In a quest to take out a bandit camp, I had to fight 2 tactical battles.  I noticed the second was much slower than the first.

My performance is usually really good. I saw the perf suddenly tank after I successfully completed my first research item. The game went from very smooth, to unplayable. It wasn't a slow degredation, however. The save game I made just after this happened does not load, either, just loops the animated background while trying to load.

Without any sort of hardware or system info, we can't really help you.

See https://forums.elementalgame.com/364285

DxDiag: http://pastebin.com/m9zfYwUv

I'm having the same problem. Also my intro screen is split. Half the background stuff is on the left side. The other half is in the middle with Yellow lines cutting through the center. It does in during the ANSI movie at the start as well.

Not sure if it's related but I run in 16 bit gfx on my desktop cause it seems to help improve preformace. Elemental always gives me the warning that it's a 32 bit gfx game when it starts. But I've never had issues like this with it in the other builds.

I am getting the same thing.  Here is my dxdiag:  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9163928/DxDiag.txt