Units
Artillery
Artillery is the heavy weapon unlocked by Gunnery, the harp branch's third node: it breaks cities from range.
Iron first
It carries the same prerequisite as Janissary: with no Iron deposit inside your territory it cannot enter a queue at all — an empire-wide gate (The production queue).
Against cities, from range
Its attack vs. city value is 9 — above Siege's (6), the highest damage to a city on the board is its. Because its range is 2, it deals this damage without closing to adjacency; as long as the target is visible it can strike a city without ever approaching it at all, unlike Siege (Combat, "Ranged attack").
When it strikes a non-adjacent target, Artillery does not advance into the tile of a target it kills, and a defending unit strikes back only if it can reach the Artillery with its own range. A city strikes back at a ranged hit with a share of 0.5 of the counter damage (Combat, "Ranged attack"). Artillery can also attack an adjacent target; in that case the rule reverts to ordinary melee: a unit strikes back in full and a city not at all.
Outside the type triangle
Artillery does not enter the type triangle (it appears in no row of
| Defender | Attacker | Defense multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Spearman | Raider | ×2 |
| Spearman | Sipahi | ×2 |
| Raider | Archer | ×2 |
| Janissary | Archer | ×2 |
| Archer | Spearman | ×2 |
| Sipahi | Pioneer | ×2 |
| Sipahi | Siege | ×2 |
| Sipahi | Archer | ×2 |
Upkeep and cost
Its cost is 12 — the most expensive unit on the board — and its move 3, slower than Siege's (4). It breaks a city harder than Siege does; the price is a higher cost and a slower march.
When to build it
When you have the Iron resource and already know which city you are taking — an Artillery built without a target does not earn back its cost. In matches where you want to run a siege from behind the line, this node is taken instead of Siege — at the price of taking the city's ranged counter; it is also possible to build both together, using Artillery for ranged support and Siege for the adjacent blow.
Arriving by upgrade
A Siege can be upgraded into this unit with gold: instead of building one from scratch, a veteran moves to the new weapon. The price and the conditions are on the Economy page.
The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.