So I finally got Elemental to run on my rig last night. Word of advice to ATI owners. If you are getting a black screen -> CTD when you try to load the game, then try exiting out of ANY ATI programs running in the system tray. That was how I managed to work around the problem.
That said, I installed the 1.05 patch and played for about 2 hours last night. The game seems to be a hybrid of Civilization and King's Bounty with some magic elements thrown in. It definitely has some promise, but the biggest problem I've seen so far is that the game just isn't fun. I don't know how to explain it better than that. In civilization, the early game was always a bit slow, but there was the excitement of striking out, finding little villages to help you out, and sending out droves of cave men to beat the piss out of your neighbors. In Elemental, I feel like there is WAY too many things to find in the early game (i.e., too many "villages" with loot), which detracts from the excitement of finding anything at all (in economics, this would be called an oversupplpy problem). That, and the early enemy units seem to be ridiculously overpowered. Which make exploration downright dangerous and the possibility of an early conquest of one of the AI civ enemies a pipe dream.
With some rebalancing and tweaking, Elemental could be a great game with all the addictive goodness of civilization. But at the moment, its just . . . . . Booooooooooorriiiiing. Hopefully the later game will pick up.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. Reasonable minds can differ, and I hope you like the game.
Best
Sox