I bought Elemental a few days ago and I finished twice since then. I love MoM and I really like Elemental, although sometimes it is quite annoying, which are mainly due to bad/non-existent polishing. Lets say, when I am surprised 50 % of the time it is positive and 50 % is negative.

These are all issues I encountered while playing 1.08.

Positive surprises:

- Sane AI: I earthquaked my opponent out of all his cities, finally I got the volcano spell, I used it and next round I get the information that this faction has left to oppose me, I won! This was just awesome.

- nice small things: -5 points "you killed my spouse" in relations screen.

Consistency:

-Feedback mechanism in some ways they are awesome like perceived value, relations points + for x, - for y, etc. but in some parts and ways it is completely missing:

* points "you won you got 75 points" WTF!? I mean why? And what is the max? Is this space invaders or a freaking awesome 4X game with a zillion ways to win and lose?

*Movement, why isn't there a path shown? This at least would show me, when my troops on the strategic map tend on crossing enemy territory, how far the actually can walk etc. Why do you obscure that information? (Is the pathfinding algorithm that cpu intensive / buggy? It certainly has some problems.)

*It is just there an obscure, there is one really big bug (see below) all the other times it just did nothing or I didn't realize it... Also I found no way to see how it is calculated, so I could get at least a basic understanding.

-Quests, I realized a hated the quest thingie and I mean I liked the idea, but while playing it is just annoying to me. I thought about that and it dawned on me, maybe I am wrong, but the Quests actually BREAK the atmosphere due to the design! You see the whole game has a clear and consistent interface, but the quest screens are: dark, full screen, dialog buttons look also different etc. There could be many reasons for that, but since you have a working gui system, you should be able to put instead of the current system. Right now, it looks just like another game to me, I guess I am not the only one.

Bugs:

-The earthquake spell isn't seen as an attack, even when I use it more then ten times on every city of the opponent and I am the last opponent on the map and also the only one visible near his cities? (The same goes for the flood spell).

-The AI just sends wave after wave of soldiers into my archers without even coming into melee range. I don't have a problem with strong archers, but maybe you should "hardcode" some army relations, e.g., min 30 % archers... cause I was way into the game and he had only melee units and he got killed over and over again. This at least could provide a quick fix until you get a decent AI that calculates proper counters.

- If the player is a "tactical genius" (with the current AI + balancing), e.g., killing an army with a combat value of 800 with a army with 400 or so without getting a scratch, he should have WAY EASIER chances getting a peace treaty (+ points for relations).

-Morale, there was only one battle, where morale played a part, yet it was pretty haunting (I reloaded and tried again with different army setup). I attacked with a balanced force, yet my morale was like 5 or 10,  well, I couldn't find out why. Yet, the problem was I nearly killed about 70 to 80 % of the enemy (in both occassions), but that didn't help me, cause all my troops panicked and couldn't finish of the rest, I could have waited to see my people die although I mean my troops, where totally winning but they all panic? At least let them run away and not get slaughtered SLOWLY by a bunch of smurfs that just lost nearly all their friends.

-The rat quest was broken at least once. (I had the rat, but moving to the humble inn did trigger nothing.)

-Path finding algo sending my troops into enemy territory.

-AI ignoring sometimes my territory and when I talk to them, I can't tell to "get off my lawn". This also seems to happen, when they wander on they border and the city influence expands, there was one guy who appeared to be trapped in my territory due to this.

Suggestions:

- In the relations the player should get credit for killing the enemy leader (respect) in battle. Also when winning against great odds - this should be easy since the values are calculated anyway and the modifiers for relations are already existing.

-Perceived value... Some treaties are just 10 or 100 times more "expensive" to me than to the other party, especially with peace and non-aggression treaties. I just reduced the hugest opponents whole army to the half of its size in 10 to 20 turns, but the one guy with 3 cities thinks his non-aggression treaty is way more valuable than mine... vice-versa would make more sense. (Also a ingame feedback on the values would be interesting.)

-Resolve Automatically should offer different calculations for different tactical suggestions: stand fast & assault. ( 2 or 3 algos should be sufficent) Cause I had archer+melee troop armies that didn't get a scratch when I played myself, but had medium loses when calculated, I guess the AI sent the melee troops into battle.

so, hope that helps.