"I hate hexes," says Wardell when asked
what he thinks of Civ 5's big new feature. "One, I like being able to move in eight directions. I don't like only being able to move in six. Two, it makes the game feel like playing on a hardcore board tile game. I just don't like that look."
What a poor statement. 
Tons of game sites worldwide have published preview reports for Civ 5, and lots of fans have got to play the game at demos. Every report I've read (and I'm pretty sure I've read them all and even translated many from european sites) has only had good things to say about the shift to hexes.
I'm dying for Civ 5 - the game looks amazing, and I think the hexes will feel 100% more natural, as they do in Wesnoth.
GalCiv2, Civ, Elemental, MoM, Moo, all those games - all turn-based strategy games are essentially computerized and glorified board games. That's one of the things that makes them own.
Anyways. It's obviously too late to do hexes for Elemental, and I wouldn't say it *should* use them, but I do think hexes are a better and more natural way to do tile layouts, and the whole diagonal movement on squares where there's no real facing on the diagonal, is kinda cheap. Civ will bring hexes to the mainstream and it'll be interesting to see if the genre evolves.