First of all, I want to thank the Stardock team for a quick update today.  You guys really are the best.  I'm feeling much better about this game coming together.

Anyway, I just want to inform you about continuing performance issues.  Thankfully, it seems like the graphical artifacting is gone... although the blurry graphics with advanced lighting is still there.  However the performance is even worse.  After playing for a few turns and especially after tactical battles, the framerate drops to a crawl.

Here's my options:

and my debug.err file:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9170386/debug.err

Also some suggestions:

- Creatures right now aren't really differentiated from each other.  I know that later on, the higher level creatures get special abilities, but I think for the sake of both differentiation and challenge, every creature should have some ability, even if it's a passive ability.  For example, in MOM, common swordsmen had the "large shield" ability which gave them bonus vs. ranged attack.  In Elemental for example, even low level spiders should have a web ability... at varying levels of effectiveness as they go up in level.  Higher levels can get poison bites or something like that.  Units really should get passive abilities depending on characteristics also, like resistance to magic, resistance to a certain type of magic, defense against certain types of attacks, etc....This is just an example of course, but right now it's not fun when creatures are essentially the same except for stats.  Also why don't creatures/units have a "resistance" stat for resistance to magical attacks?

- Battlefields should be bigger, at least the size of MOM's.  Right now they are too small.  Also the sides start too close together.

- Magic is WAY too powerful in tactical combat.  I liked how MOM did it where you had casting skill and available mana.  The way it is now, essense is your casting skill and effects only max mana.  I would love to see mana collected as a resource which limits how much you can cast in battle and otherwise.  Right now there isn't enough regulating your use of magic, even in the strategic game.  That's probably too much for a quick fix though... but something making magic more balanced and fun would be great.  Also should the sovereign be able to cast multiple spells per turn in tactical combat?

- Will there be any global enchantments that effect the entire globe like in MOM (and AoW)?  Such things are like wonders in CIV and really would suck if not in Elemental.