which distinctions between cruisers and battleships came) and N. Raider) or you view cruiser and battleship as a same thing in game term
?
For a hopefully familiar example, Columbus's two smaller ships, the
Pinta and the
Nina, were Caravels, each abut 70 feet long, carried a crew of 18 men and weighed about 60 tons. Very fast, very maneuverable, but no Caravel could carry heavy cannon, so their 'range' would be about 200 meters at best, and mostly with swivel guns - oversized muskets. In combat factor and speed, they are the Scout Units of the Ocean tiles.
Carracks were high-freeboard vessels. They could carry a lot of 'guns', but if they tried to carry a lot of heavy guns they ran the risk of becoming Top Heavy - the
Vasa was an overloaded Carrack and she heeled over a little too far and went down like a rock within minutes after she was launched! So, for the same tonnage, a Carrack would carry a little more than half the guns that a lower, longer and more stable Galleon hull could carry, and most of the Carrack's guns would be lighter. In fact, the early Carracks carried very few guns heavier than a swivel gun or 2 - 3 pounder anti-personnel weapons - strictly short-range weapons that do not qualify the ship as a Ranged unit.
Dividing warships into ranged, melee and bombard is artificial and just a bit silly except for, possibly, the specialized Siege Galleys built by the Diadochi in the Med in Classical times. They took a pair of large galleys, lashed them together, and mounted heavy catapults or even Siege Towers on them to attack fortified cities from the waterside. Those were strictly temporary expedients and they had, arguably, nothing but a Siege Bombardment function.
All ships with cannon can Bombard very well compared to land units. After all, the largest army field cannon of the 18th century was a 12 pounder, the normal Siege cannon in the black powder era (Renaissance to early Industrial Era) was a 24 pounder, and the smallest cannon mounted on the upper decks of a Ship-of-the-Line was a 12 pounder while over half the ship's guns would be 24 to 42 pounders. Even a single Frigate could fire the equivalent of 2 - 3 batteries of field guns at a time: a Ship-of-the-Line carried as many heavy guns as an army's entire Siege Train!
And in the Modern Era, even a Destroyer carries 4 - 6 120 - 130mm cannon, which on land would be considered Medium Artillery. A single Heavy Cruiser of WWII carried 8 - 10 8" guns, or the equivalent of 4 batteries of Soviet Super Heavy Cannon - the sort of artillery which the army would use against concrete fortifications or stone buildings being used as strongpoints. And only Railroad Guns on land came close to the size of a battleship's main armament.
The point is, though, that except for a few smaller coastal Monitors and Gunboats, the naval units in the game (Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, etc) were not built or designed to Bombard land targets, they were designed to fight and sink other ships. It just so happens that Heavy Artillery is Heavy Artillery, and the same guns that could sink a ship could also pulverize land targets.
The one thing that should change in any 4X historical game is that before the Galleon or Ship-of-the-Line carrying big cannon with ranges of up to 1000 - 1500 meters, ALL 'Naval Ranged' ships have a range of 1. The catapults and smaller swivel guns used on Polyremes, Galleys, Caravels and Carracks had effective ranges of 100 to at best 400 meters. In most cases, that won't hit any land target unless they are conveniently standing on the beach.
