Non-People/Country Things in AH that are wanked

What things in AH are too overused, overrated, and overemphasized?

I'd say Greek Fire should be one. In OTL they certainly didn't stop the Ottomans from overrunning Byzantium. Yet in AH they're always thought of medieval Greece's ABM system.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Airships.

People often think the Hindenburg destroyed comercial blimpry, the fact is, they're just not very efficient machines.
 
A working difference engine is over-rated, you look at the problems of even keeping an electronic computer working in this dusty, dirty world and then imagine a million gears wurring about. As for underused I would have to say would be the average soldier. Everyone wants the heroes to be the key linchpins in a conflict, the thing is the average grunt infrantry man is the one who wins the war.
 
Overused: Time Travellers giving past-folks upgraded weapons and technology.
Underused: Mistaken science (aether, phlogiston, Odic Forces, Orgone, alchemy) being real and working.
 
Gurkhas. Elite troops are nice, but now that they've been hurrah'd over by Stirling in The Peshawar Lancers, it's time to move on to another type of colorful ethnic elite warrior.
 
Successful Op SEA LION
victorious CSA which doesn't further come apart after 1865
rockets and other wonder weapons
(confessing to my own biases here, too :)- more and better African-American combat units as solutions to military, civil rights, race issues
BNA and ther ARW-related themes
 
Are you familiar with the idea that the Baghdad battery was a defibrillator? I love the idea, personally.
What I think makes the most sense is the hypothesis that it was used to coat cheap metal jewelery with gold. My Chem teacher talked about that in class a couple weeks ago.
 
Are you familiar with the idea that the Baghdad battery was a defibrillator? I love the idea, personally.

What I think makes the most sense is the hypothesis that it was used to coat cheap metal jewelery with gold. My Chem teacher talked about that in class a couple weeks ago.

Maybe these batteries had that use, and it has been proven that these batteries indeed produce enough electricity to do this.

...but personally, I think that these batteries were rather some interesting little gadgets of the Mesopotamian scientists of those days.

Think of uses in experiments not unlike Galvani's experiments with froglegs and Volta's early experiments.
 
Arquebuses and other primitive gunpoweder weapons. Give it to the Incas or the Aztecs in an ATL and it will end with half of the world ruled by native Americans. :D

However, look at what really happened in OTL siege of Tenochtitlan. The things that actually won the fight in OTL were iron swords, cross bows, European-style sail ships and - most notably - smallpox and other germs. Most of the gunpowder weapons in Cortés' army were lost in the Noche Triste or spent at the Battle of Otumba. In fact, the Spanish needed to build a trebuchet during the siege in order to attack the city walls (and even in this case it didn't work, because the first rock thrown fell over the trebuchet itself, destroying it :D:D:D).
 

Thande

Donor
Underused: Mistaken science (aether, phlogiston, Odic Forces, Orgone, alchemy) being real and working.
I like this idea.

As far as phlogiston is concerned, you could say it's true. It's largely a matter of semantics - the original oxygen theory has been so changed over time to fit modern conceptions that it's about as 'true' or 'false' as the rival phlogiston was.

I've often thought that the modern physics conception of the zero-point continuum is rather like the old idea of the aether.
 

Thande

Donor
Arquebuses and other primitive gunpoweder weapons. Give it to the Incas or the Aztecs in an ATL and it will end with half of the world ruled by native Americans. :D

However, look at what really happened in OTL siege of Tenochtitlan. The things that actually won the fight in OTL were iron swords, cross bows, European-style sail ships and - most notably - smallpox and other germs. Most of the gunpowder weapons in Cortés' army were lost in the Noche Triste or spent at the Battle of Otumba. In fact, the Spanish needed to build a trebuchet during the siege in order to attack the city walls (and even in this case it didn't work, because the first rock thrown fell over the trebuchet itself, destroying it :D:D:D).

Definitely agree there. In fact I'd say that as late as the late nineteenth century, firearms vs bows, spears etc. was no guarantee of victory. The machine gun (and perhaps earlier repeaters like the Colt revolver) was the paradigm shifter in my opinion, not gunpowder itself.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Rifling and better loading (together) were the shifter, and then machine guns.

Oh, and as for airships, if you have no opposing air-force, they could work very well as bombers. Colonial policing, maybe? They have a better range and load for flattening African villages than an airplane does.
 
I like this idea.

As far as phlogiston is concerned, you could say it's true. It's largely a matter of semantics - the original oxygen theory has been so changed over time to fit modern conceptions that it's about as 'true' or 'false' as the rival phlogiston was.

I've often thought that the modern physics conception of the zero-point continuum is rather like the old idea of the aether.

Ever read Garfinkle's "Celestial Matters?"

Bruce
 
I don't know if it's been said before, but... Tesla-technology. Yes, it was damned ahead of its time, and yes, our world might have been fantastically different, if he got his way, but dammit, it's wanked. Are you telling me that anti-grav could've been invented? And free electricity? WTF? That's hardly capitalist-friendly.

But it's fun anyways. Just look at Red Alert 1 & 2: Don't you just love playing the Soviets and frying the bejeezus out of Allied infantry? I know I do. And the Eiffel Tower level was sheer genius.
 
Ever read Garfinkle's "Celestial Matters?"

Bruce

One of my favorites. One set in the 1700-1800s with alchemy and phlogiston, or one in the Victorian Age with Aether would be equally genius.
Here's some other ones.

Overused: Magical creatures-Dragons, vampires-showing up and changing history.
Underused-Prehistoric creatures surviving their extinction and changing history. Dinosaurs are at least as cool as vampires, and are real. Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh was okay, but I want my dinos!
 
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