That's fair enough, the amount of electricity you'd need would be huge. I'm still trying to go for the crazy scientist weapon type feel, so my final suggestion for a type of rifle before I scrap the entire nation and start over, the Tesla Gun, albeit not invented by Tesla. 

There's all kinds of theories that he was within reaching distance of achieving it, and I mean some guy managed to effectively build one in his basement! Bear in mind that my army is absolutely tiny compared to everyone else in the game, so I wouldn't be able to conquer the world solo, tesla guns or not