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.

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

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?

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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

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

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. 

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

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?