Dominion 3 is pretty solid

hmm.. interesting. Although I feel a little guilty about discussing direct competitors on a Stardock forum.

(I don't really consider FFH as a competitor - just a filler before Elemental is in release worthy shape).

Excellent info! This will keep me interested for a while until Elemental is in better shape (I got bored of ffh2 a while ago already, but it's what you expect to happen after a good 250 to 300 hours of gameplay).

I looked but didn't see mention of the FFH2 modmod Rise of Erebus in this thread.  If you like FFH2 you'll likely like RoE.

Some of the 'larger' RoE games (in terms of # of foes, map size, etc.) sometimes (but not always) take a relatively long time while waiting for the AIs to move, but other than that it's really a great modmod.  It has some changes that are really nice (like you can build all improvements without waiting for the associated tech, you just don't get all the benefits until the tech is researched).  It adds some pretty substantial changes to FFH2.

I've been playing RoE while waiting while Elemental's current paid beta makes the game stable (1.06 is getting there) and for major balancing (filling in missing spells, removing overpowered 'features', making the items which make Elemental unique -- like shards and essence -- as important as they should be, etc.) which will likely take a month or 2.  Elemental has great potential and will get there eventually, but the release is by all reasonable definitions a (paid) beta (major patches for stability which invalidate saves, major balancing to gameplay, major changes in the UI, etc.).

Damn, I didn't even know Planetfall existed.  I just dl'd and clicked on a few random sound files........  I'll, uh, be back in a week or two.  Ask Brad to rewrite the tactical combat system while I'm gone.

If you've never played FfH2, it is without a doubt "worth it." Admittedly it does have some limitations - you'll know you're playing a Civ4 mod and not a game designed from scratch to be a fantasy TBS, the Civ4 engine prevents it from ever being as awesome as Elemental has the potential to be. But within those limitations, FfH2 is polished, (relatively) balanced, and packed with tons of content and replayability, all areas where Elemental still has a lot of room to improve. Go play the hell out of FfH2, and when you come back Elemental will have seen 17 more patches, and will be so much more awesome we won't recognize it as the same game we're playing now.

Then again, if you have cash to spare you may as well do both - try Elemental, and if you get more than your share of bugs/crashes, or maybe the gameplay imbalances limit your replayability, you can always lose yourself for a few weeks in FfH2 before coming back here to try the latest patch.

Also going to put in another recommendation for Dominions 3, but it is a bit.. different. It's not a city-builder like Civ4 or Elemental, it has much greater emphasis on tactical battles and much less emphasis on, well, everything else - i.e. economy and empire management is minimal at best. But it has a great free demo, relatively extensive (you can play as many full games as you like, you just have limited faction/map choices and can only research about half the spells, if I recall correctly), so you may as well try it.

By the way FfH2's AI is pretty decent for a TBS game, and certainly better than Elemental's. It doesn't match up to base Civ4's, no, but base Civ4's AI is pretty much god tier for the genre at this point, after 2 expansions and a series of huge patches to work on it.