I've not tried Elemental for a few versions although I've been taking the updates when offered. After using Impulse to 'verify' I have a good installation, running the game looks good at first until I get to the 'choose sovereign' screen. It has no images at all (should it?) and no sovereigns to pick, so I click the button to create one, as there's nothing else I can do. The empty boxes of the 'choose' screen and for a second I'm looking at an Elemental fullscreen backdrop picture, then crash to desktop with no error displayed.

The debug file is http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1265481/Elemental/choose-sov-crash-debug.txt

No doubt I've done something silly so suggestions for what to look at are welcome!