Warhammer 18th/19th Century

The other day somebody asked what the Warhammer setting would be like if it advanced to more of an 18th-century level.

People responded with ideas, other people called those ideas stupid, some people suggested taking it into the 19th Century level, and we pretty much got nowhere. The main issues were:

>Bretonnia is not France and it wouldn't follow the same timeline as France, so it wouldn't need to have a French Revolution.
>There's not necessarily going to be a USA equivalent unless you count the Dark Elves.
>This is not real life so it's not going to follow real life history.
>We were being too human-centric; what about the other races?
>We were not taking magic into account enough.

With those in mind, let's try this again in the name of fun. Any ideas?

So it seems unlikely that the empire and forces of chaos would be kept in constant standstill. For the sake of advancing the plot I would have the forces of chaos have a stronger encroachment into the empire either destroying or occupying major cities. Alternatively have the empire pushed the beastman back to the wastes and burn down the forests they've hidden and occupied? Granted my knowledge of lore is not great.

Also in regards to magic i feel like they would have either completely abandoned magic due to its unpredicatibilty or there would be significant advances enabling wizards to practice magic more reliably. If the former hedge wizards are persecuted even more, but if the later they are likely given more leeway or encouraged to join wizard academies.

Maybe Chaos has finally taken Kislev for good. I think the Empire would've finally pushed the Beastmen out of their borders by this point, as part of the whole "Age of finally establishing order in our borders so we can fuck around more in other people's business" thing.

I would think they'd push more to the latter, especially since magic is half of fantasy.

On the subject, last thread neglected the battles of good versus evil to focus on a fucking Frenchtoastian Revolution.

The colleges of Magic have only been around for about 200 years, and continue to advance in the present. They also have been cooperating with the engineers and gunnery schools, especially the gold and bright orders. If the empire progresses they would have more magic, not less. There would also be a lot more overlap in magic and technology as institutions become more trusting of wizards, and as the population of wizards continues to grow. I think at some point in the empires future the colleges would become influential enough to have the supreme Patriarch gain an elector vote.

Let's not let magic and technology overlap too much. The Empire shouldn't end up powered by magic like it's Harry Potter or something, although semi-magic airships are cool. Let's not get too focused on how magic and technology mix.

Now on Bretonnia: like how it's 200 years behind the Empire in Warhammer, it should still be 200 years behind the Empire now if not completely stagnant. Stagnancy is the opposite of this thread's point, but that doesn't mean we put it on the same level as the Empire in terms of development, and while Revolutionary France sounds cool, Bretonnia is neither revolutionary nor France. It should move closer to the Industrial Era, but not into it. Early cuirassier pic related: guns, but still look like knights.

The pre-Revolutionary period also had multiple conflicts that weren't the Seven Years War to take inspiration from for Bretonnia: The Thirty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Jacobite Uprisings (pic related, demented peasants who thought the nobility was controlled by elves or some other such nonsense), the Wars of the Roses, and the English Civil War.

Gendarmes were also a thing after the middle ages.

Armored French soldiers from the Thirty Years War. Maybe Bretonnia had to deal with hordes of beastmen pouring out of the Empire.

Soldiers from the Wars of the Roses. In the war against the Beastmen a lot of Bretonnian knights died, leading to the development of a professional army with knights as the elite "In case of emergency break enemy" cavalry.

I guess what I'm trying to say is to look for inspiration from the period where firearms and armor still coexisted for Bretonnia, like at the point the Empire was (Minus the magic and advanced technology) at while the Empire is now past that point.

Pic related.

>Early sixteenth century French gendarmes. Note the very complete plate armour for man and horse, the extremely heavy lance, and the military skirts, called "bases", worn almost universally in the early 16th century.
What Wikipedia says.

Knights would NEVER use ranged weapons, especially guns and other gunpowder weapons. At best, they allow their peasants to use gunpowder artillery, reluctantly like they do with trebuchets. Bretonnia isn't just s less advanced version of the empire, it's a totally different society

How do elves counter gunpowder weapons? Would elves eventually take up guns if the humans ever went full 19th centuriy military tactics? Can't imagine bows and spears being very effective in the gunpowder age

>This is not real life so it's not going to follow real life history
Not sure why you'd include that as an 'issue'- it's just someone fundamentally disagreeing with the whole idea. Like starting a thread about robots by saying 'one of the issues raised last time was that robots are dumb'.

Because in the last thread we hit bump limit mostly by arguing about how they weren't advancing the setting, they were trying to turn it into warhammer historical even when it made no sense. Like the whole bretonnian revolution.

Elves counter guns with their superior archery skills, better rate of fire and MAGIC. They buttfucked Marienberg by casting A powerful version of Melkoths mystifying Miasma they cheated the aim of the defense artillery and gun troops and then winning through elvish superiority. Guns aren't a big deal to elves really, and they have no reason to use them since they can achieve the same results if not better with bows or spells.

Napoleonic manuver was warfare is something elves would be great at till they relised how many people die very quickly in it.

That said someone should have a minority of elf auxiliaries being the best light infantry in the world.

Unless its a machine gun, a gun has ZERO advantages for an elf over a bow. So your auxiliary elf supreme light infantry would wield bows and melee weapons, not a smelly, noisy gun that could potentially misfire and will obscure the battlefield in gunpowder smoke within the first few volleys.

I feel like something like religious freedom and ethnic assimilation is something that goes hand in hand with the industrial revolution.

The Chaos Dwarfs seems like an obvious candidate.
Their small semi-city-state empire can't hold all of them, many CDwarfs already joins up with chaos warbands regularly.
In a time where religion is less important, what nation would turn away the arguably greatest engineers and blacksmiths in the world?
Their patron deity Hashut is pretty harmless all things considered, although technically a chaos god he comes with few of the downsides of the big four. In a "enlightened" age I could see the worship of Hashut being tolerated.

The Chaos Dwarf empire controls a decently sized territory, but with extremely limited resources. I can see their empire either being left behind or simply collapsing.

There could be an emerging population of Chaos Dwarfs in countries like Estalia, Tilea and whatever nation the border princes turns into, even the empire could accept them into their cities in an attempt to not fall behind on technology.

I know its even greater blasphemy but maybe the Orks could share a similar fate? They would be hopelessly outdated at this point, their lands nothing more but a juice target for many nations.
Maybe they could survive as mercenaries, eventually even becoming second class citizen somewhere?

>Knights would NEVER use ranged weapons,
I never said they would, although I guess I did imply it a bit. Non-noble men at arms are still a thing.

Bows are actually pretty effective until the invention of repeating firearms, it's just that it's easier to use guns. Not to mention that this is Warhammer, where anachronisms are a given.

Last time we spent a chunk of the thread sperging over the idea of Bretonnia having a revolution on par with France's. My above talk on Bretonnia is meant to turn attention away from the concept.

>Chaos
>Being accepted, ever

Another question: What happens to

>Another question: What happens to
I didn't even finish my question.

What happens to the Tomb Kings? They all die, leaving a massive uninhabited waste? Somehow the curse on the land is broken and colonists begin flooding in, only to find hordes of undead sleeping in like every other necropolis they try raiding?

The Tomb Kings numbers are finative and are kind of fundamentally against change.
The would dwindle until they could no longer be considered a faction and simply become an occasional danger found in the desert.

I'd imagine there will be some major advances in colonizing lizardmen turf.
Slaan mostly die, everything becoming feral, technology enabling the combat against the lush forests.

Do you think the dark elves might adopt firearms? 18th century firearms are far more reliable than the firearms at the time of standard warhammer and the dark elves have few qualms about adopting and improving upon human technology, considering that their most distinctive weapons, repeater crossbows, are based on cathayan designs.

I think they would. Imagine dark elf pirates with flintlock pistols.

The possibility of the Lizardmen dying off is... Possible.

The Dark Elves would flourish in this era.
They are by far the most imperialistic and expansionist faction in Warhammer.

They would probably try to establish colonies in Lustria and maybe even Nippon or Khuresh.

The High Elves in contrast are traditionalists and would likely suffer while the Dark Elven empire grows.
I don't know what that means for Ulthuan but its proximity to the Old World abd its growing nations of potential allies might keep them safe.

>feel like something like religious freedom and ethnic assimilation is something that goes hand in hand with the industrial revolution.
Religious freedom and enlightenment is a lot harder to justify in a world where the gods are literally real and there is hard evidence of their existence

Tomb kings remain the same. Or maybe Settra gets tired of all the looters and starts keeping larger portions of his armies awake at a time. Better guns aren't really going to help in a desert that is a logician sl nightmare for any invading humans. And where whole armies of skeleton warriors can be hiding under the sand, and burrowing troops can appear right behind your artillery and fuck it up. Tomb kings were already getting ready to try to take over the world, I don't know why they would stop.
slann will remain a threat as long as there are at least a few of them. If they hypothetically all died off (not happening) the whole world is fucked since they're the ones maintaining most of the Magicsl wards holding back chaos. Also, the lizardmen become even more savage and dangerous thanks to turning to Sotek worship more. And the jungles of lustria are dangerous as fuck without a civilization of lizardmen wandering around. At best, humans are confined to living around the coasts

>dark elves imperialistic and expansionistic
Plain wrong. They don't even build new cities in naggarond, because of Malekith.

Lol wut? High elves are the expansionistic ones with colonies all over the world. And dark elves stick tonteprodice just as hard as High elves, perhaps even more so. Pic related, any dark elf lord could start a settlement somewhere else, but they'd be seen as a pussy who can't handle naggaroth and no one would give a shit about what they achieve there

Waitwaitwaitwait...

How did we get to this point? Were the End Times not? Did they just never happen? Did Archeon's big legions come down and wreck shit? Were the elves reunited? Did skaven burst from the sewers and spread their blights across the world? Did Macha finally get- oh wait, wrong Warhammer.

>They don't even build new cities in naggarond
Because Naggaroth is the most inhospitable place on the planet, which they have been taming since they settled, abd would at this point have tamed even further.
Lets not forget that Naggaroth itself is a colony, a massive one that eclipses its home land in size

I was under the impression that the elven colonies were recalled duringvthe civil war, one of which were the Wood Elves who refused and separated themselves from the High Elves.
Have the High Elves even tried to colonize since? Because meanwhile the Dark Elf empire grow to the largest nation on the planet (or is Cathay bigger?).

Nobody likes End Times. It was faggot shit.

>Have the High Elves even tried to colonize since?
Yes, they have colonies that pop up on the map.
>Because meanwhile the Dark Elf empire grow to the largest nation on the planet (or is Cathay bigger?).
what? Where are you getting this information from? Dark elves raid all over the world, but they aren't setting up an empire by any means unless you count them manipulating other nations as building an empire.

Ok? Which is why we're asking what happened instead that lead to the empire gettin so strong

All of the bad guy wins are turned into embarrassing defeats. All of the "the good guys would have won if this little thing did(nt) happen at this exact moment" are changed. Order wins.

Reposting my thoughts on TKs from the last thread because I think anything is more interesting than Kemri becoming a shitty desert where nothing happens.

>I kind of like the idea of them finding a way to reverse partly or fully the corruption of the great waterways and making part of the land lush again.
>TKs would be a mix of living and undead units, a land under the staggering weight of tradition but also busing with pioneer spirt from the population boom of new settlers being invited in to making a home in the revived land.
>Good friction of people trying to figure out how social mobility working when the man above you can never die.
>Revival of the Mortuary Cult and other institutions then being filled with warm and cold bodies as the demands of the empire explode with the tidal waves of immigration.
>On the table they'd deal in unbreakable but limited line infantry supporting large Malitia units.
>Conventional artillery bought from The Empire mixed with wicked bone magic augmentations to do silly shit like quick lime that toughness up the skeletons.

It's also worth noting that there is not a small amount of Undead in Kemri of which the majority are in military service, they'll need some living subjects in a few generations of Napoleonic warfare and you could certainly make it a pressing concern but I hardly think they'd die out at the rate some have predicted.

All of Naggaroth is Dark Elf territory, they even have a massive setup up north to protect their borders.
Naggaroth is a big place, they may not populate the country side much but their massive cities contains almost enough people to make up the difference.

They're not the biggest nation in terms of people but in land.
Which the US proved is a very valuable thing to have as time moves forward. Smaller but much more powerful nations got left in the dust because they couldn't support that kind of growth and had a lot fewer natural resources to exploit.
Naggaroth is perfectly set up to profit from the industrial revolution.

I think that that is referring to the fact that while the dark elves inhabit a few large cities,they hold dominion over most of the north of the new world. However, as this area is relatively uninhabited, this doesn't really mean much. The possibility of dark elves expanding and founding new cities is not unfeasable though, look at hag graef founded by discontent nobles. It's entirely possible that a collection of druchii nobles could seek to establish some holdings in a mineral rich area to increase the resources available to them.

I also like the idea of dark elves using guns, improving upon the human design when they become more reliable. I think that the high discipline and the callousness of the dark elves lends itself well to napolionic warfare, after all they have been known to send wave after wave of soldiers to their deaths to take a single high elf fort.

but what of the greenskins?

I think there are some small exclaves of dark elves near Naggaroth which arent under its direct control. these guys could eventually spread if they manage to grow. of course, without Malekith's influence they would probably gradually cease to be dark elves

Carolean tactics and/or highland charge made monstrously powerful by their natural strength all supported but the most tremendous bombards you have ever seen, large hordes become less common as the world grows smaller. Many become full time mercenaries seeing it as getting paid to go fighting forever, the badlands remain not worth the time and effort and thus a raging ball of war as orcs get tougher from the constant import of new and powerful weaponry.

Mercenaries?

Absorbed into the newly formed Border Prince united nation as a warrior caste?

Embracing industry and becoming a fully fledged iron clad nation?

I'm glad there's another thread that hasn't been derailed yet.

>Knights would NEVER use ranged weapons
Is this a Bret thing?

>they have no reason to use them since they can achieve the same results if not better with bows or spells
They'd still probably have to adjust their doctrine considering ranged combat has gotten deadlier over the centuries.

>even the empire could accept them into their cities in an attempt to not fall behind on technology.
I'd think they'd prefer to get normal unchaos-y dwarves than openly accept Chaos into the empire.

Chaos Dwarves going mainstream in any capacity (as in, not a pocket of vermin to stomp out) is going to require them to hole up in a position with strong defenses (like a mountain fortress(es)) and focus on creating industrial capacity.

Chaos getting settled should be an exception, and likely a result of a particular front like Beastmen or Chaos Dwarves breaking off from the larger horde of Chaos in the earlier days.

Modern Chaos now spreads through philosophies and thought, spreading strife with empty promises of freedom and rights. The printing press, not the sword, now seeks to tear down civilization as the masses become increasingly sympathetic to a cause that promises them freedom from industrial servitude.

Trying not to triple post but I had additional thoughts to deal with issues from last time.

>Melee isn't dead
There's a fuck ton of room for melee of all types to still show up, if anything there's going to be more overlap between ranged and melee infantry by this point. Guns complement assault infantry rather well, look no further than the golden age of piracy for examples on that.

Gunlines can be expected to engage in a bayonet charge, armored assault infantry can cover their assaults with a crack of their pistols before they clash, and even savage enemies like orcs can still make use of a blunderbuss full of metal scraps to soften incoming enemies.

>Armor is still here, just heavier and more expensive
Guns didn't get rid of armor IRL as much as economics, and its fair to assume the same would apply here. There's a lot of talk about how existing armor and toughness already shrugs off firearms; but an increase in the effectiveness of guns is going to affect that. Its reasonable to say that if armor can survive an increase in gun tech, which we are, then its because they also advanced by increasing thickness and the amount of magic imbued.

You can still have your armored horsemen who have bulletproof armor, but that same horseman is going to much heavier or simply have less armor to compensate. If anything, this means being properly armored went from being a nice bonus to being extremely valuable; as people keep bringing up if you can tank lines of infantry firing at you then you better run in there and take advantage of it.

honestly i disagree, we have eighteenth century or better guns in the game already with master engineers or the skaven, but the armies that really rely on their armor can still more or less handle them. if anything your more likely to see techniques that mess with the integrity of gunlines with things like grenades becoming more common then they were in the actual 18th century

Chaos Communists!

I'm avoiding a direct parallel to communism honestly, I'm more thinking a more generalized idea that liberal ideals like human rights and representation are inherently harmful to the empire; making it a conflict based on the conservative ways of order versus the new ideas of Chaos. This also means we're unlikely to see any white knight faggotry where the hyper successful democratic state becomes dominant; democracy only exists to install a brutal anarchy to chaos.

>we have eighteenth century or better guns in the game already with master engineers or the skaven
I doubt those are standard issue, the point is that the best guns in the old world are at least becoming cheap enough to equip enmasse. In either case I don't see a reason to force something like stagnant weapon technology to preserve the status quo.

>grenades becoming more common
They were rather common earlier than the 19th century IRL, so absolutely. I think i mentioned last thread grenades make perfect sense for an enemy willing to get shot a lot. Grenades seem rather orcy too.

There's also the plenty of other weapons we haven't mentioned yet like rockets, fire spears, and greek fire that we can bring in too.

well they arent standard issue for the empire i did mention they were master engineers personal guns. they sort of are standard issue for skaven gun teams with the drawback that they are intensely unreliable, but since were talking about armors need to get thicker to deal with increased penetrating power of more advanced guns (mainly empire examples so far) we can disregard things like reliability and rarity and focus on how well they handle it in general, which is rather well for chaos and brettonia and orcs. so my arguement mainly was that your overestimating the effect of gun advances in a setting where many armies are over armored already to deal with the guns of the time. theres a reason that even dwarves with more advanced and reliable guns than most anyone still needs to rely on "anvil" units after all. the heavy armor of the day can basically say fuck your guns and keep on coming, an advancement would only achieve parity to a situation that heavily favors armor.

Even assuming that guns haven't gotten drastically better over time, we are 100% in the era where field artillery can be expected from a gun heavy force. Not to mention that if heavy armor was consistently beating the standard long arm they can just up-scale it until it was a suitable anti armor weapon. Heavy guns like in pic related are a step above Imperial weapons, and that's possible with the materials of the time. By now they could be launching explosives at armored hordes with hand-mortars.

I'm still sticking by my idea that Bretonnia should be a modernized cavalry-based faction, with stuff like mounted riflemen and really fast towed artillery.

well first we were talking about guns not artillery (yes I realize their technically the same thing but dont be that guy), and i wont argue with you that once sufficiently powerful artillery becomes plentiful armor is out the door but when it comes to hand guns there a very hard limit to up-scaling until its just as impracticable as sufficiently heavy armor and the question becomes which reaches that point first. honestly, considering the situation I dont really see the point coming where the cheap gun in the hand of some imperial beats the armor on some 9 foot tall ogre in plate an inch think or more. its not that guns arent going to get drastically better, its that just means they've finally given warhammer armor real competition for the first time.

Well as long as the answer isn't "EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME" I'll accept that. So what you're saying is the armor is the same but its starting to be matched by the better guns out there. Considering I was hoping there'd be room for different kind of guns like muskets vs rifles I think this works rather well. Might have it where rifles or other high power gun users might have their lower RoF balanced out with long range anti armor.

are we just talking about military advancements? because advancements in medicine would have at least as big an impact as far as these things go and considering shallya is a thing

I think it should aesthetically lean towards the early modern. See my above pics. This is also the time for dragoons. If anything Bretonnia should be cavalry from 15th to 17th Century. It doesn't have to reach 19th century level, and staying behind a few centuries would help it keep some of its knightly flavor.

Egyptians stay Egyptians. They're undead, that's their shtick.

Also remember that there are creatures that can take bullets only meant to take down people but may have issues with pushing against a pike or taking a halberd to the face. A bayonet on a musket may be a good impromptu spear but it may be too close for comfort against a horde of trolls or minotaurs, which you may want a longer spear for, or maybe a halberd so you can make deep cuts on their unarmored bodies.

To this day I shall propose a colony in the New World protected by ironclads. It's cool, it's not too "America! Fuck yeah!", and it's not trying to shoehorn an entire nation into Warhammer.

The problem with this is that if we're going to base the Empire on the 19th century and give them Maxim guns and shit, Bretonnia is going to be completely fucked.

Yeah, especially if we jump straight to the Maxim which is a mass produced reliable, and ultimately a revolutionary weapon for warfare. I saw machine-guns being only as far as the Civil war AT BEST. Relatively inefficient prototypes that work in neiche situations. If we want to go as far as machine-guns this is inevitably going to turn into Warhammer Great War.

Southland colonies sounds more likely, fewer Lizardmen to deal with

that's not the chaos star on your hat now is it comrade

Deleted my post due to confusion. I'm thinking going full Maxim gun is going too far, especially if we're saying that its been standardized. Its only the rather late 19th century when shit like smokeless powder makes machine guns logistically manageable. As I've understood the development we're leaning late 18th to mid 19th, with things on the far end of that spectrum going towards dwarves or prototypes.

I have to agree with this, Brets can't totally move beyond armor and match the Imperial gun heavy light infantry units. Pike and Shotte peasants while bullet-proofed knights ride in for the kill sound like it'd still be able to encompass the high-mobility cannons 19th century fag has brought up.

Demi-lancers and dragoons with grand adornments seem like a fair step forward for Brets.

Additionally, on the matter of elves. People seem to have the opinion that any firearm is going to be a grossly inferior firearm for precise marksmanship. I'm similarly not very well read on warhammer fantasy elves but I'd like to remind everyone that rifled firearms, even muzzle loaders, were capable of accurate fire to and beyond 300 meters. Elvan accuracy and the fact such weapons require exquisite craftsmanship seem like they'd make sense for one of them, if not wood elves.

While I do like the aesthetic you're going for there, that's the Last Spanish Tercio at Rocroi. The flag is a pretty big giveaway.

I missed this, and wholeheartedly approve. There is a lot of room for ranged and melee ala carbiners and lancers without giving up heavy cavalry.

I'm confused by the assumption that Chaos would still retain a strong foothold in Norsca. In the far north where the Kurgans and Hrung prowl, sure. But there's no way the Norse would survive in the face of a rejuvenated Empire, so I would suggest that the Norse civilize in a manner similar to Medieval Scandinavia though they never quite degenerate into the Magical Realm that is modern day Sweden.

As for where Chaos spread in the "golden age" of the Old World... Well, let's just say the ruinous powers dived deep.

Deep below the sea. The nautical cultures were unprepared for the inflitration of Chaos leading to a forgotten time of death and slaughter. While the surface world experienced a time of arcadian plenty and splendor, or in the case of the Skaven a period of relative stagnation, the sea floor became a shell of it's former self. Horrid abominations now prowl the deep.

The shells of once magnificent cities now lay empty, populated only by degenerate creatures lying in wait. As of yet, only a mere handful know about the dreadful situation on the sea floor, and those that do say it gets worse every time they dive deep.

maybe brettonia will have like a boshin war but western and in warhammer and knights will become the bureaucratic class

I like this. My dwarf armies fluff is centralised around undersea miners, it'd be great to see the setting expanded on that line.

what about tzench I get the feeling he would really be active with setting the way it is

Whoops. That's what I got when I googled France and I assumed since it was a French victory and they looked all triumphant and shit that they were French. I'm not good with flags.

Maybe I want ironclads fighting lizardmen.

>Maxim guns
Whoa user, let's keep it a bit earlier. Not too close to WWI now, we're not skaven. Gatling guns, baby! More aesthetically in line with Warhammer, I mean look at dat brass.

>Bretonnia is not France and it wouldn't follow the same timeline as France, so it wouldn't need to have a French Revolution
If you insist on having it be the 18th/19th century, you're going to have a pretty hard time when you cut out THE defining event of the era. It was an age in which the ideas of inalienable rights, popular sovereignity and the social contract had become popular. Cut those out and you don't have the 18th/19th century, you have the 16th/17th century with better guns. You need to have a French Revolution equivalent in there somewhere. Maybe entirely different. Maybe the king/emperor of whatever you want to call it peacefull accepts popular sovereignity and cooperates with the masses to eliminate those pesky nobles. Maybe some sort of Republic naturally forms. However, you can't just cut out the ideas of the Enlightenment pushed to its logical conclusion and still call it the 18th/19th century.

>and they looked all triumphant and shit
They look triumphant and shit because there were two (I think) tercios that kept resisting even as the rest of the army fled away. The French ended up respecting them so much, they were allowed to leave the field of battle under the same conditions as an army under siege (their flags, arms and armor intact, no prisoners).

>If you insist on having it be the 18th/19th century, you're going to have a pretty hard time when you cut out THE defining event of the era. It was an age in which the ideas of inalienable rights, popular sovereignity and the social contract had become popular. Cut those out and you don't have the 18th/19th century, you have the 16th/17th century with better guns.

When I say Warhammer, I mean except for Bretonnia. Their shtick is not enlightenment and revolution, it's chivalry and stagnation. We can't have Bretonnia without knights and armored cavalry, otherwise it isn't Bretonnia. We can, however, have the Empire with fancy pickelhaubes instead of fancy hats, because they're still angry Germans with guns and steamtanks.

Speaking of steam, it's about the time where railroads are a thing.

THERE HE BLOWS!

I don't think the Empire would've tried pushing into Norsca. They probably would've been met by some horrors of Chaos and pushed back. Maybe the Norscan tribes then united briefly and pulled a Swedish Empire on the Empire's ass. And then got their asses kicked and dissolved again but now with knowledge of metallurgy and gunsmithing.

>Their shtick is not enlightenment and revolution, it's chivalry and stagnation.
So it'd be the equivalent of one of those Holy Alliance countries, that fights tooth and nail to keep the old ways? Makes sense, but we'd still need some sort of liberalism. Where it comes from and under what guise doesn't matter.

The big rival of Bretonnia is the empire, isn't it? What if the empire naturally evolves into Enlightened Despotism (imagine Louis XVI if he didn't go full retard)? That would only intensify the rivalry, with Bretonnia as the champion of the old ways.

On the subject of Chaos, I keep saying the Frenchtoastian Revolution shouldn't be a thing, but it should be. As in, repeating Chaos-influenced revolts by the downtrodden who follow ruinous teachings in the guise of enlightenment.

>The big rival of Bretonnia is the empire, isn't it? What if the empire naturally evolves into Enlightened Despotism (imagine Louis XVI if he didn't go full retard)? That would only intensify the rivalry, with Bretonnia as the champion of the old ways.
I think the Empire becoming an industrial and semi-meritocratic intercontinental empire would be enough to sow hatred between the two. Also, I said it up here that hordes of beastmen are run out of the Empire. Why? Because the Empire chased them out with their advanced technology, so they have to run to lesser nations, like Bretonnia. Bretonnia blames the Empire (although wrongly), and their rivalry is fanned by the technophobia of Bretonnia meeting the Imperialist ambitions of the Empire.

>So it'd be the equivalent of one of those Holy Alliance countries, that fights tooth and nail to keep the old ways?
It would be Bretonnia, a nation of Warhammer that's slow to change.

Hold it, the Holy Alliance user gave me an idea. Catholic League: Bretonnia Edition. Imperial missionaries encroach on Bretonnian territory after the beastmen wreck it and convert peasants while the nobility is unable to do much about it. After the nobility recovers and the military is reformed they have to deal with Sigmarite uprisings. May also be responsible for Breto-Imperial friction and the introduction of gunpowder to the Bretonnian military.

Bump of suggestion recaps

>Prussia-esque Empire
>15th-17th century Bretonnia
>Empire chases most beastmen out, beastmen wreck Bretonnia
>Chaos takes to the deep blue
>Chaos leads the Enlightenment (The Human Empire of Sigmar is neither human, an empire, nor of Sigmar)
>Orcs with guns
>Dark elves with guns
>High elves with guns maybe?
>Imperial colonies in the New World (New Orleans/Mobile?)
>Imperial Colonies in the Southlands(South Africa? Afrikaners?)
>Problems with Sigmarite converts in Bretonnia

Holy alliance user gave me another idea: Kislev, Bretonnia, and the Empire enter a holy alliance to fight the dark enlightenment that Slaanesh and Tzeentch are attempting to peddle in the realms of man. Maybe this is the time where Sigmarite beliefs begin spreading in Bretonnia.

Alright, Gatling guns. Although I would like to give the Empire a standardized Martini-Henry/Snider-Enfield-esque rifle.

That could totally be a thing.

Also, we first need to figure out how we get from the end times or what we have instead of the end times, to where we are now. I'm not too well versed in the End Times and there's shitloads to read, so can somebody give me a rundown one what happened during them?

Or inform me why we should just scrap the End Times?

fuck off voltaire

...

Again, how do we justify the rest of the world advancing in technology and political structure just because the Empire is doing it? Since when do elves, orcs and dwarfs give a shit what humans are up to? And why are we insisting that an advancing empire will have to follow the same path as real world nations in a world where gods, magic and monsters are all very real things?

The empire gets better guns and crushes most of the greenskins and beastmen within its borders, just like the elves and dwarfs did when they were on top. Then maybe they push into the border primces, Kislev, Tilea and maybe even Albion or norsca. But beyond that, it doesn't trigger setting wide changes into real world 19th century.

18th/19th century Warhammer may be a misnomer, considering we've only talked about the Empire reaching that level while Bretonnia reaches only a 17th century level at the latest. We need to talk more about other races, honestly.

>And why are we insisting that an advancing empire will have to follow the same path as real world nations in a world where gods, magic and monsters are all very real things?
It literally says in the OP that it doesn't have to follow the same path as real world nations.

...

...

Scrap them, I'd say. Go with Storm of Chaos going the way the player results were showing instead of GW's scripted results - with Chaos getting blown the fuck out repeatedly

Can Grimgor still headbutt that punkass Archaon? That was one of my most favorite things of Warhammer. The fact that the ultimate personification of evil was taken down like a punk by some random jackass who shouldn't have even been there. That, and I could tell it tormented GW that their pet edgelord lost.

>Chaos leads the Enlightenment (The Human Empire of Sigmar is neither human, an empire, nor of Sigmar)
Eh, one of the sourcebooks for the RPG introduced revolutionaries who opposed the aristocratic order of the Empire. I'm fine with having pro-democracy rebels but I'd prefer keeping them separate from Chaos, at first anyway. A failed Jacobin rebellion or armed uprising may easily drive a Robspierre, a Lenin, or even a Washington to madness after all.

...

...

came out a bit small

A) Yes, of course, it just happens earlier on and is even more humiliating because his armies are getting shitstomped at the same time.
B) You know what they say - the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

>Dark elves with guns
>High elves with guns maybe?
absolutely plebeian, no elf would sully himself by using a human weapon, let alone a noisy, smelly gun that stops working as soon as it gets wet

They weren't saying that a few thousand years before.

>A) Yes, of course, it just happens earlier on and is even more humiliating because his armies are getting shitstomped at the same time.
I like it. Chaos barely makes it past Kislev, only to be massacred at the first hamlet. In addition, Archaon gets put in his place by Grimgor, forcing the Chaos hordes to retreat back into Kislev while the Empire focuses on the Skaven and the Vamps. Though Norse raiders continue to terrorize the coastline, in addition to Kurgans rampaging through the former lands of the Kislevites, the power of the Chaos Warriors had been broken in total.

However, Archaon's humiliation favored the Von Carsteins....

When did elves ever use human weapons? if its the whole " dark elves got their crossbows from cathay" I'm sure theres no actual source on that. Crossbows are just scaled down versions of the bolt throwers they always had

The joke is that there weren't guns thousands of years before.

>Eh, one of the sourcebooks for the RPG introduced revolutionaries who opposed the aristocratic order of the Empire. I'm fine with having pro-democracy rebels but I'd prefer keeping them separate from Chaos, at first anyway. A failed Jacobin rebellion or armed uprising may easily drive a Robspierre, a Lenin, or even a Washington to madness after all.
I love that kind of desperation.

Sounds like a plan, the huge Chaos invasion not being what it was panned out to be. This would mean the Empire is not that beaten up and takes care of other things like beastman herds more easily.

My current 40k campaign has a Nobleman who shacked up with cultists as a way to get a loyal support base, and Space Che Guevara who went to chaos because he was tired of the imperium being stupid bullshit.
I also like revolutionaries going to chaos out of desperation.

Gunpowder weapons have been around for over 2,000 years in the warhammer setting, and the dwarfs had precursors to these since their golden age though they relied more on magic and alchemy.