I don't see orichalcum becoming less important. Yes we are developing magical options of our own, but this stuff basically auto-nixed both sombra's mind control, and does a number on changeling disguises.
There is never enough of this stuff.
It does that for individuals though (and most of our prominent individuals are protected one way or another by now), and we're reaching the point where most of our battles are going to have tens of thousands of our soldiers fighting, especially as our population balloons in the wake of our industrializing. Knightly orders are always going to have some relevancy for sure but our professional infantry core and increasingly sophisticated artillery is only going to get more and more prominent.
Further proposed uses for Orichalcum are for limited specialist roles like cannon shot.
Because hatching plans is like, a third of what this thread does and at least two thirds of the time those plans are basically pie in the sky wishlists anyway.
I'd appreciate a lot more argument over the far more impactful situation with Maretonia than immediately moving on to a new obsession. How that shakes out could easily shape our national interest for an entire generation- its a complicated situation which offers diverse opportunities where we have information to speculate.
Far more tied... really?
Here's what we know about the Yeti's, they are slavers who aren't against eating slaves. Beyond that we know nothing of their culture or whatever. Who exactly is going to say "Don't kill all the slaving cannibals and raise the kids to not be slaving cannibals"?
Also of course, there's the question of "Who is going to say that and then have the force projection to make it stick"?
Going more in depth in real world examples is basically garaunteed to result in Mod intervention so I'll just leave it at, look up "Uighur".
If you think we're going to get away with "Uighur" and that the yetis will just be content to sit around and be genocided by us, I don't think we're ever going to agree on colonial policy in the storm countries. It's hilariously easy to say 'kill all the adults and raise the children
right' but doing that
is hard without modern technologies, a decentralized population, and hostile terrain. If America couldn't do that with the Philippines, I don't see why we can casually do it with literal yetis. We didn't even sack and loot Mare-A-Thon, for all our militarism we are shrinking violets to the sort of deliberate and calculated butchery you're advocating.
Moreover, you're literally defending a policy of aggressive imperialism because you are convinced no one can call us out on it. Nevermind Alicorns or diplomatic coalitions, we don't need to give people incentive to treat us like a hostile encroaching empire, realistically any domination of Maretonia (annexation, economic dependence, protectorate, balkanization- whatever) is going to raise enough eyebrows, precisely because there's no obvious checks on the Gryphons anymore. Invading a bunch of isolationist slavers with the intention of destroying their civilization in totality is not going to look good in a world that flat out does not have the same culture and beliefs regarding colonial imperialism as ours.
