An airship would likely be VE. Rather than using them we just make our magic carpets FASTER. They can't hit us if we're going faster than their arrows possibly can.
Absolutely it would be VE, if not NE. But it would also be immune to small-arms fire, and allow us to deploy far more ordinance. Faster carpets would also be good... but where's the fun in that? (Note that, unlike with strapping wings to horses being 'fun', an airship is not literally dead weight- there is some function to its larger size)
They have iron clads? I thought they just have steam powered ships
They seem like mundane ships, except for the giant steel containers and a paddle on the back.
Oh. I thought they were armour-plated? Well, that makes them a lot less of a threat than I thought they were. Still, steam-powered ships.
If we instead use the design AND revision to upgrade the carpets, say by making them faster, capable of going higher, longer-wearing, and even larger (Carpet, not horse), we could probably scrape an advantage out of this. I really don't think that a sky ship is a good investment right now. Especially not dependent on our extremely limited carpets. It'd make great target practice even for the enemy's largest cannons.
Their cannons are not designed for AA capabilities. So long as we move fast and high enough, they won't be able to track us.
Also, carpets are not extremely limited, they are Expensive. The limiting factor is the number of mages we have- which makes increasing the number of carpets per mage a good idea.
Considering you've just developed bombers this turn, I don't think it's unreasonable for them to develop AA.
Not the sort that could take down an airship, though. Their anti-mage snipers are already doing a good job against unarmoured carpets, so why would they try to improve on that?