EWoM is already as Civ-like as I could tolerate. What exact features would you want from it?

I'd prefer to have more Dominions and MoM in EWoM rather than Civ.

Oh, and SMAC's unit designer. I can't believe SD managed to fail so much with this feature. We need some classic rock-paper-scissors choices in design, beyond the cost. Oh, and chassis. Why the hell we can recruit ogres, darklings and other such stuff but we can't dress them up in w/e we want? Ogre in full plate with lord hammer would be awesome.

"Civ V and Elemental share that addictive "just one more turn" quality that I have always loved in turn based games. Speaking of that, I am off for one more turn."

"...think I'll be playing these two games for years down the road..."

Both my thoughts too.! I like history and fantasy topics so these to games serve very well. Wouldn't mix the art styles e.g. they're both wonderfully unique but I like army promotions (what are they called in CiV?) would be fun in Elemental too - especially without hex tiles.

And what about having different ages in EWoM? By advancing through the ages technology and warfare could improve and correlate with your research... but I think this would be far too civilization-esque. Starting in the time before the Cataclysm with all prosperity and superior technologies and then after the cataclysm starting in a different way. Like going the Civ-Tech-Tree backwards to the middle ages but from there again to a totally different future era, technology-wise.

Can't follow? - me neither...

i dont know exactly, Im just stating that I am enjoying both games ALOT and that it woudl be cool if these two games or developers could come together and make one crazy game with the best parts of each CIV and Elemental.

Civ does somethings better and Elemental does somethings better, one reason why I enjoy both these games atm, each offers differnt things, but both are addicting and fun.

Anyways, I know this wont happen, it just crossed my midn as I was playing Elemental and then Civ5 back to back.

I get what your saying, it's a good point, but while that does give the player some degree of customization of unit traits, it is not unit design.

Yeah, but by then you realize that Oogloglogo is run by Genghis Kahn and they are using Stealth Bombers.  So you fix that... then you find out their are studying Capitalism...so you fix that and then you see they have the Statue of Liberty.. so ....ah screw it...

*Goes back to Elemental*

No, that would damage the genre.  The two games go in different directions.  Convergance usually means lack of innovation.  Look how stuck ActionRPG's are now.  The differences among titanQuest, Torchlight and Diablo2 are virtually nothing.

More than once in Civ I've wished I could get rid of a pesky mountain and go looking for my sovereign.

Besides that, the unit movement in Civ V is driving me insane.  I get not wanting to create stacks of doom, but I should be able to click my catapult, some horse archers, and a few swordsmen from my territory and specify how I want them to land in formation on the other side of the continent.  As it is because of turn order my catapult will run into my horses or the entire group will get stalled because I have a stray horseman riding in the other direction so each turn I'd have to manually direct my unit back to the place I originally set as their destination.  It's ended up meaning that I have to meticulously move each unit one by one.  These days for big wars instead of using tactics or diverse units or anything remotely fun I just throw unit after unit of horsemen at my target, because at least then I know my catapult isn't going to get destroyed because somehow it ended up on the front line.  There has to be a gameplay fix to that or I'm going to lose patience with it completely.

Right now I would rather have Elemental and its current problems than Civ and its.

As soon as Elemental gives me a detailed city list (and not-so-required but please, please, please an auto-survey type mode for adventurers to pickup goody huts) I will be happy.

Civ 5 with wizards, item shops, and dynastic marriages would be pretty awesome.

I really love the new interface in Civ V, the popups wait on me to do whatever I've been planning before I have to select which cities are producing what etc. The art deco style is also something I appreciate, and the more natural looking maps with the hex based system  are nice. Personally I'd like to have seen them stick with a more traditional square looking castle for the forts in Civ V, but that's just nit picking. The AI really needs some work when it comes to diplomacy and warfare. The new ranged units provide for some seriously brutal defensibility, but the AI doesn't seem to be able to comprehend why it can't march single file down between the mountains and the ocean and expect to win. Also it's a lot harder for the AI to seem to comprehend why it's losing in Civ V, if you've got two forts set up with trebuchets behind a front line city, you're not likely to see the immediate cavalry charge to take them down. In the diplomacy, I've seen a sneaky Rome get me to agree to go to war with someone who I had a defensive pact with, just to declare war on me instead of my old ally. That's about the most advanced thinking I've seen the AI do, I ask for 1 gold a turn for 90 turns, and am told that for the low low price of 92 gold it's a deal. that sort of thing should be ironed out soon enough.

As far as Steam, mods, and patches are concerned the folks that do the QA on Steam patches don't mess around. A program that I enjoy playing on Steam is a little tower defense game called Sol Survivor. They rolled out a patch for the multiplayer mode to correct an issue with the co-op survival loot distribution options not working properly. The folks at Steam ran into an issue (from what I gathered with the Mac version of Steam), and then went ahead and tweaked (the Mac version of ) Steam rather than kick back the patch. Or when Novint was coming out with the Falcon support for Half Life 2 and TF2 etc, they ran into some issues. I believe what happened there was they got in touch with Novint and got everything straight before they released the new patch (which coincided with some other update for TF2). The folks who work for Steam are gamers, and while I can't swear it will happen they will hopefully help with any mod efforts broken by new patches. There is, of course, a disclaimer in the Mods section of Civ V that says that they can't guarantee that all the mods will work or something to that effect, but I don't doubt that the integration of a mod browser in the application itself will not only make any mods easier to install than ever, but hopefully get some mods a lot more exposure than they might otherwise receive.

I think that in terms of gameplay Civ V and Elemental are leagues apart, and to me that's a good thing. Mods for Elemental and mods for Civ V, the future expansions of both series etc. should have that much more to offer strategy fans that own both titles the less alike they are.