how many active caravans can have cathay?

[This World is an illusion, exile]

as i understood only 2. 1 is on the way to some city and 1 is returning to capital. is that correct? or am i missing something, then whats the point to hire more lords?

[Central]

there are a few reasons to hire more caravan lords.

it takes time for the lords to return after making a trip.
if your first trip was very long and the second trip is short than the first lord will not have returned in time to make the third trip, so you might need a third caravan to keep running them constantly.

caravans can still die, after which you need to replace them, those will generally be low leveled lords. by having more lords than needed you can build up a pool of caravans with experience, thus giving you some experienced reserves in case one of your caravans wipe.

caravan lords have random traits and the available ones switch out every once in a while. it can pay off to look at the recruitment every once in a while to see what traits are available, if you see something you like than you can recruit them, that way you have the lord with a skill you want waiting in reserve when one of your caravans wipe.

[This World is an illusion, exile]

so basically i can have 2-3 caravans returning to my capital, but only 1 caravan can be active?

[Searro]

Yes, only 1 caravan can be going out at one time.

[This World is an illusion, exile]

thanks