Let's play: Elemental: War of Magic! (Image heavy thread.)
And when I said image heavy, I ment it. :P
Elemental Forums
Let's play Elemental: War of Magic on the official forums! 
(To show all my noobitude at the game and people who are curious, how the game is in it's current state. Also, I'm bored.)
I do like the title screen. Though, with 8 buttons to press, it really doesn't fulfill Jon's idea of simplified yet.
We play on a small map, called Stardockia.
Our custom Sovereign CariTwelf is a tracker (gives one more move on the map) and attuned (gives +2 mana each turn) both those can't be seen. We take the mobility spellbook for fun teleporting later on, the combat one just because and max strength and constitution, to be able to inflict some pain later on. I also chose Adventurer for even more moving around.
I also choose Tarth as my race, for obvious reasons. I also make sure to set every AI to Hard (two steps above the normal difficulty). Yes, you have to set each AI seperatly, or else only the first one will be different and the other AIs will be still on normal. I don't play on ridiculous, cause I'm a big wussy. 
That is my starting position, not very good, but at least one shard is there to get some mana later on.
As usual, Janusk joins us in the next turn. He is a champion, that is, an unit that can level up and equip items which we can buy from the item shop.
I'm building a beacon of hope, which gives us prestige which increases the rate at which people come to the city. Marked with a big red ! is fertile land on which I'll build a farm. We need the food of the farm to be able to build houses, which are needed increase the number of people in the city. People are needed to build buildings and are also the main source of income.
I visit the shop to buy a pair of Travelling boots, to further increase my movement. Later on we will be able to buy much more stuff from that shop, if we have researched it and have the gold to spare. Capitalism, Ho!
While exploring the lands I meet Relias, sovereign of Altar. While he may sound nice, he always declares war against me, so don't be rused by his nice appearance.
After some more exploring, I meet my first wandering champion, who I immediatly recruit for 70 gildar. While he's not cheap, he gives 1 tech knowledge per turn, which allows me to jumpstart my research.
I immediatly start to research military, to get some basic equipment, since I didn't choose any in the beginning. In 15 turns, I'll have something to fight with besides my bare hands.
Meanwhile glorious Frogosia has built it's first workshop and has now started on a hut, to increase it's capacity for people and thus our gildar income.
We also had gotten a quest from an Inn to clear out some rats, which Janusk promptly did, we now have to return to the Inn to get our reward.
I wasn't careful, so I was suprised by a roaming wolf. Though CariTwelf survived with only 1 hp left, she got enough experience points to advance a level. I put all of them in Intelligence, since casters need a high Int score to be able to teleport later on.
Lucky, with 50 Gildar you can buy quite some armour.
And we also married Janusk, in the hope of many spellcasting babies in the future.
Frogosia levels up after reaching 15 population. I choose the Tech bonus, since having better stuff is much more important then being able to research the few spells I want fast.
I start to build a pioneer to get me another city soon and also build a study, to increase my research. I want weapons so I can show Altar, why red wasn't the best colour to get.
I also finished the rat quest, which gave me about 100 gildar, which is clearly imba so early in the game. As soon as we've finished researching that equipment, we will buy some very good stuff for our Queen and her husband.
The study gets finished, which doubles my research output, a second study gets planned.
Ah, the joy of military research breakthroughs. Next I start researching Magic, so I'll be able to harvest the power of the shard next to me.
What a women most loves to do. Shopping for armour and weapons. Capitalism, ho!
CariTwelf goes from an useless, 3 attack, 0 defense sovereign to a mean 13 attack, 6 defense battle queen with only a bit over 100 gold spent. I also spend some gold to get Janusk some new stuff. Interestingly, in the current version, men have 2 more cloaks available then female chars, which is not suprising, given that men usually are more worried about their looks then women.
Janusk is with 9 attack, 5 defense only slightly weaker.
I take a slight detour to kill a similar wolf as before, not a scratch on me now and the wolf was dead in 2 hits. We're prepared.
Janusk got attacked by a bear. He killed him easily with his spear and leveled up. I increased his strength and constitution a bit, to make him a little less emberassing to be married to a warrior queen.
Time to die, Lord Relias!
Defending the city is his spouse with an impressive attack of 11 and an even more impressive cleavage.
We kill her easily. We not only gained a new city, but also enough exp to level CariTwelf and Janusk up. I put the 3 points gained in Int for CariTwelf and Const for Janusk respectively.
The war is now over before it even has begun. My research champion in the north will kill Altar's pioneer before it can escape. I'll heal up my pair of super units and then will march towards the final enemy city.
While waiting with my units in the conquered city to heal them up, I researched Shard Harvesting, which allows me to build an air shard, which will give me 2 mana per turn. Stockpiling mana, for future teleporting uses. I start researching civilian techs now, so I will be able to build up those newly aqcuired cities.
I also finished building an arcane laboratory, so I can now start to research new spells.
Teleport, oh you sweet teleport, instant moving in your own territory for only 16 mana. Although it needs at least 19 intelligence to be able to cast it. It allows you to defend a large amount of cities with only a small army, since you can be anywhere, anytime.
And the last enemy city got conquered by my... pioneer? Oh well, I set my pioneer some turns ago to those tasty resource places and forgot about him, and he promtly walked in to the undefended enemy city and claimed it for me. Yay.
6 Gildar to spare him? I don't think so!
Bears? No match for my new, 10 attack, 6 defense, units.
Lookie, what do we have here? (This city suddenly appeared in the fog of war, even though I hadn't rediscovered that area.)
Oh, he found some armour, how cute.
Too bad for him, that my armour is better.
Guess he should have been willing to give me more then just 6 gold.
An overview over my land. 4 cities now. The fourth is a bit to the north and with it I should be easily able to control the whole peninsula now.
What my cities are doing.
And that's it for today. I rushed one AI, because it just started too close to me (and it tried to settle on my resources and it declared war on me in my last game) and to be honest, there is not much the AI could have done against it. The item shop coupled with some luck in finding gildar on the map is just too powerful. Also, the equipment technology gives you such an advantage, thanks to it's 9 attack oak spear and the set of padded armour, that any enemy who doesn't research that first and equips its unit with it immediatly, is just dead.
But not all hope is lost for the AI. There are still 4 players left that I haven't even met yet and since they'll had some time to build up now (it's turn 42 now) we will see what happens to them. Soon.
Muahaha.
PS. this is my first let's play here. So any criticism is welcome. Pictures too big? Too small? Too heavy? Too much text or not enough? Not enough snark or too much? Does it need more lulz? Feel free to shoot. 
). So, first we'll start to build up our cities a bit to fix the money problem. Since in Elemental, people = money, we just need to make sure all cities are growing, that should solve our problem fast. Also, we should research a diplomacy technology very soon: trading. Trading gives caravans, which are only slightly overpowered. Each caravan arriving in a city gives that city a 10% boost in gildar production.
