Please open your debug.err file in notepad, and link the contents into a post here via pastebin. This will give us some technical information that can help troubleshoot your problem.

The file can be found in My Documents\My Games\Elemental

Be sure to copy the debug immediately after the error occurs; if you start the game again, the debug log will be erased and recreated for the new session.

as  I wrote in another thread, if you run Win7 or Vista try to run the game as administrator. worked for me

This is EXACTLY what happens to me!

After rebooting, it seemed to work again so I downgraded a couple of graphic options and turned off the intro sequence, figuring that might help.

Ever since I did that, I get a crash to my desktop when I try to start the game. I get the dragon splash page, and then right when the intro would normally start, I get one of those "Do you want to send this error to Microsoft" things, and the game crashes back to desktop.

Here's the pastebin:

http://pastebin.ca/1924794

It's very weird. The first time I tried running it, it seemed to work at first. I was designing my sovereign, and the game slowed down and finally just stopped. I had to pop out to my desktop and close it. Then when I tried to run it again, I got the black screen...the splash page, the music, but just a black screen. After rebooting, it seemed to work again, but changing a few options meant I had to close it and restart for it to take effect.

And now I get this crash. Every...time...

I have been looking forward to this game for months now. It's really frustrating. Please help. Thanks.