I think I will prefer Civ5 over Elemental, mostly because of the 1-unit-per-hex rule, which will remove the "stack of doom" problem from the Civ series (so it won't be just another Civ game, it will be significantly different), and because IMO Elemental lacks depth, diversity and excitement in its current state.

I'm hoping so as well. BTW I haven't thanked you and the 1.4 team for all the AoW I been playing. Great work, awesome game

That's how I felt about Civ4, for the most part, and I think that sentiment is "left over" from Civ3 -> Civ4, where not a lot changed and I wasn't crazy about some of the changes. 

If you have followed Civ5 much, there are several significant changes that should make it feel very fresh - I think they have broken out of the "Madden Cycle", so to speak.  Those changes may be positive for some and negative for others, but either way Civ5 will almost definitely not feel too much like Civ4.

Civ3 was awesome compared to Civ2, and for me at least, I think Civ5 is going to be awesome compared to Civ4.

The other thing is that other than being turn-based empire builders, they don't have a lot in common.  Fantasy vs. Historical, the appeal is different to different people.  I think Elemental has a lot of potential and will be a good game one day, but I'm afraid the release is a crippling blow to the game in the grand scheme of things, in terms of its popularity and sales.

I've also been playing Civ since day one.  Civ 3 was my favorite.  4 never worked all that well for me, and that is with all the patching and expansions.  I do not cheat or use cheats, yet my game would randomly lock up or my cities would stop growing completely.  Civ 4 was a huge disappointment to me.  Civ 5 would require of me to spend money on a new computer.  No thank you. 

What I want from Elemental is the variety that Civ has.  I already like a lot of the gameplay and original ideas of Elemental.  Just more of everything.  Resources, monster, spells, variety and each faction be unique from their buildings to their tech and such.  The dynasty aspect of the game is a blast, and I would love to see more depth to it with the many factions already in the game.  Kinda like the final version of GC2 where everyone and everything was unique and worked well.

Yeah he played 100 hours of elemental, got bored and asked for a refund which he got then cam back to the frums to cause shit....(this from another board minus the shit part.)

You don't care if a company starts disclosing their users' purchases and history on a public forum? Are you seriously defending that? Just because a company's game has seen an unsuccessful launch doesn't mean it somehow becomes okay for them to do that. 

Anyway, clearly it was a faux-pas because my post was deleted and the post I was quoting has now been edited by the employee, and that happened like 15 minutes ago, I don't even know how and why you are quoting it.

I find it intriguing that you feel not much changed between Civ3 and Civ4.

To my feel Civ3 was a worse 'game' than Civ2 because it actively tried to squeeze all the fun out of the things I liked about Civ. There was nothing to be gained by finding islands or whole empty continents to colonise, or even building a big connected empire because the massive corruption thumped you in the head any time you tried anything interesting. Settle an exposed settlement on the other side of an enemy to grab a nice clump of resources, fine you can have the resources but don't expect that settlement to ever do anything, you'll be lucky if it ever has 2 production, etc.

I know why Civ3 did this, they were trying to balance things and remove some supposed exploits that had been in Civ2 but in the process they destroyed the game for me. Civ4 rethought all this and came up with much more fun and balance mechanics to achieve the same goals without destroying the fun.

All IMO of course!

The problem with Elemental right now for me is, even once the major stability and AI are fixed, it's just... too.. simple. For a 4x game it lacks strategic depth. There isn't much to do as a builder - city building is very simplistic and shallow, as is the economic model. It's very rare that you have to make choices or trade offs, because it's fairly obvious what the best thing to do is. After playing one or two games, you can figure out the best strategy to follow, then it's just a matter of optimisation with each attempt.

As for Civ V, it remains to be seen what it adds to the series. If it's just a dumbed down version of Civ IV I'd give it miss. But Civ IV was so good and added so much to the gameplay, I have some faith that Firaxis are doing more than just "polishing the previous one a bit and slapping on a new number". We'll have to wait and see.

Once 1.1 comes out, I bet Stardock will add a lot more strategic complexity to make the game interesting and have replay value. But until then, I'd be passing the time with games that have more depth.

I Was so hoping you were gone, guess not yet. 

You add nothing so are basically nothing, have a great life.

Yeah, I am. Especially if you come back and start trashing the company's product on their own forums. Stardock can do whatever they want here and I've seen companies do worse when it was required.

Look, I've seen gaming communities fall apart because of people bitching and posting stuff. Stardock has every right to moderate and reveal if someone, in fact, doesn't currently own the game.

There is certainly a line that I wouldn't cross in defending that but it's not a black and white issues. What Stardock did is acceptable.

If you want to be a shit disturber, go elseware. Plain and simple.

I haven't even got through all the content for Civ IV yet. That's why I bought Elemental. Civ V will be there when I'm ready  for it. Besides, I have all of the other Stardock developed games. I wanted this one too. Just didn't want it in the condition it came in. I did ask for a refund but changed my mind. I'm going to hang on and see how this plays out. In the meantime I'll keep playing Civ IV and DDO. Somebody let me know when this game is finished.