Re: Change (was: (TFT) Jobs table: ...)

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

At 19:02 -0400 9/27/11, Jay wrote:
> The u.s. entered the Great War (WWI) in April 1917.
> Versailles was signed in June 1918.

	Fascinating post. I'd thought of the WWII build-up as 
stunning, but this puts even that to shame in some ways.

BUT....

	This history relies on a technology base able to field 
200,000 soldiers plus the "work battalions" plus the industrial 
infrastructure *plus* the normal-technology ground troops, and still 
feed everyone. That's not only farming technology, but government of 
huge numbers of people which implies communications and 
transportation infrastructure. In a medieval setting, more or less 
none of that exists.
	I think for "period" veracity, you'd have to look farther 
back. The British Royal Navy, building up for its battle against the 
Spanish Armada, may be a good analog, but even that is after the 
development of gunpowder weapons, so it's marginally too far up the 
industrial development ladder. At those levels of technology, change 
and build-up took place on a scale more like decades than years, even 
under the impetus of impending invasion.
	Magic, as always, throws a monkey wrench into the analogy 
(Ow! I broke my metaphor!) by actually enabling transportation 
(gates) and communication (proxy, Long Range Telepathy) on par with 
or beyond modern-day technologies. So maybe the WWI buildup is 
actually an appropriate simulation; but I'd be careful about drawing 
too many parallels across many levels of technological development.

--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
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Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:

				Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
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