Xi Jian's visit to Huainan this time was not only to inquire about the good news, but also to discuss the purchase of ordnance.

Today, such a north-south situation, it can be said that many people did not expect it, including Fang Bo of the border town of Xi Jian, and it can be said that it is the most advantageous state of the north-south situation since Yongjia. While people are excited, it is inevitable that they will be caught off guard and caught off guard. To put it more bluntly, there is not enough preparation to deal with a sudden upturn.

The scale of the Xuzhou army is far better than Huainan, but the performance in actual combat is not comparable, in addition to the various reasons stated before, there is another important point, that is, the Xuzhou army does not have the Huainan army such a huge and systematic military industry.

In fact, purely from the military base, Xuzhou is better than Huainan, whether in terms of technology, or resources, including smelting and casting tradition, Xuzhou's foundation is better than Huainan. However, there is also a problem with these industries, that is, they are too fragmented and it is difficult to integrate and coordinate production.

In other words, that is, there are not many military industries that Xi Jian, the assassin can master, and most of them are scattered in the hands of various military leaders. And these military leaders, to be honest, do not have a very high view of the overall situation, and with their own capabilities, it is difficult to operate these industries for a long time, and it is difficult to form a stable scale. Because of this, the production capacity of the entire Xu Town in a long period of time is not even comparable to the Wujiang base operated by the Shen family alone.

Because there is no overall regulation and long-term planning, and with the changes in the situation between the north and the south, many Xuzhou army leaders have greatly expanded their troops in order to compete for military merits, or turned the original dependent population production units into A soldiers, or directly accepted and surrendered prisoners, and the scale of the Xuzhou army has been greatly expanded. However, due to the lack of sufficient ordnance reserves, many of the new soldiers did not even have weapons, which not only did not improve their combat effectiveness, but increased the burden of raising the army.

After the decisive battle of the vortex, the Xuzhou army was much more aggressive than the Huainan army, and several people and horses passed through the Huai to the north, but the results were not ideal. Of course, there is also the principle of the art of war that the poor should not be chased and the master should not be stopped, but the problem of the Xuzhou Army itself is not small. In many places, the marshals just organized a group of Ding Zhuang, and the basic ordnance was not sufficient, so they made a noise and went north, wanting to compete for military merits. As a result, the battle achievements were not grabbed, but there were many defeats as a result.

Therefore, with the advent of winter, the Xuzhou army gradually settled down. The previous strong attack, not only did not have much to boast of, but because of the excessive intrusion on the locality, several entrenched slave armies in the local area collapsed, especially the slave army Liu Zheng's subordinate unit that is still entrenched near Surabaya, so the chaos has grown.

On the one hand, the town is also stepping up the organization of armament production, and on the other hand, there is no lack of regret that he was too generous before, and transferred all the ordnance and weapons abandoned by the Vortex Slave Army to the Huainan Army, and now he has to ask again. Ordinary ordnance is just like camp tents, boats, bows, knives and arrows, and so on, after this cold winter to step up production, and wait until the beginning of spring next year to use troops, the current disadvantage can definitely be reversed.

However, the production of machinery such as armor, which takes a long time, is definitely not a temporary cramming that can explode production capacity. In particular, there is one of the most important vehicles, which is also what Xi Jian wants to obtain the most. The chariots of the Huainan Army were arrayed, accompanied by Shen Zhezi across the river to the north, and played an extremely important role in many battles. Moreover, when the two armies cooperated earlier, the Huainan Army also gave Xi Jian more than a dozen combat vehicles, and after they were put into use on the battlefield, many front-line generals were full of praise for this.

If a large number of chariots are put into the battlefield, then the Xuzhou army will undoubtedly gain greater initiative in the coming year, especially in the coming year, especially against Liu Zheng and other slave troops who rely on the complex waterway situation around Surabaya to defend them.

Hearing Xi Jian's appeal, Shen Zhezi couldn't help but laugh. In fact, the chariots of the Huainan Army are arrayed, the technical content is not too high, there are almost no barriers at all, as long as they are willing to invest, the Xuzhou Army can also be built with their own strength, and they do not need to be restrained by Huainan in terms of technology.

In fact, similar to the overall production technology environment in ancient times, even if Shen Zhezi has any technological innovation that is one step ahead, it is difficult to create any technical barriers, and the replication is extremely strong. Even if it includes relatively high-end gunpowder, it is okay to produce a small amount of it behind closed doors for its own entertainment, but once the scale of production capacity is expanded, it is easy to leak out.

Because this process itself does not need to improve the overall productivity of the society, the technical barriers are not high. Especially in a volatile social context, where mobility is high, technology exchange and diffusion will become common. If you want to keep it secret for a long time, then the management cost will become extremely high.

Therefore, although the Shen family workshop has been continuously developing various proportions of gunpowder, Shen Zhezi has never regarded it as a winner or loser in the world. Especially in the absence of obvious dominance advantages, how tempting your technology is, someone is willing to pay a price. Even if a complete set of technologies can be kept completely secret, then in the future, the Huainan Army's baggage transportation team will become the object of competition from all parties. At that point, the allies will become unreliable, and the black hand will be more ruthless than anyone else.

Of course, this does not mean that technological leadership is meaningless, and the pioneers have a great advantage, that is, they can stipulate industry barriers and yardsticks. The greatness of Qin Shi Huang lies in the fact that he created a model for the rule of a unified empire for future generations. And with this template, no matter how chaotic the world is in the future, those who have aspirations will work towards it.

The inertia of path dependence, as well as the constraints on human behavior, are persistent and long-lasting. To take the simplest example, it was not the front-line scientific researchers who determined the width of the rocket thrusters in later generations, but the width of the buttocks of two horses, which was decided more than 2,000 years ago. The width of the two horses is the width of the ancient Roman chariot, and the width of the chariot determines the width of the road, and the width of the tram track invented later is also determined by this. This criterion was later applied to train gauges, and the means of transportation for transporting rocket thrusters was trains.

There are countless examples of things like this that seem absurd, but are actually true.

The chariots of the Huainan Army have been formed in formation, and their military significance has been determined through repeated actual battles. Then if the imitators wanted to chase the same victory, the first thing they had to think about was the comprehensive imitation of the Huainan Army. In this regard, the Xuzhou army has a unique advantage, there is no lack of witnessing the power of the chariot formation, and even the actual chariot.

The standard configuration of the chariot of the Huainan Army is to carry 20 people, bows, crossbows, guns, lances, knives, staffs, hammers and other weapons are readily available, and the whole chariot adopts an uncommon double-axle hanging compartment structure. Among them, the rear car is the main battle part, and the two-layer shield defense of wood and iron is used. In addition, because they had to be close together and tightly formed in battle, the axles were round-tipped axles instead of the pointed ends of ordinary vehicles.

In fact, after seeing the achievements of the Huainan Army's vehicle formation, the Xuzhou Army had also adopted a similar combat method to slightly transform the military vehicles in the original army into battle, but the final battle result was very different from the Huainan Army's record and was far from it.

Of course, there are many reasons that determine a war, such as the comparison of military strength between the two sides, the difference in terrain, and the grasp of the timing of the battle. But the most obvious of them is naturally the difference in the use of weapons between the two sides, and it is also a factor that is best corrected and compensated.

Therefore, after receiving the gift of the Huainan Army, the Xuzhou Army then put it into battle, and sure enough, the performance improved a lot. This undoubtedly established the brand effect of the Huainan Army's chariot ordnance, but in fact, the reason is really only because of the different use of weapons? No one can tell.

In fact, Shen Zhezi himself didn't know what kind of style and structure Liu Yu's moon formation and chariot were. In fact, there are many reasons why the Huainan Army's tactics are polished and matured, some of which are indeed justified, and some are simply simplified because of customs.

For example, the two-axle structure of the combat vehicle is naturally more flexible than the single-axle combat vehicle when it moves on the battlefield. In particular, the Huainan army lacked animal power, and it still relied on a considerable part of manpower to complete the chariot activities on the battlefield. Moreover, such a two-axle structure can split the tank into two parts, which not only increases the carrying capacity of a single tank, but also makes it more convenient when it is transported into the battlefield by boat.

As for the coordination of personnel and equipment, there are some unclear reasons. For example, the ratio of various weapons, the Huainan Army is ten rods and five hammers, in fact, why this is so, including the current Huainan Army itself, can't say clearly. However, when the Xuzhou army followed suit, it still strictly followed this ratio.

Of course, the whole chariot is not without technology, such as the outer iron armor of the rear trailer, which is first forged as a whole, shaped and then heated and carburized through a crucible. Shen Zhezi didn't know if there was this kind of solid-state carburizing method in this world, but the technology mastered by Huainan was summarized by the Wujiang Smelting and Casting Base itself. The iron armor of the chariot thus cast is extremely hard and tough, and even in the event of a violent impact, it will neither easily deform nor break into pieces.

All in all, the Xuzhou Army wants to create the same chariot as the Huainan Army alone, perhaps there are not too many technical restrictions, but it is short of a complete military industrial system. This time Xi Jian entered the town to ask for help, Shen Zhezi believed that it must have been Xuzhou after some trial production, but the finished product was always less effective, or the cost was high, and the gains outweighed the losses, so he had no choice but to ask Huainan for help.

Shen Zhezi has long planned to build a large-scale military base in Luojian in the town, and the Xuzhou Army is the target customer in the plan. And it's not just the chariot, he also has to prepare more options for Xi Jian. 8)