The video tutorials are pretty good -- they don't cover everything yet, but I'm sure that new ones will be released as time goes on.  Here's a link to the first one, and the others are listed on the same page.  Anything the videos don't cover, just ask about here.

http://www.screencast.com/users/draginol/folders/Default/media/f0f0207e-c9bf-4464-82a1-20ef87d179c2

 One thing to remember: you can left-click on an enemy unit and look at it.  The number on the shield is its combat rating.  If your rating is lower or even very close to it, you may not want to attack.

The truth is that even us old-time turn-based strategy game veterans are just learning how to play, and there isn't an adequate guide (yet), and the interface isn't the easiest to use or understand.  Be patient because in my esperience, Stardock is really good at improving their games over time.  I guarantee that the game you are playing right now is far different than the game you will be playing a month or two from now. 

What sorts of things are you having problems with?

I'll help if I can:

Basic rundown when starting on a random map:

Sov is usually placed in a decent city location, there will be fertile ground and a few other resources in the immediate vicinity. Click on your leader and in the bottom left you should see a few buttons on the action menu, one of these will found your kingdom by constructing the first city. This is the only city your leader will be able to construct. From this point forward you'll have to train pioneers to build new cities.

Once the city is built it will start expanding a ring of influence over the land, any resource tiles that fall under this ring can be built on. Click on the resource tile and choose the build option in the lower left corner to claim a resource.

Most buildings need materials, gold, or a combination of both. Housing requires food.

When you build on a resource it will link to the closest town, adding to the production of that resource for the town. You'll find while researching that most of the buildings you can make in a town are % modifiers rather than flat bonuses to something. So a granary increases food production 25% rather than +X food. Because of this you'll want to take note of what your city provides before building improvements inside. Production information is found in the bottom right info bar when you've got a city selected.

If your city is producing a large base of research, that one should get schools and universities to improve on it. Farming towns get granaries and whatnot. Cities go up in level when they reach new population levels. When you select a city you'll see a bar in the bottom right with a house on it, this bar slowly fills based on your prestige level (goblet). If your city has +3 prestige you'll gain 3 citizens a turn up to the housing cap. More houses = more space for people, once the bar fills the city grows, you get to choose a bonus and gain access to better buildings.

While building up your first town, you'll want to send your leader around looting bags and such around the map, you'll also want to recruit some NPCs if you run across them as they can help boost your economy a bit at the start. To recruit an NPC just walk up to them and click, you'll see a speech bubble if you can afford them, if you cant there will be an X over it. If you get an NPC of the opposite sex you can actually marry them to start a dynasty. Some will turn you down if your reputation is too low, wandering around leveling up and doing quests will help with that.

If your leader took the summoning book I recommend starting research on summoned creatures first, they can really help augment your early exploration and keep your leader from getting killed. Throw in one attack spell for good measure. If you went with a combat leader he should have decent enough equipment to start out ok.

Once your research unlocks some better gear you can bring NPCs to the towns and buy items from the shop. You can also find and be gifted items from exploring and completing quests. It's a good idea to keep your NPCs in good gear for exploring, as you complete research in the adventuring tree the world will become a more dangerous place.

Research:

Green = Civilization techs, generally these unlock improvements for your cities to construct and enhance your resource gathering capability.

Red = Warfare tree, these techs are focused on better armaments for you troops as well as training structures and larger unit sizes and HP bonuses.

Blue = Magic tree, these techs improve unit essence (mana), allow you to build harvesting structures on elemental shards, and unlock magic equipment for use on soldiers and NPCS.

Orange = Adventuring tree, these can uncover new resources on the map for you, allow access to better NPCS, and allow access to better quests and goodie bags on the map.

Purple = Diplomacy tree, this tree unlocks new treaties you can use with other nations, special training resources that let you recruit all kinds of fantastic allies, and trading/caravans (you'll want this one early on because you can caravan between your own cities for more income)

Lets see, some other things that threw me off initially. You cast spells on the world map by using the button by the mana bar when you've got a caster selected. You cannot cast from within a city. Trading items between heroes is done via a button in the actions tab. Your sov and his/her spouse need to be on the same tile to make babies. They become units at age 20 I believe, they'll appear in your capital and can be equipped like any other NPC. They typically share traits of the parents so choose your spouse appropriately. Mine is an assassin and now I've got a family of assassins running around, kinda nifty.

If you've got more specific questions i'll try to help

Well, before Stardock nuked (i.e. "deleted") my last post, elmo3 posted a link I am finding helpful: https://forums.elementalgame.com/391280

And cwg009 mentioned that we have a pre-release version of the game.  Perhaps also waiting a little bit for the release patch might help as well... at least that's what I am going to do.

But I agree completely, an in-game tutorial would be nice.  I love turn-based strategy and this game looks like it has a lot of depth... I guess it's just a matter of going somewhere else outside of the game to learn to play?

As Miramous always says, “I see more than urgency in your eyes boy.”

I found it much easier to start a sandbox game. After playing some in sandbox mode the campaign is easier to understand.

Seconded.

does my suggestion here seem viable? perhaps some enterprising mod maker could actually make a fleshed out tutorial of sorts using the mod tools?

https://forums.elementalgame.com/391949

With stardock games, (actually with most games) I typically go through and click on every button on the UI just to see what it does the first time out. Most tutorials are simply wastes of time showing me things that are in every "insert genre" game. My first game had like 200 turns go by before I sort of got the hang of what I was doing. By then I'd made alot of mistakes, but learned alot too. The second game went much smoother (except where the AI super warmachine wiped everyone out by the 100th turn including me).

That method isnt for everyone, but thats how I do things. Figured it couldn't hurt to post

Dear god, yes! It needs a tutorial! People saying 'watch the video tutorials' or 'check the forums', no! When I play a game, I would like the game to teach me how to play, not have to check websites in order to learn. The game was telling me that I should build a farm, I don't see it in the build page, I don't see it with my farmer selected, so I just forget about it.

Come back to the forums, as I like to check them out anyway, and suddenly I know how to build a farm.

Really, add a tutorial into the campaign. That's often what they are there for in TBS games. Popups tat tell you 'right, you have to do this, here is how to do it' and a checkbox to disable tutorial tips. Bonus points if you design two tutorials, one for people who have not played a TBS before which covers all the basics, and one for people who know all this, and just want to know the specifics for Elemental. As god knows what else I am missing out on, my first views of the game have been rather frustrating, and certainly not something I would recommend to my friends, as I would end up with them either frustrated or I would be spending most of my time telling them how to do things.

Well, I'm not going raaaaaaaaaaaaage like the other people. But I wouldn't mind some hand holding for the $60 I spent on this >.>

The "training manual" PDF recommends: "We encourage new players to start with the Campaign mode, which will introduce you to the world of Elemental, the dynamics of the game, and take you on an epic adventure to restore the world."

All the Campaign mode did for me was stick me on a beach north of a shipwreck I could not apparently reach, and that's it.  Zero direction.

First impressions and all that.

Yes, it's wonderful that there are forums to peruse and videos to watch and other resources to help with learning the game, but the game's launch version should stand on its own.  I think a lot of folks who have "pre-experienced" the game through following it on these forums and elsewhere and/or participating in any alpha/beta phase of testing may just not understand how awkward the game may seem to those who have not had those experiences.

Having come to the game fresh without watching the video tutorials, I went straight into the campaign expecting a tutorial. While the first mission does take it in steps it is also quite easy to get lost. I think the main reason for this is that the UI does not track in an easy way what I am meant to be doing. My current task doesn't seem to be listed anywhere except in a sort of transmission log. Looking in quests (which is where I would expect it to be) is completely empty.

The dialogs are also very keen to give me tasks to do but not actually tell me how to do them. The buy some stuff task is a good example. It took me literally 5 minutes to find out how to equip things to my avatar as well. I just couldn't find the button.

The pre-combat summary screen is also counter intuitive. At first glance I thought the screen was giving me a summary of my army vs. their army but instead is comparing individual units. I head into battle thinking I am going to win and get royally kicked until I realised this on my second attempt.

Leveling up in the campaign is also quite confusing. I have a list of stats which I've never seen before and asked to make a decision on what to select. This isn't an issue if you play a custom game first I suppose since the create avatar screen tells you what each of them do but it would be handy to have tooltips when you hover over the stats in the level up dialog.

It was at this point I gave up and went on to the forums to find a tutorial. The main reason I got fed up was the way the game was introducing new concepts without actually explaining how they work and what to do. It assumes to a certain extent you either know where the buttons are to do these tasks or are willing to search the interface for them.

That's what happened to me!  I am surprised that did not come out in the beta.  I write business apps for a living and years ago I met Alan Cooper who is a god when it comes to design; he says in his book, 'The Inmates are Running the Asylum' that, "... the costs of badly designed software are incalculable, robbing us of time, customer loyalty, competitive advantage and opportunity."  While I believe the UI here certainly works if you know what you are doing, it fails in a cognitive walkthrough (can someone who has not been taught still figure out what to do).  I am not suggestion that the devs dumb down the game, and after watching the videos I am excited again about the game, but for the sake of it succeeding as more than a niche product for the hardcore 4X players, I hope they implement a better tutorial system for the campaign game.  When I get off work I need to download the Day0 patch and see if it relieves some of the frustrations I had trying to play last night with the pre-release version (I did not know it was a pre-release version until today).