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[stabbymcstabstab]

Yeah, that thing isn't going to help us right now. We need something larger-scale.
~~~
Improve Minor Fireball, making it easier to cast. We will spam it everywhere. Our main attack spell, ho!

Apply the Expense Credit to our Longships. We need to win the seas in order to reinforce our mainlands!
~~~
Anybody up for creating Ironclads next turn?

+1 to all three of these ideas.

[RAM]

I have an idea for the modification:

Crystal-fueled Antimagic Charm: Instead of relying on a gem, a summoned crystal acts as fuel for the effect, slowly deteriorating instead of disappearing all-at-once, consistently fueling the spell. Perhaps spells cast into the Area of Effect of the charm can vibrate out of existence like the crystals would when they expire.

+1 Being able to nope their spells would help. Summoning crystals to use as focal points to extend the life of our summoned crystals may be silly(but "a wizard did it" refutes that...) but cystals and gems... share certain similarities... The tensile strength of the summoned crystals should brute-force their way through the explosion issue(gems are mad brittle yo) and we should already have the necessary technologies in the relevant fields. It should just be tweaking the structure of our crystals... Now, granted, with just a revision I would not expect the effected soldiers to be using summoned weapons or being obscured by fog or anything like that, but still a big blow to their targeted spell use.

Are fireballs good in jungle?

[OceanSoul]

Are fireballs good in jungle?

If you don't mind burning our army alongside the enemy. So yes, they'd be good for friendly fire. Unfriendly, if you prefer the literal sense.

[10ebbor10]

Crystal-fueled Antimagic Charm : +1

Use the Expense Credit on our cavalry. They're better than those of Moskurg, so with the extra horses we can absolutely crush them.

Order : Concede the Eastern Sea (but not the Western one) and Plains. Concentrate all forces in the Mountain and assault the desert. Deploy the frost tower.

[VoidSlayer]

The anti magic charms do not work, unless we want to turn their sleep spells into frag grenadines against our own guards.

[10ebbor10]

The anti magic charms do not work, unless we want to turn their sleep spells into frag grenadines against our own guards.

Which is a reason to fix them, not abandon them.

Honestly, our early tendency to continiously abandon projects when they didn't work out is what got us in this mess in the first place.

[andrea]

Crystal-fueled Antimagic Charm : +1

Use the Expense Credit on our cavalry. They're better than those of Moskurg, so with the extra horses we can absolutely crush them.

Order : Concede the Eastern Sea (but not the Western one) and Plains. Concentrate all forces in the Mountain and assault the desert. Deploy the frost tower.

+1, lets try sticking to a plan. If we manage to get a good roll on them, they will be powerful.

[Azzuro]

+1 to the Crystal-fueled Antimagic Charm, and +1 for Order to Concede the Eastern Sea (but not the Western one) and Plains. Concentrate all forces in the Mountain and assault the desert. Deploy the frost tower.

However, I would vote for Using the Expense Credit on Forever Frost. Right now, it and the wand of Fireballs are both at National Effort level. If we reduce its cost down to Very Expensive, we can deploy them everywhere, helping our war effort in all theatres. Right now cavalry only help us in the Plains and somewhat in the Jungle, and not at all upon the Sea.

[10ebbor10]

However, I would vote for Using the Expense Credit on Forever Frost. Right now, it and the wand of Fireballs are both at National Effort level. If we reduce its cost down to Very Expensive, we can deploy them everywhere, helping our war effort in all theatres. Right now cavalry only help us in the Plains and somewhat in the Jungle, and not at all upon the Sea.

We already reverse engineered the Wand of Fireball at very expensive level. Our big fireball spell is the exact same thing, with only a minor morale drawback.

Besides that, Forever frost is not useful in all theathers. We can not use it at Sea, because it's a tower. We can't use it in the Mountains or Taiga, because it'll freeze everyone. We're not going to be attacking the plains, which leaves only the Jungle and Desert for usefull locations.

Cavalry will be usefull in both Jungle, Desert and Taiga, which is all the areas that matter.

Forever Frost:  [5-1, 2-2, 4-2]  This may be one of the most expensive and ambitious projects you have ever undertaken.  Not only are you working on a fairly novel inversion of your existing fire evocation (getting rid of heat instead of creating it) you are scaling the project up as you have never before.  Months of work produce a huge, unwieldy spell apparatus, essentially an astoundingly expensive tower that has to be assembled in place and requires the skill of a master wizard to operate, as well as countless other skilled wizards.  The spell takes a good day to activate, but once done so it will run for weeks at a time provided it is tended to by skilled wizards and the enchantments continually refreshed.  It essentially creates a very powerful cold evocation and then channels it directly into the air.  It then consistently lowers temperatures within a radius of about fifty miles, essentially changing the weather for an entire region.  Sweltering weather becomes calm and reasonable, temperate regions become frosty.  You think it probably best to never try and activate the tower in your home taiga, lest you kill everybody you've ever known and sink Arstotzka into an eternal winter.

Apart from the astounding cost and complete lack of mobility (it takes a week to disassemble and reassemble the tower) the biggest cost of the tower is that it ties up skilled mages, forcing them to remain wherever the tower is placed.  Therefore, whilst the tower does grant you a terrain advantage wherever it is placed (or negate a Moskurger advantage) it weakens your offensive capabilities because less mages can leave the tower's side (they are still perfectly able to contribute to defence).  A National Effort.

[This is what I would term a Master level spell; bonuses to every phase of combat, with a corresponding expense and likelihood of drawbacks.]

[andrea]

Plus, lets remember that the forever frost requires our hero wizard. We may not be able to expense it away.

[10ebbor10]

Pretty sure that Requiring Hero = National Effort.

[OceanSoul]

If the Forever Frost tower can get built on an island in the sea, then it may be able to freeze the sea. How warm/cold are the seas, anyway? If they're only temperate, we may need to modify/strengthen the tower. Besides, making a tower on both oceans would be expensive...

[Azzuro]

Ebbor, the part you quoted only says that we shouldn't use it in the taiga, and doesn't mention the mountains. And it's precisely because it requires our master wizard to operate that I want to reduce the expense of it, so we can deploy it in multiple places, including at Sea if we could downsize it enough to fit on a large ship.

When they can get close our officers hack through swaths of men with their crystal razor axes, but in the jungle that's difficult to do.  We're pushed back bit by bit, until we're hanging onto the very edge of the jungle.  Compound bows, storms, and bolts of lightning are hell in the dense foliage - and without Myark to make up the difference, we can only just hang on.  Another year like this and we'll be pushed back out entirely.  Fancy axes are great, but they don't do enough.

From this, 'storms and bolts of lightning' are two of the three issues facing us that stem from Moskerg weather control. (Sidenote: shouldn't it be easier to close to melee range in the dense foliage than in the open, thus putting ranged combatants at a disadvantage compared to the plains? And how exactly is the lightning striking us, unless our men are taller than the trees?) Forever Frost will solve these two issues, and give us a combat advantage by turning the climate cold, which favours us northern folks.

However the main reason why I'm arguing for this is that we spent an entire design phase on Forever Frost, and so far used it all of one turn in the previous three. It may be throwing good money after bad, but I would like to see us at least keep up in the weather control arms race.

[10ebbor10]

We have the exact same temperature bonus in the mountains as in the taiga. The fact that the effects would be the same are thus logical.

Forever Frost will solve these two issues, and give us a combat advantage by turning the climate cold, which favours us northern folks.

Except it won't.

We used forever frost in the Jungle before, and it accomplished nothing of note.

Let's remember, this was the description of the Moskurgian cavalry.

Calvary, the heavy artillery of the medieval era, were once limited to minor nobles and knights.  Restricted to critical battles and the relatively less-risky skirmishes that preceded them, most combats have consisted of boots on the ground slugging it out.  This does not seem to be the case for Moskurg, however; their horses, seemingly only fit for travel and not combat, are...everywhere.  Though lightly armored, entire divisions of the troops have crashed into our battle lines over and over again, snapping their shoddily made lances and lashing out with sword and spear.  We fail to win a single battle here, let alone gain a territory.  Those who aren't run down quickly surrender, and once relieved of their armor and weapons are immediately returned to us.  Our own cavalry are much stronger than any Moskurg horseman, but even they can't win against a seething ocean of these overgrown rats.  Fireballs blast holes in their ranks, but they're filled as soon as they appear.  Horses leap through walls of flames, and though a few tumble from their saddles wreathed in fire the rest charge through our ranks like demons.  If we do not do something to counter these new horsemen, we may very well see their hoof prints on Arstotzkan home soil.

Enormously good and effective, despite their shitty quality. 

We have better armor, better weaponry, and better horses for this kind of combat. We would crush the Moskurgians.

Meanwhile, this was what our frost tower did :

A bolt of lightning crashes down into the tower not a few feet from where Myark was standing.  The explosion of super-heated plasma sends him and the stone bricks he was standing on off the side, and they all come crashing down into the foliage below.  The sudden disruption of the delicate, carefully-drawn spell circles on the roof of the tower resulted in a second, much slower explosion.  Were Myark still standing atop the tower he might have been able to prevent the cook-off of magical power slowly growing out of control, but without him there was little the wizards left could do.  The top of the tower flashes briefly.

The explosion sends mortar, brick, and bodies sailing into everyone standing around the tower with an indiscriminate violence.  Unfortunately, it was mostly Arstotzkan troops standing nearby.  Plate armor absorbs a good portion of the debris, but with their hero wounded and most of their mages dead the troops have no option other than to retreat.  Myark is hauled off the battlefield by one of the surviving squads, and they manage to abscond with him.  He will live.

So, it did not stop the storm amd it did not stop the lightning. It's basically a piece of crap more harmfull to our own forces than to the enemy.

I'm open to redesigning it, to make it better and more usefull. But as it is now it's useless.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Crystal-fueled Antimagic Charm : +1

Use the Expense Credit on our cavalry. They're better than those of Moskurg, so with the extra horses we can absolutely crush them.

Order : Concede the Eastern Sea (but not the Western one) and Plains. Concentrate all forces in the Mountain and assault the desert. Deploy the frost tower.

+1, lets try sticking to a plan. If we manage to get a good roll on them, they will be powerful.

+I'll agree with this and on our earlier lack of a proper plan and besides for all we know using the magic crystal to absorb magic might be the key to keeping them around. Then it's a revision to make our lances and longaxes do the same for a Elite Mage-Breaker unit.