The UI needs to tell players what the terrain art (e.g. the 'fill color' stuff and vector effects like the mountain ranges vs. the new swampy-looking stuff) they see on the cloth map means in plain language.

I can appreciate the need to limit the types of objects that show pop-ups on a mouseover, but I really hope the devs will remember that Microsoft-style What's This help was a really good end-user-self-teaching sort of idea. Even if Elemental ships with a good tutorial campaign, which would be a first for Stardock, the UI alone should be able to help players learn the game quickly.