Trade Boat

The Trade Boat in Age of Empires is the basic trading vessel available from Stone Age. Its function is for early trade to develop, generating Gold in exchange for any of the other three resources. Much like Fishing Boats they are unarmed and unarmoured and such need protecting. They are also upgraded to Merchant Ships in the Bronze Age. They can be trained from Dock. Boats are twice as resistant to conversions than regular units. Minoan naval units cost 30 % less and Yamato get 30% more HP.

A player will trade 20 of their selected resource for 20 Gold at any allied, neutral or enemy dock. The default resource is Wood, which you can change at any time. The boat will take 20 Gold from the Dock's inventory. The inventory slowly increases to a limit of 100. If there is less than 20 Gold, the Trade Boat will have to wait for the Dock to produce more. When the Trade Boat returns to it's home Dock it will deposit the Gold, and you will receive an amount based on the distance between the two docks. The bottom number out of 20 is the amount of Gold you will receive for your resources, ranging from 7-75.

Upgrades
They can be upgraded to Merchant Ships.



History
Small boats were used by Stone Age peoples for trading across rivers, lakes, and oceans. We know, for example, that tool stone found on Aegean Islands was brought to the mainland and other islands by traders long before large seagoing boats existed. Primitive trading boats were usually dugout canoes, papyrus bundles, or hide boats with a limited cargo capacity. They probably carried only limited quantities of valuable trade goods, such as carvings, ivory, furs, tool stone, decorative minerals, and amber. Large bulk cargoes could not be carried profitably in small trading boats.

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