First off: hi! I just picked up Elemental this weekend, and pulled an all-nighter last night playing through what I assume was the entire campaign mode (I'll get to that in a minute), followed immediately by starting up the much deeper and cooler... whatever the fancy name for non-campaign-mode is. It seems pretty fun so far! Barring a few issues, naturally, or I wouldn't be here.

Anyway, before I get to some suggestions that other people have probably made already, let me go ahead and get my thoughts on the Campaign out of the way. First, I updated to the latest version before I started playing, but the game is still buggy as hell. I mention this here because, for whatever reason, it seems to be worse in campaign mode than in normal play. The main thing is that, quite often, my units will seemingly become entirely unable to act. I'll tell somebody to move, or hit the "end turn" button, and nothing happens--it seems to happen more often when I have units auto-exploring, though that's all hindsight really. In any case, the solution is to go through all my units and hit their "skip turn" actions independently. This has yet to fail, but it's an annoyance to have to go through.

The other thing about the Campaign is that a couple of the scripted events are really, really screwy. Every time I passed near the enchanted gate, I got the message that the way was blocked--this includes the several times I passed by it after I had the gate opened. The worst part, though, is that I beat general what's-his-face--which game narration assured me was the final battle--and, uh, nothing happened. His unit vanished, my good little Sovereign leveled up and everything, but I didn't get any "A winner is you" narrative rewards, and haven't been able to locate any other plot advancements. I assume therefore that this was a glitch, rather than an oversight.

Anyway, enough about the campaign; let's get on to my list of demands suggested improvements for the main game.

1) For faction creation, I really don't think being able to create female units is something I should have to pay for. I could maybe see the justification as being "it makes non-male armies more unique," but that should be a stylistic/narrative choice, not a tactical one. If the Queen herself is stepping out to lead her armies in battle, I feel that "Property X was a better investment" is a pretty poor reason for that army to be composed entirely of men.

2) On that subject, if there's a way to design a female unit intentionally, other than hitting the randomize button until I can't wear pants anymore, it's not particularly obvious. And if there actually isn't a gender toggle switch somewhere, then shame on you.

3) On that subject, I would very much like it if my female Sovereign--and any other female characters--could wear pants, please. I know I have the "greaves" option, but they cost resources and aren't all that attractive. Skirts/kilts for the guys would be nice, too, by the by.

4) A little more functionality when it comes to text entry would be really nice. Standard keyboard shortcuts for selecting, undoing, copying and pasting would be nice, but at the very least I'd like to be able to use the up and down arrow keys. Deleting the standard Faction/Sovereign history and typing in your own is kind of a pain when your choices for correcting typos are either "hit left arrow 95 times" or "navigate with the kind-of annoying mouse." It breaks the flow, and such.

5) In the process of starting my first campaign, I created a Sovereign first, then saved her, then realized "ooh, faction creation" and went back to the main screen to do that. But then when I went back to start the game proper, my saved Sovereign was nowhere to be found. Not sure why that would be.

6) I'm not sure what the standards are for a faction showing up in your "Foreign Relations" screen, but they're pretty weird standards. I can freely contact a King (Emperor?) whose territory I apparently stepped into once, though none of his cities show up on my map and I have no idea where he is, but the King who set up shop right down the road from my capital? No dice; I have to walk somebody up to him before we can have a chat. Rather odd, that.

7) I know I'm going to replace it anyway, but it's still a little weird that no matter what profession I pick for my Sovereign their backstory has them written up as a miner. Maybe she was an Assassin who specialized in pickaxes? Anyway: vignettes can be a fun read, and I think it would be keen if the default history changed with whatever choices you made during Sovereign creation.

I have a couple of more ideas, but I've only just thought of them and want to double-check to make sure that they're actually absent before bringing them up. Anyway, thanks for your time, and for the game--it looks like it has a lot of fun potential, which I hope it lives up to.

Later!

--TB

Edit: On a forum note, could there be a "disable smilies in this post" option? Emoticons are a text-friendly substitute for facial expression and tone of voice, but god are the pictures annoying!

Double edit: Oh bugger, lookit that, there's a sticky thread with all the previous suggestions listed alongside guidelines for new ones. Pardon me while I wallow in my own guilt. >< Argh... I guess I'll blame it on the all-nighter and worry about fixing it later, after I've had a nice nap.