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[RAM]

It makes our foot soldiers more effective, which is a lot better than just one more barrier spell. Web is one of the few things that actually works right now...

[Iituem]

Wall of Fire: [3, 2-1, 3-1]  You have varying results on your latest spell.  Using the lesser fireball spell as a base, you remove the need to propel the fire and channel that energy into maintaining a constant sheet of flame.  Because you don't need to move the sheets once placed, this extra stability allows you to keep the flames in place for an hour or more at a time.  The requirement for at least one skilled wizard to be concentrating on the spell to maintain it limits its use, and the complexity limits its casting to only journeyman wizards.  The walls, once cast, cannot be moved.  They must be extinguished and re-cast to change their configuration.

This spell proves ideal in large-scale combat, where it can be used defensively to screen our troops but also aggressively to forcibly channel the enemy or strike at their emplacements.  In theory it could be used defensively in skirmishes (though the nature of skirmishes would prevent aggressive use because of local manoeuvrability) but right now the major flaw in the spell is its extremely lengthy casting time; an hour even for the very skilled.  Whilst this lengthy casting time is in place it can be used effectively on the main battlefield where one has time to prepare, but not in skirmishes.  Very Expensive.

[Roboson]

Hell, I'm sold. After last turn, I'll take anything. My vote for revision is plate armor.

Edit: Oh, and the scholar?

[RAM]

I even left instructions for those idiots in how to make armour work. Nothing special but ball bearings are super-primitive and ball-and-socket is just a wedge in a hole...

Ehh, I am +1ing the armour because throwing good money after bad is always fun.

I am adding a proposal to place the wall of fire into a wand because that casting time is brutal and wands help with casting.

[10ebbor10]

Revise armor

Why did we attract a -1 for the spell, again? It's not exactly new research.

[RAM]

Agreed, it seems pretty much identical to webs but with fire instead. Sort of why I don't like it, but webs have the ranged summons and persistence values. Maybe because fire is meant to be instant and boom and have a point of origin because fire is just like that. You gotta have some variation between your magic schools afterall...

[stabbymcstabstab]

+1 to revising the Plate Armor, if we get that nice and function we can simply wade through their arrows like rain.

[10ebbor10]

Not just their arrows. Their everything.

Sabres are slashing weapons, and plate armor is impenetrable to those. The weapon is competely unsuited to attack even the weak areas. Their spear suffers from the same issues. It's a simple thing, not a complex anti armor weapon like a halberd or pollaxe.

[Iituem]

Revise armor

Why did we attract a -1 for the spell, again? It's not exactly new research.

+1 -1 0 for making it deliberately expensive, -1 0 -1 for ambition (additional expense already taken into account).  It isn't new magic because you've got the base spells down pat, but you've never produced a stationary constant spell effect before (webs are a conjuration; they create a spray of web matter which lasts until it decays back into the aether, whereas this spell creates fire and then keeps creating it for the duration of concentration in a set pattern).  The 'ambitious' modifier represents the fact that you have a new spell base for future magic having researched that (stationary continuous effects).

[10ebbor10]

Can we see which of those "Spell components" we have?

[Iituem]

Sure.  Broadly, you have:

Evocation - channelling energy (fire) [Fireballs, Wall of Flame]
Evocation - propel channelled energy [Fireballs]
Evocation - sustain channelled energy [Wall of Flame]
Metamagic - stabilise spell in structured form [Wall of Flame]
Conjuration - create/summon matter (simple substances) [Obscuring Cloud, Crystal Lance, Web]
Conjuration - form created matter into shape [Crystal Lance, Web]
Conjuration - copy entities (simple entities) [Summon Swarm, Fire Wasps]
Conjuration - splice copied elements (dodgy, but simple options) [Fire Wasps]

I'll do a similar list for Moskurg over in their thread.

[OceanSoul]

How does splicing together a Cloud of Wasps sound? Essentially, a loosely golem-like bundle of wasps that can punch things by shaking part of it into a fisted arm. If magic winds part it, it flies back together, with minimal damage, where wind isn't. If it's expensive, other mages could conjure wasps to add to the spell. Might even innately work with fire wasps. We don't have much on the living-body part of it, but we could just have it be controlled by the mage, maybe with help from others, if our rolls are a little low.

[Iituem]

Plate Armour: [5+1] With the work you already did trying to sort out the problems with getting plate to work, you at least have something to work on.  However, it is an excellent base to work off and you get a lot of work done.  In fact, by the end of three months of work you have managed to sort out the mobility problem whilst still keeping the parts cheap and, importantly, modular and replaceable.  It is, in fact, a strong improvement on plate armour in some other world [Earth Prime] because you set up what is essentially a manufactory of armourers to make it happen.  As such you are able to outfit a whole third of your troops with plate, giving you an advantage in every stage of combat.  The only troops who don't wear full plate are your archers, who mostly settle for breastplates and leather with greaves and vambraces to keep mobile, but your thanes certainly and the stronger carls are all garbed in plate.  Still Normal Cost!

[Roboson]

Those Moskburgers won't know what hit them. Do we have word on this turn's contest?

[RAM]

On the matter of the scholar: Summon a swarm of insects. Walk through them, invite the scholar to do the same, even collect a few on their hand and study them and their magical faculties. "Even our pests bow to our civilisation."

Proposals for next round)I am not yet voting for any of these):
Spell of magic crystallisation: Create a tiny crystal out of magic or grow such a crystal to make it larger. These crystals can then be broken down to feed other magic. Essentially allowing our wizards to store up magic during downtime to extend their activities the rest of the time.

Should be a pretty big deal at first, granting us extra power for what we are doing, but might have a downside in that it would mean our casters would often have a combat-useless(Unless it can absorb hostile magic too) spell prepared and be in a magically drained state until they crack open their crystal. So could cost us in enemy ambushes but the extra magic in battles should be a huge boon.

As for future prospects, they are crazy-huge. We could make wands to let civilians and off-duty wizards contribute magic to the front-lines. Probably something like a slot machine, you put your hands on it and watch the pretty lights dance across the magical channels as a crystal slowly grows in a bowl(To keep complexity down they might need to have a seed crystal first, ideally any idiot would be able to use the things.) then they take their crystal to the counter and get paid for their contribution...

Then we develop "wands" that use these crystals instead of needing a proper wizard. We can outfit out mundane soldiers with spells in that case. Arrow summoning bows, self-repairing armour, holy hand-grenades patriotic flame-throwers, spontaneous tower-shields... Making wands for the magically inept would be difficult, it would need to do the whole spell by itself, which would limit it to simple spells, but developing ammunition for such things would be the first step, other than that it is just stripping the spell-process down to its simplest elements and reproducing it in wand-form which is tedious but should be certain.

Another option is to find ways to use extra magic to enhance spells. If we could burn a crystal to make our fog ignore their lesser spells, or turn a fireball into a firesea, or summon the same number of wasps but instead of a few burns a few of them together can melt through metal...

Copy the wind spell: Counter it directly, aid our ships, and gain an element. Having seen it in action should help us develop a copy?

Military academy: Train our thanes and their bodyguards to have consistent expectations and communication. Provide teaching from experienced veterans. Test the lot of them for magical aptitude, and, perhaps most importantly, teach them how to train their followers. Make sure that the whole army meets minimum standards of marching speed, battlefield endurance, responses to cavalry charges and arrow bombardment, knowledge of why running from cavalry is an extremely bad idea... Also they should check their followers for magical aptitude and send them for further evaluation. We can then revise this academy to have a magical faculty to improve training of magicians and to add a magical element to the curriculum so that all squads know a little about magic and can perform extremely basic spells.

At present I expect that we are just relying upon everyone to train themselves. They have good intentions, bless them, but a certain degree of heartless methodical analysis and conformity can work mundane miracles...