Every TBS I've ever played has suffered from the same problem. At some point, maybe half way through or later the player either knows he has won, or knows he has lost. It seems to be in the nature of the genre that once a certain point is reached victory is either guaranteed, or defeat is inevitable. I'm hoping Elemental is the game that can break this trend, and find a healthy alternative to the "mop up" phase, and give player some insentive to continue playing, and keep things interesting right up until the end. There is hardly ever a large shift in power that can destabablize the game. Now there certainly are obvious ways to do this such as adaptive difficulty and similar things, but in my personal opinion I find games frustrating that punish the player for doing well and reward players for doing poorly. This seems counter intuitive Also most games have several paths to victory, but I find most of them anti-climactic

-What this post is for is essentially to say I hope Stardocks AI expertice will alow for a game that will keep us on the edge of our seats without frustrating us or be punishingly difficult. I'm thinking that they certainly can, as GalCiv 2 had probably the best AI of any TBS i've played thus far. One reason I bring this up is this game seems like it's going to be very epic. From sprawling maps to strategic battles this very well could be the game TBS fans have been waiting for, but we need to know where epic meets boring! At what point does the games epic scale become a liability? At what point does awesomely huge maps become 'OMFG when will my troops get there?' or 'How am I supposed to manage this huge empire?'. These are just some thoughts I have been having, and was wondering what you guys thought?