Friday Update: Week 19/2013, Artillery Special

That's right, this is our first ever Friday Update Special. There's no special story behind it, we just happened to be working on a whole lot of artillery units at the same time, and thought it would be nice to showcase a couple of them together. First up, an artillery unit that's unique to the Mongols...


The Huo P'ao is one of two units* that the Mongols have access to, come Age IV, by means of a tech called Chinese Powder. This gives them a set of earlier but weaker gunpowder units. In fact, it's even possible to attain these units in Age III*... The Huo P'ao works much like a Petard in unmodded AoE3, and as such is a risky but effective way to take out enemy Castles, Towers and what-have-you.

Sticking with unique gunpowder units, the Spanish have some as well. This time they only come in Age V, and the tech that unlocks them, Gun Technology, only becomes available once Black Powder has also been researched. These units are supplementary to the Hand Gunner and Bombard available to all civs.


The Cannon is one of the three units* unlocked by this tech, and it is a very useful little gun. Unlike the Bombard, it is not primarily an anti-infantry weapon, or indeed a siege gun. It can do both these things rather effectively, but the Cannon is particularly good at fending off enemy artillery and siege units. Its high damage and bonus against siege units means that the Cannon is probably the only unit that can reliably destroy Siege Towers and even enemy Bombards before they can be any use, making this a very useful unit indeed.

You may have noticed that both these units will only make their first appearance in the Quintessence, as neither the Mongols nor the Spanish is in the Prologue. Well, do not despair! Here's a unit that will very probably be included in the next patch, so you won't have to wait quite as long:


Yes, thanks to the splendid efforts of misterscp, K&B will include that most iconic of all medieval artillery units, the Trebuchet. Like in Age of Empires II (and I know this will please some people), the Trebuchet is trained in the form of a cart, which can then deploy into a functioning Trebuchet. The Trebuchet has good range and deals a very respectable amount of damage, but is not unvulnerable to counterattacks.


This week's quote of the week is to reassure you all that we're still working on all sorts of things for a second patch, including balance. In particular, the possibly too great strenghts of a pike-and-shot formation of Archers and Spearmen has been discussed in quite some detail...

Synecdoche wrote:If you maneuver too long with light cav against a large group of archers without starting to kill them, you take a lot of unanswered arrows and sometimes even lose against one of the units you're supposed to counter.

K&B salutes... the weather... On the Northern Hemisphere... Around Northwestern Europe... When it's not covered in clouds... You know, perhaps we shouldn't salute it after all.
K&B refutes... Sochi. We're not normally particularly bothered by individual Russian cities, but this one has become Putin's personal favourite, it seems, which is typical, because it's bound to ruin the Olympics, ruin Formula One, and by the looks of all the (lack of) diplomacy going on there, ruin the lives of Syria's citizens as well.


peugeot407

* = Don't even bother asking about these things, they're closely guarded secrets. Well, they are until we choose to expose them in future Friday Updates, anyway...