Artillery

From Heroes of Might and Magic III
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Secondary skills
Expert Air Magic.png Air Magic
Expert Archery.png Archery
Expert Armorer.png Armorer
Expert Artillery.png Artillery
Expert Ballistics.png Ballistics
Expert Diplomacy.png Diplomacy
Expert Eagle Eye.png Eagle Eye
Expert Earth Magic.png Earth Magic
Expert Estates.png Estates
Expert Fire Magic.png Fire Magic
Expert First Aid.png First Aid
Expert Intelligence.png Intelligence
Expert Interference.png Interference Horn of the Abyss
Expert Leadership.png Leadership
Expert Learning.png Learning
Expert Logistics.png Logistics
Expert Luck.png Luck
Expert Mysticism.png Mysticism
Expert Navigation.png Navigation
Expert Necromancy.png Necromancy
Expert Offense.png Offense
Expert Pathfinding.png Pathfinding
Expert Resistance.png Resistance
Expert Scholar.png Scholar
Expert Scouting.png Scouting
Expert Sorcery.png Sorcery
Expert Tactics.png Tactics
Expert Water Magic.png Water Magic
Expert Wisdom.png Wisdom
Artillery
Basic Artillery.png Basic Artillery: gives control of the ballista and defense towers to the hero. The ballista has 50% chance to inflict double damage.
Horn of the Abyss HotA: + control of the cannon, which inflicts additional damage to fortifications.
Advanced Artillery.png Advanced Artillery: gives control of the ballista and defense towers to the hero. The ballista has shoots twice with a 75% chance to inflict double damage.
Horn of the Abyss HotA: + control of the cannon, which inflicts double damage and additional damage to fortifications.
Expert Artillery.png Expert Artillery: gives control of the ballista and defense towers to the hero. The ballista inflicts double damage and shoots twice.
Horn of the Abyss HotA: + control of the cannon, which inflicts triple damage and maximum damage to fortifications.

Artillery is a secondary skill that gives the hero manual control over war machine Ballista (or Cannon Horn of the Abyss) during combat and control over the arrow towers when defending a town during siege. Artillery provides control over the arrow towers also in the original game, even though it is not mentioned in the in-game description of the skill. It is interesting that Ballista is controlled by Artillery secondary skill rather than Ballistics, which is responsible for Catapult.

"Double damage" in the skill description does not mean that the final damage is necessarily duplicated, as it might also be increased by other factors, such as high Attack skill - compare damage formula.

Heroes with Basic Artillery as a starting skill:

Heroes with Ballista as a specialty:

Heroes with Ballista as a specialty and Artillery as a starting skill:

Heroes with Cannon as a specialty and Artillery as a starting skill:

Horn of the Abyss[edit | edit source]

Effects on cannon:

With Basic Artillery or Advanced Artillery the cannon does randomly 1 or 2 points of damage to fortifications. With Expert Artillery the cannon always does 2 points of damage to fortifications. With Advanced Artillery the cannon does double damage and with Expert Artillery triple damage to enemies. As opposed to ballistas, cannons always shoot once.

Chance to get[edit | edit source]

Out of total 112 for Shadow of Death, and of (112 + Interference chance) for Horn of the Abyss Horn of the Abyss.
Banned skills change the probability.

Town Class Chance to learn
Town portrait Castle small.gif Castle  Knight   5
Town portrait Castle small.gif Castle  Cleric   2
Town portrait Rampart small.gif Rampart  Ranger   6
Town portrait Rampart small.gif Rampart  Druid   1 (lowest)
Town portrait Tower small.gif Tower  Alchemist   4
Town portrait Tower small.gif Tower  Wizard   1 (lowest)
Town portrait Inferno small.gif Inferno  Demoniac   5
Town portrait Inferno small.gif Inferno  Heretic   4
Town portrait Necropolis small.gif Necropolis  Death Knight   5
Town portrait Necropolis small.gif Necropolis  Necromancer   3
Town portrait Dungeon small.gif Dungeon  Overlord   8 (highest)
Town portrait Dungeon small.gif Dungeon  Warlock   1 (lowest)
Town portrait Stronghold small.gif Stronghold  Barbarian   8 (highest)
Town portrait Stronghold small.gif Stronghold  Battle Mage   4
Town portrait Fortress small.gif Fortress  Beastmaster   8 (highest)
Town portrait Fortress small.gif Fortress  Witch   1 (lowest)
Town portrait Conflux small.gif Conflux  Planeswalker   8 (highest)
Town portrait Conflux small.gif Conflux  Elementalist   1 (lowest)
Town portrait Cove small.gif Cove  Captain   5
Town portrait Cove small.gif Cove  Navigator   1 (lowest)
Town portrait Factory small.gif Factory  Mercenary   6
Town portrait Factory small.gif Factory  Artificer   6


User commentary

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Some may find the information in this section subjective or irrelevant.

Artillery is useful if you have access to Ballista, and even better choice would be selecting a hero with this speciality as your "number one", especially on small maps. If the Blacksmith of your home town doesn't produce Ballistas, but you have an opportunity to get it (by capturing a town with Ballista, on the map, or building a Ballista Yard in a Stronghold), Artillery is a good choice. Moreover, it allows you to fully control the town's defense (as sometimes arrow towers kill enemy's least valuable troops, i.e. neither ranged nor flying). High price of a Ballista is "the other side of the medal". A secondary hero may learn Artillery so as to shoot wandering creatures and weak enemy troops, avoiding melee attack and thus decreasing losses. Always learn Artillery if you rely much on Blind spell, as otherwise Ballista may shoot blinded creatures, making them able to fight.

The only redeeming feature of Artillery skill is that while defending a siege, it gives the defending hero control over the arrow tower(s). Sometimes more valuable than the damage of the towers is the chance of defending hero to cast the first spell in each round. Additionally, heroes with Artillery specialty start with a ballista, which can be useful in the combat as the AI sometimes attacks it wasting an otherwise possibly harmful attack on the "free" ballista. However, purchasing a ballista for this purpose is typically purposeless unless the kingdom has plenty of gold to spare.

The problem with Artillery skill is the ballista, which is not only ineffective but also expensive, weak and possible risk factor during combat. An example of the ineffectiveness is that even if the hero has Expert Artillery, Expert Archery, Attack skill value of 20 and the target is within range, the ballista only deals approximately 200 damage against a neutral stack of Archangel. Moreover, the ballista has only 250 health and acts last during the combat round, which means it may be destroyed in battles even before it can inflict any damage at all. Another major disadvantage of ballista is, that in a combat it may provide creatures with breath attack an opportunity to attack troops behind ballista without fear of retaliation. Not to mention the fact, that ballista is not deployed when attacking creature banks or defending against a siege.

When playing on 200% difficulty (eg., the setting usually reserved for competitive games), players start with minimal resources. In this instance, heroes that start with Artillery can be a godsend, especially if your town lacks ranged units by default and you cannot afford to upgrade units during the first few turns. Because of their large pool of hitpoints, you can kite a single flying stack around, out of danger, while the artillery softens the enemy stacks to the point where your stack can one-shot them.

Also, Ballista/Cannon specialty can be very strong on campaign heroes as they start with a ballista and good stats on subsequent scenarios and can usually start clearing the map with no additional troops


See also: