Did you read the quote I addressed? "All expectations and sequels and such aside" was part of the quote. What part of that did you not understand? 

To reiterate: I'm not a fanboy of either SD or Firaxis. But if you name Civ V "Startegy Game 1" and Elemental 1.1 "Strategy Game 2" and development would stop on both, no one can say that Strategy Game 2 is even close to the other title. Elemental 1.1 is still WIP, no matter how awesome it'll become. That's not fanboyism, that's just realism.

Also, you should learn to respect game developers a bit more. It's a tough business and the guys at Firaxis try their best just like the guys at SD. They tried to steer Civ towards a new direction, and it didn't quite pan out the way everyone hoped it would.

Finally, I agree with a couple of posters above that in the long run Elemental is going to blow Civ V out of the water.

I personally didn't experience any significant performance issues when it first came out, but you're right that it did have its share of bugs.  Nevertheless, Civ IV remains one the best strategy games ever made, and by all accounts Civ 5 is an inferior follow-up.

Civ V should of been built on everything they learnt from the development and post release support of Civ IV but it wasn't. That's why it's terrible, they didn't bring forward what they did right and they didn't learn from their mistakes.

As for elemental, mistakes have been made, stardock have taken our outcry of complaints and suggestions on board and are doing their best to work the game into something better

I mean really read some of Brad's posts, they've made huge sacrifices to give us a better game and there's nothing that's makeing them do that other than a personal commitment to their fan base.

How many other companies would do that? Further more how many companies have done absolutely nothing and just said "you got what you paid for"?

Even though Elemental ended up on that dreaded list it gotted the least amount of votes!

That way we can say that atleast Elemental is the best of the disappointments this year

agreed, surprised and happy about this exact point.  This is the only reason why I have stuck around this long.

I don't think that is necessarily a good thing.

It surely is the most disappointing game of the decade for me. I never ever pre-ordered a game before Elemental. Well, I should have sticked with that policy. I decided to give up altogether months ago when the promised "free expansions" suspiciously became "free MICROexpansions"... Yet,  just out of curiosity, I decided to check the state of version 1.1. I'm not surprised by what I'm reading. The only vague hope that remains barely alive is that Master of Magic Mod some fans are working on, but honestly, it's too much to expect from them. The game is so plain that everything needs to be modded in, I mean Elemental doesn't even a few different races... it's honestly hopeless, and modders complain that modding options are very limited, too.

What a let down.

Also, the thing that nobody mentions is that, even if future expansions will manage to turn Elemental into a barely playable and interesting game, what we will still be missing, forever and ever, is real expansion-level content. I mean months ago from "expansions" we would have expected things like crafting, tons of new *races*, *flying* units and who knows what else. Now we need *expansions* in order to get *basic* content... is a map generator even in, at this point?

No offense intended; I agree that Civ5 is a "complete, working game with a lot of cool mechanics." It's been that since day 1, no argument here; my point was that as of 1.1, Elemental has also become a "complete, working game with a lot of cool mechanics." To me both Civ5 and Elemental are not perfect, the AI still needs a lot of work, and some game mechanics are not as fully developed as they should be, some mechanics that probably should be there are missing, and thus replayability suffers - but in both cases there are some cool aspects I enjoy, both games are perfectly playable if you have a weekend to kill. This is not intended as an insult to Civ5 (or Elemental for that matter). Also comparing how far Elemental has come since launch to Civ5, I'm more optimistic about Elemental's future, but that's speculation on my part.

My main point was that if I judge Civ5 harsher or play it less than Elemental, it's not because Civ5 is worse on its own, it's because it has a lot to live up to. Civ4:BTS is an amazing game, it's sitting right next to Civ5 on my desktop, and I can still easily play it if its successor doesn't match up. Sure, Elemental used to be considered a spiritual successor to MoM, but let's face it - it stopped being MoM2 some time ago and departed into unknown original territories, what we're playing now is definitely not a successor to MoM in the sense that Civ5 is to Civ4 or SC2 is to SC (despite how much many people would like it to be).

Don't agree at all that 1.1 is a complete game. Working, yes. Complete? No. Any game with broken/not working mechanics is not complete. End of story.

I understand if people don't like Civ5. They gutted a lot of stuff with the thought in mind that a game can have simplified mechanics without losing strategy. I hold to this idea as well, but it's debatable whether or not they succeeded. I do think a lot of the hate for Civ5 comes from long time fans who mistake complexity for strategy, and were disappointed in the switch of focus from one to the other. When you put that aside and look at what both games are trying to do, Civ5 is a success, and Elemental (at release) was one of the most horrendous failures in video game history. It's a lot better with 1.1, but it's still not a successful game. It's not even fun once you learn how to play it.

To call games like SC2 and Civ5 disappointing is just a pathetic attempt to fight off a perceived enemy. These games are some of the best released this year, and both are winning/nominated for many awards. They might not be as impactful of their predecessors, but they are universally considered great games. And before you say how dumb reviewers are, consider who has a better and more objective perspective. It's not you.

I stayed away from Elemental until version 1.1 was released, so I only have experience with the new version.  It's not perfect but the number of bugs is not outrageous compared to other new releases.  I definitely don't feel that it should be ranked #2 on the infamous list.  I say give Brad and company a chance to continue making improvements before making a hasty judgment.  I haven't enjoyed a game in this genre as much since MoM.

Believe us when we say it took a ton of effort on Stardock's part to get it that way. At release it wasn't just a bug here or there. There wasn't one system of the game that didn't have a high profile bug in it. If Elemental were being judged solely on the 1.1, it would be unfair. But based on the 1.0 version, it's pretty accurate. And that's not even where the disappointment really came in. The bugs were just extra gasoline, thrown on to the fire. Elemental fell short on many of its promised features, from the scope of tactical battles, to how fleshed out dynasties are, to how quests are to this day basically still at stage 1 of development and implementation. To be disappointed in a release as a reasonable person, you have to have been looking forward to things someone else promised in a shape or form. Stardock and Brad made a lot of promises on what Elemental would have. Some of them they didn't even fulfill, which is ok, every game does that. But the ones they did do still feel pretty incomplete as of 1.1.

I'm not sure if you're addressing anyone in particular, but I'll defend my point that Civ V is more disappointing.  

With Civ V Firaxis took one of the best game formulas (that produced it's the various Civ games) and tinkered with it enough that they lost the magic of the previous games (for the many reasons I've already posted about).  

It has absolutely nothing to do with fighting off a perceived enemy.  I would have been thrilled if both Elemental and Civ V were so good that I had a hard time deciding which to play.  Unfortunately, neither were good enough to demand my attention.  

Elemental was less finished as evidence by the massive mechanics changes it is undergoing (And will probably continue to undergo).  Civ V was more disappointing because they tossed their lineage out the window in an attempt to get simpler.  Civ V had climbed much higher and had much higher expectations to meet.  And missed them badly.  That's what makes it more disappointing.

Most disappointing does not mean worse game.  It means most disappointing game.   

I've heard this before. That was not my experience. Civ IV was far from perfect out of the box, but it had multiplayer capabilities and was playable until the end game for myself and my friends whom I played with. In fact, I played Civ IV heavily up until the last year, using expansions of course, but I didn't buy expansions to fix the game like some players and game developers/publishers seem to think is okay to do. I buy expansions to add to a game that is competent and fun already.

Unfortunately Elemental was also a great disappointment for me - any contemporary Fantasy TBS game that compares itself to MoM has to equal Dominions 3 in my book - and it didn't... here's hoping the ongoing work can bring it up to a level where I'll consider playing this instead of Dom3.  

Civ IV was a huge disappointment for me.  I played one game on Small and...there went 50 bucks.   Not as big a disappointment as when I bought Supreme Commander 1, though--I bought a $100 Nvidia GTX card and a power supply just to play Supcom.   The game ran beautifully after I upgraded my box--I just didn't like the game.   Man, that sucked.

Lol, brutal. Sorry, but I know where you're coming from with Sup Commander. I didn't invest in anything or the game but....the game was a let down to me going in with zero expectations. The magnitude of your disappointment must have registered on a seismograph somewhere.

I agree, Elemental was the biggest disappointment for me this year next to Disciples 3 and Civ 5. However there are 2 major differences for me. Disciples 3 was in development for idk how many years now and we ended up with a craptastic wannabee Kings bounty clone in the end somehow. As is typical the developer/publisher (Kalypso I think) dropped all support post-release and the community of fans (the very few left) are working on semi-legal means to patch all the current gamebreaking bugs.

Elemental I only heard about this year at a time when Civ is pretty much the only real TBS around. I was wicked excited for this and Civ 5, as I loved Civ 2+4 and was glad to have a fantasy TBS like Fall from Heaven 2 mod. I figured the future finally looked bright for TBS as Civ might finally have competition which could only improve both products overall. Unfortunately Civ 5 was easily my biggest disapointment, but I won't go into that. Elemental was disapointing for obvious reasons at release, but thankfully Stardock is working hard on remedying the situation and I am accepting the generous gift of free expansions as collateral for having to wait longer for development and trying to be patient somehow. I agree with you completely that expansions should add to a game, not patch it. I really hope the core game is fun and playable by the time we hear word of expansions. 1.1 has brought the game a long way, but I feel it still needs another huge 1.1 style patch or two for it to be held to a decent standard. I don't blame people who bought the game got disappointed and plan on shelving it for a half a year before trying it out again. It totally lacks multiplayer for one thing, and the version I saw that had 'working' multiplayer had no customization and pre-calced tac battles.

Someone comment on this please!

O.K., I'll comment...

How about we wait for more information about the expansions before we start complaining, k?

actually i meant the random map generator

Still, mtn_man has some very good points. No Crafting, flying beasties or multiplayer? Seems to me like we're still short on the gameplay systems needed to be close to the 'premier Fantasy TBS'.

Back to playing Dom3 for me, with it's far more detailed and complete fantasy TBS content, and it's multiplayer to boot (which is where it shines, AI will never duplicate the challenges, actual diplomacy, bitter defeats and rewarding victories of TBS multiplayer). Will check back in on this game in a few month's time. 

Either that, or the least well known.

No, there is not random map generator per se.  Instead we have a few dozen set land masses with randomized resources and start locations.  Take a look at ../Program Files/Stardock Games/Elemental/data/Maps

I personally like Civ V, but then I do not treat it as a war game, so the war plays minimal part for me in Civ. Plus on top of this, Civ V was released after Elemental, and it looked like really polished game compared with Elemental.

Even now, after first major patch in Civ, and 1.1 patch in Elemental, Civ V is arguably much, much better game. I play mostly exclusevely Civ, not Elemental now-a-days.

I really think Elemental should take the crown, and I question if Civ V even should be on the list because some people had really unrealistic expectation from vanilla game.

They going to fix this right? weird for a game like this not to have a random map generator

I thought MOM had this? Or was i mistaken?