I finally convinced myself to give Civ V a go last week, and have racked up quite a few hours on it. For obvious reasons one of the first things that occurred to me were the similarities to Elemental. So I thought I would compare what both of them do right and wrong. I am huge Elemental fan but Civilization is superior in a lot of ways, and I come to the conclusion that it is mostly because they are building upon an established and tested game while Elemental's mechanics are new and untried. Keep in mind that Civ does have a lot of problems in my opinion, but unless they were directly comparable to Elemental I didn't bring them up here. So here's to FE!

Trade and Resources

I have always loved the trade system in Civ. The luxury resources are a extremely well designed way to get players to interact on commercial basis. It is no exaggeration to say that historically entire kingdoms have existed solely because of international trade. The lack of anything similar in Elemental is a huge drawback.

The strategic resource system in both games is almost exactly the same early game, you find Horses and Metal. Like WOM in CIV you rarely trade these resources, because of balance reasons. Except in Civ you don't have resource spawning techs like in Elemental, and in my opinion the game is better for it. However late game in Civ you unlock new resources as the game progresses. This allows early resource advantages a chance to shift, so getting a bad resource spawn in one age my be rectified later in the game.

Resources and city placement is much more important in Civ then Elemental. You can't get away with placing cities anywhere you want in CIV because of happiness. Placing cities near resources, coasts, and resources is extremely important. In Elemental city spam is pretty much the way to go. Every City will increase resource production without any negative effects. Also most resource are only useful early game, and are negligible late game. Food, Mines, and Shards being the only exception. With metal having no benefit outside of massing troops.

You can't form overtime trade treaties in Elemental, or really have any reason to trade for anything but metal.

Conclusion: Civ tools Elemental here. The mechanics in Civ are deep, important, and interesting while the ones in Elemental are shallow and mostly pointless. The importance and variability of resources makes every game unique in Civ, but all Elemental games are pretty much the same.

City States/ Mini Factions

In my opinion and others the minor faction is WOM are pretty much pointless and will probably see change eventually so I won't even bother to write about them, except to say they don't do much.

In Civ City States have both good and bad points. The Good: They produce units that scale, and allow players to interact with something other then other players by providing rewards to befriending them or targets to attack without starting WWIII. The Bad: I found myself ignoring them. You can't really interact with them until you befriend them by completing missions, ie kill barbarians or another city. Basically you just end up bribing them with money in order to get the resources they have, or conquer them. I would prefer a system where you could trade with them normally instead of the do missions, kill us, or ignore us system. The mission don't offer alot of variability, and are sometimes impossible(ie the target barbs are on the other side of another player). It's interesting that they have a mission system while Elemental doesn't.....

Conclusion: Both systems need improvement.

Combat

Elemental has a tactical battle system, and designable units while CIV does not, yet combat in Civ is still more fun and strategic. In elemental all units in combat act the exact same, and you just equip them with better armor and weapons. All that really matters is armor to dmg ratio. Not alot of strategy except to rush up weapon tech and mass. In Civ V there were alot of changes to combat, and I love them. The removal of stacking makes unit placement important. Combined with ranged units and terrain effects there is alot of strategic depth. While teching is important proper unit placement and taking advantage of terrain can allow players to overcome greater numbers or tech disadvantages. Combat and terrain change over time as units evolve through the ages in CIv, in Elemental they stay the same.

Conclusion: The combat system in Elemental needs Strategic depth, even beyond the weapon system revealed for FE. Even the best tactical combat won't be able to compete with Civ, because Civ has so much strategic depth to combat now.

Barbarians / Monsters

Elemental has a lot more variance in monsters than Civ. Barbarians are just normal units that spawn from camps and attack players. They also last all game unlike Barbs. While I consider monsters to be to similar and UP late game to show their true potential, I expect that Elemental will rock Civ here in FE. That said from a game play perspective Barbs do do some things better then Elemental. Since cities don't grow in size in Civ, barbs running around destroying improvements is really annoying. Barbs can also capture the workers that you have out building improvements. Combined this makes  Barbs really annoying, but in a good way. The only downside to this is that really early game it takes around 18 turns to produce a worker and since you cannot build buildings and units at the same time losing a worker is a huge deal. In Elemental monsters are much more threatening because they can kill cities, unlike in Civ. It's all or nothing. Barbs are more gradual they run amok and do damage to cities, they don't destroy them completely or die hopelessly. I prefer this system because in Elemental all you do is build a few basic units in a city and you are monster proof, no thought required. However in Civ it is lame that barbs can't attack cities, especially empty recently founded ones.

Conclusion: Elemental has a better system because of the range of monsters and mechanics, but could pick up some stuff from Civ.

Faction Diversity

Not a lot in either game. Civilization has a advantage just because of unique units buts it's a small one. Unique units don't last long and usually change much. Neither game has teams that play significantly different then others.

Conclusion: About the same.

Economy

Civilization has a much better economy. Your juggling every resource all game, unlike in WoM where most are pointless and the product of some sort of spam. 

Conclusion: Elemental's economy needs balanced.

AI

In both games the basic AI's are all right. Elemental's however has more weaknesses. It is broken in regards to diplomacy. Both the games also have a problem with combat. The trade-off of all the strategic depth added to combat in Civ is that the AI is to stupid to do it properly. A good player can trounce an AI with superior numbers and equal tech easily. The Elemental AI also sucks at combat it runs at you stupidly, always allowing you first attack and does not design units well. Diplomacy is just so much better in Civ because of the many more options and a smarter diplo AI.

Conlcusion: If Elemental's diplo AI and system gets fixed then they will be equal. With a a good combat AI it would be better.