Jumping the Shark Podcast with Stardock’s Derek Paxton and Jon Shafer

Wow at an hour and a half this podcast is long.....

The new food/housing concept sounded nice. I also like the trophy idea.

NEWSSSSS, YESSS, NEWSSSS, Been sooo loonngg......  Not very informative, but gotta dig on how much love they show Stardock.  D*mn glad to have the two aboard!! Now where's that Dev. post on magic?

Nice interview and good to hear from Derek and Jon.

They really seem to love Stardock it seems.

Also, happy to hear that Derek and many people at Stardock are huge Magic the Gathering fans.

I'd love to see a little Magic the Gathering influence in E:FE if possible.

Ok, hearing that makes me want to see an Elemental spin-off  game that plays kinda like Culdcept Saga.  I think it could work.

Yeah, the idea of trophies sounds very cool. Prestige from killing powerful beasts helping the growth rate of a city.

No problem; just about all of the concepts in MoM's magic system (other then the 3-way income distribution) were lifted directly from M:tG, which had just taken off right about then.  Kind of stood out if you were a player at that time (am I dating myself again?)

By the way, I am in no way claiming that is a bad thing - the magic system of M:tG is the best I've ever seen, and it translated exceptionally well.

I still remember when I discovered MoM, I was thinking at the time exactly this : "Awesome: they took the best of Civilization and Magic: The Gathering in a game !"

Lol. I guess I didn't think that out too well.

Of course MoM was inspired by MtG! *slaps forehead*

I must be getting old. Ha ha!

tanafres, you are right. The magic system in MtG is still one of the best ever. Even after 17 1/2 years of playing, it's still horribly addicting.

 So, if E:FE is going to closely pattern MoM then we should be able to see the MtG influences as well.

Too true Jack Trowell. It's perhaps why MoM is still a great game after all these years for me and countless others.

Can't wait for the game.

Dreams about a Magic the Gathering mod...

i was playing Dualsoftheplaneswalkers 2012 on PS3 last night 2h giant (2v2)... anycase it was myself and my second controller vs derek and jon... they said they were playing alot of magic on spare time to get ideas... anycase i owned them up real nice... spanked them up using dual illusions decks... though they said it was cheating but oh well it was quite entertaining.

Wow. That's really cool to hear.

It wasn't very clear to me but I think he said that there are no population caps and that food resources only function as population growth boosters. Is that right?

Also, I really like the idea of tying different aspects of the game to each other. His example was that the trophies won from a boss monster could be used in a city to boost population growth. I like the idea of interconnecting game concepts a lot, but I get the initial impression that population growth is a non-factor. I think his idea could be further improved by adding other choices:

• trophy in a city boosts morale: while defending, the garrison gain bonus health; newly produced units gain a bit of extra health
• When a trophy is brought to a city, a new technology becomes available in the tech tree: a special project for researching the trophy. Research could uncover a new spell/building/weapon/armor/kit. It being a special project, it would take a long time to research and may require prerequisite techs.
• Let's take the trophy of the giant fire boss as an example. I think his trophy is his heart, so let's assume it is edible. The player has the choice to give portions of the heart for his champions and/or sovereign to eat. This will grant them a special ability/trait. In this case I was thinking hp regeneration per turn.

Fall from Heaven 2 sort of had trophies when you played the Doviello. They helped add culture and money to the city they were added to if you had the proper building built.

I like the idea of using the boss monster you killed for various things as mentioned above. Extra morale is a nice idea.

It'd be cool to kill a white dragon and be able to use it's scales to make cold resistant armour if you the proper building or kill a highly poisonous creature and then be able to manufacture poison tipped arrows. Lots of possibilities.