Techs for a world without explosives

Psycadelic_Magi said:
Lemme think of some effects of gunpowder...

I know that, after gunpowder started to be in wide use, armies began to use lighter and lighter (and eventually virtually no) armour, since speed was a better protection than the armour that could be punctured easily. So what would happen instead in our scenario?
The trend before gnpwdr was more, and more defensive armour (plate mail), but will the 'uber-crossbows' people are talking about discourage the trend or continue an armour-weapon battle where armour gets heavier and heavier, and the weapons get more and more puncturing?

The poison-warfare concept is a real good idea to break the crossbows thing up, could be real interesting... Need to think of other alternate forms of war though..

(THIS is the sort of thing that should be discussed by the way, instead of the go-nowhere argument most of these people are in)


I expect you would see some of the same things happening with personal armour that you saw happen with tank armour after WWII, and castle fortification after the first gunpowder cannons showed up. The early gunpowder era was the age of scientific fortification, remember. At first you get thicker and thicker armour/walls, but eventually you get scientific design that helps the armour start handling the most common angles of incidence with the right amount of deflection.

For example, if the main threat to knights is head-on, point blank shots from bowmen (because from a distance the arrows/quarrels don't have enough penetrating power), then knights would get armour that was pointy in the chest, so that head-on shots would tend to deflect.

Incidentally, it was not the bow that lead to the fall of the knight, but rather the pikeman. By the time the longbow came to prominence, knights were already tending to fight dismounted because the pike could handily break up the cavalry charge. *Mounted* knights actually do a good job against longbowmen; dismounted knights get slaughtered, especially when charging uphill in the mud (was that Crecy, Agincourt, or both?). It would be great to see some sort of mod where knights could do an ok job against pikemen (e.g. like now), slaughter defending longbowmen (like now), but be in serious trouble if both are present...

Also, since burning is OK, but explosions are not, you'd see a lot of use of boiling oil/fire arrow combinations, perhaps more consistent use of greek fire/napalm, etc.

Again, like the idea of a poison tech branch, maybe a trebuchet ammunition branch (e.g. stones, fire, some sort of fuse-less shrapnel good against anyone not armoured, etc.). It would be definitely interesting to investigate the limits of bow technology; I know that current complex bows and crossbows are considerably more effective/powerful than they used to be. Interesting to know what modern (or even 19th century) machining technology could do to the cross-bow.

Interesting UUs to give a "primitive" tribes in this world might be the blowgun and/or the boomerang. I think that blowguns were incredibly accurate, which would be great when combined with some poison research, and boomerangs do a pretty good job against anything not heavily armoured.

PS: Sorry to open up the "no fire" discussion; I originally thought that doppleganger just meant no explosions and no gasoline engines, but then when I read more carefully and it said "no combustion"...
 
The arrow spured the arms race of the middle ages,armor went through many changes, always in response to new changes in the bow.The death of armor was gunpowder, mounted or not nites could not have thick enough armor to deflect a round projected by explosion.Pikeman was the answer to heavy cavalry, not spacificly nites.A dismounted nite would make quick work of a pikemanl.
with that,you have to assume that the arms race continues,and we start the discusion at this point.
 
Thanks for all of you still posting!! except Zombie69. You just have to argue, even if we've already gone on beyond your arguing point, and I'm sick and tired of it. If we could stop specific people from posting on our own threads, you'd be the first to go.
Back to the topic, I love all this!! Especialy clearing out why the knight finally threw in the towel. I'd agree on the part about the Knight's development of armor, though I think what drove gunpowder was that people were tired of the arms race, so (and correct me if I'm wrong, except zombie69) what I think we need is an alternative revolution. Or perhaps I'm wrong and the arms race continued well into the 16th century. It's realy up to us to recreate history!!:D
Also, my favorite topic has barely been touched on: the infristructure. What I mean by this is that how will this effect the methods of production. And also the people, how will democracy change, will comunism develope, and will it be more effective in this world without firearms.
Keep it coming!!
P.S. what about modern religeons? and Christianity and Judaism too. The largest toll for Judasim was WWII. So without the world war...
 
Production has, I think, been little affected by explosives, except of course in the munitions industry and the use of internal-combustion engines as power sources. The latter would be replaced by steam and, later, electric and nuclear power, just as happened in the real world. Earlier today I saw a TV program which showed the steam catapults used in the US navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, stated to be capable of throwing a Volkswagen twelve miles: this is comparable to a battleship's big guns. Mind you, I think it would be less devastating to a target to be hit by a car rather than a ton of high explosive.
 
The Dopelganger said:
Thanks for all of you still posting!! except Zombie69. You just have to argue, even if we've already gone on beyond your arguing point, and I'm sick and tired of it. If we could stop specific people from posting on our own threads, you'd be the first to go.
Back to the topic, I love all this!! Especialy clearing out why the knight finally threw in the towel. I'd agree on the part about the Knight's development of armor, though I think what drove gunpowder was that people were tired of the arms race, so (and correct me if I'm wrong, except zombie69) what I think we need is an alternative revolution. Or perhaps I'm wrong and the arms race continued well into the 16th century. It's realy up to us to recreate history!!:D
Also, my favorite topic has barely been touched on: the infristructure. What I mean by this is that how will this effect the methods of production. And also the people, how will democracy change, will comunism develope, and will it be more effective in this world without firearms.
Keep it coming!!
P.S. what about modern religeons? and Christianity and Judaism too. The largest toll for Judasim was WWII. So without the world war...

Since the most successful development of communism (or a least a communism-inspired government) has been in Russia and China, both of which had massively agrarian (almost feudal) economies at the time of the institution of communism, communism might more easily take root. Especially when you consider that without internal combustion engines, you are looking at steam tractors; presumably larger, trickier, and much more expensive beasts, if only for the sheer size factor. Adoption of such farm machinery would fit in well with communist concepts of farm collectivisation rather than individually owned production.
 
The Dopelganger said:
Thanks for all of you still posting!! except Zombie69. You just have to argue, even if we've already gone on beyond your arguing point, and I'm sick and tired of it. If we could stop specific people from posting on our own threads, you'd be the first to go.
Back to the topic, I love all this!! Especialy clearing out why the knight finally threw in the towel. I'd agree on the part about the Knight's development of armor, though I think what drove gunpowder was that people were tired of the arms race, so (and correct me if I'm wrong, except zombie69) what I think we need is an alternative revolution. Or perhaps I'm wrong and the arms race continued well into the 16th century. It's realy up to us to recreate history!!:D
Also, my favorite topic has barely been touched on: the infristructure. What I mean by this is that how will this effect the methods of production. And also the people, how will democracy change, will comunism develope, and will it be more effective in this world without firearms.
Keep it coming!!
P.S. what about modern religeons? and Christianity and Judaism too. The largest toll for Judasim was WWII. So without the world war...


In terms of industrial production at the level of Civ, I think that you wouldn't see too much difference. I don't know how coal-fired power plants work, and whether they use the combustion of coal to drive turbine engines, or whether they work through steam. You might be able to argue that coal plants would be more expensive/less useful if they were steam driven, but hydro/nuclear would remain unchanged, I think.

Plastics is an interesting question, as they are petroleum-based. From what i understand of the premise, there is no problem with their being oil, just with it being rapidly combusted; would we have discovered plastics as quickly if we weren't burning and drilling for all that oil anyway?

With a largely steam-based industrial economy, water might become a much more precious resource; massive agricultural irrigation in some dry areas is currently resulting in serious water shortages (California, Aral Sea), and one might suppose this would be more severe with a steam-based economy. Can salt-water be used easily in a steam engine? A source of fresh water or salt-water plus a distillation plant might be a necessary precursor to massive industrialisation improvements in a city. Or perhaps just factory +25%, +25% with water, +25% with power rather than the +25%, +50% with power that it is now.
 
The Dopelganger said:
Thanks for all of you still posting!! except Zombie69. You just have to argue, even if we've already gone on beyond your arguing point, and I'm sick and tired of it. If we could stop specific people from posting on our own threads, you'd be the first to go.
Back to the topic, I love all this!! Especialy clearing out why the knight finally threw in the towel. I'd agree on the part about the Knight's development of armor, though I think what drove gunpowder was that people were tired of the arms race, so (and correct me if I'm wrong, except zombie69) what I think we need is an alternative revolution. Or perhaps I'm wrong and the arms race continued well into the 16th century. It's realy up to us to recreate history!!:D
Also, my favorite topic has barely been touched on: the infristructure. What I mean by this is that how will this effect the methods of production. And also the people, how will democracy change, will comunism develope, and will it be more effective in this world without firearms.
Keep it coming!!
P.S. what about modern religeons? and Christianity and Judaism too. The largest toll for Judasim was WWII. So without the world war...


I'd leave the religions out of things, much as has been done in vanilla CivIV; any attempt to differentiate will offend someone, and I think the religious system works pretty well as is. Also, hard to think of cases of specific religions being affected by the development of the automobile (OK, the Amish, perhaps, but not on the large scale of religions in Civ).

(As you can see, my post got too long, so I'm breaking it up into sensible discrete replies; did you know that there is a 30 second time limit between posts? Perfectly sensible, but I hadn't expected it.)
 
The Dopelganger said:
Thanks for all of you still posting!! except Zombie69. You just have to argue, even if we've already gone on beyond your arguing point, and I'm sick and tired of it. If we could stop specific people from posting on our own threads, you'd be the first to go.
Back to the topic, I love all this!! Especialy clearing out why the knight finally threw in the towel. I'd agree on the part about the Knight's development of armor, though I think what drove gunpowder was that people were tired of the arms race, so (and correct me if I'm wrong, except zombie69) what I think we need is an alternative revolution. Or perhaps I'm wrong and the arms race continued well into the 16th century. It's realy up to us to recreate history!!:D
Also, my favorite topic has barely been touched on: the infristructure. What I mean by this is that how will this effect the methods of production. And also the people, how will democracy change, will comunism develope, and will it be more effective in this world without firearms.
Keep it coming!!
P.S. what about modern religeons? and Christianity and Judaism too. The largest toll for Judasim was WWII. So without the world war...


Well, gunpowder as a personal weapon really only took off with muskets and the bayonet, which made every soldier a specialist in both ranged and melee combat, rather than having separate pikemen and archers. The ease in logistics (bullets and powder are much lighter than a quiver of quarrels) and use (easier training than a longbow, works ok in the rain), made the musket better than bows of all sorts. Also, early bullets were big, and if there was still enough oomph, they made massive holes, knocked people down, and couldn't be stopped by shields/armour. This happened during the 18th century. American Revolution, definitely primarily muskets. 30 years war, English Civil War, definitely gunpowder on both sides, but lots of pikemen still, I believe. 7 years war (French and Indian war for you yanks) also primarily gunpowder. So, in our world, sometime between 1650 (combination armies, including musketmen) and 1750 (all musketmen). By Napoleonic times, musketmen, cannon, grenadiers, and the first riflemen.

Steam engines were introduced in the early 19th century (1814 I think?), so
even an earlier invention of steam wouldn't have specialized to personal weapons in the same time-frame (even it you push it up to Newton/Liebnitz or something, not sure you have steam-powered personal weapons early).
So, the revolution needs to be something other than personal steam weapons.

Biological weapons are scary, and might have been developed/deployed in major ways, but typically aren't fast enough to use on the battlefield, and don't really fit into the philosophy of pre-Napoleonic limited war. (Interesting link on how on-field casualties actually *decrease* as weapons get more and more destructive: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gabrmetz/gabr0022.htm).

I can only think of chemical weapons (gases), poisons, acid, fire, electricity, magnetism, and nuclear power off the top of my head. Electricity/magnetism seem to be the main options for improving personal projectile weapons to me, and that seems like a later development. However, you only need one explosive chemical advance to get something that can fire a projectile; of course, then you basically have gunpowder.

Chemical flame-throwers in WWI had a range of around 20-30 yards I believe, so you could posit an early development of a hydraulics-driven flamethrower with a decent range; but they'd get chewed up by bowmen of any sort. Against any sort of melee unit, however, they would reign supreme. Sort of super-crossbowmen, in CivIV terms; big bonus against infantry, but bowmen would get a big bonus against them. Something like this might replace the musketmen niche; add in a much more expensive but slightly stronger longbow-equipped missle unit that is trained for fighting in the open (the cheaper, less-well trained longbowman unit would still be used for city defense), and you've got an interesting mix for late-medieval early renaissance warfare.

Modern infantry/armour could be battery powered electromagnetic rail-guns and early steam tanks followed by later developments of electric fast, lightly armoured scout vehicles, and massive nuclear-powered land juggernauts.

Not sure what would go in-between, though, to fill the cavalry/grenadier/riflemen Napoleonic-WWI age niche.

Just some thoughts,
 
ummmmmmmm what about the layden jar that could store electricity
 
if u used it as a tip when it hit some thing it would break= fried knight any1?
;) ;) hehehe
 
The Leyden jar was an early form of capacitor. In my days working in a electronics lab, in pre-transistor times, it was a common prank to leave a charged 200-volt capacitor somewhere that somebody was likely to touch its terminals and get a shock of less than dangerous power: can anybody tell me how big a modern capacitor would have to be to deliver a lethal jolt and so be a possible projectile ?
 
Er, I think the leden jar was the early battery I was talking about, but I could be wrong. I'd like to thank Elta for the link. I noticed as I kept reading that the anime I listed as to where I got the idea was listed as an example to the concept of steampunk, which is aperantly what this is called.
I have a new idea rolling in the back of my head. I've learned that the first steam device was made back in late Roman times, made by an inventor who lived in Alexandria (the famous one in Egypt). He developed seige machines early on, but moved his inventions toward the theater later in life. His steam engine, mearly a speeding, rotating ball, seemed to be just another entertainment device to him. But if only he had put an axle on it! A common theory as to why this was not seen as a means of energy was that there was just too much slave labor for people to realy care about a new form. I still think he just didn't see it's potential. Soooo, technicly we already have the steam engine, we just need a shortage of this serfdom, slave labor (we're back to the middle ages) to push things off of the arms race stage. Perhaps the weapons do get uglier and more destructive, until there becomes a labor shortage? So entire towns are wiped out? But then perhaps, just more "outsourcing" would occur and nations would just conquor for labor. This could go a multitude of ways. But that's the beuty of history!
 
Quick addition:
A labor shortage could result not only from over-killing, but the black plauge as well.
On top of that, I'm not asking we go in the direction of steam, it just seems like a logical step to make. So feel free to add another labor souce that was pssible back in the 1400's (I think that's when the middle ages were, I've never been good with dates)
 
i was going to correct him, zombie, but he asked for you. the arms race continude well past the 16th century! has he never heard of the cold war?
 
Interesting topic but I hate to say that combustion is anything that burns. So without combustion, everything that has a flame on will be non-existent.

But if we are talking about a world with saltpeter or any explosive chemicals then that sounds pretty interesting. I agree that air pressure and steam power will then become a key technological area that mankind will focus on. That and probably hydraulics with solar power. Warfare will be pretty different from what it is right now and the way we travel will be much different too.

My 2 cents
 
A dismounted nite would make quick work of a pikemanl.
Why would a dismounted knight make short work of a pikeman? A dismounted knight is just a heavily encumbered infantry man. A pikeman is armed with a long spear is more than capable of destroying a dismounted knight.
 
Shaihulud said:
Why would a dismounted knight make short work of a pikeman? A dismounted knight is just a heavily encumbered infantry man. A pikeman is armed with a long spear is more than capable of destroying a dismounted knight.

Because a dismounted knight is an armoured man with a manouevrable sword, rather than a leather-clad conscript with a 20-foot long spear. Try stabbing someone with a pole-vault pole sometime; it's a lot less manouevrable than a broom or a rake. Pike lines are good at fighting against each other, or against horses, not really against anything else.

If you've got longbows and pikes, however, the knights are toast, because if the ride their horses, they can't break the pike wall, and if they walk, they are pincushions by the time they get to the wall.

This situation transformed itself into pikemen/musketmen combinations once the musket got reliable enough to be more effective than a crossbow. The longbow wasn't surpassed until the repeating rifle in terms of speed and accuracy, but any joe with a few weeks training could fire a musket, while the longbow took years and years of training.
 
scott, thanx for the support at any rate its still esentally a chess board ,using catapults and balistas to put holes in a pike wall to charge longbowman ,anyway you look at it ,you had a big arms race going on here .I dont think gunpowder upset the balance I just think it gave them something eles to concentrate on ,but then again if i saw a big ball of lead traveling down field ide want to be a little more mobile,and wearing heavy armor would inhibit that.
 
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