movies, Movies, and MORE MOVIES!
Flavor movies, don't leave them out
Elemental Forums
One thing I like in these types of games are event movies. Little three to four second movies that pop up when you have a semi unique event happen. Like a new born to the family, or a child's death, or a storm at sea sinks a ship, or a dragon raids a town, or an undead army rises from the site of a great battle of the past. There are all kinds of things in Elemental that could trigger events and as such trigger event movies. These little cut scene movies add a Ton of Flavor to any game. There's always a few guidelines some Devs forget though when adding these flavor movies.
1) There should be LOTS of different Movies.
2) The player should be able to "click" or otherwise skip the Movie if they so chose.
3) Always include a option in the "Settings" to turn the Movies off entirely. After 50 or 60 times the player can get tired of watching even the coolest 4 second Movie. Also these Movies can slow performance on some machines.
Again I can't stress enough how much FLAVOR these types of little touches add to 4X games or games in general. Empire Total War has a movie when two of your Spies duel. Sadly though none of the other events have movies. This is a bad thing to do. Either have a bunch of event movies, or don't have any at all. Don't get Lazy and only have one like Empire Total War. If time is a factor then only do a few event Movies and add more later in a patch or expansion.
Hehehe My fault for not considering those details when chosing nickname. 
