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[Tack]

Magic School: 5 (Nirur, Stabby, Terenos, NAV, Khan Boyzitbig)
Phalangites: 3 (Madman, Jilladilla, Happerry)
City Muster: 1 (Tack)

Yeah, the longer you talk on it, the more it seems like a complete fantasy.
Don't overreach so hard.

[Madman198237]

Really?

OK. Not sure where you're getting it from. Right now, we're using hoplites. That's cool. The Macedonian Phalanx destroyed the Greek city-states, which were marching hoplites in basic phalanxes. The Macedonians managed to beat the Persian horse-archers, and then Alexander the Great marched through a large part of India. Not even the Romans managed that.

And it was cheaper, as the soldiers wore either cloth armor, or no armor at all, and used smaller shields.

It requires less training, because you do not need to teach individual men to use swords and spears in one-on-one combat, you just have to teach them how to march and maneuver in large groups, which is far more time-efficient.

The slaves piece is the main item of the design. The rest is a simple spearman revision. Using slaves as effective soldiers will not only alleviate some of our transport problems (How much space are we consuming to ship a bunch of unarmed and unarmored suckers to the front as meat shields?) but it will also allow us to save on manpower and material costs. Unless the materials system in this game does not follow the "Quality AND quantity AND difficulty combined generate resource costs" AR standard.

[Tack]

That's the issue, it sounds like two designs.

1: Change spearmen and hoplites to pikemen.
Awesome- very keen, great idea.

2: Arm and train the slaves.
Awesome- very keen, great idea.

But it's two ideas nonetheless.

[Madman198237]

1. Make longer spear, give to SPEARMEN ONLY. Hoplites serve in a different position in a full Macedonian army.
   1.1 Revision-worthy. Only revision-worthy.

2. Convert slave units to lightly-armed Phalangite unit, just like the Spearmen. Heck, I'll even make former spearmen into trainers and officers, it'd be good for training costs as well.
    2.1 THIS is what fills in the "Design-worthy" aspect. Individually, making slaves get pikes and basic training would probably be a revision. Add it in with a couple of other revisions and we have a design.

[Iituem]

Design: Magic Schools  [Effectiveness: 2] [Expense: 5] [Bugs: 6]

The bad news is that magic is not intuitive.  The fundamentals require lengthy memorisation of countless magical precepts, most of which require you to think in specific ways that seem almost entirely arbitrary.  It can take many months of practice, if not years, to develop the necessary skills to make magic possible, let alone reflexive enough to be useful in battle.  Even with the traditional of magical tuition we are starting, only a handful of students can actually be trained at a time; in terms of total output of education, this provides only a minor increase.

The good news is that magic can be taught, and more importantly magic can be put into a syllabus, tuition formalised and made easier to digest.  While class sizes are small, they can actually be taught as classes, decreasing the total amount of resources needed per student to train effective mages.

The best news is that we have managed to head off corruption in the training system from the get-go.  The trainers are selected for their honesty and honour and are rigorously watched by each other and trusted elders.

Apprentices now cost 18 training each.  Mages cost 45 training each.



The leader of the Dorytos magic school, Euphrosyne of Dorytos, which is currently working out of said scholar's home and taking lessons in her olive garden, makes three points.

Her first point is that the primary limiter is budget right now.  It costs a lot of time and money to train even apprentices, so if you want more in the field you need to devote more money to them.  Right now only 3% is devoted to apprentices, 2% to full mages.  That is barely enough to train one mage, so she recommends dropping mage funding entirely and focusing on getting apprentices out in the field.

Her second point is that while apprentices could theoretically maintain three spells at once under their current training, we only know two Lesser spells.  They are not yet being used to their most efficiency.

Her third point is more of a suggestion.  Mages do not benefit as much from distributed magical training (many mages in many schools) as they do centralised training (many mages in one school) where they can benefit from better training facilities.  By founding a single magical academy in one location, the quality of education could be improved, allowing mages to field a wider array of spells.  She predicts that it would take around three committed strategic efforts to develop things to the point where apprentices could cast a fourth spell, but each expansion would provide more training for students.  Best of all, unlike with Militia Camps there would be no increase in overall corruption.


Megaproject {Magical Academy}:  To build the Magical Academy, you should select a city to build it in, where it will reside thereafter.  Each Strategic action spent on expanding the Magical Academy will primarily increase the breadth of spells mages and apprentices can learn (Note: It will take multiple actions to unlock additional spell slots) and secondarily improve the overall training output of the League.

Note:  Expanding the Magical Academy is only half as efficient for producing extra Training as building new Militia Camps, but will incur no corruption for doing so.  Militia Camps incur corruption equivalent to the current corruption inherent in that design.


It is now the Revision Phase.  You have 2 dice remaining.

[Taricus]

Looks like we need to use what we learnt in making the magic school and then just devote a turn to expanding our training facilities massively.

[Tack]

Iituem, do we have diminishing returns on revisions, or can we still try cutting corruption?

Routine testing
Magical school Effectiveness
By having a set of routine questions many trainers or households can ask aspiring apprentices, it's easier to get a baseline on whether they have the memory skills or quirk of mind to make an effective Mage or Apprentice, therefore, less unsuitable students are sent to the academy and therefore the education can be put to better use on those able to learn.

[Iituem]

Iituem, do we have diminishing returns on revisions, or can we still try cutting corruption?

Routine testing
Magical school Effectiveness
By having a set of routine questions many trainers or households can ask aspiring apprentices, it's easier to get a baseline on whether they have the memory skills or quirk of mind to make an effective Mage or Apprentice, therefore, less unsuitable students are sent to the academy and therefore the education can be put to better use on those able to learn.

You can indeed keep cutting corruption until it's gone.  You just kept rolling really badly on the anti-corruption checks.

[NAV]

Honestly I like the corruption for its flavour.

[Jilladilla]

This definitely could've gone better, but it went decently, I suppose. It probably won't enhance our chances of winning that Die Credit, though.
Either way, I'll just iterate my two suggestions for revisions here:

Levy
Combat in the past few years has shown that even the weakest of the foul insectoid menace can easily rip through our unarmed, unarmored, and untrained slave fighters. As a result, we have decided to finally do something about this. In exchange for their freedom after the war ends, the newly branded 'Levy' will be armed with a crude wooden shield constructed out of scrap wood that likely would only protect against a single hit (if they're very lucky) from a 'Soldier' drone before shattering into splinters, a shoddy spear gathered from hastily or poorly made rejects and less successful apprentice work, and an absolute bare minimum of basic training conducted while still on the move with their new army (Said training mostly involves 'How to not stab yourself or the guy standing next to you' and some basic pointers from willing Spearmen).

Even though the Levy only carries extremely basic equipment and next to no training, it'll still be a major step up in combat effectiveness for the formerly dubbed 'slaves', as they'll actually be able to fight back against the horde, instead of merely trying to stall it with their bodies praying assistance will arrive.
This is intended as a revision to the slaves, and the constant mentions of horribly sub-par equipment and training is to attempt to maintain the cost at only 1 manpower, to allow this to truly replace and upgrade the thousands of slaves we're currently sending to their deaths.

Personal Visits
Our commanders, or a trusted delegate personally appointed by them, goes out and visits the camps where their future troops would come from at unscheduled intervals. As even the most cowardly, corrupt, or glory seeking commanders would want a well trained force (as such a force would increase their chances of not dying on the field of battle, or of claiming a glorious victory for the latter category), it is anticipated that they wouldn't be content with mere bribes to 'look the other way' when it comes to neglected soldiers.

When the time comes for soldiers to be sent to war, they will be put through a 'final exam', personally overseen by their future commander, to ensure that our trainers actually did their jobs in getting every soldier under their care up to par.
Corruption removal, take three, surely our military commanders aren't so greedy to take bribes to look the other way when it comes to their inadequately trained troops? After all, it's their lives on the line if the line breaks. Of course, someone could come up with an alternative write-up involving taking what we learned from the success of the Mage Schools and applying it to the camps.

[NAV]

For the levy, I think upping the quality of the spears and shields, but removing any training would be better. At least game mechanics wise.

Historically big heavy clubs have also been an effective cheap low skill weapon, worth considering. Might be especially good for bugsmashing.

[Tack]

If we can increase their morale without costing any training time; that's good news to me.

That being said, maybe battlefield promotions will work as a revision.

[Terenos]

If we intend to fight for that extra credit die, we must revise to improve the effectiveness of our troops.

Best option is the slaves, given we field so many of them. Even a -slight- increase to their overall killing power, could do wonders for us. However, front 1 also has a solid force of Hoplites (20), and Spearmen (137). So those may also be worth looking at.
Given that they are currently deploying their spitters to front 1, we are losing the vast majority of our troops in the Ranged and Melee phases. Improved armor, or formation tactics could increase the survivability of most of our troops.

[Tack]

Or we could use the dice to redistribute troops or build another training camp which supplies front 1

[Terenos]

Also true, I'm just legitimately concerned it won't be enough.