I wanted to say 2 things (good and bad).

1) I didn't like any Civ games before Civ 5 and this new one is actually enjoyable. They got rid of many annoying things... and the new city state and culture systems are very good. The combat system is much better, but I feel like its not as sophisticated as games like Panzer General (which is somewhere between 15-20 years old...). The game runs fine on my system, but my system is pretty beefy (except the intro video is all messed up for people with xFire and SLi).

2) I have read the Civ 5 forums every day since launch and there have been many many complaints about the game. Now I would imagine more people bought Civ 5 than Elemental, so maybe the percentage of people who are dissatisfied is much lower. My conclusion is that Civ 5 has many of the same problems as Elemental did at launch, or at least similar problems... but the difference is that Civ 5 had about 50% of its stuff working perfectly and 50% needing lots of improvement. This allowed people to overlook the flaws and focus on the positive, while Elemental probably didn't have much that was actually perfect and fun all by itself.

add to that the elimination of city health, Cultural growth based off of cultural buildings and not religious buildings, the ability to persue a cultural victory with only 3-5 cities, new rules for domination victory, ranged attacks, more detailed diplomacy.....all fun improvement IMHO

need I go on?

Nah, the problem in Elemental is that most of the choices are obvious, and/or don't matter.

Sure, you CAN use shortbows over longbows. There's no reason to do so.

You CAN make squads of 1 instead of bigger ones. Again, there's basically no reason to do so.

You can pick the earth direct damage spell over the fire direct damage spell, but once you know what kind of shards you have within reach the decision is obvious and there's a right and wrong answer.

You can pick swords over hammers, but one of them is clearly better then the other.

Really, a lot of the decisions are like the ones in WoW talent trees. Sure, you CAN take the survivability talent over the DPS one, but if you're a PvE player you're wrong for doing it. There's an absolute right answer and everything else is wrong. It's a fake choice, and one where experienced players don't actually have any choice at all.

With the magic system changes in 1.1, it looks like Elemental is heading in the direction of giving meaningful choice instead of the illusion of choice. Once that happens it will be a much better game.

I am skipping this one until they have a Complete version in a couple of years.  I was very disappointed with Civ IV until BTS.  I am also not upgrading my system or replacing it until a few more years pass.

I have Civ 5, and currently I can't play because for some reason, the game crashes at exactly 15 min mark.

But like Elemenetal, it will be patched thus I am waiting.

Thats it. You just nailed it. The main problem with elemental, that it is merely the promise of a great game, but not actually a great game yet. Hell, some might not even find it fun in its current state.

In a sense Elemental reminds me of the epic failure called "Master of Orion 3". MOO3 wanted to be more than awesome as well. I totally fell for the hype. Lived on the tidbits of info i managed to extract from their dev blogs. Weeped when the game was delayed. Cried when they announced the feature cuts and was disgusted when they finally released the game. In a sense it was pretty much like Elemental is now. An unfinished game, rushed out the door.

The only thing giving me some hope is the fact, that SD has a decent track record when it comes to fixing / maintaining its games, so I'm kinda sure that Elemental will become a decent game one day. I'm just not sure I will care by the time they finally get there.

Wait, you're saying I'm bad for raiding as a subtlety rogue in the past? =D

Zaniness aside, that's the key flaw in Elemental.  If you have a choice, it's a meaningless one.  Either the other "options" are greatly better/inferior or a direct lateral move.

Well, we will have to disagree then.  Sure, we have tactical combat, but the poor AI doesn't even get a chance to attack before I first attack autowin.  As it has been mentioned above, unlike Civ 5, Elemental separates units from buildings in construction, so you lose choices there.  Elemental doesn't let you get heroes that are useful past turn 100, it doesn't let you get magic that works differently than a bow, it doesn't let you have sovereigns that don't suicide-kill themselve, it doesn't let you take advantage of dynasties beyond simple hero recruitment or have interesting choices when customizing your units, it lacks integrated modding beyond editing maps and some broken faction stats, and on and on.  Civilization let's you build units or buildings, focus on diplomacy, culture, science, war, expansion, economy, and due to time restrictions, you actually have to choose between those options, and that's about it.  So I see far less strategic choices in a standard game of Elemental.  In fact, one of the problems in Elemental is that it makes gullible/inept/new players think there are too many choices to make as to how you're going to play.

If you're looking to complain about Civ 5, there are other places you can do that. There's no need for it here.