A Mighty Realm

[Gwrthefyr]

1. Which was the intent of describing those rules in the first place, but even then there are advantages, unless you're poor in the kind of resources that are needed to make the powder (as the english initially were), you're likely going to adopt it: this can be seen in the rate of adaptation, while, yes, the impact of being involved in Italy during the Italian wars was great for the french and spanish, and of course being on the mediterranean they were part of the great trading basin that tied the muslim, orthodox and catholic world, their having this wealth in ressources (thanks to a lot of animal husbandry, especially cattle, needed for salpeter) explained a lot why it was relatively easy for them to eventually adopt it. The english were slower to adopt it as they were, for a short period, poor in salpeter: at the battle of Calais the powder was so weak that the cannons failed to eject the balls. Which is pretty much why the english still fielded a mix of longbowmen and musketeers well into Elizabeth's reign, which is about when the longbow stopped being a weapon of the main english troops.
Any bow that is not composite is going to be of marginal utility for war, bows cost a lot, and compound bows (great or short) are likely a rarity limited to the Vos and the Rjuven in the game.

2. Yes, I am, which is why I mention then in the original post

3. But it still doesn't make sense, I mean strictly from a "what does this damn unit represent in a proper, less abstract strategic representation of the late middle ages" - unless I take them to represent landsknecht, in which case they should be mostly mercenaries, their having a bonus against pikes makes sense, and they're also in the right time period for firearms and pike dominated warfare but will never be the main body of a troop, just a specialist unit you keep around to go through pikes. And of course are a century too early if we assume HYW-level technology.

[Exile]

As described in the original write-up of Anuirean units, "Infantry" are halberdiers and the like - decent-quality units meant to fulfill a battle-line role.

Elite infantry are better-trained, metal-armoured troops equipped with the same sort of weaponry as Infantry.

The masses of peasants slaughtered at some medieval battles would simply be Levies.

Irregulars are skirmish units - hence their having a missile attack and a higher move value than Infantry.


For the historical equivalent of BR's Infantry I'd look to urban militias and the like. With pikemen they are, after all, the best line unit that Guilds can muster, and seem to fit the role quite well.

[Gwrthefyr]

Oh thanks for the info, I forgot about urban militias. That makes sense then, although I wouldn't see them being a main line permanent force compared to mercenaries, pikes and bows and the like at least from a purely historical standpoint, more like the troops the reserve rules exist for I guess.
(my mac stupidly had a physical break down the week I decided to take a cooldown )

Sudden thoughts: alternate technological paths.
Various alternate technologies could have but didn't happen for various reasons. Compressed air guns were tried from the 1500s on but they had a variety of problems:
- Fragile canisters requiring about 1500 hand pumpings to refill for 30 shots.
- Power falloff, the first shots would hit about 150 yards at the same power as a .45 ACP round shot by a 1911, the last third of the shots would become progressively less powerful. When Girandoni made his proposal to the austrian empire, he also built wagons with air pumps that could rapidly refill multiple canisters, and soldiers replaced their load of powder with three canisters.
- Societal dislike; even at a time where guns were entrenched in culture, riflemen using air rifles would be summarily executed as spies: it's a silent, smokeless weapon, thus considered something spies use for assassination. Think about the stigma of the pistol as a murderer's weapon, make it ten times worse, and that's about it. It's seen as blatantly unfair because the only way to figure out somebody is sniping at your troops is because your troops are dropping like flies from rifle shots. Of course, if they had become dominant, the attitude would obviously have smoothed out anyway.
- You trade the fragility of powder that can't be used without fouling in the rain with the fragility of a canister that could leak relatively easily, but at the same time, if it rains, the one with the gun powder can't shoot at all, while if a canister leaks, your rifleman still has two spares for more shots than most battles of the time involved. And rain will also destroy your longbows and make crossbows a pain to use. Thinking of crossbows, the chinese had a repeating crossbow prototype in the 15th century, and a german crossbowmaker tried to build something like a pump action crossbow, in the 16th, but gunpowder weapons had already pretty much taken over for small arms.
- Price, like with rifling and wheellock muskets. Probably slightly less bad than wheellock muskets though which were basically sticking clockwork in a musket so yeah, but it's still added complexity thus costlier, no matter how superior a weapon it might be (at least until the canister leaks or hits the last 10-ish shots ). If an army were to decide to field it and show its superiority, though, assume people will either go for mob in masse or adopt them fast, too. This kind of technical advantage rarely lasts interbellum, and is often even moved past during the same war if it lasts long enough.
- Gun control: Like crossbows and pistols, and we all know how much it deterred people from using those

Besides they obviously won't make the people who dislike firearms on principle happy anyway, since this is even more likely to bring in repeating weapons early, and it seems half of them have no idea guns existed before six shooters . They, however, do not necessarily need to, and the stress put on a canister by repeating shots rapidly would break them, especially before the industrial era. If we assume the elves aren't completely down to stone age level and have some sort of production capacity (instead of just being annoying primitivist mary sues), I can see them adopting these over gunpowder weapons.

Among other (non-military) technologies that could have taken alternate paths, we could also note basic steam propulsion, almost but not quite reached often since the iron age, with the spanish conducting experiments on a boat in the 17th century iirc; photography, a primitive form of which was likely known in the roman world, even if mostly prototypical. Paper, produced in China initially, which only became accepted as not heretical in Rome when it started to be produced by italian cities and kingdoms instead of being bought from the Mameluks and the Ottomans. Other italian states had varying definitions of heretical to begin with *cough* Medici controlled Florence, for example (excommunication would have worked great if Lorenzo the Magnificent wasn't much more frightening to the florentines than God). This is about the time period this happens anyway though so yeah. Electricity, although at the time its only known use was electroplating, anything else would require a mix of fundamental research and accidental discovery and both are more a product of the enlightment, at least on the scale required, or it will be slow advances, I guess. IOW, a huge mentality change which I'm not positing; mentality changes don't come only from technology, if at all, you also need the exchange of ideas, which commerce and cultural exchanges eventually brings but relatively slowly; those would likely just be a lot more of the same with guilds and nobles having a relatively monopoly on advanced tech anyway. It did, after all, take centuries in Europe for this to happen after the renaissance had already led to the rise of the middle class (and the english version of it led to... a nobility dominated parliament with seats basically bought to the heirs of various peers or their "commoner" (lol) cousins and a relatively socially immobile upper class (even more than France) where most of the newcomers were already knights or blood relatives of the older nobility, just lacking in titles; only in England would this ever be seen as commoners rising up, while in the Netherlands it cemented a patriciate that assimilated into the dutch nobility; basically the earliest examples of "rise of the middle class", prior to the enlightment, tended to result in this).