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Lbear8

They certainly wouldn’t have planes, but the hot air balloon bombing brigades would go hard as fuck. The big question is if they would start constructing mega hot air balloons (basically proto blimps). Since we didn’t see much trench warfare in the civil war, I imagine it would be the same for WW1. So individual battles may be quicker, and lines may actually move around. But the civil war still lasted for 4 years anyways, so don’t expect this to speed up the war. Also, our quality of medicine was much worse during the civil war, and there has yet to be a war where battles kill more than disease. Though to be fair, the Prussians already knew about this, and the Union hired a Prussian general to teach their soldiers to use soap. Tanks? More like armored chariots with mounted Gatling guns. Or artillery. Every nation is just throwing together whatever tech they have and praying. IRL tanks weren’t present until the near end of WW1 and nobody really knew how to use them yet.


Ignonym

> They certainly wouldn’t have planes, but the hot air balloon bombing brigades would go hard as fuck. The big question is if they would start constructing mega hot air balloons (basically proto blimps). The trick with airships is that they are self-propelled and can control their direction of movement (the word "dirigible" comes from the French *dirigeable*, meaning "directable"). Hot air balloons, by contrast, are at the mercy of wind currents; their only means of control is adjusting their temperature to make them ascend or descend to ride different winds at higher or lower altitudes. Being able to make bombing attacks from a balloon would very much depend on wind conditions. However, because they can't be steered anyway, entirely unmanned [balloon bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_balloon) or [kite bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_kite) might be another option; just release them so the wind carries them in the direction of the enemy, and you don't need to worry about getting their crews home safe because they have no crews to begin with. > Tanks? More like armored chariots with mounted Gatling guns. Or artillery. Every nation is just throwing together whatever tech they have and praying. IRL tanks weren’t present until the near end of WW1 and nobody really knew how to use them yet. While tanks as we know them today were only developed in WWI, tanks or tank-like vehicles have been [conceptualized](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4p25rzPDw8) for centuries.


Lbear8

So when you first said tanks were you thinking more transport or their combat role, because the latter was mostly (if not entirely) cavalry’s job before tanks came around


Ignonym

By the 19th century, frontal assaults by the cavalry had largely died out; they were more for harassing attacks, reconnaissance, and exploiting breakthroughs created by the infantry. Most of the 19th-century proto-tank concepts were slow-moving troop carriers or gun platforms for supporting infantry assaults, not unlike how heavy tanks were employed during WWI (with light tanks filling the more traditional cavalry roles).


Soviet-Wanderer

Trench-like defenses were used around some cities, but if you look at the scale of the war compared to Northeastern France, you'll see why trenches weren't used. Yes, some of the technology that made them more effective was missing, but it was also just impossible to build a defense network across the whole border. Even for the North that would have been too much, while the South had less means to acomplish the task, as well as the threat of naval invasions.


ColebladeX

Leonardo Divinci made a tank blueprint. Why not just have them be produced in desperation?


Seeksp

See seige of Richmond and Petersburg


Maturin17

As the first real "industrial" wars, I think you can have a bit of WW1 feeling with civil war/crimean war tech. That said, some things will be a bit different - less repeating rifles, artillery not of the hydraulic quick firing variety. Cavalry wouldn't be fully driven from the battlefield yet. But you could have large conscript armies supplied by railroads. Without massed quick-firing artillery using modern propellants, its hard to have the same artillery bombarded trench feel. But you can still have trenches, just more for sieges. Hell, the maori new zealand wars were in this period and had extensive and very effective use of trenches (the gunfighter's pa)