Catapult, trebuchet, cannon: how each one flies

01Green Hills: catapult and trebuchet

Heavy stones leave the arm slowly and climb high, and the wind catches them less than a cannonball. Reloading takes longer. In the chronicles of Kyivan Rus, stone-throwing siege machines were called poroky.

02Wild Steppe: the Cossack cannon

The cannon is the standard every other era is measured against: fast balls, steady arcs, the full push of the wind. Cossack armies relied on artillery in their wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.

03River Forts: Congreve rockets

Rockets leave the rack slowly and speed up in flight under their own thrust, so they are hard to read at first. The wind pushes them only half as much. Rockets of this kind were first used in battle by the British in 1806.

04Iron Valley, Concrete Line and Sky Citadels

Howitzer shells leave fast and drop hard. Modern field guns fire almost straight and barely notice the wind, and reload faster. Plasma — pure fiction — floats far under weak gravity and ignores the wind completely.

Land	Weapon	Speed	Gravity	Wind	Thrust	Reload
Green Hills	Catapult	0.9	0.81	0.6	—	1.2
Wild Steppe	Cannon	1	1	1	—	1
River Forts	Rocket Rack	0.8	0.9	0.5	yes	1
Iron Valley	Howitzer	1.15	1.32	0.7	—	1.1
Concrete Line	Field Gun	1.25	1.56	0.4	—	0.9
Sky Citadels	Plasma Gun	0.8	0.64	ignores it	—	1

Relative to the Cossack cannon (= 1.0). Every era reaches the same distance, so no land is easier because of its weapon.

05Different flight, same reach

Every era is tuned to reach the same distance as the cannon. A land is never easier just because of its weapon — it asks you to aim in a new way.