I'm pretty sure that the devs are balancing their interest in our random carrying-on about a way-unfinished fantasy TBS game with wanting to know what we think about specific design decisions. So, in some ways, it makes sense to me that we know pretty much nothing about how essence and mana might work in the game. But I've already long lost track of the number of posts (my own and others) that made me wonder "Is this just way, way beyond consideration for Elemental?"
If you think that sooner might be better than later for the devs to open up a wee bit in this area, please sign on. I'm not asking for all that much, but many folks have pointed to a wide range of basic questions such as whether we'll have custom spell design, how spell lists might vary by Element, etc. IMO, just a few scraps of the current dev plan in these areas could help us slavering pre-beta posters make better contributions to the effort.