Cannon towers before the discovery of gunpowder

[Roy1991]

I just noticed that it's possible to have cannon towers (wall defences of a Huge city) before the discovery of gunpowder.

I wonder how those worked?

[Sheogorath]

Witchcraft, thats why you generals keep getting burned.
You heathen dog.

[Faenaris]

Are you sure? I just got back from my Sicily Campaign and I couldn't build them before I discovered gun powder. I played with 1 turn = 1 year, so, it took a LONG time before I could get my shiny cannons.

[Roy1991]

Yep, I'm sure.

I captured Milan around turn 55, and was able to upgrade it to a huge city 3 turns later.
Since then it has been under siege by Milan and Venice several times, and the cannons destroyed a lot of siege towers & rams :)
(it's turn 72 now, so gunpowder still hasn't been invented)

[Roy1991]

Ah, there're also cannon towers when you upgrade a fortress to a citadel, that probably caused some confusion :)

I didn't mean those, but the extra wall defences that cities get when you upgrade them to huge cities. They've also got some sort of cannons.

[Quillan]

I have seen the same thing. It's called "Ballista towers", but they aren't firing ballista bolts for me; they're firing cannon balls. I'm uncertain if it's because I slightly modded the game: I changed timescale in the descr_strat.txt file from 2 to 1, so it's running 1 year per turn. I've played 80-odd turns so far. If I'd been playing the normal time scale, it would be 1240+ AD. I'm not certain when gunpowder gets discovered, but it's possible the cannon towers are the result of X number of turns passing rather than a certain date passing.

[TanOrpheus]

When you fight on the battle map in a city with Cannon towers they fire flaming bolts not Cannon Shells, so they just have an incorrect name.

[mikoyan]

So, you must have balista towers instead of cannon towers to have the benefits...