What follows are the same failures I experienced on three different gaming systems that have carried over from Elemental that absolutely MUST be resolved.  Frankly I'm perplexed that there is endless discussion about neat gameplay ideas versus genuine polish that still needs to happen to make this a highly adopted (and profitable) game.

1.  Failed Starts - On normal difficulty mode I've started too many games in a row where: (A.) the creatures have armies, or at least high attack/def stats, in a short amount of time and start conquering my cities.  (B.) other factions (AIs) already have curiously large expanding borders within a few turns.  (C.) or both.

2.  Overlapping Events - This is absolutely maddening and unacceptable design.  Why do popup style events get themselves so out of order?  Example:  I walk up to fight some wolves on turn 3, but it borders another undiscovered faction.  Instead of completing the battle I initiated and am focused on, it interrupts with dialogue with the new faction.  Same thing happens with the tech discovery tree popping up at the wrong time, and any other game event that generates an interrupt or popup UI.  

For #1, is the game sometimes not starting on the difficulty the user chose (I'm doing normal for now)?  Is it starting the player too late in the game (i.e. the AI has a head start)?  Can there not be a global lockout for creatures attacking cities so early in the game?  It's very crushing to the player to be a few minutes into a game and already losing a precious second city or a sovereign fight to amp'd up creatures.  It doesn't foster a strong urge to finish the game, much less start a new one.

As for #2, these two games seem to not queue up events and let the user handle them in the order they rightfully occurred.  This is a very frustrating user experience and it seems to possibly induce buggy behavior from the game at times.  Suddenly the game "won't play right" or at best it causes me to be distracted from an event i was about to focus on and handle something else out of order.

Edit:

There seems to be a resounding battle cry for "the world is dangerous" and I think the community and devs have lost their way here.  I've seen too many games come out where the game designers fall in love with a "vision" or a certain mechanic being central to the game.  This is a famous mistake which gaming lectures at conferences, conventions, etc, warn about and is being ignored.

I see thread after thread on here sweating the small stuff, or details, or what mods they would add, etc, when core attributes (like #1 and #2) are flat ignored.  I'm glad Stardock is building a game for the community to enjoy but what is really happening here?  Is the smaller niche crowd being catered to?  Or is Stardock making a truly world class balanced game with mass appeal?