Backpack Catapultist

Level 1, 2 and 3 backpack catapultists in a row.

Vanilla

Attribute	Value (L1 | L2 | L3)
Health	30 | 40 | 45
Damage	8 | 11 | 13
Attack Speed	30 Ticks
DPS	3,7 | 5,1 | 6
Range	8 Tiles
Armor	0
Compatible Buffs	Shield, Bloodrush, Invisibility

Overview

Backpack catapultists are the trojan special unit. They are the first and only artillery unit featured in the game - in addition to their listed primary damage, they deal 50% of that damage to every target within a radius of two tiles around the primary target, and 25% to every target within a radius of an additional three tiles. This allows backpack catapultist to deal damage in a generous area of effect and far beyond their primary range. To compensate, they have the lowest health of all soldiers in the game.

The area of effect visualized.

Strategy

Backpack catapultists are a hard counter for all units in the game, with one exception: archers. This leads to a strange situation where they are theoretically the most powerful unit in the game, but in practice are always faced with their achilles heel.

Against melee units, backpack catapultist benefit the more enemy soldiers are coming their way. In combination with allied melee units they can overwhelm an archer army of equal size, but this is prone to error, as the formation must not be flanked, nor may the backpack catapultists be endangered in any other way.

Trivia

• Despite not being melee units, backpack catapultists can benefit from the viking's bloodrush spell.

• Backpack catapultists are theoretically a contender for the highest possible damage per attack. With maximized fighting strength and the squad leader bonus, their base damage increases to 21,45. With bloodrush, this increases to 42,9, which would be rounded up to 43. If every possible tile around the primary target contained an enemy unit, each attack would deal 18*21=378 additionall damage for the inner ring and 72*10=720 for the outher ring. This results in a maximum damage of 43+378+720 = 1141. In practice, this value is unachievable, however, as settlers who are not currently doing a particular task (including fighting) attempt to maintain a minimum distance of one tile in each direction to all other settlers.