It may very well have to do with my older NVIDIA video drivers, but when I click on the different Sovereigns the boxes are blank or in some case they have a mis colored cape silhouet.

Pastebin would not accept your default error log?  I needed to cut it into two..

http://pastebin.com/Jta0DWkw

http://pastebin.com/SFzgaz13

After creating the 2nd entry it appears to dislike something in this chunk of txt..

DebugMessage:  LoadCoreXMLData finished
DebugMessage:  Create setup screens.
Debug Message:  Started Load Game XML Thread
DebugMessage:  LoadGameXMLData
DebugMessage:  No string tables in C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\Elemental\Data\English\*.tips

When I started the actual game the entire main screen (accept for menu) was white.   I saved, changed res and restarted the game and it refused to restart 800mb ram (task manager). 

http://pastebin.com/nkQ5fbiS

 Then I opened to EXE manually, instead of through impulse, and it allowed me to start loading but never started after 15 minutes.

DebugMessage:  Set mouse.
DebugMessage:  Set update timer.
DebugMessage:  Popup Manager Update: Unhiding FullScreenBink
DebugMessage:  Popup Manager Update: Unhiding LoadWnd
Debug Message:  LOAD GAME: Loading Quick Data
Debug Message:  Finished Load Game XML Thread
<last log entry>

Even though this notebook overheats and shuts down with any new non-supported NVIDIA drivers I am going to give it a shot and see if things work "fine".