I'm playing through a first game of elemental now and am having fun, but I gotta say I'm pretty clueless as what I should be doing. A few questions:
1) I successfully built a city next to a shard of ice, and then build some building on it to harvest it. I really have no idea what that means though. What benefit is there to taking over a shard?
2) City building is fun, but again I'm not sure what I should be focusing on. Should most of my money go to developing cities, or hiring a bunch of random heroes I find?
3) Can random monsters wandering around kill my cities? I've got some kind of super-golem with 60 or so attack rating wandering outside my capital. If its not going to attack my city, I figure its probably a good defense for that side of the town. 
4) There is a spell called something like "Revive Land". I tried it on some grassland, but nothing seemed to happen(except me losing essence). What exactly does this spell do? Does it turn barren(or fallen?) land into grassland?
5) When starting a game, should I focus on any particular technology? My guess is the adventuring tree is a good bet, but I'm not really sure.
6) Is there any downside to my sovereign getting killed?
7) There is a civiopedia-esque button at the top, but it doesn't actually seem to give any information. Is it broken/not ready yet, and is there any documentation in general elsewhere?