I have the same problem. During the creation of the game map, Elemental crashes.
I played around to the different resolution, which avatar and country i selected. When the resolution was set to the lowest value and the game was set to run in window mode, then for some reason i could get Elemental to create the map, but the game stopped before the first turn was over, i tried to build a workshop and then Elemental crashed. There wasn't any notice about what the problem could be.
When i tried to run the game in fullscreen mode, the creation of the map, of the world, made Elemental crash before I got to see the initial screen after the loading screen.
When i tried to run the game in Window mode, no matter what resolution, i got the initial screen after the loading screen of the creation of the Elemental world.
During the while running in window mode, i kept checking the memory, but it didnt look like there was a problem, the memory never got above 600 mb, but i never got to the 2. turn, Elemental crashed every time i tried to build a workshop.
OS: Windows 7 (fully updated)
Debug file:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6700313/debug%20low%20resolution.err
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6700313/debug2%20highest%20resolution.err