[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Artillery and sea units (PR#1476)

[Daniel L Speyer <dspeyer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 20 May 2002, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     I disagree. The naval units cannot be built before the development of 
> cannon,
>     which is admittedly not quite the same as what the typical ship in real 
> life
>     will be using. 
> 
> That's the point.  These ships would not have made sense with the sort
> of cannon that were used in wooden ships.  They became possible
> because of more modern guns.
> 

Our tech tree is pretty ahistorical anyway.  In the real world, canons
predated musketeers.  In fact, early canons (in Europe, at least) were
bronze, whereas muskets waited for more skilled metalworking.  For
historical accuracy, gunpowder should allow canons and metalurgy should
allow musketeers.  (BTW, this would probably make better gameplay,
too.  At present, musketeers are too powerful -- they obsolete
everything.)  With this switch, the ironclads wouldn't be too far out.

BTW, this is not the only weird flip in the freeciv tech tree.  Map making
and Seafaring seem sort of backwards, as do alphabet and writing.  But,
then, much of the tree is misnamed -- leadership, conscription and tactics
are all ancient.

--Daniel Speyer
If you *don't* consider sharing information to be morally equivalent to 
kidnapping and murder on the high seas, you probably shouldn't use the
phrase "software piracy."