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[Detoxicated]

Earth magic:
PROS: barriers, earthquakes, Tunnels,  sandtraps

[Madman198237]

Little bit of combination with our wind magic might also allow us to sandstorm their camps at night.

That's wreck their sleep, turning them into sleep-deprived wrecks in combat.


Also, we could manipulate paths, roads, everything. The road your scouts just checked might now be 100 yards to the left and covered in well-hidden pitfalls and crap.

[Detoxicated]

Yes and perhaps granite mech armor?

[NUKE9.13]

Earth magic:
PROS: barriers, earthquakes, Tunnels,  sandtraps

CONS: Entirely new school, barriers may be vulnerable to cannons, less useful offensively.

I thought of a way we could beat them in the artillery game. It'll take a few steps to get there, but if it succeeds, we might outrange them. I'm thinking coilguns. I mean, you basically just attach lightning wands to a series of copper coils, make a spell that activates them sequentially, and boom, done. Admittedly, it may not be quite that easy. Which is why we would start with an innocuous invention:

al-Maghnat's Wonderous Northfinder: The eccentric al-Maghnat usually lurks in his lab some distance from the capital, situated in a field scorched black by constant lightning strikes. His mysterious works involve miles of copper wire, hundreds of lightning wands, and several charred apprentices per year. And now, he has something to show for his efforts. A simple device, not even slightly explosive, it consists of a small dish with an iron needle mounted in it, in such a manner that it may spin freely. The magical part is that the needle always points north. This is because the iron has been, ah, 'Maghnatised', through a mysterious process.
Considered a curiosity by some, the value of this 'Northfinder' was quickly recognised by our sailors, who realised that this would let them navigate far more easily, even when out of sight of the coast. Already they are drawing up plans to use these devices to outflank Arstotzkan navies, who will never expect an attack to come from the open ocean. We may even be able to circumvent their navy entirely, and attack ports as far north as Arstotzka itself!


HEY. Vote for an Emblem, you guys.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

So I left off at page 12 and decided to just skip all of that and go to the last page which is 45 for me, and we have airships and people are for Earth Magic which I argued for a few months ago.

What 

Can I get a sitrep while I go check out the last report to see where we're at? Also something about an emblem?

[crazyabe]

Personally, I'd like to be able to control how heavy our adamantine is, Imagine the force of a wisard summoning large amounts of marble sized pieces Which each weigh a ton each.

[Madman198237]

Agree with crazyabe's emblem. His LATEST emblem, anyways.

Extreme control over density of adamantine would be interesting, but unless it could be spawned/removed in large batches, it will not give us the shelter from artillery that an earth spell would. Remember: We've got LOTS of advanced warning for figuring out where they're going to fire.

[Detoxicated]

I think we are at the point where we could branch out our magic again. I think a tunneling spell would aid us greatly everywhere but especially in the mountains. Also this suggestion has been around for a while.

[NUKE9.13]

Can I get a sitrep while I go check out the last report to see where we're at? Also something about an emblem?

Well, the war has gone back and forth. At one point we controlled the Plains, the Jungle, and 1 section of Taiga. As you can see, we have been beaten back. This is primarily due to their artillery.
We started the artillery war with our ballista, but they have us beat with (?)Steam(?) Cannons, which are also rifled (don't ask how we know that :/). So, looking for a way to revolutionise warfare again, we went for flying carpets, because airforce beats artillery. They proved moderately successful, but they got trained birds to attack our carpet riders, and besides, a single wizard can't carry many Firestorm Shells (basically greek fire bombs) with him, so I advocated for an airship, which would be resistant to bird attack (since standing on deck it is far easier to fight one off), and carry more armaments. I had hoped it would also let us deploy troops behind enemy lines, but they don't have room.

...I mean, way more than that happened, but that's why we have airships, anyway.

[Detoxicated]

Since i saw the earth magic idea i liked it

[somemildmanneredidiot]

To my knowledge there are two emblems up for vote so I'm going to throw another +1 at crazyabe's design.

With getting the airships down to VE we may actually be able to make assaults into the Mountains once we push back to them, so that specific aspect of Earth Magic isn't as necessary as it was before.

So, we need to push our artillary game further or create another way to strike at their artillery. The airships may allow for the latter but I have a couple ideas based on our lightning research.

eSaint: What sort of Lightning bonuses do we have due to our attempts at Directed Lightning spells and those disposable Uncontrolled Lightning Wands?

Here's the angle I'm seeing. We have a bunch of Lightning sources, we just need to properly direct said Lightning. We can create a Staff that draws lightning to a target, allowing for ULWs to do extra damage as well as being useful when we draw on our Storms. From there, we can combine the two item systems into an artillery sized piece, either doing many Wand sized bolts or having one larger bolt for more massive damage, possibly being able to do both. With that, we should be able to mount them on our ships in whatever manner is most useful and make sure they're designed to be able to fire from the airships. We could also make smaller airships that are basically just gunboats with one of said artillery piece, which will benefit both the sea and the air.

I expect a design and a revision for the Staff, a design and two revisions on the artillery piece, and a design and a revision on the gunboats as they're in essence scaled down airships. Presuming we get the Research credit, we should spend it on the artillery piece to hurry things along.

The Staff will help on every facet of the battlefield due to how cheap the ULWs are, the artillery piece will be a refinement of the concept, and the gunboat will allow us to have a mobility that should have them screaming in frustration.

All of this of course depends on what angles they decide to play and how effective our airships turn out to be.

Also, did we ever spend that Expense credit that we decided to bank for a rainy day?

[NUKE9.13]

What, from a billion turns ago? Yes. I'm pretty sure we've used every expense credit we've gotten.

Also, the problem with artillery is not that it does insufficient damage, but that it has insufficient range.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Correct and thank you, I've been AFK for 30 pages so I wanted to be sure.

I'm operating on the idea that Directed Lightning is effectively Line Of Sight range which leaves only Indirect Fire artillery as a means to go beyond that, or some sort of Divination Targeting ritual spell.

[Kashyyk]

I believe we're already at Edge of LoS with our ballista.

Anyway, I +1 crazyabe's most recent artwork.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Wait, so are their cannons Indirect Fire capable? Do they have more of them? If those are the problems then we should go gunship first and then design new Lightning things as the mobility should make up for both of those issues.