Wait.  Right now the game, at best, is an acquired taste.  There a lot of changes coming in the next couple of months and might be some teething pains to boot. Unless you love modding, no one can justify the $50 price tag, but that might change shortly.

Brother J

From one in the beta for a year, and owns the game......wait! It may be a long one!

If you're going to eventually buy it anyways, why not just buy it now?  Either you play it and enjoy it, or you find that you don't like it in it's current state and you come back to it in a few months.

However... if you can wait, wait until the demo is available and see whether or not you like it at that point.

definitely wait.

I suggest you wait. It'll be quite fun in a few months, after the AI and the core game code has been exposed through an API so the community can have at it for a couple of months. Right now as a strategy gamer you'll likely be disappointed by the lack of depth and AI.

I don't think that's logical. You can have some fun now, or a lot more fun later.

I say buy it.  I have not had this much fun with a turn-based strategy game since Civilization 2, I hated GalCiv2 and Civilization 4.  This game is chock full of stuff to do, mods and updates come frequently and are easy to implement, and the game itself is a lot of fun.

There's a great feeling that comes with owning a game that continues to get better and better all the time.  It's like, "Hey, I'd better load up Elemental again, the new patch just came out with tons of new improvements, and more content".  With Elemental, unlike most games, it's like playing a game which stays fresh and exciting every week.  

If you buy the game now, there's always going to be something new to discover.  If you buy it when the game is "complete", you have nothing new to look forward to.

At the moment it's kind of an interesting game to tinker with but the balance is bad, and they are planning some big overhauls of several major parts of the game including the magic system.

In all honesty buy it now if your willing to essentally try out a beta version and want the first expansion pack free, (which startdock are doing to make it up to people who stick with it through this early version. Or wait a month or too when I'm sure it will be much more polished, balanced and fun.

I am having fun with it but then I was in the Beta and so have no problem thinking of this as an extension of the beta, but if your looking for a polished and well balanced game Elemental is not yet there.

I would call a patch every week or occasionally every other week pretty quick actually, as someone who's done other types of software development. They where quicker than that at first but the more major the patch the longer it takes. Remember they do have to code, test and QA these patches and most of them contain fairly large numbers of fix / changes. I think some big changes are needed I'm afraid to make the game work well, a more kingdom based magical system I would say is essential. I would guess however that the major changes will settle down for a while after a couple more patches, after that it will be tweaking balance, or adding new content / systems to the game rather than overhauling current systems, just my opinion of course based on GC2 updates.

I agree I wouldn't bother with the campaign mode personally I only play the sandbox mode.

Here's how you can choose.

Coin Flipper
http://www.random.org/coins/

There's even an option for a US $50 - American Buffalo 24-Karat Gold Coin.

My opinion, game is fun already--the proposed changes will be just adding to it.  I'd buy, but then again, I already did.

If your still on the fence then  your interested.. I am having fun with the game right now. I have yet to finish a  game but that's because I take my time exploring, monster hunting and developing my "base nation" be for going to full on war mode.. I do defend myself from those that attack and usually end up with an ally or 2. This is how I have fun as it is.. if you expect a challenging AI its not there yet, there are bugs that wreck game play for to many folks(these are being fixed at a fair pace)  , and there are game systems being overhauled.. If any of these statements give you pause wait for now.. ask us again in a week, at that time we will have another slew of fixes and some game play cahnges that may change some of our minds.. do not mistake me I think its is a good game that will be great thanks to Stardok and modder support.