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

[Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

scripsit Richard Stallman:
>     Hmm, maybe ironclads should require metalurgy, not invention.  Actually,
>     they should probably require conscription (whatever we rename that to).  I
>     think ironclads came in not too long after rifles.
> 
> Russia used conscription in the 1700s.  Those armies presumably used
> muskets, not rifles.  Perhaps the "riflemen" unit should be related to
> the engineering that made rifles possible and not to "conscription".

Riflemen are made possible by the minée (sp?) ball.  That's the
hollow-based conical bullet that allowed rifled muskets to be loaded as
fast as smoothbores, giving roughly something like a 150% increase in
lethality.

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

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