I want to say that I am very much in the camp of people who think Elemental is a good game slowly moving towards greatness. That said, I do personally have a few points I want to make about the current state of Elemental. Some of them I have stated in other posts but I am going to consolidate them here with a few others.

1) Tactical Cooldowns - Currently, spells rely on a mix of mana and combat speed to regulate how often any given spell can be cast. So from the stand point of the player trying to min max his sovereign, it is in his best interest to maximize mana and combat speed to cast the same spell over and over again. If spells had tactical cooldowns associated, then some OP sovereign would be forced to mix and match his spell casting instead of casting the same AOE chain lightning spell over and over.

2) Caravans should trade more than just food - I know that Elemental is a fantasy set game, but it has been stated over and over that SD does not want to just have resources pop in from nowhere. Currently, Caravans only trade food which would make sense if they were actually moving food from foodie areas to non foodie areas to aid growth. However, I am not clear how simply having a caravan somehow makes your farms magically better. This would probably makes sense if they traded gildar as money is in general a fantasy creation and is popped out of nowhere. As a suggestion, I think that most resources should be moved to city use only and that caravans would be needed to move those goods around your kingdom.

3) Shops should be able to rebuy items at regular cost - It is not fun to accidentally buy the wrong ring at the store for 300g and only be able to resell it back for 150g even though you never left the store.

4) Leveling up Cities should be optional - Ok this one is a bit odd so bear with me. Say I place some border city to extend my influence. It grows and grows, eventually hitting the level two cap. Currently the game basically freezes and asks me what to do with the city. Ultimately I have no idea what I really want to do with this city, so I select some random upgrade and move on. Two turns later, a gold mine or some other resource pops up and I say to myself "darn, I should have selected the gold upgrade." Hell, sometimes I select the wrong upgrade because I simply am not given the chance to really look at the city and make a good choice about its future. In every other game where some kind of city hub can be upgraded, it is the players option to upgrade the city.

5) Allow NPCs to upgrade special abilities instead of main stats - Currently as NPCs fight and level they can become stronger or faster, etc. What about my tech NPC? I dont care if that guy gets stronger or faster. What I would really like is for that guy to become a better researcher. Maybe as he levels, he could give a tech bonus to the city he is in.

6) NPC Resource bonus should be applied to a cities base resource - Currently a merchant NPC sitting in the middle of a mountain gives as much bonus as one sitting in a city with a market. It would make sense that these champions would only be made better by the cities they are a part of. Consider a tech researcher at a city with a school v. a tech research at a gilder centric city.

7) Sovereigns should be able to attach to a part/company/etc. - Currently as a game progresses and larger groups of guys come onto the field, the sovereign finds themselves in a very bad position, lowerer hp, defense, attack, compared to these regiments. It would be nice if the sovereign could attach to the unit giving him some meat shields to buff his hp/defense.

I am sure I have more suggestions but these are the big ones for now. Thanks SD for making a very cool game.