What I especially like about Elemental

Played a few sessions of Elemental and noticed that they were very different during the early game. This is because the challenges facing you differ a lot depending on what resources you are missing, what kind of characters show up, what neighbors you have, if there are monsters nearby, and so on. I like this a lot and makes the game fun and challenging, you have to think of new and different ways to progress. Some examples:

- In one session I was cornered on a peaceful penninsula (not tiny but too small for my taste) but with no source of metal, stopping me from building a boat.  Had a choice of attacking my neighbor to get out, or trade with him for metal at a rediculous cost! Entering a pact was actually not enough, because his city was completely blocking the path. (Can't move into the actual cities even with non-agression pact, perhaps this will be fixed, or it is an intentional feature.) Finally gathered money to pay for the metal and got out.

- Another session was radically different, I had lots of space to expand but also many monsters threatening. So the start was slow but steady, with no neighbors in sight until my kingdom was quite large. Also had extreme difficulty finding a spouse.

- Third session I hade a neighbor who wanted the same city spots, turned out into a race to get them. Would probably had excalated into an early war but I didn't finish this session.

Also, the game is vary stable on my old computer. Some bug-fixing and balancing is needed to make the game is really great. But this is as expected during the first weeks of a release. I've seen much worse stability and balance in similar games, even months after release.