Multi-barrelled Cannon

Multi-barrelled Cannon is a artillery unit in Cossacks 3, available at the Artillery Depot. Unlike the other pieces of artillery, this one requires an upgrade at the Academy.

Background
To increase the rate of artillery fire, inventors attempted to multiply the number of barrels in an artillery system. Naturally this was not suitable for large-calibre cannon due to their excessive weight, but smaller cannon loaded with grapeshot profited from this development. This is how the predecessor of the modern machine-gun was developed. The new weapon was of limited use. It was effective against tight enemy infantry or cavalry formations. However, multi-barrelled cannon had only a short range of fire, were very heavy and extremely difficult to manufacture, therefore they were soon out of use.

Characteristics

 * Fires shrapnel at close ranges.
 * Effective against unarmored infantry.
 * High rate of fire.
 * Requires gold for upkeep.
 * When out of gold, multi-barrelled cannons stops firing.
 * Unguarded multi-barrelled cannon can be captured by the enemy.
 * Spends a lot of coal and iron on firing.