โ | Early automatic-fire weapon. Better against infantry than buildings. | โ |
—In-game description |
The Gatling Gun is an artillery unit in Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs that is unique to revolting European civilizations and can be trained at the Artillery Foundry.
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.
Choosing George Washington as the revolutionary leader will increase the Gatling Gun's hit points by 25%.
Further statistics
As Gatling Guns are unique to revolutionary European civilizations, only technologies that their base civilizations have access to are shown in the following table:
Unit strengths and weaknesses | |
---|---|
Strong vs. | Infantry |
Weak vs. | Cavalry, artillery especially Culverins, light infantry, Arrow Knights, ships |
Improvements | |
Hit points | Professional Gunners (+10%) |
Attack | Heated Shot (+1.5x multiplier vs. ships) |
Sight | Town Watch (+2) Gunner's Quadrant (+6) |
Speed | Trunion (+15%) Apache Endurance (+5%) |
Creation speed | File:Inca Chaquis Messengers.png Incan Chasquis Messengers (-10%) |
Train cost | Mapuche Ad-mapu (-10% coin cost) |
Penalties | Coffee Trade (-10% speed, Dutch only) |
Home City Cards
As Gatling Guns are unique to revolutionary European civilizations, only their base civilizations' cards and other civilizations' TEAM cards are shown in the following tables (for the revolting player themselves, non-TEAM cards will only be applied if they are sent before revolting):
Click for a list of Home City Cards related to the Gatling Gun | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Europeans
Indians
Ottomans
Revolutionary
Spanish
|
Trivia
- The Gatling Gun shares the same portrait with the Organ Gun in-game, even though it has its own portrait in the game files (as seen above) which was used by the 4 Gatling Guns Home City Card on the Revolution Deck.
- The Gatling Gun 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 originally planned to be trained in the Industrial Age instead of by revolting first.
- 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.
- If the player is playing with the Portuguese and researches the Rabaulds upgrade at the Artillery Foundry and then revolts, they will get a Gatling Gun with a unique model. However, this will not affect the unit's statistics.
History
โ | 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. | โ |