Combat:

- Building up the perfectly cursed creature and then landing an infect

- Maul. There, I said it. I like Maul. a lot. and then some.

Map:

- Spreading death (changing the map to the dead tile and corrupting shards to death shard)

- Selecting a role for a city and then selecting the best level up choice

All the other things are merely good, but these things have me rubbing my hands together in giddy expectation.

Oh, yes, it's pretty entertaining. I would be nice to see our El Presidente Sovereign, walking on streets too, should he be in the city at the moment.

Watching the evolution from base principles to final results. In essence, customizing factions and then learning how to use them well. Learning the implications of each ability, how they fit together, etc.

Note- this applies as much to flavor as mechanics. Learning how the faction wins is fun. Just learning how the result looks and feels is also fun.

Basically, Elemental's strength, is that it provides many early decisions, both in customizing sovereigns and factions, as well as where you put your cities, what resources you find, etc. and the results of each combination are interesting.

* Tactical combat. This is why I play games like this in the first place.

* Leveling and equipping heroes and sovs. RPG elements are always fun.

* Summoning units. Not sure why I like this... But when I summon a bunch of units right in the face of an enemy that just attacked me ---> Satisfaction!

Glad to see you're still thinking about the game. I haven't played in a while, but it was definitely my favourite game of the last couple of years.

Back to topic:

1) I like that there are so many different tactical and strategic possibilities. There are a lot of races and sovereigns, and they have significantly different strengths and weaknesses, which massively increases the replayability. I enjoy sitting down and thinking out what the best strategy is, bearing in mind what this nation gets cheap, what it gets expensive, any unique units or abilities. I enjoy planning how I can maximise my hero's strengths, what order I should level up skills, what's important right now and what can wait. The number of spells is initially overwhelming, but when you finally work out (or read about) a successful battle winning strategy it's very satisfying. The spells are great, they really change how the game plays, and I think the balance is pretty good. I do occasionally wish some spells weren't "obviously" better than others, so I didn't feel I was casting the same spells time and again. Ongoing balancing, like the thread you did a while back, "what are the spells you never cast and why?" would be cool. Almost all of the spells have some benefit, the problem is normally that the mana cost is too high or it's just not worth spending a turn casting (in tactical) compared to some other spell. Relatively minor tweaking by reducing mana costs would suddenly make some spells much more interesting.

2) I enjoy the exploring at the start of the game, as you set out into the big bad world and hope you don't disturb anything too scary, work out what you can kill now, what you'll have to save for later, and all the while hoping you left your capital properly defended.

3) I enjoy levelling up my hero into some death dealing machine. Similarly I enjoy designing powerful units, taking into account my resource and research constraints, which smash all before them and can hope to survive to reach a high level.

4) The wildlands are quite fun. There are still some I haven't seen, which increases the interest. In many of my games it was probably suboptimal (in terms of time to complete the game) to beat a wildland compared to killing AIs, but it was invariably more fun to complete the wildland.

5) The quests are fun, at least up to the point where you've seen nearly all of them. (I often seem to get more than one Arena in my game, which seems excessive.)

6) I enjoy playing against an AI that is not an idiot. The problem with having a game with so many possibilities is that the AI may be spectacularly bad at understanding all the possibilities and generally play like an idiot or play in an extremely predictable way. I can still remember how impressed I was when the AI actually immobilised my Stack of Doom, after months of ignoring strategic spells! Thank you for all your ongoing work in that area.

I wish faster pace in gameplay, at least 50% of immersion MOD speed and not just keeping waiting for things or cure the boredom with quests.

I wish more trade options (trade tech directly or even cities)

I wish more interesting AI gameplay - war can happens between AI player - i.e Empire vs Kingdom asking me to help where my decision impact the relationship in either side and not just keep bugging me for money or mad with me if I dont give. Civ series handle this better - even AI ask for something it offer something in return such as an equivalent technology or some money to compensate

The fact with the AI and gameplay also force me to be a warlord even I am a nerd who prefer keep researching and make city better. Even with 4 game objectives I have to keep fighting kill, kill and kill and only diffrent is to kill with sword or a spell.

I wish more different between Empire vs Kingdom , when I conquer the other faction city I gain many buildings / tech that I cannot access to, making kingdom more uplifting and empire more frightening. I don't know I enjoy SMAC / Fallout wasteland but the desert in LH is a bit depressing. Probably  those in games like SMAC there is a lot of mysteries feeling and possibility behind just a piece of waste land

 I wish AI research dragon also because that is such an insane disadvantage if it don't. Or at least nerf the dragon a bit by giving some heroes a powerful "dragon slayer" ability.

Yes!

1) Building my stack of Doom out of custom units, enchantments, fortress upgrades, and the combination heroes/normal troops to offset each others weakness

2) Leveling sovereigns down the path of my selection, trying different builds to get a different "feel" when I play the game each time.

3) Building an Empire - Specializing cities, stacking improvements and the feeling of an "empire of doom". I actually yearn for a little more control/granularity on this.

Features

Traits/Factions- because each faction/trait is not balanced perfectly, some can be wildly more powerful in their own way leading to variety of methods to exploit.

Customizing units - I am more attached to the spearmen or swordsmen I custom made, even if their selection of traits/equipment was a bit of a "no brainer"

Wildlands & wild monsters & Quests - Once I have the stack of doom/Empire of doom that I'm satisfied with, I need something crush with it. However the gradual creep of my empire is also enjoyable. As I clear an area to build on it's a rewarding feeling of progression. More so than taking the AI's prebuilt town.

This is very close to what I wanted to write. I really enjoy being able to create and customize my own sovereigns and then sending them against the world. I like the mix of 4x mechanics with the importance of heroes.

Very cool stuff. Taking notes for future updates.

1.)  Exploring the world -- by far, this is my favorite thing in FE:LH.  This includes finding loot, encountering interesting creatures/monsters, and running into (what I call) the "epic quest regions". 

2.)  Building your empire, especially with regards to developing your cities and planning their growth "path" (town, conclave, or fortress -- and what their specialization within each path might be). 

3.)  Watching your Sovereigns and Champions level and grow, and determining what path(s) you want them to take. 

4.)  Tactical combat. 

5.)  Interacting with the AI players. 

6.)  Customizing/designing your own Sovereigns. 

7.)  Customizing/designing your units. 

8.)  I love the hard choices you're forced to make with city development and research. 

I find the expand and exploration stage of the game most exciting, because that is the stage of the game where your choices in research, city management and tactical combat are most important and will direct the rest of the game. By the later stages I can research pretty much anything I want soon enough, have enough cities that if I don’t build something here I can always build it elsewhere and unless the AI is dominating can lose troops left and right.

One of the 4X games I still love and play is Master of Orion 2 because of how technology is handled. You can only choose one tech out of three from each one level, and that one tech could change the current nature of your whole game. I dislike being able to research everything eventually because in games like LH I end up with the same units in the end no matter who I play as, and that is boring. Not being able to get everything meant that every technology decision mattered because you are always in a race to adapt and improve.

What I want from a 4X game is to be able to play in lots of different ways and feel like every decision I make matters. That comes from having a variety of decisions which interrelate and affect how the game plays.

Honestly I love the roll playing aspect the best, I always like to play the roll of an adviser that has to help a somewhat misguided leader help salvage their struggling kingdom, and make it a powerhouse.

I also enjoy the city building and research aspect of the game, making an empire with massive cities that each on their own is a powerhouse feels great.

The random events and quests I also like and wish there were many more quests and random events.