Firearms and cannons are absolutely forbidden in this era!
The state of the Great Gan Empire is very similar to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in Jiang Ming's previous life...
The political landscape of this period was one of utter collapse of social order and the utter ruthlessness of the people!
This is a double-edged sword. It can unleash people's minds and give birth to great ideas similar to those of the Hundred Schools of Thought, but it can also lead to wars in a country that have no bottom line!
If guns and cannons had been invented...
Even if other vassal states, or those with ulterior motives, do not immediately produce weapons of the same quality.
But in a decade or two, the entire Great Gan Empire will soon be engulfed in the smoke of war...
The creativity of the people is boundless!
Never underestimate the wisdom of ordinary people!
If you dare to do it, they will dare to imitate it, and... they will quickly improve it, making it much better than what you did!
It might even surge ahead, constantly innovating and introducing new technologies in this emerging field...
If the world descends into chaos again by then, it will be even more difficult to deal with!
Therefore, Jiang Ming decided to adopt the counterweight catapult from medieval Europe to deal with the impregnable city walls of Wei.
In fact, the East also had catapults, and they were no less sophisticated than those of the West.
However, the problem is that their operational strategies are different.
The East has no shortage of people in its wars!
On the battlefield, each catapult was tied with dozens of ropes... Many hands make light work, and with hundreds of people pulling together, the stone could be thrown out in an instant!
In the Eastern theater, every battle involved hundreds of thousands of people fighting to the death!
Therefore, if manpower can be used, there is no need to spend too much effort designing more sophisticated siege weapons.
Ultimately, all that matters is taking down the enemy's city; there's no need to waste any effort on that...
However, the situation was different on the Western battlefields.
Given the relatively small number of soldiers, being able to mobilize 50,000 people is already a very large, even terrifying, army!
Their meticulous armor design, leaving no blind spots, reveals that Western armies placed great emphasis on defense, hence the similar design of their cities...
Thus, this monster, the counterweight catapult, was born!
A counterweight catapult is a device with a large number of heavy counterweights attached to one end. It uses gravitational potential energy to make the counterweights fall, which in turn pulls the lever to throw a huge rock out!
The main purpose of these giant stones is not to kill people, but to smash through enemy city walls, leaving them riddled with holes, so that... once the enemy city walls collapse, the army can charge straight in!
East and West, two battlefields, two modes of attacking and defending cities. It's not a matter of which is better or worse; the key is to find what suits you best!
If this Western model of warfare truly had an advantage, it wouldn't have been so thoroughly defeated by the descendants of Genghis Khan's westward conquests...
But this does not conflict with the current strategy of using counterweight catapults!
Jiang Ming personally designed the blueprints, creating what was at least the most sophisticated and optimized counterweight catapult in the Western Middle Ages, and then handed it over to the carpenters to make.
Jiang Ming doesn't lack people either!
Therefore, once the design drawings were completed, construction began simultaneously on one hundred giant counterweight catapults.
Jiang Ming's preset counterweight weight is five tons!
It can be said that even in Western history, there have never been any abnormally large creatures!
However, in order to quickly resolve the war in Wei and to put enough psychological pressure on the rebels, Jiang Ming designed this monster.
The counterweight end of the catapult can hold a lot of stones for the purpose of counterweighting.
And Jiang Ming didn't use the so-called "many people pulling the rope" method to lift them up...
Instead, it features a cleverly designed roller pattern.
That is, dozens or hundreds of people run inside a giant drum... The converted mechanical energy directly pulls one end of the counterweight to slowly rise until it reaches the highest point, and then a 3-4 ton boulder is placed on the launch section!
Once the mechanism is opened...
These 3-4 ton boulders will be launched like meteors!
For a weapon of this size, using a wooden structure would be quite difficult.
Because the wood simply couldn't withstand such force...
Therefore, the counterweight catapult manufactured by Jiang Ming was made entirely of metal, which to some extent increased the gravitational potential energy at one end of the counterweight.
When the craftsmen understood Jiang Ming's design drawings, they were all amazed and exclaimed in astonishment!
They never imagined that the general could design such a marvelous object...
If this thing comes in handy, what city in the world can't be conquered?
The entire ordnance manufacturing site was a hive of activity... furnaces roared day and night...
The garrison troops standing on the city walls of Daliang were also somewhat bewildered.
"Mindful talk, what kind of tactic is this? Why are we starting to smelt copper right in front of the two armies?"
Even Wei Ji couldn't figure out what Jiang Ming was up to.
Jiang Ming wasn't in a hurry, and he had the various countries continuously send supplies to him.
Back then, the State of Wei, relying on its wealth and its central location, mobilized resources to build such an "abnormal" city as Daliang.
But how can Wei Ji's ability to mobilize resources compare to Jiang Ming's?
Jiang Ming gave the order, and the entire nation began to mobilize to the front lines...
Even the Qin state, which had never fully submitted to him, sent a large amount of raw copper to help Jiang Ming manufacture "weapons of mass destruction".
Two full months later, forty counterweight catapults, each as tall as a pavilion, were finally completed!
Jiang Ming was also eager to see how it would go.
A 4-ton boulder was loaded into the "throwing bowl" of the "catapult," and then the mechanism was activated to launch it!
Suddenly, a meteor streaked across the sky above Daliang City and crashed heavily into the city wall, instantly creating a very obvious breach!
Seeing this, Jiang Ming's soldiers cheered and shouted "Long live the Emperor!"
Because they saw that the so-called indestructible Daliang City was also so vulnerable in front of Jiang Ming's "Divine Might General"!
The experiment results look good!
Jiang Ming immediately ordered all 40 Shenwei General counterweight catapults to be launched simultaneously...
In an instant, a terrifying meteor shower began to fall over the sky above Daliang City!
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