Okay, long time lurker, not quite first time commentator.

One thing that's a huge design point is the interactions between resources, production, and traits.

In most 4x games, traits impact the ease of access to a particular resource- and resources might be population growth, gold, research, mana, food, etc.

In elemental, the devs are talking about having a lot of different types of resources.  I don't think I'm terribly keen on that, and I'd like to explain why.

One thing I've seen in several games is traits which improve access to a particular resource- say, gold for example, but then what can be done with that resource is fairly limited- i.e. you may produce 20% more gold than your competitors, but in order to do anything with that excess gold, it has to be "converted" to production, and that conversion (rush build) may cost 3:1 or 4:1 exchange rate.  Additional complexity comes in when a single resource is required for multiple aspects of empire management, but every one of those aspects is still "capped" by limited access to other resources.

I'd like to see a model with fewer resources, but each resource having direct impact on one aspect of your empire- so, producing food directly impacts population growth, mana crystals impacts magical research/casting, mining impacts unit production, wood impacts building production, etc.  If each resource ties directly to a specific aspect of gameplay, and you avoid "conversion" functions, or requiring multiple resources for an aspect of gameplay, you avoid dilution of trait impact (hey I have lots of gold, but I don't have enough wood, so my gold means squat to me!), and things remain relatively easy to understand. 

If the resources -> empire aspects can be reasonably mapped, traits impacting resource access can be reasonably understood, and a player can go about picking traits which enhance his playstyle, and enjoy his game.

Of course, this leads in to a discussion of playstyles.

Let's see how many play styles I can enumerate-  

Warmonger-  To hell with diplomacy, this player wants to dominate via military campaign

Builder -  You've all seen him- this player wants to build every city improvement, and create a few mega-cities which then pump out whatever he wants (research, military units, etc) to win.

Expansionist- this player builds tons of small cities, and attempts to win via the might of many!

Researcher- This player wants to win by racing up the technology (in this case spell research) tree.

Diplomatic- Not many games support this player, but a few allow a player to truly go far by manipulating politics.  Setting other players against each other, and helping insure that *all* the other sides get hurt when they go to war with each other, he maintains enough of an empire to swoop in after the others have weakened each other.

Golddigger- The player who thinks pumping out more money will give him a substantial advantage. I really hate this one.  Gold is needed to do everything, so making more gold looks like a viable play approach, but between diminishing returns, conversion rates, and caps due to other resources, this frequently turns out to be a red herring approach.

In general, folks are going to want to pick traits which impact their playstyle-  a builder is far more likely to pick bonuses which make it easier for him to build city improvements than he is to pick a trait which improves his units' combat effectiveness.  Hopefully it will be reasonably easy to discern which playstyle or playstyles a trait will be conducive to.

Cheers

   Ikarius