The PAX Preview's Frogboy displayed in his Dev Journal of Stardock's Elemental: War of Magic were pretty impressive to say the least. Among the many things to catch my attention was the screen-capture of the (Sovereign's Spell Research System.)
As a fan of trading-card games (TCG's) in real-life, the fact they have chosen to represent spells using a 'card' style representation instead of a generic icon makes me curious and leads to a few questions...
I'm curious how deep this concept will go into the game's mechanics, will it be purely cosmetic, or, could it have the potential to rival a system (within game) such as that employed in EA's 'Battleforge'?
With games of Elemental involving up to 32 factions, in essence a persistent world of sorts is being created, a game-state that potentially may last for months of real-life gaming time. This would allow for some serious spell-trading to be conducted - and indeed could form a pretty intense type of power-play within the game. Withholding or hoarding certain spells which you've managed to monopolise, and trading on spells which are no longer useful, or won't pose a threat to weaker nations or city-states. Combine this with Elemental's modding capabilities and role-playing game elements and potentially Stardock could create a truly persistent Sovereign character for each player - which transcends individual games played, retains achievements, and theoretically could maintain a magic base of 'spells acquired' from which they can take a certain number of magics into the start of each game with them...
Consider they could also treat technologies in a similar way, or store a user-designed army unit with all its customisation as a single type of 'card' for easy reference as a template in future games etc and you've got yourself a virtual-TCG.
I'm really enthusiastic about this concept, however it turns out, I'm sure it will be intriguing. With the popularity of games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! their must be a significant player base of gamers who understand and enjoy the TCG dynamic if employed well.
What do you think? Would this be a horrible take on how YOU see Elemental, or could you see this working?
