The Kerkuros is an upgrade of the Merchant Fleet
, available to most seafaring nations. It is essentially a single-master, Egyptian-style bireme with higher gunwales, is slightly faster but also has substantially higher armour (2-3) making it very hard to kill except with dedicated anti-ship weapons such as the Fire Raft, The Kerkuros is usually associated with the Ptolemaic Egyptians as well as most African and Asian factions.