Heavy Cannon

The Heavy Cannon is a heavy artillery unit featured in Age of Empires III. It is produced at the Factory (see Hidden cost below) and can be shipped from the Home City.

Overview
The Heavy Cannon is the typical heavy artillery piece for the Spanish, Portuguese, Germans, Russians, Dutch, and French. The Heavy Cannon is also available to these same civilizations from their Home City shipments (2 Heavy Cannon), most notably the Russians who can send a total of four cannons thanks to the Tsar Cannon card.

The Heavy Cannon's power and hit points are similar to the Great Bombard, but the rate of fire is slightly faster and it has no penalties versus Cavalry. The Heavy Cannon is effective against enemy infantry and artillery units, Spanish cannons using Unction are also effective versus Cavalry and other Artillery due to high damage and lack of significant penalties. Overall, a Heavy Cannon (1 on 1 and lacking Unction) would have a good chance to beat a Great Bombard with full health, though it would rely on the Heavy Cannon getting two shots off (12 seconds) before the Bombard began attacking the Heavy Cannon. This is realistically possible due to the Heavy Cannon's smaller penalty versus other artillery and its greater rate of fire. Other common factors such as battlefield confusion, varying levels of micromanagement skill and line of sight advantages allow this scenario to occur frequently. The population cost of this unit is 7.

Hidden cost
Training the Heavy Cannon at a Factory takes 115 seconds (109.25 with Chinese TEAM Engineering School card, 103.5 with Engineering School card and 97.75 with both). The average resource gather rate of a Factory is 5.5 every second (before the Factory improvements (+20%)). This means that the Heavy Cannon, while appearing to be free, will have a cost dependent upon how effective the Factory gathers a needed resource. In many cases, this cost can exceed the base value of the unit.

Home City Cards
As the Heavy Cannon is exclusive to European civilizations, only Native American and other Asian civilizations' TEAM cards that affects them are listed here. {| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;" ! sab="1148" | Click for a list of related Home City cards
 * - sab="1147"
 * - sab="1149"
 * sab="1150" |

Russians

 * }

History
"The logistics of moving, maintaining, positioning, aiming, and firing artillery required a highly drilled and disciplined team with a sharp commander. In addition to the men and artillery pieces in his command, an artillery officer had to see to the horses used to haul the pieces around - sometimes up to six for heavier guns. When one side in a battle could field hundreds of artillery pieces, the logistics of just moving them into position were taxing. "Heavy Cannon" is a relative term, but in general, cannon considered 'heavy' were typically used as permanent gun emplacements to defend Forts and strategic locations."