Great Bombard

The Great Bombard is a piece of Ottoman Artillery featured in Age of Empires III.

Overview
The Great Bombard is a slow and heavy unique artillery piece used by the Ottoman Empire, only being created by Ottoman factories or sent from the Home City. The Great Bombard has a massive damage output, shredding any infantry it encounters on the way with just two of them. The Great Bombard is also excellent at taking out enemy buildings with this extremely high damage. They also have a relatively high amount of hit points.

However, the Great Bombard does have its own disadvantages. Being the largest (and heaviest) artillery in-game, they are extremely slow when moving and will need protection against surprise rushes against the Bombard. They also have a relatively slow firing rate compared to the Heavy Cannon and Rocket from other civilizations. In addition, the Heavy Cannon and Rocket do not have any penalties when fighting cavalry.

Upgrades
The Great Bombard can be upgraded to the Imperial Bombard for and, which increases hit points and attack by 50%.

Hidden Cost
Training these units at a factory requires 115 seconds, 109.25 with Team Engineering School sent by a Chinese ally (for civilizations without Engineering School), 103.5 with Engineering School and finally 97.75 with both Home City Cards. The average resource gather rate of a Factory is 5.5 every second (before the building upgrade (+20%) and Home City Card, Market, etc. upgrades). This means that Heavy Artillery from a Factory, 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 (700 resources) of the unit.

History
"Great bombards were a set of medieval cannons that were cast of bronze or iron and fired stone projectiles weighing hundreds of pounds. The greatest of these was a cannon called 'Basilica' that pounded the walls of Constantinople. It was over 25 feet long, used hundreds of pounds of powder that, with a projectile weighing in excess of 1,200 pounds, took hours to load. The bombard was so huge that it had to be constructed in two pieces that screwed together to make it, presumably, easier to move. This meant it only took 60 oxen and hundreds of men over 40 days to move the bombard the 120 miles between Adrianople and Constantinople at an achingly slow two miles a day!"

Shipments
This is a list of shipments that benefit Great Bombards in anyway.

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%; margin-bottom:0px; margin-top:1px;" ! sab="1148"| Click for a list of Great Bombard related home city cards
 * - sab="1147"
 * - sab="1149"
 * sab="1150"|

Ottomans

 * }