Just thought I'd add some feedback for Stardock and everyone else.

Downloaded the 1.08 patch and started a new game, using a customer soverign I'd previously created and a large size map from elementerra program.

[bug] Still got OOM error.  Willing to acknowledge that it could be related to the elementerra map size, though I wasn't using the 256x256 max size it makes...I think the one I was on was 176x176 or so.  Could play around 150-200 turns before it crashed, same as on prior versions.  my system:

Intel Cori i7-920

6GB RAM

Radeon 4870 video card with current drivers

[bug] Ran into an AI faction that was still heavily in debt.  So far I only encountered 2 other AIs, both empire factions (Resoln and Umber, I was playing as a Kingdom).  Resoln was running a -10000 gildar debt last I checked.  Umber seemed to be on the up and up though.

[bug?]  Saw a couple new NPC types that I hadn't seen before, named 'Champion'  they were non hostile and marked as if they were part of some faction, but I got the 'cannot talk to' icon when I moused over them.  They just stood around wandering in small circles in my territory.

[bug?] Possibly related to above, even though I researched Recruiting and Heroes on the Kingdom adventure tree, through 400ish turns I had run into only 3 NPCs that I could recruit.  This seemed much lower than I'd seen before, so it seems that maybe some of the NPCs were spawning as those 'Champion' NPCs.  Also frustrating is that all 3 were the same gender as my sovereign so I couldn't get married

[observation] The magic damage system seems much improved, thank you.  I couldn't check if shards were working, unfortunately...I had skipped on the water book for my sovereign, so of course water shards were the only ones I've found so far

[observation] The new maintenance costs for merchant/study/archivist basically force my starting city to become a food factory regardless of what other resources may be nearby, since it's the only food resource I'm guarantee to find on the map (aside from the ones that come from Lost Bounty tech)  It does create more complicated and interesting city management decisions overall, though.

[observation] With monsters paying out a lot less and the increased costs for city structures, gildar was a lot harder to come by.  It still feels like this needs more balancing, since between paying for city structures, armies, and NPC recruiting, it really does make the beginning of the game slow way down relative to prior revisions.

[observation] Diplomacy still feels like it needs work.  The two empires I ran into were quick to try to bully me and then start war, which is fine and, I suppose, in character.  However, once I built up my army and closed the gap (diplo screen no longer had the penalty listed for 'I think my army is stronger than yours') , stolen a few of their cities and beaten them down a bit, it was still virtually impossible to stop the war.  They would value a peace treaty at something like 11000 and I only valued it at like 50.  They were losing but would I would still have to heavily bribve them if I wanted to stop the war.  In any of the games of Elemental I've played, regardless of factions involved, it's nigh impossible to cease hostilities once they've begun.  On the plus side, they didn't have their sovereigns running around all over the place that I saw.  Only ran into one of them when I had pushed deep into their territory, and couldn't kill him since it was on his turf.

Anyway, I saw Brad post in another thread like this that they appreciate the feedback, so just thought I'd share and help if I could!