Organ Gun

Organ
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 Gun is 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

The Organ Gun is one 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, it fires multiple shots per gun, essentially making each gun long ranged, particularly deadly canister shot. It can only fire Round Shot, but this is cold comfort to its foes considering its volume of fire per volley. It functions just as well at close range as it does at a distance, although in that sense some of the late-game artillery with canister shot may be more practical. In an offensive siege they can completely destroy a city's walls in short order, and the shot spread means they can destroy every wall in the fort, meaning that their inability to move becomes less important. This shot spread does however make them very inaccurate when attempting to hit a unit, as whilst normal artillery are fairly inaccurate, the seven rapidly spreading shots make them even less accurate (though with seven shots, they have seven more chances to hit, giving them an overall higher accuracy). Due to the devastating nature of these guns, friendly fire can be very damaging.

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