TL4 Without Iron

[Sindri]

If you have a TL4 society that doesn't have access to iron but is otherwise fairly close to standard TL4 including the size of it's population and military what happens to bronze? Does it's CF increase as the demand for bronze increases past the ability to supply it or is the society capable of increasing production enough to maintain the normal CF or even decrease it? Roughly how many people are we looking at being able to outfit in bronze armour? Do you think military use of bronze will be most useful focused on a smaller group or allowing some amount of protection for a lot of people or for that matter is it better to focus on arming people? Will developments in material technology cause items made from bronze in historical bronze age societies to shift to other materials? Will new categories of items requiring metal cause a notable shift in the distribution of bronze across items?

[DanHoward]

It won't work on Earth. There aren't enough reserves of tin that are available to low tech societies. The Romans consumed millions of kgs of iron every year and every one of those items would somehow need to be replaced with bronze ones.

[Phantasm]

One of the reasons bronze has a higher CF than iron is because the tin used in its production is either scarce or has to be imported from locations far removed from the sources of copper. Adding additional (and preferably closer) sources of both copper and tin will help increase the supply, though without iron your demand will go up as well as the population grows.

A removal of iron from the TLs above TL1 is going to affect a lot. Bronze does not easily make mail or swords longer than a shortsword, nor does it historically hold an edge as easily as iron. This will affect your armies from TL 2 onward. It also affects the kinds of soil you can plow through with your wooden and bronze-edged plows, which may limit your fields, even if you have 3- and 4-field crop rotations in play.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

It won't work on Earth. There aren't enough reserves of tin that are available to a TL4 society.

What won't work? I was asking what would happen if you take a TL4 society and restrict it to non-iron metals while putting any plausibility objections aside (because I'm trying to look at variables in some degree of isolation). If the answer is "They will have access to basically the same amount mass of metal as historical bronze age societies" I'm just as happy to hear that as anything else. Anyone have a vague idea of how much more expensive acquiring bronze would be under those circumstances?

[DanHoward]

If copper and tin were just as plentiful as iron then there would be no noticable change in society except for the lack of a few items that can't be made without high carbon steel.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

If copper and tin were just as plentiful as iron then there would be no noticable change in society except for the lack of a few items that can't be made without high carbon steel.

I'm not talking about copper and tin being as plentiful as iron is, I'm wondering how expensive a unit of bronze would be in this hypothetical situation and what the mass of extracted copper and tin is compared to historical bronze age societies.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

A removal of iron from the TLs above TL1 is going to affect a lot.

No it isn't.

Bronze does not easily make mail or swords longer than a shortsword, nor does it historically hold an edge as easily as iron. This will affect your armies from TL 2 onward.

It won't affect them at all because both sides have the same techonlogy. In any case The outcome of battles are rarely dependent on what equipment each side uses.

It also affects the kinds of soil you can plow through with your wooden and bronze-edged plows, which may limit your fields, even if you have 3- and 4-field crop rotations in play.

Farming tooks were rarely if ever made from high quality steel. Most bronze alternatives would actually perform better than what most farmers were using.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I'm not talking about copper and tin being as plentiful as iron is, I'm wondering how expensive a unit of bronze would be in this hypothetical situation and what the mass of extracted copper and tin is compared to historical bronze age societies.

The question can't be answered. You will be exhausting the available reserves of copper and tin much much more quickly than they did historically, so the price of bronze will end up being a lot higher than it ever was historically.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

It won't affect them at all because both sides have the same techonlogy. In any case The outcome of battles are rarely dependent on what equipment each side uses.

Well potentially it could remove the advantage of people who would have been early iron adopters... but I mostly agree.

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The question can't be answered. You will be exhausting the available supplies of copper and tin much much more quickly than they did historically, so the price of bronze will end up being a lot higher than it ever was historically.

Well yes, that's rather the point. Obviously people won't be able to track down an analogous historical situation so I'm just looking for a rough back-of-the-envelope guess. That's not the same thing as "can't be answered" though.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Well potentially it could remove the advantage of people who would have been early iron adopters... but I mostly agree.

Early iron was inferior to bronze. They used it because a lot more of it was available so more troops could be equipped with metal.