The developers have cited Fall from Heaven 2, I think. Considering that all of these features more or less were also in Gal Civ 2, I think you can expect a great deal of these making it.

I really, really want to try out FfH2. But I can't get the stupid thing to work! Maybe it's because I bought CivIV off of Impulse...

No, I bought the complete edition (or whatever it's called) that has both of the expansions with it. But for some reason the FfH2 installer can't find the BtS.exe. Even if I manually find it, it doesn't work.

It defintely works, but you need to modify where the FfH2 installs, it tries to install into Civ4\Mods folder instead of the Civ4\BTS\Mods folder as it should... if you just move those and then modify any desktop shortcuts as necessary you'll be gold... just did it this weekend on my new laptop with Civ4 complete bought via Impulse.

I liked the concepts in FfH2, including the armageddon counter, worldspells and traits. I'm sure everything could be implimented and balanced better in elemental though. Certain worldspells were really really annoying and unbalancing if you played the wrong race. Pick Scions and struggle with population and lose it against a few vampire worldspells that  give -2 pop per city, vampires were a little OP with vampire units eating population for exp, very cool mechanic and fun, nice to include but needs balance somehow, add a diplomacy penalty or limit it to necromancers, risk city destruction, uprising, limit to a single 'head vampire' type unit... etc. Another problem, overexpand early and get the rituals making the barbarians destroy everything (Mokka? fronzen goblin things each stronger than a warrior). Push the armageddon counter quickly and get the horsemen of the apocalypse dashing all over with the attack power of a dragon each. I liked the unique aspects and radically different playstyles and I played the mod many times, really liked races appearing mid game and good-evil conflicts. Although it did take me a few attempts to get into FfH2 with the complexity, and I really wanted pure magic to be more of a viable strategy... the mages were too fragile and never very powerful sadly, unless you were definately going to win anyway (and could farm exp, since mages required high levels that couldn't be bought or rushed easily. Archers were always better, anything was really. Passive support bonuses would have made them better, even in the realm of Civ4's limited combat I'm sure a few things could have been thought up.

I have to say one thing though, I don't like wandering barbarians at the start... i may be the only one but I prefer them to be in caves... at least until you've explored 1/3 of the world. Having them destroy towns long before you can defend them makes it really annoying. Losing population makes sense, losing food/wood/buildings all fine... even if certain monsters razed cities would be ok (dragons should) but not all.

Sorry for the rant, all I'm trying to say is that care needs to be taken with what to impliment. If everything is implimented then Tutorials would help it all work together, I'm sure a few fan made tutorials could be done by a late beta, but having a good stock tutorial and gradually building complexity to ease you in would help new players.

"3.  Dangerous barbs

So far in Elemental the barbarians/animals are more nuisance than challenge.  In FfH it is quite possible to lose early on to encroaching barbs.  It certainly makes the game opening more fun as opposed to the bog standard first so and so moves."

This is my biggest hope for elemental. There was nothing more I enjoyed in FFH2 than playing a marathon game with raging barbs. Of course this was slighty unbalanced for some of the civs, ie. The Clan and my personal Sidar.

OT: With the Sidar each time I got a warrior to level 6 (which is damn easy with so many Barbs) I could transform him into a Great person specialist. I remember in my first game (On Monarch/Huge/Big and Small/Marathon) with the Sidar I got swamped by Barbs from turn 200 to turn 500. I ended with 28 gret person speciallists!! Mostly sages and engies. My capital was producing 228 of my 330 beakers, while building any wonder in under 10 turns. (Which on Marathon really is fast!!)

Heh, Google pointed me here while searching source for another Elemental post I'm writing
(organic flavored monsters).

FfH2's Armageddon Counter, would fit very nicely into EWoM!  Allow creatures to rise to a powerful end-game.  Give players an opportunity to affect creature growth and power.  Increase the decision tree as to how players will deal with creatures.  Ignore budding creature colonies at your own peril!  Allow them an inch, and they'll take a mile.  Left to their own device they will grow, expand, and evolve to become an intensely powerful threat.  And, player has the option to hastena monster armageddon towards their own devious aims.  Capitalize on the choas that creatures gone wild would create.  But beware, they tend to bite the hand that feeds them.  As creature activity increases, bad ass big-bosses arrive on the scene.  Perhaps culminating in a ripping of the barrier between the living and the dead... or something to that grand affect.

shame FFH2 suffered from the flaws of Civ 4 ... got really annoying dealing with citys late game i still think elves were to hard to play since they had no siege weapons, the Armageddon counter would be really the only thing worth using. World spell would fall under a spell book. i think over all FFH2 couldn't live up to what it was meant to since it was still based on Civ 4 flaws.