Heya Sethfc.  Many of the testers here have already done just that.  There is a post laying around about DosBox and MoM.  I agree with you that it is an excellent place to pick ideas from.  I haven't played Age of Wonders 2 yet.  I played the first one.  I understand both Age of Wonders 2 and the Fall from Heaven mod from Civ 4 are also good places to borrow ideas from.  I haven't played those yet.

  Elemental is definitely gonna have influences from the great games(or very nearly great) of the past.  The whole cloth map mode is definitely an homage to scaled based miniature recreation and role playing games.  If you played DnD a long time ago you can see a close resemblance between Elementals cloth map mode and Judges Guild maps(which were far more evolved that most maps released by TSR at that time).  If you go back even farther and chech out a miniature historic recreation called 'Ancients' you can see where and how our gaming has evolved.

 Its one of the reasons I hope we get a couple different overlays.  I want squares as well as hexes.  The hexes are great for outdoor movement/combat and squares are nice for dungeonering.  Would be nice if we can insert notes and commentary on our maps also.  Shades of Ultima.  Having multiple map making tools or assets to draw from would be great.  Different colors to write with, etc.

  Some of the things I enjoyed about MoM.  Lots of different fantasy standard creatures/races to play as or against.  Exploration.  Myrror and dark elves.  Probably my favorite aspect besides the great spells and magic system would be  creating your avatar with all the retorts, spell book options. 

  So far in the forums I have seen much anticipation, excitement, and many great ideas or thoughts put forward by other gamers here.  Pretty sure anyone lured here (like myself) by a spiritual successor to MoM are going to be at least a little excited by what they see in beta.