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[crazyabe]

Detect Thoughts: (1) Kashyyk
Antichronic Reverbramancy: (3) your 9.13, detoxicated, Crazyabe

[Madman198237]

I hope this is just revision-worthy, but we NEED to make Storm Strike an all-weather spell. If we can start calling down lightning strikes from over the horizon or even from the deck of a warship, we'll be capable of turning the tide.

So, I'd propose this:

Enduring Death
By streamlining the enchantments used to fly even further, and applying them to the hull of the ship itself, the Alsamma Safina can be made to fly higher, faster, and longer. It can also afford to carry enough extra mages to cast Storm Strike and the Hammer. The carpets will be kept to provide extra lift whenever possible, but they should be no means be a limiting factor in production. In order to increase carrying capacity, the ballistae will be left behind. We do not need them if we can dodge artillery and cast Storm Strike.
The newly-refined enchantments will also be applied to our carpets.

If we combine THIS with an all-weather revision for Storm Strike, we should be capable of literally raining death on Arstotzkans everywhere. Storm Strike should, by now, be an easy fix. We've been working with weather for DECADES. So, combining these two should give us the all-important killing capability that Arstotzka's artillery has....except it's better, because it's magical and has "Allah" (In Character designing YEAH!) written, quite literally, all over it.

[NUKE9.13]

Ah, you're right. We have by now so much experience with lightning that a revision is almost guaranteed to succeed. And it was mentioned in the battle report that lightning strikes can destroy cannons (or at least make them require so many repairs that they are effectively destroyed). That's a better idea than explosive shells (although we might want to do that later)

I disagree with your design, though. I considered improving our airships as well, but I settled on the divination spell because it will help our troops on the ground survive. I had hoped that fliers would be able to take out enough of their guns to where our infantry could once again close the distance without being completely destroyed, but so far that has not happened. Some defence against artillery is long overdue, and a divination spell is the best way to do that, I think.

[Madman198237]

As I understand it, Storm Strike cannot be used over-the-horizon. So we need to improve our airships. Doing so will ALSO allow us to own the seas, I'd think, regardless of what they deploy.

We should first work on deploying all our old and powerful weapons again. Next turn I want to work on antimagic. As in, dissolving crystals (Again) and going extreme-long-distance with our Staves of Tubikh Rrahim. Doing so would allow us to remove their advantages entirely--deploy a wizard on a ship who's only job is to direct the antimagic properly, and you can make their cannons worthless.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Personally, I think we just need more wizards so we can have more carpet riders and siege weapons and such.

As such, I want to suggest a Focused Apprenticeship Program, where our wizards and master wizards pick out the most talented of Apprentices and use them as minions in return for giving said Apprentices focused training to turn them into proper wizards.

It's a good idea, but we should wait until we retake the plains to use it so we can get additional bonuses to it.

@This Current Design: I think we can all agree that our Storm and Lightning Magics are important tools that, when we can properly deploy them, are intensely effective. Right now we're still relying on Uncontrolled Lightning to get the job done and when it does hit it does marvels. If we can spend one last design and revision to actually control where Lightning goes and then expanding where we can generate Lightning, either through Storm Strike revision or through advancing our airships, those efforts will be intensely more effective.

In regards to defending against artillery, I think we've moved into a form of warfare where infantry are only really useful for holding ground and mopping up after other elements of the army have won the battle. To that end, pursuing methods to directly attack and disrupt the enemy artillery may save more lives than trying to move our units out of the way in time.

Advancing our anti-magic is definitely important but it might need to take the backseat for a couple turns depending on how they use their research credit. Or it could take the entire focus of our next turns in an effort to shut down whatever they come up with. May Murphy have Mercy.

[Madman198237]

I basically want to work out the issues with lightning NOW. That will allow us to destroy a lot of stuff. Then we could do almost anything with it---next turn, perhaps we invent the Staff of Many Deadly Freakin' Lightning Bolts and kill everything. Or we go the other route, and, once we start decimating everything with flying ships and lightning strikes, we go ahead and pursue earth magic---raising fortresses and razing fortresses with one spell!

[NUKE9.13]

earth magic---raising fortresses and razing fortresses with one spell!

On the one hand, I approve of the wordplay. On the other, you are being crazy overambitious. Our first attempt at earth magic will probably be like 'Magically dig a ditch and pile up the dirt into a crude wall'. Which is one reason I'm against it- we're up against the wall now, we have less room to experiment.

In regards to defending against artillery, I think we've moved into a form of warfare where infantry are only really useful for holding ground and mopping up after other elements of the army have won the battle. To that end, pursuing methods to directly attack and disrupt the enemy artillery may save more lives than trying to move our units out of the way in time.

Yeah, except we haven't. Our air support isn't powerful enough and our artillery doesn't have enough range. I'd like to shift to that sort of paradigm, and have been trying to, but it just isn't working out. And with this one spell we can substantially reduce the effect of, like, half a dozen of their designs/revisions/expense credits.

And re:lightning, we can make guided lightning in a revision. We have, in fact, got a design for guided lightning that has been sitting around unfinished for ever (we tried fixing it once and got a 1, and there hasn't been a good opportunity/use for lightning since).

[Madman198237]

I like the wordplay too, but that's not my argument.

I want to redesign our flying ship to make it that much better. We can, and then perhaps our air force WILL be powerful enough. You are against branching out, yet you think you can get enough information from a divination spell to dodge artillery? You can't move hundreds of men out of the way of one of their huge barrages unless you have enough information beforehand to just make a slightly better spell to allow you to lay traps where they will be placing their artillery.
What I mean is that you need too much TIME to relocate these things. Divination is cool, but I think a practical advance in our lightning and air force is the way to beat their METAL CANNONS and long range.

[NUKE9.13]

They're firing non-explosive shells. To avoid getting hit you have to move, like, a meter to the side.
Also, Divination magic is not branching out. We started with the Divination Spellbook. It is the least branch-outiest thing we could do.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

What I'm proposing is to make our airships powerful enough and to help set up artillery to have the necessary range, or at least the mobility to effectively have the range.

I'm aware of our efforts at guided lightning as I was around for them. The difference here is that the Staff of Guided Lightning would allow for Wands of Thunderbolts to work in concert to effectively create more powerful bolts of lightning while also providing a guidance system for the lightning that Storm Strike provides.

As an aside, our Wands of Thunderbolts provide a Lightning source in all weather types, so the Staff of Guided Lightning provides the ability to direct that lightning in a manner that would match or exceed the effects of an all-weather Storm Strike.

[evictedSaint]

Design: Antichronic Reverbramancy [3+1, 5+1, 2+1]

Designed as a new spell that riffs off of our base school of magic, Antichronic Reverbramancy uses the faint tremors of time to detect the location of future barrage sites.  Similar our Detect Ambush spell, it focuses on the threads of time that flow through a narrow "chokepoint" in time - things that will happen, rather than the things that may happen.  The warning becomes more pronounced as the event draws nearer - for example, a mage may feel a faint tingle of warning when an enemy commander orders a firing event, a small hint of alarm when the artillery is loaded, and a definite, noticable forewarning once the cannons target the position.  This gives a mage anywhere between ten to thirty seconds of warning before the first shell lands.

The spell is limited to the immediate area surrounding a mage, who must enter a trance-like state to focus on the flow of time.  Entering and exiting the trance takes some time, though a mage can still mumble outloud from within the trance state.  Exiting the trance gets harder the longer it goes on, and a mage who spends more than ten minutes lost in the threads of time can be considered gone for good.  The spell is simple enough that apprentices can cast it, and the trance is strong enough that they could ride on the back of a horse with another soldier without waking up.

Of course, if the entire area around a position is targeted with artillery fire, a thirty-second warning won't do much good, but it's better than nothing.  Cheap

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Uh, I thought we were still doing debating on designs and hadn't done a proper vote yet.

[Madman198237]

Aaaaaaand crap.

Alrighty then. Guess that's toast. Once again: Limited warning doesn't help. Especially with their new mass-bombardment tactics.


For the revision:

Storm of Wrath
Arstotzka has managed to reduce or destroy the effectiveness of our storm spells across every theater by lowering the temperature. Well, that's alright. Our Researcher Priests have focused on bypassing the mundane, accessing directly the holy powers to cast this spell. If Allah can work in the cold, our storms shall strike in the cold. This allows for storms of terrible power to be conjured up in any climate, at any time, in any place.
The spell is a direct redesign of Storm Strike, meant to allow us to use it in every climate. Of course, if the power is increased (Come on, high rolls!) as well, we won't complain. At all.
Although Arstotzka might.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts: We get this, we can do much more damage to all of their everything.

[NUKE9.13]

Well, we shall see how effective it is.

Anyway, right now, lightning. But what to do with the lightning? Hmm. I'm leaning towards accuracy- all temperature lightning would be nice, but the range of HoA doesn't compare to the HA1.

Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts: Remember Spear of Allah? No? That's fair. But some of our researchers did, and they dusted off our research into its performance. And among the dozens of reports of fried apprentices, they found a kernel of useful knowledge. Mostly what not to do when it comes to making lightning more accurate. Rather than fix SoA, though, they decided to apply this to the Wand of Thunderbolts.
The new and improved Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts is inscribed with prayers humbly requesting god to strike the intended target. It also fires a tiny blip of magic in the split second before the wand discharges to create a pathway for the lightning to flow down, just in case god didn't get the message (and besides, god helps those who help themselves).
Not only does this improve the accuracy, but the discharge becomes more reliable, reducing the risk of the wand blowing up.

Storm of Wrath: (1) Madman198237
Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts: (2) SMMI, NUKE9.13