Rule The Wave 3

[Pinkie Mclucas]

Rule, Britannia!" is a British patriotic song, originating from the 1740 poem "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson[1] and set to music by Thomas Arne in the same year.[2] It is most strongly associated with the Royal Navy, but is also used by the British Army.[3]

The song was originally the final musical number in Thomas Arne's Alfred, a masque about Alfred the Great, co-written by James Thomson and David Mallet and first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, on 1 August 1740.[4]

In 1751 Mallet re-used the text of "Rule, Britannia!", omitting three of the original six stanzas and adding three new ones by Lord Bolingbroke, to form the repeated chorus of the comic song "Married to a Mermaid". This became extremely popular when Mallet produced his masque Britannia at Drury Lane Theatre in 1755.[6]

Married to a Mermaid tells the story of a young man, in some versions a sailor or a farmer, who falls overboard from a ship and is married to a mermaid, and later rises from the sea and says goodbye to his comrades and messmates and his ship's captain. It is a traditional sailors' song and regularly performed by choirs, and its lyrics have many versions. A version written, composed and performed by Arthur Lloyd has the lyrics: [6]

"Rule, Britannia!" soon developed an independent life of its own, separate from the masque of which it had formed a part. First heard in London in 1745, it achieved instant popularity. It quickly became so well known that Handel quoted it in his Occasional Oratorio in the following year. Handel used the first phrase as part of the Act II soprano aria, "Prophetic visions strike my eye", when the soprano sings it at the words "War shall cease, welcome peace!"[7] The song was seized upon by the Jacobites, who altered Thomson's words to a pro-Jacobite version.[8]

According to Armitage[9] "Rule, Britannia" was the most lasting expression of the conception of Britain and the British Empire that emerged in the 1730s, "predicated on a mixture of adulterated mercantilism, nationalistic anxiety and libertarian fervour". He equates the song with Bolingbroke's On the Idea of a Patriot King (1738), also written for the private circle of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in which Bolingbroke had "raised the spectre of permanent standing armies that might be turned against the British people rather than their enemies".[10] Hence British naval power could be equated with civil liberty, since an island nation with a strong navy to defend it could afford to dispense with a standing army which, since the time of Cromwell, was seen as a threat and a source of tyranny.

At the time it appeared, the song was not a celebration of an existing state of naval affairs, but an exhortation. Although the Dutch Republic, which in the 17th century presented a major challenge to English sea power, was obviously past its peak by 1745, Britain did not yet "rule the waves", although, since it was written during the War of Jenkins' Ear, it could be argued that the words referred to the alleged Spanish aggression against British merchant vessels that caused the war. The time was still to come when the Royal Navy would be an unchallenged dominant force on the oceans. The jesting lyrics of the mid-18th century would assume a material and patriotic significance by the end of the 19th century.

"Rule, Britannia!" is often written as simply "Rule Britannia", omitting both the comma and the exclamation mark, which changes the interpretation of the lyric by altering the punctuation. Richard Dawkins recounts in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene that the repeated exclamation "Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!" is often rendered as "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!", changing the meaning of the verse. This addition of a terminal 's' to the lyrics is used as an example of a successful meme.[11]

Maurice Willson Disher notes that the change from "Britannia, rule the waves" to "Britannia rules the waves" occurred in the Victorian era, at a time when the British did rule the waves and no longer needed to be exhorted to rule them. Disher also notes that the Victorians changed "will" to "shall" in the line "Britons never shall be slaves".[12]

The song assumed extra significance in 1945 at the conclusion of World War II when it was played at the ceremonial surrender of the Japanese imperial army in Singapore. A massed military band of Australian, British and American forces played as Supreme Allied Commander Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma arrived.[13]

Richard Wagner wrote a concert overture in D major based on the theme in 1837 (WWV 42). He subsequently made it the basis of his "Groe Sonata" for piano, Op. 4.Ferdinand Ries quotes from it in "The Dream" (also known as "Il sogno") for piano, Op. 49, and wrote Variations on Rule Britannia for orchestra, Op. 116.Johann Strauss I quoted the song in full as the introduction to his 1838 waltz "Huldigung der Knigin Victoria von Grossbritannien" (Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain), Op. 103, where he also quotes the British national anthem "God Save the Queen" at the end of the piece.

The French organist-composer Alexandre Guilmant included this tune in his Fantaisie sur deux mlodies anglaises for organ Op. 43, where he also makes use of the song "Home! Sweet Home!". Likewise, the French composer Alexandre Goria used the tune as part of his Salut la Grande Brtagne - Six airs anglese transcrite et varie, 1re. Suite No. 8, Op. 44.

Arthur Sullivan quoted from "Rule, Britannia!" on at least three occasions in music for his comic operas written with W. S. Gilbert and Bolton Rowe. In Utopia Limited, Sullivan used airs from "Rule, Britannia!" to highlight references to Great Britain. In The Zoo (written with Rowe) Sullivan applied the tune of "Rule, Britannia!" to an instance in which Rowe's libretto quotes directly from the patriotic march. Finally, to celebrate the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, Sullivan added a chorus of "Rule, Britannia!" to the finale of HMS Pinafore, which was playing in revival at the Savoy Theatre. Sullivan also quoted the tune in his 1897 ballet Victoria and Merrie England, which traced the "history" of England from the time of the Druids up to Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, an event the ballet was meant to celebrate.

Campaign so far nothing was shown but i expect rule the waves rip off at least since it's hard to mess up copying something good it should be good too. I hope for some improvements over RTW like battlegroup creation and doctrine settings, this might be one of my biggest draws for the game provided that everything else is passable.

Now, let's keep in mind that RtW2 is the prequel [edit: SEQUEL, of course] to RtW and has a couple of years of development, fixing and expanding under it's belt, so it isn't really fair to compare the two games directly but, yeah, in it's current state?

RTW engine is pretty light, allowing a lot of abstraction a game like UA:D can't. But it is also the result of Y.E.A.R.S of active development. Rule the waves is only one game with the engine, they also released Steam and Iron before that who was pretty much only the core battle system with no campaign and only historical scenarios. They had a painfully long beta for the two RTW. And yet today there is still lot's of things that are underdevelopped (battle generation, anyone? Yes?)

RTW is a superior game because it had at least 8+ years of development (Steam and Iron posts are as old a 2013) and you can bet the developement started way before that. Of course this is with no 3D engine whatsoever. Pathfinding is easier to code like that: have you tried colliding with ships in RTW? Most of the time there is an auto avoidance with RNG, a thing you can't do that easily in a 3D engine. Shell trajectory is just some number to write with no need to see if they go under the waves before reaching their target. Ships are just some grey blocks, with no visible subdivision and a rather strict (if realistic) turret placement. You can't actively avoid torpedoes, ect.

Ship designer on the other hand seems to be flawed from the inception too, the snap togeather aproach sucks and whats funny the ships usually look like ass, especially the ai ones. It limits the creativity and missed key aspects of ship design while having no real beneftis. It's really not hard to make streachable hulls and variable machinery space and citadel size. Hull is not really a complex shape and dynamicly calculating the space which can be used for machinery and barbettes thus creating the citadel is something someone after weekend coding camp could do.

It looks to me like amibition of the game is not to do something new or better but just to copy the idea of rule the waves and dumb it down for wows players and people who care about graphics more than gameplay.

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