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Masked Mustachio's Canister Shot

Unpopular Opinion: Empire Total War was one of the best Total War games. I know I already lost you because obviously Medieval 3 would be the historical game I want them to release the most, but Empire 2 would be a very close second. That is only because Empire has unit replenishment and the combat is still great while Medieval 2 feels much more dated.

Anyway what does this have to do with this mod? Well I hate that I do not enjoy using the Empire Great Cannons, Dwarf Cannons, or Vampire Coast Carronades despite LOVING cannons in Empire Total War. These units are higher tier than the mortar or grudge throwers but they are not as good. (At least I don't get much use out of them). A big part of this is because they reload insanely slow and miss enough that they are not reliable. Their rounds don't explode so if they miss by an inch, they might as well have missed by a mile.

The intention of this mod was to give the basic cannons of the Empire, Dwarves, and Vampire Coast a similar feel to the cannons from Empire Total War by adding a canister shot. I wanted the canister shot to be very damaging when it hits tightly packed units directly, while making sure that loosely spaced units were much more resistant to the cannon. I also slightly increased the reload speed of the normal cannon fire because 20 seconds is unbearable. They are now at 18 seconds which seems minor but it puts it more in line with other artillery. The reload speeds of regular cannon fire go between 18 seconds to ~15 seconds when they are rank 9 veterans. The canister shot has faster reloads at around 15 seconds to ~10 seconds when they are rank 9 veterans. This is somewhat accurate to real life cannons as (apparently) canister shot was faster to reload than round ball with practiced cannon crews firing one every 10 seconds and an experienced crew firing round ball every 15 seconds.

I only gave this option to the two basic cannons because I want them to be viable options, but do not want them to be better than the higher tier artillery options.

The DPS of the canister shot LOOKS much higher than the cannon DPS but that is because it shoots 16 projectiles and gives the impression that it does way more damage than it does. It can do great damage when it hits with all of the projectiles which I wanted, but that doesn't happen constantly. The accuracy of grapeshot is lower than the round shot by 10. So Empire cannons have accuracy of 25 and the canister shot is 15. The dwarves have higher accuracy at 30 so the grapeshot is 20. The range of empire canisters is 200m and dwarf canisters is 190m to match with the round balls being different. This mod also gives the Witch Hammer cannon magical grape shot with increases to damage to match the increase the round shot has. The flaming rune affecting dwarven cannons will give the canister shot flaming damage.

I may tweak things in the future if I feel like things need to be changed, but I have played with it quite a bit and I am happy with where it is. I wanted something that feels like the canister shot of Empire Total War but also isn't completely overpowered. The best way to deal with these cannons would be with loose formation infantry or cavalry as the canister doesn't spread enough to damage a lot of units in those groups. Low or single entity units also work well. Or just shoot them with your artillery/magic.

You should note: I would rather lean towards canister shot being fun than completely balanced. If canister shot has to be overpowered to be fun then you better believe I will leave them overpowered.

Check out my other mods I made here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/lumparoo/myworkshopfiles/?appid=0&sort=score&browsefilter=myfiles&view=imagewall

Video on how this was made: https://youtu.be/D_TGBe52-tw

Videos on how to Mod Warhammer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzN-p6lsLwG1j2vHw9ZteIg

Also please rate my mods so that they can get rated and noticed by other players with similar interests. I do really appreciate it.