is there a parallel here to gunpowder? i.e. european feudal era cavalry, expensive and needing trained warrior elites to maintain - giving way to relatively untrained masses, and then the eventual political grants to reward those masses? The only difference is that you seem to be saying that bronze (centralized kingdoms) -> iron (democratized, more polities) but definitely the shift from cavalry to gunpowder saw the reverse.
is there a parallel here to gunpowder? i.e. european feudal era cavalry, expensive and needing trained warrior elites to maintain - giving way to relatively untrained masses, and then the eventual political grants to reward those masses? The only difference is that you seem to be saying that bronze (centralized kingdoms) -> iron (democratized, more polities) but definitely the shift from cavalry to gunpowder saw the reverse.
this makes me we want to play/make a Bronze-Iron Age 4x game