Elemental is a diamond in the rough, the early release left an unfinished feel to the game.
First, lack of tutorial, after about 20 + hours there are things I am still learning to control and make use of, an in game tutorial would be helpful. The Campaign is OK, but does not give you a real feel for the game in the sandbox mode. Which is the Bread and Butter to a game like this. The Campaign is relatively short and took maybe 6 - 7 hours to complete, to what was a really anticlimactic ending.
Sandbox mode, is quick to get into, few quick choices from again a civilization type screens and boom you are playing. However, the HUD (display) is lacking in clear direction so it takes a few minutes to figure out how to do what you need to do. Once you get past a few tries as you get a feel for everything works, it is not a bad game.
However, the game crashes frequently even at version 1.06. Typically during battle, so if you don't save frequently it could be a disaster. The game on smaller maps seem to do better than play on bigger maps. I suspect there is memory leak somewhere and eventually you just run out of memory and the game crashes.
With that I hope Stardock keeps at this until it is polished, and working as it should be, it would be a shame to think I wasted 50$ on what amounts to be a Beta Release.