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

[Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

scripsit Daniel L Speyer:
 
> 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.

I like that switch as a starting point.

> 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.

The tech tree is full of idiosyncracies and anachronisms.  The modern
"military" techs are particularly bad -- Leadership has nothing
whatsoever to do with cavalry, and Conscription (in the sense of the
modern state's mass-conscription army it only dates to the French
Revolution) should result in cheap, bad infantry -- the Guard Grenadiers
certainly weren't conscripts!

The radical advances in military technology had to do with firepower and
C3 (command/control/communications).  Give me radios and I'll give you a
modern, decentralized army.  Without them, you could have a battalion's
worth of modern MBTs, and they'd have to line up like musketeers to keep
in formation.

But if we're going to tackle this, IMHO we need to start at the
beginning.

-- 
Thanasis Kinias
Web Developer, Information Technology
Graduate Student, Department of History
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul