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Desert? And a full overview:

Maybe a nice ready for you Alpha975, http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?557729-My-list-of-Ship-Types-weapons-and-tactics-that-could-be-in-ROME2-Please-help-add-to-my-list With the many different types of ships for all purposes you can create so many awesome situations. If 0.A.D nexts big feature update would be "seabattle mechanics , effects , and stuff" Then ships like the Harpex / firepot / corvus and artillery / archer ships would have so mutch potential to create unique battle,s and make 0.A.D a game to play in different ways. I really hope that after the capture feature naval get's it mutch needed love...

Another tiny update: Yes, sure, large ships were apparently very often used as platforms for artillery, sometimes even several ships tied together as to house even larger artillery pieces or very heavy siege equipment. As I understand it, heavy siege artillery was used to take cities under siege from the sea while lighter artillery was used in naval combat to decimate enemy deck crews (the consensus in the books I looked at seems to be that it would take a large number of hits to actually sink an enemy ship with these weapons, so they were most likely not used to sink ships.) Light artillery was pretty much standard for warships in our time-frame and it is mentioned that roman warships had a standard crew including 10 artillery officers. An interesting side-note: when the punic wars started, rome didn't have a modern navy, so they had to use the ships of they allies at first. Luckily for the romans, a punic pentereme was washed ashore after a storm and the romans (most likely with a little help, perhaps from greek experts) were able to examine the design. They used the punic ship as a stencil for their own quinquereme that was nearly a 1:1 copy of the punic ship as a result. It was noted by roman authors that quinqueremes were supperior to the earlier triremes in almost every aspect except speed. They also used the same technique for mass production as carthage, producing sometimes even hundreds of ships in a matter of months and numbering the parts, a technique similar to the mass production of ships in venice, millennia later. However, due to lack of experience the roman ships turned out heavier and bulkier than their punic counterpart and the romans even used not completely dry wood. The romans also lacked experience in seamanship, even having to train their oarsmen on land. This inexperience in naval matters also cost the romans hundreds of ships in storms and losses of up to 50 000 men in single incidences. Since pulling off a successful ramming maneuver requires a highly trained crew, lots of experience and an extremely agile vessel, most non-professional navies at the time had to rely on boarding action when fighting against more professional navies (that in turn could carry a much smaller complement of marines). This was correctly noticed by the romans who had large experience in land combat but almost none in naval matters. They also faced the problem that the faster and more agile punic ships would regularly outrun, out-turn and successfully ram the roman ships, while the larger roman marine compliments were almost always able to win when the enemy ship could be boarded. This lead to the ingenious invention of the corvus, a long boarding bridge with a heavy spike at the end that could fix closely passing or ramming enemy ships in place so they could be boarded. This device surprised the punic navy which, after a lossy defeat, had to completely change tactics and now try to single out roman ships and hit them only from the sides and rear and retreat quickly or risk being boarded and loose. You have to remember that some of the naval battles in the first punic war saw hundreds of ships on both sides and had losses that had no equal in number were it not for some of the bloodiest naval battles in the pacific theater of WW2. Scouting was also very difficult as navies would often sail very close to the coast and could be very fast, meaning that around every corner one could bump into the enemy main fleet. Storms were another problem, as the warships at the time were not vessels built for the high seas but built as light as possible, often carrying even only a day or two of rations (or loosing to enemy ships when carrying more) and pulled ashore over night or when storms were approaching. The corvus (and heavy siege artillery) increased that problem by a lot, as it made the ships top-heavy. Thus, after loosing several corvus equipped fleets in storms and tens of thousands of men, it was abandoned again after only 5 years of service. A few centuries later another ingenious invention was used to make boarding easier: the romans shot giant grappling hooks from their deck artillery to catch smaller and faster vessels at the battle of actium. But this is almost out of the time-frame we want to depict. I hope you enjoyed this brief text (and the latest screenshot)