Gatling Gun

The Gatling Gun is a special artillery unit in Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs. It is available to all European civilizations, but only when Revolution has been researched.

Overview
The Gatling Gun is unusual compared to the other artillery pieces in the game, with the exception of the Organ Gun; it is the precursor to modern-day machine guns and fires projectiles at a rapid rate, which is useful in killing enemy infantry units at a brisk pace. The Gatling Gun becomes available to players if they choose to revolt from their European civilization in the Industrial Age. While devastating against infantry they are less effective against cavalry and buildings, doing reduced damage against them. However, due to their high rate of fire they can still do good damage against them if in groups. It is inferior to the Organ Gun in multipliers, attack, range, Line of Sight, upgrades and age, but is available to every civilization.

Trivia

 * It uses the same icon as the Organ Gun.
 * They have the second fastest rate-of-fire after the Flamethrower, together with the Organ Gun, if every shot from a volley is counted separately.
 * The Gatling Gun were planned to be trained instead of Revolt in the Industrial Age, but were removed.
 * The Gatling Gun unit model visually resembles a Colt 1876 Gatling gun. This is slightly anachronistic considering the time period the game and its expansions were set in (between the 1500s and the year 1850).
 * The in-game History section mentions the Gatling Gun's invention taking place in 1861. In reality, the Gatling gun's final designs were completed in 1862 and the weapon was first fielded for service in 1863 during the American Civil War.

History
"The Gatling gun was invented by Richard Gatling in 1861. Although not precisely a machine gun, it nonetheless offered devastating firepower for its time. The operator of the gun would turn a hand crank, which rotated six gun barrels around a central shaft. Cartridges were continuously fed into the barrels as they made their rotation. The Gatling gun saw its first limited action on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War, where its rapid fire of up to 600 rounds a minute proved extremely deadly. The gun was also used in multiple conflicts worldwide during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until it eventually was replaced by the modern machine gun, with its automatic action."