Both summoning and training monsters as it stands is horrible.

     My main problem with summoning is the book of summoning, which mid game lets you summon a bear??? The book of summoning should be available much sooner, maybe to the exclusion of other spellbooks. Secondly Giants are way too good compared to elementals. Make them slightly tougher and switch them with cheaper minor elementals, or something.

     Elemental has a wealth of unique monsters and it determined to waste them. the four monsters per empire is a wasteful system, instead monsters should come from rare tiles like spider lairs that spawn randomly. Everything from rock spiders too ogres should be in the game, though monsters would be devided into neutral good and evil, with  only the corresponding empire able to summon good and evil. Also each "lair" would have mutiple levels of a monster like a rock spiderling lair that lets you summon spiderlings and giant spiders. You would be limited to what you could buy though by the level of a tech research with 4 levels, replacing the 4 researches now implemented. for example an ogre lair would require lv 2 research to create young ogres and lv4 to create ogres. While darklings, spiderlngs and wolves would require lv1. Lastly, remove the option to create a random monster as a prestige bonus, its a useless attempt to allow players to have fun with monsters.