Elemental has several listed win conditions but too me it seems more like one win condition with several names. For example to win by killing everyone else, you rush an army and attack early (kinda like playing starcraft), but if you want a diplomatic victory, what do you do? Well you may think you talk to your opponents, sign agreements, and give gifts, but no, that isn't it. You rush an army so that every nation you encounter wont declare war on you, then you run around killing off all the overly aggressive factions. No faction will make any treaty with you unless you have a huge army as your army size has a huge affect on diplomacy (much larger than anything else). By the time you can actually ally anyone you have had the power to defeat all their armies for a while. Basically for any form of victory the key is, rush a large army so that the ai wont all declare war (no peaceful nations here all of them are very warlike even if they are poor at the actual execution) then do whatever, but what is the point if they all require having a stronger army than your opponents?
Am I doomed to have to make or take 20 cities and a large army every game? Honestly I dislike having to manage so many cities and generally just leave them doing nothing 90% of the time. Give me the option to sit back and keep my opponents at bay with magic or politics, make it possible for 2 or 3 huge cities to compete with the tons of tiny settlements the computer uses. In short, please give me more ways to play. This is a fun game, and I suspect that it will only get better, but doing the same thing over and over gets a bit dull.