hello,

given that we're now encouraged to give ideas for improving the game, here's my biggest complaint from the time I've spent playing Elemental (note: I've barely touched the game, as I'm waiting for v1.1 which should be more fun to play, so I haven't touched on most of the "broken" game elements discussed elsewhere. I simply started a game, played it for 30 mins, then decided to stop and wait for the patches):

Why can my all powerful leader only found the initial city? This doesn't make sense. I guess it's a gameplay mechanic to stop city spread? But it just feels like it's been bolted on. I quite liked the idea of the channellers sacrificing their essence to allow for city growth. That model seems a) to be more distinct from Civ's settlers and it creates a very obvious and interesting trade-off.... grow your empire/kingdom at the expense of your hero. 

This would also facilitate a natural change from rpg-y hero based gameplay into empire building as a game progressed (assuming you went down the multi-city route). Surely this would help give the game character and more emergent narrative? Towards the end of a game, your Sov would be little more than a  figurehead, sitting in his/her castle commanding armies from afar.

Alternatively, you could just create the one city, and protect it with a hugely powerful wizard... essentially Saruman in his tower with a group of followers.

And if we are going to stick with the settlers/pioneers solution, could we not be given a unit of pioneers right from the first turn (like in Civ), and then remove city building abilities from the Channeller completely. Rather than the current artificial "your sov can found a city, but only one, other cities are build in a different way" rule.