Wish this poll was made sticky, and or that more people would vote!  800 people is a very small sample size atm.

When are you going to make the game not terrible? I ask this seriously - I read the patch notes hoping there'd be fixes. The UI is awful - which is a substantial step up from the abomination it was earlier in (apparently now pay-for) beta, but it still presumes someone already knows what they're doing (and I love Civilization, so I'm not exactly in the dark on most of the basics here); in which case, why have a UI at all? They can memorize keyboard shortcuts from some fansite! This is a basic design failure that makes beginning the game a non-starter. I don't need a Baby's First Videogame dialog, but maybe something that doesn't presume I am on the dev team would be nice. Valve has a Friends and Family test - they sit down friends and family and have them play their game in development, with no coaching, and take extensive notes. I can't help but think "struggling with basic tasks" wouldn't scream at you guys from such an encounter.

Someone suggested the campaign as a bit of a tutorial; I can only presume that this is a joke and the punchline is me. Found a city, check. Build a farm, check. Next quest objective? Nothing. Maybe I need to grow my city? So about 50 turns or so later of nothing, I attack the little spider (not the big one, the little one) with the three peasents and champions/heroes/Soverign+scribe+farmer and get wiped out. Turns out he has 0 attack. Maybe equipping him with a 1 damage weapon since it's the VERY FIRST MISSION EVER might be a great safety railing?

I enjoyed GalCiv 2. I enjoyed SOSE even though the game amounts to GET A CAP SHIP AND GO (Entrenchment didn't change that for me). I enjoyed Demigod, even though it took months of patches for you guys to figure out the save function (favor point purchase glitch?). What I read before launch read that combat in this is the same - BUILD MEAT AND GO - I think you missed a lot of feedback in the beta by postponing bug fixes (which I could understand if you were adding/removing functionality that might obviate the need for bugs fixed, but then you posted that it takes one dev a half day to bugfix - uhhhh, large swaths of beta testing/feedback rendered inert as a cost on one hand, 4 hours * 1 dev time as the countercost... I read that post as a self-slap in the face that didn't register). Good luck on your next endeavor, but I can't talk myself into talking my friends into your games, and I've now drifted into wondering if I should buy the next game that will sit underplayed on my Impulse launcher.

I voted "I don't like it". Even though, since I spent good money on it, I really, really want to.

I come back to the game once every day, but sadly, after the first ten turns, the UI and the general ugliness of the game get to me. Someone needs to explain to me why some of the buttons are just so TINY.

One of the main issues with Stardock games-- GalCiv and Elemental-- is that their backstories just aren't very good. Forget about the ridiculous names. Take a quick comparison between Elemental's incomprehensible hodgepodge of fantasy tropes and the utterly compelling story behind Alpha Centauri. Or compare the quotes used in these two games. The difference in the quality of writing is so stark, it's embarassing. GalCiv was a better attempt, but it still had a weaker story than Master of Orion.

Basically, whoever is conceptualising Elemental's lore isn't a very good fantasy writer. I know they got Random House in on the picture with some book, which I haven't read, so perhaps that book is a lot better than whatever is in the game, but right now, as a game player and avid fantasy and sci-fi reader, I have to say this is C-grade stuff!

I voted disappointed. Not because of bugs, I haven't encountered any serious ones yet. Not because of the UI, even thoughit is a little rough in some places and needs some work, it is sufficient for now. Not because of the graphics or art style, I pretty much like it the way it is. Not because of the setting, I applaud Stardock for doing something different (I still would like some more different factions, but I'm sure mods and expansions will add plenty). Not even because of the campaign, even though it is apparently more of a tutorial but at the same time does not play anything close to how the sandbox is played. It is because the heart of the game, the sandbox mode, just doesn't feel compelling or immersive. I haven't been as excited about a game as I was about Elemental for years, and I absolutely hated that I had to wait until yesterday before I could play it. But I think it is very telling that I don't feel terribly compelled to start the game today, while usually when I get a new game the first few days I play it just about every opportunity I get.

My expectations may have been way to high. When I first learned about Elemental back in 2008, how it was going to make you the ruler of a nation in a RPG world, I thought it sounded amazing. I imagined little woodland outposts, charming rural villages, busytowns and beautiful cities, all with populations you had to keep happy. I expected to be dealing with scheming nobles, mad wizards and invading hordes, and dealing with them through force, diplomacy or magic. I thought of great armies clashing total war style, with dragons soaring overhead, heroes leading the charge and sovereigns casting epic spells from across the field.

I have been closely following the development since then, and adjusted my expectations through the process. But still I was very exited. Even when the combat system was changed to 'old school' turn based. As long as the main game was interesting enough that wouldn't bother me so much. When I didn't see much of what I was hoping for in the final stages of the beta, I started to get worried. But Stardock assured us that their internal build was way more fun, that we would see when we got the game.

Unfortunately what we got is a game where you build the same generic city after city, so you can build a strong economy, so you can build a strong military, and then proceed directly towards the victory condition of you choice. Armies consist of two types of units, melee units armed with the best weapons and armor you can afford, and ranged units, with the occasional hero or monster for support. The magic spellbooks are pretty much identical, the only thing guiding which direct damage spells to use is what shard you happen to find.

The above is pretty harsh, as there are a lot of things to like in the game. I like designing your own troops (although you need to be able to make more interesting choices). I like the art style and graphics (seriously, kudos for those). I don't mind the economic system, although it needs balancing (and I'll probably use a mod that makes it more settlers like when such a thing is made). There are a lot of things to like and the game has a lot of potential, but right now it doesn't live up to expectations.

Well said, Satrhan.  I voted "I liked it" because I do, I even love parts of it.  So while I didn't vote disappointed, I agree with everything else you said.  What your paragraph describes is epic and what I was hoping for.  In it's current state, the game isn't there (yet).

I've been a bit disappointed and I am usually very resilient and pain-resistant in terms of design deficits when it comes to TBS games simply because there are not enough of those out there these days. That disappointment however is just a result of stacking frustrations occurring during playing the campaign - I did not play the main game yet because I sincerely hoped for some epic story.

In my opinion it would have been better to introduce a pure tutorial map which would also explain every aspect of the game, alot players these days are ad-hoc learners who learn through doing the things themselves instead of reading about it. The campaign part should have been separated and being richer. The story should have been a bit more arcing. Instead of disconnected and loosely connected stages it would have been better to stick to mini-arcs.

The UI was one of my biggest gripes, while it does what it should in most areas I feel that in general had a clunky, inconsistent and the whole opposite of sleek feel to it. For once it does not hurt to have more highlighting. Knowing what you point at is in my opinion very important, the second important thing is a response. I want to know that my click actually just was acknowledged visually (think of buttons). I should also have the possibility to actually cancel any action in progress - this is why tactical combat confused the hell out of me. Sometimes the whole combat would be stuck with me accidentally clicking elsewhere and getting an unexpected response which sometimes ended with units running into their deaths without me being able to prevent it at all, another time I couldn't click anywhere or getting any response out of it so I had to press Next Turn/Auto-Resolve or in case the battle seemed to be totally stuck - with neither Auto-Resolve or Next Turn doing anything: Kill the game via task manager. Since we are already at the tactical combat section - not being able to quit and reload seems to be odd. Seriously most of the time I battled more with the UI than with monsters.

Last but not least I feel that tactical combat is very...simple. Which can be a good and bad thing altogether. I expected to be able to pre-position my units and have a little more flow - in the end I found auto-resolve just sufficient and ALOT less hassle.

Now this won't turn me into a fanatic tinfoil-hatting "I trusted you for 7 years and now this!" hater. Lord knows I've played games which I paid more for and were alot more disappointing and a real trust-killer. I just hope that in case GC3 is coming that alot lessons will be learned from here.

I simply don't.

i don't like it at all.

There isn't one single feature which makes this game better than Master of Magic or Age of Wonders 2. So its very existence is mostly meaningless.

Two: Unlike the mentioned games, this one has an active dev team behind it, and is highly moddable by the public.

I voted disappointed with it.

Actually  the more the days goes by the more i'm fearing it may never become what we all hoped it would be.

So many things gone wrong that it would take months of development to fix them. And by fixing i don't mean squashing bugs but actually making the game fun (champions, magic, city building, you know it all by now).

I surely hope stardock will manage it but i can't help fearing that a majour overhaul may came with a paid expansion. Or not at all if sales figures will be too low.

Crossing fingers here anyhow. Like many others my stance is "i want to like this game, really"

I voted that I like it, recommend it, simply because it seems I needed to vote to see the results. Having now played it I really wish I had voted disappointed instead (or even hate it, only reason not to is optimism for the future). The game isn't finished, and I don't mean the stability bugs - they will presumably be fixed fairly quickly, in a matter of weeks I imagine. Way more concerning is that there just isn't a strategy game in there right now.

Strategy games are about multitudes of choices between different options each of which are viable but have strengths and weaknesses in different situations. Balance is so bad that most choices only have one right answer once you know the game. The AI is practically non existant, the mechanics are broken, many areas of so called interest have no affect by late game (eg magic, champions, even resources become pointless, you either have more than you can use of a resource or none), etc. It might count as a sandbox game and can be fun for the first few hours but once you realise how things work and that there is only one optimum choice in each situation you realise it isn't a strategy game.

Compare Elemental with something like Civilization 4. That is the standard for strategy games now - tautly balanced choices and tradeoffs between different paths, an economy and gameplay that scale from early game to late game, competent AI. Graph Elemental vs Civ on these points and Elemental is the line that you can barely see at the bottom of the graph

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure fixing this is a multi-month problem because what needs to be done is to actually MAKE a game out of all this. It isn't a matter of fixing some problems, the core mechanics need complete rethinking so that tradeoffs such as large cities vs many small towns, champions vs normal military, magic vs tech, rushing vs digging in and teching up, etc are all balanced. I'm not even sure that there is anyone at Stardock capable of doing this sort of complex multi-mechanic balancing but I live in hope...

ATM it's a piece of coal and I voted disappointed because I was expecting a rough cut diamond.