I despise the cowardice of standing in a line and shooting guns at people 100 ft away, but hey I digress to each his own, I hope they make a Rome 2.
Rome II seems almost certain, they've made sequels to all of their other earlier titles (Shogun, Medieval), the time is ripe, and it seems to be what most fans are asking for.
You could very well be dead before even beginning to reload. If you were on the first row of the line, you knew you'd die that day. But still the soldiers would march, staring death right in the eye, preparing to take down as many of their enemies as they needed, with nerves of steel. What cowards. Also, what the speed of reloading has to do with cowardice is beyond me.
That is the most stressful experience I can imagine. Even more so than hand-to-hand combat before firearms. With hand-to-hand combat, you could trust in your ability to defend yourself, firearms threw that out of the window. It was luck and a test of true strength to be able to stand your ground while not being able to advance or retreat. Your fate was sealed if you were first up, as UnitRico says. A wall of musket balls sailing at you was not a good experience, nor was actually getting hit. That must have been absolute agony.
Heck, even if you survived, you'd hear the bullets fly around you, and the cries of your dying comrades, while the smell of blood starts to rise.
Think about the US Civil War. You were still standing in lines (yes near the end of the war you had trenches), but this time smooth bore musket have been replaced by rifled musket that shoot MiniƩ balls that make the guns more accurate and deadlier.
True, I prefer skill over luck so i am a hand to hand kind of guy, but as I stated before To each his own.
This also introduced sharpshooting, which is "cowardly" in my eyes, compared to the early 1700s to Napoleon.
Sharpshooting existed before the Civil War. It was used in the American Revolution and in the Napoleonic Wars but I get what you mean, what would be concidered modern day sharphooting started in the US Civil War.
Rome is the best, I did play medieval 2 before it but it's just not as great (for example: unepic cavalry charges(=fat and slow horses)). And I don't like Empire because it keeps crashing my computer for no reason. Also in Medieval 2, Empire and Shogun 2 the units are sooo similar for (almost) all countries, in Rome it really feels like it's civilization vs another.
The Civil War introduced scopes for rifles (there were scopes before it but they were no use since the guns were so inaccurate).
That's what I ment by "what would be concidered modern day sharphooting started in the US Civil War."