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

[Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

scripsit Richard Stallman:
>     Make Feudalism require Monarchy and Iron Working
>       gameplay: make ancient units (esp chariots and legions) useful.
>       also logic/history: you realy want to try a stone pike?
> 
> Most of the pike was wood, always.  The point was iron.

'Pike' technology is iron-age.  The social organization necessary to
field pikemen or phalanges is much more important than the material
technology.

>     Swap Musketeers and Canon
>       gameplay: musketeers are too powerful
>       history: canons came first
>       (note: this makes ironclads even more powerful, maybe we should raise
>            their cost to balance it out?)
> 
> Canon were developed around 1400; ironclads around 1850.  It seems
> clear that ironclads depended on some other more advanced technology,
> some sort of metallurgical technique I suppose.

Actually, they depend on steam engines.  The classical predreadnought
battleship needed modern metallurgy to create its high-velocity rifles
and its armored plates, but the first generation of ironclads were just
steam ships with lots of iron slapped on.  The weight of all that iron
made them almost useless under sail, however, so that they couldn't do
the kind of maneuvering needed in age of sail naval combat.  The steam
engine changed that, making armored ships capable of effective tactical
maneuver (but most kept sails as backups for decades).

There were steam-powered wooden-hull ships, BTW, and the first ironclads
(excepting the monitor types) were wooden ships with "appliqué" iron
plates.  All-steel construction came later.

>     Rename howitzers
>       history: we had howitzers in WWI -- we sure didn't have robots
> 
> Perhaps "self-propelled gun" is the right term.  However, I am not
> sure it really makes sense to have a special unit for this, because
> its relevance is only tactical at a level which Freeciv does not try
> to model.  Maybe it should just be eliminated.

There needs to be an artillery type unit which can keep up with the
Armor and Mech Inf at a speed of 3.  It makes sense to equate that with
self-propelled artillery -- not because SPA had higher strategic
mobility than towed, but because it's a much easier distinction to make
than artillery towed by horses and steam tractors versus artillery towed
by trucks with pneumatic tyres.  The fact that SPA was originally
developed to accompany armored formations adds to the credibility of
this representation.

-- 
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