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[GreatWyrmGold]

The mole has already paid for itself twice over;

Eee? When? If you mean this

As you watch it delve downwards towards the manarack deposits, morning comes and brings with it a rush of 324 Mana.

324 is our regular morning mana income

Oh, I thought that was extra from the manarack.

And moles might be animals, but they're not morons. Have you heard of mole tunnels collapsing due to ineptitude of the diggers?

[Rolepgeek]

I was getting annoyed at his insinuation that a mole doesn't know how to keep what it digs from collapsing.  Considering that's what they do for, you know. Living. Besides, what creates cave-ins easily is the hitting of heavy metal objects in a small point that tends to crack something important setting off a chain reaction breaking a bunch of rocks. Melting, eating, and shitting them? Less so.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

No, animals aren't great diggers. Moles may dig quite good, but their tunnels do collapse quite often, they just don't care and dig new ones. (or repair the old)  You need intelligence to dig stable tunnels. Build supports and so on. And not only you need to dig to the manarack, you need to move it back to the surface, wagons and the like. We may create some mining, but it will never be truly effective one without aid of the pros
BTW, real world moles don't dig deep tunnels, they don't need to do it, all their tunnels are shallow ones, just below the surface, to hunt earthworms.  When you go deep, digging become much more advanched

And who said that ants are good diggers? They never dig deep and most anthills are constructed not dug out. Ants prefer to look for natural holes, don't dig new

Just google - "mole tunnels collapse" and enjoy. ( Here some description of their tunnels
IRL, They collapse just after any serious rain. And that's tunnels with several inches deep. I repeat: moles don't need to dig deeper.
Mining require intelligence it can't be done by animals or everything will collapse  sooner or later. Especially with some aid of a hostile earth god

[javierpwn]

Ants dig their own tiny cities, a fully developed one going down several meters
Even if they start from a small hole, they expand greatly

Now imagine giant ants, that spew fire, and build entire underground cities

If you worry about earth gods so much, if they felt like it, they could literally render the ground asunder beneath our town
So try not to think of the worst circumstance for that...

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Ants dig their own tiny cities, a fully developed one going down several meters

Care to name genus? Preferably with the link. I know no ants like that. And even if they exist, they don't specialize in digging, they get everything aboveground
Also, you guys ignore physics, small tunnels behave differently comparing to larger ones

Now imagine giant ants

I imagine... what will they eat?

If you worry about earth gods so much, if they felt like it, they could literally render the ground asunder beneath our town
So try not to think of the worst circumstance for that...

That's much more expensive in Mana, than collapsing tunnels that are on verge of collapse

[Koliup]

Ants dig their own tiny cities, a fully developed one going down several meters

Care to name genus? Preferably with the link. I know no ants like that. And even if they exist, they don't specialize in digging, they get everything aboveground
Also, you guys ignore physics, small tunnels behave differently comparing to larger ones

Now imagine giant ants

I imagine... what will they eat?

If you worry about earth gods so much, if they felt like it, they could literally render the ground asunder beneath our town
So try not to think of the worst circumstance for that...

That's much more expensive in Mana, than collapsing tunnels that are on verge of collapse

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095335/Underground-ant-city-Brazil-rivals-Great-Wall-China-labyrinth-highways.html was, as said in the article, made by a variety of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafcutter_ant  Just because all you see is a small mound, doesn't mean there isn't more under your feet. Could give them firebreath/secretions to make the walls of their tunnels concrete tough, or tougher.
Ants don't have to be too big, either. Perhaps dog sized at max? Can eat special fungus they can farm themselves. They can use the forest for the materials.
Might be wise to beef up any trees/plants we plan on them using.
Heh, I forsee a future wherein the forest is turned into an overgrown jungle of horrors. Just to support the horrors we actively use.
Also, as we're not an Earth god, we literally cannot collapse tunnels unless we get lucky with a fire or chaos magic. We'll need creatures(built for the purpose or not) to do it for us.

[javierpwn]

*Highfive*

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They build really small tunnels and cities right?

Would be easy Just to have our citizens live in these....

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Oh, tropical ants Well , should have expected, they have some strange ants.... Still I'd prefer firejacketsized diggers with some way to transport very small pieces of ore to the surface via equally small tunnels, that can collapse as much as they want... Then we may process what is mined. That's a slow, but a safe way to mine

Don't get me wrong, while I dislike that mole for thematic reasons, I admit that it is a great tool. Tool in the hands of experienced miners.
Undeground housing, transport tunnels, mining, some hilarious military things all can be done with it, especially if we'll have like 10 of them. But without human or  dwarven intelligence, all that is either impossible or will have much lower quality
And that moles can't do any delicate job...
What I like - potential military uses for it. But mining... I am afraid that it will create more problems then good. We may wait few days to see how will it behave. But I expect problems from that

We don't need to enter any negotiation about it until we build the fortress, so mining may wait. But deal with dwarves will let us mine and process manarack much more effectively then alone. Should we use many digging animals or  not

Using delicate, small scale, ecology friendly mining options with small miners is another option I'd consider... while using the mole for large scale tunneling\combat... because extensive mining have tendency to hurt life

[Comatose]

Hello,
Just finally got caught up with it all, and this thread reminds me of Demonhood. 
I'll be keeping tabs on this thread.

Also, congrats to Corruptor.
These sorts of threads take really good organization and writing.

[kaian-a-coel]

WHY NEW CREATURES? And redundant ones with that. And useless, too. I strongly dislike these moles. Offer them to the dwarves to get rid of them. Do not create those ants.

Bigger problem with new creatures is that while we're tinkering with them, WE'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING ELSE, like getting new followers, allies and ressources.

Have an agreement with the dwarves to mine that stuff. Discuss with him the price of his miners WITHOUT telling what they'll be mining. Try to weasel a good deal. Use the moles as bargaining goods.
"How much would you takefor mining stuff on our territory?"
"Hmmm... Like, half of it?"
"And if I offer you those moles?"
"They could be great helpers! I'll take 30% and the moles."
"Deal."
"Deal. What will we be mining?"
"Manarack. :3"
"..."

[Ukrainian Ranger]

WHY NEW CREATURES? And redundant ones with that. And useless, too. I strongly dislike these moles. Offer them to the dwarves to get rid of them. Do not create those ants.

Bigger problem with new creatures is that while we're tinkering with them, WE'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING ELSE, like getting new followers, allies and ressources.

Have an agreement with the dwarves to mine that stuff. Discuss with him the price of his miners WITHOUT telling what they'll be mining. Try to weasel a good deal. Use the moles as bargaining goods.
"How much would you takefor mining stuff on our territory?"
"Hmmm... Like, half of it?"
"And if I offer you those moles?"
"They could be great helpers! I'll take 30% and the moles."
"Deal."
"Deal. What will we be mining?"
"Manarack. :3"
"..."

BIG +1

Guys, take the last turn as an example, simple visit to that afterlife added us more than 1\3 of mana generation + possibilities to use that souls... What wee got for that mole and 150 mana? Almost nothing
We have many better things to do, than make new creatures

[kaian-a-coel]

Guys, take the last turn as an example, simple visit to that afterlife added us more than 1\3 of mana generation + possibilities to use that souls... What wee got for that mole and 150 mana? Nothing.
We have many better things to do, than make new creatures

Fixed.

[scapheap]

I have no opinion on the mining. The afterlife guards on the other hand I'm thinking theme wise they should be like Maokai(league of legends) that is on fire as it show our spheres(Is a walking tree that throw mini tree(life), On fire(Guess), can absorbed others magic and use it, also can teleport(chaos))

Log

[G D]

Have an agreement with the dwarves to mine that stuff. Discuss with him the price of his miners WITHOUT telling what they'll be mining. Try to weasel a good deal. Use the moles as bargaining goods.
"How much would you takefor mining stuff on our territory?"
"Hmmm... Like, half of it?"
"And if I offer you those moles?"
"They could be great helpers! I'll take 30% and the moles."
"Deal."
"Deal. What will we be mining?"
"Manarack. :3"
"..."

... The spinning mana hammer strikes Donut in the head, bruising the muscle, jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain!

I guess that we dont want to turn one of our two allies into another enemy? And i simply cant understand that whole "I dont like moles so lets give 60% of very rare and precious resource to this dwarf and for bonus points antagonize him at the same time" thing. No need to make new creatures but also no need to discard already created. So -1 to this plan.

+1 for boon exchange with urist instead. We can use earth mage/priest to improve our tunnels and with our fire boon he can also became good smith. Maybe use Azula for this.

We can also look at elves - we can become allies because of the life sphere or we can convert elves to our religion or if we want we can attack them.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Hm. maybe playing chaotic games with Uristiel is not the best idea, but anyway he should do the mining. It's his speciality. In fact I think he can and will analyze our land for minerals as soon as we offer any mining deal. He is a god of earth and should see such things

And the best way to turn Uristiel into our enemy is to try to hide our manarack and mine it ourself. What should God of war do when there are some resource he needs but don't have access to? Just imagine order gods offering him alliance - help us, and you'll get the mines. I doubt that he likes us that much

No need to make new creatures but also no need to discard already created. 

It's not discarding, it's an attempt to make it useful. Giving it to the Uristiel give us certain diplomatic benefits. Because for him that mole is useful