Organ Gun

Organ Gun
Belongs to	Ottoman Empire
Type	Fixed Artillery
Guns	4
Firepower	432
Range	400
Accuracy	40
Reload	25
Morale	3
Tech requirement	None
Produced from	Cannon Foundry or higher
Shot types	Round Shot
Cost	1330 SP/920 MP
Upkeep	330
Turns to train	3
Unit cap	None SP/4 MP

Organ Guns are a type of artillery in Empire: Total War. It is available with the Special Edition of the game and the Special Forces & Bonus Content DLC.

Description

Thanks to its multiple barrels, an organ gun can fire devastating volleys all on its own.

An organ gun has several barrels that are fired, almost simultaneously, when the gunner applies the match. In theory, each barrel could be loaded with a different kind of projectile, although given the different ranges of, say, shot and canister, this would be wasteful. Only a suicidal or slightly mad artilleryman would use explosive shells. There is a good chance that the first shell would have exploded in its barrel before the last is prepared.

There has always been a tendency to make artillery pieces with more than one barrel. The great Leonardo da Vinci was among many to design a ribauldequin, or volley gun. As so often with artillery, the Ottoman Turks were ahead of European gunmakers in their work. They also persisted with producing organ guns after other nations had abandoned them. They also experimented with cannons of differing calibres, where a central barrel would be surrounded by small bore tubes cast into the main cannon wall. The French also flirted with a design for a triple-barrelled cannon early in the 18th Century, but it was heavy and offered no real advantages over three ordinary guns of the same calibre.

General Information

Organ Guns are some of the earliest artillery available for the Ottomans, and by far the most powerful early game artillery available. Instead of firing a single shot per cannon, they fire multiple shots per gun, essentially making each gun long ranged, particularly deadly Canister Shot. They can only fire Round Shot, but this is cold comfort to their foes considering their volume of fire per volley. Compared to conventional cannon artillery, Organ Guns have much greater volume of firepower (aided by the fact that it has four cannons rather than the usual three on large unit settings), but pay for this with a much longer reload time and lack of flexibility in ammo types. They are also immobile, making them unsuitable for offensive use in some situations.

The nature of the weapon means that, unless it's firing against a steep incline, the impact of their cannon balls are spread out over a wide area of effect. This makes the Organ Gun consistently deadly against cavalry at even maximum range--the sheer volume of fire per volley ensures that they're bound to hit something. Impacts may be fairly powerful against infantry at long range if they're clumped or if the terrain is favorable.

Organ Guns are very deadly at close range, although in that sense some of the late-game artillery with canister shot may be more practical due to faster reload times. While using Organ Guns for close range purposes may be less forgiving, it has greater killing potential. Whereas canister shot can find trouble clearing through particularly large clumps of enemies (as each pellet disperses when it hits a body), the cannon balls fired by Organ Guns simply plow through any target, no matter how large. A single well-angled volley can cause a target to rout. In an offensive siege they can completely destroy a city's walls in short order, though the Ottoman Empire may find 64-lber Heavy Artillery more useful in this situation, as 64-lber Heavy Artillery have superior range and reloading skill.