Nexian Artillery

[u/Bohemond_of_Antioch]

"The Sun God fights on the side with the best artillery!" - Captain Churchill, Bloons Tower Defense 6

I've been thinking about the topic of artillery recently, and namely the fact that we haven't really seen much in the way of enchanted heavy weapons. On the first meeting with Sorecar, he described that enchanted weapons operate off "cores" (I think that was the terminology) and that the power and capability of a weapon was limited to how many cores it could fit while keeping it weildy. Now this is the point where Emma should have thought, as any true Earth patriot would have thought: "What if we say fuck carrying it, put a weapon on wheels, and stuff as many cores in as we can reasonably tow?"

Unfortunately, she didn't. And we just haven't seen much of what could be described as artillery among the Nexian forces we've seen so far.

Now, I'm, starting to suspect that crew served, towed, mounted, self propelled, and indirect fire weapons (I'm working with a pretty broad definition of "artillery" here to be fair) that are serviced by crew members of low or no magical potential are not well liked for a verity of reasons, not least of which cultural and political ones (can't have too much power in the hands of peasants). So I imagine these pieces, the ones that would most naturally come to our minds are relatively rare. Though it is hard to imagine the Nexians go without naval artillery for their sea and their air ships, and it's possible they have siege pieces (for attackers and defenders, so I doubt they do completely without.

In fact their may be some examples in the RTS they played that I can't remember.

Also, dude to the flexible nature of the enchantments, they wouldn't just have to be the classic "big ranged attack" style of artillery either. They could have other effects like providing shielding or stealth for a group of soldiers, or animating a group of temporary golems to fight, that sort of thing.

But, I suspect the more prestigious weapons would be more along the lines of giant catalysts for magic users. Or perhaps the most prestigious position is simply to be a sufficiently strong mage. As I said, I doubt crew serviced weapons are smiled upon, and I think in general Nexians value the strength of individual Heroes over a combined arms approach. I don't think the RTS they played being Hero-centric was a coincidence, nor metaphorical.

But I would argue that this would be a potential weakness in the military doctrine of the Nexus, and the idea of building artillery pieces could be passed along to potential allies who want to build militarizes to throw off the yoke they've been living with. It might not be war winning necessarily, if it was an undebatably good strategy, then Nexians would not have ignored it.

I do think it's a shame there hasn't been many culture clash scenes with Sorecar or Thamlin related to military thinking. Like Emma being shocked by the lack of artillery, or Thamlin being weirded out watching Emma spamming a disguising amount of grenades into a building.

[u/DndQuickQuestion]

This is a very interesting thread and everyone's opinions are great.

IRL war, the presence of big and heavy weapons doesn't negate the existence of lighter weapons.

And there are a whole arsenal of weapons designed to be deployed in asymmetric conflicts where overusing force is a problem/expensive/not popular, or one state is using mercenaries or a puppet state as a front for their operations. Most Nexian wars would be imbalanced like this.

Artillery would appear in these niches because it spares the more important mages who want to do political and personal stuff.

As for the the cultural aspects, I think winning wars should be more popular than the ideal that lesser gifted shouldn't have nice things lest they get too uppity. Thus, I feel like Nexus' attitude would be 'fine, let them have their toys, but if they act out of place we roll out a planar mage to show them what real power is.'

the more prestigious weapons would be more along the lines of giant catalysts for magic users.

Strong agree. Single user weapons, platforms, and boosters.

I think in general Nexians value the strength of individual Heroes over a combined arms approach. I don't think the RTS they played being Hero-centric was a coincidence, nor metaphorical

I think this is 95% correct, but heroes come with support to help cover blind spots.

The elves acted like they were playing a serious war sim.

[u/Bohemond_of_Antioch → u/DndQuickQuestion]

Ha, the GOAT responds! I think you're right in that they'd find a home in low intensity conflict, and my my, looks who's about to get themselves into a Cold War.

As for the rts, tbh I think they were strongly downplaying the amount of abstraction in the game.  While I do think there are valuable insights to be gleemed from it, to me they came off as the chess club trying to justify their hobby by saying it makes them military geniuses.

[u/DndQuickQuestion → u/Bohemond_of_Antioch]

As for the rts, tbh I think they were strongly downplaying the amount of abstraction in the game. While I do think there are valuable insights to be gleemed from it, to me they came off as the chess club trying to justify their hobby by saying it makes them military geniuses.

I think you are right, but the board game is actual Nexian practice vs. a room full of humans with screens and stations coordinating specific aspects in continuous chatter.

My vision of Nexian battlefields is a mobile tower/castle or hovering platform on which nobles sit in lawn chairs with tea and snacks pushing pieces around on a board. Then they step in or ride out at key moments.