If you've never played FfH2, it is without a doubt "worth it." Admittedly it does have some limitations - you'll know you're playing a Civ4 mod and not a game designed from scratch to be a fantasy TBS, the Civ4 engine prevents it from ever being as awesome as Elemental has the potential to be. But within those limitations, FfH2 is polished, (relatively) balanced, and packed with tons of content and replayability, all areas where Elemental still has a lot of room to improve. Go play the hell out of FfH2, and when you come back Elemental will have seen 17 more patches, and will be so much more awesome we won't recognize it as the same game we're playing now.
Then again, if you have cash to spare you may as well do both - try Elemental, and if you get more than your share of bugs/crashes, or maybe the gameplay imbalances limit your replayability, you can always lose yourself for a few weeks in FfH2 before coming back here to try the latest patch.
Also going to put in another recommendation for Dominions 3, but it is a bit.. different. It's not a city-builder like Civ4 or Elemental, it has much greater emphasis on tactical battles and much less emphasis on, well, everything else - i.e. economy and empire management is minimal at best. But it has a great free demo, relatively extensive (you can play as many full games as you like, you just have limited faction/map choices and can only research about half the spells, if I recall correctly), so you may as well try it.