I do not work to work but I still want to eat and have an internet connection go skiing and entertain myself and family... somethings are just mutually exclusive. 

Add more AI's so you can take one over and have its gold mines.  Problem solved - Q.E.D.

Elemental is not really designed such that you can see everything in one game.

Why don't you add more gold mines in the map editor?  Its the only thing I can think of....

I looked at the map editor, I have no idea what it is doing? Also it seems rather determined to split into two separate continents with a large map.

My suggestion (and this may sound odd but I will explain) is a large map with all AIs on ridiculous difficulty.  Ridiculous AIs get a lot of resources around their cities so you can take over a few of them.  You want lots of AIs because then you can be on friendly terms with a few of them so the game won't end if one sovereign suicides itself on you, just don't alliances.  Also if you can manage to be friendly with your bordering factions you don't have to worry much about attacks since they provide a buffer, unless you want wars.  Large maps are best (I think) because there's lots of wandering monsters you can level up on if you don't want to pick on AIs.

The only downside is that large maps are more prone to out of memory errors, so perhaps a medium map would be better, hard to say since some people seem to be able to play to turn 500+ and I can barely get past 250 (haven't played with 1.09e yet).

This is the set up I used when I wanted to do the same thing.  A little bit of city spamming (I controlled 1/3 of the map) and I had pretty much everything by turn 250.  I played 250-300 but was just researching whatever because there was nothing left I wanted to experiment with.

Edit: just read the interim posts a bit more thoroughly and noticed you mentioned the normal difficulty being your real opponent.  In this case ridiculous may not be the best setting for you.  But there's 2 things to consider:

1) More AIs = more resources on the map because of starting location resource seeds, and

2) Higher difficulty AIs = more resources on the map because as difficulty increases they get more resources seeded near them.  Ridiculous setting it's not uncommon for them to have 6+ resources connected to their first city.

Well i was trying the game last night with more AI's (4) on a large map, on easy level.  I could not set one of them to 'normal' difficulty due to not knowing where they will spawn on the map.

I got a very odd map indeed, it is like a racetrack going around with roads in place. The problem i encounted was that i could not get enough materials early on even tho i was flogging treasure like there was no tomorrow (hat about 5 or 6 hero's spread out across the map) - if i see another midnight stone I'm going to throw my computer out the window!! This one thing strangled my development so badly that by the time i did get a few other cities going, the closest AI was way stronger than me (even on easy level) and i could not take him out. This is the first game i have played where materials was an issue, in every other game i played so far, treasure has always come thru on this. But i think the map was a bit funky somehow because there was way too many midnight stones, and the character level changed based on which part of the map the character is on!! I discovered this when i had a big pile of level 2 treasure in one section, and i sent a level 2 hero there to collect, but when he arrived, he was level 1!!!

Anyway, i think my best option is the map editor, i will try and get it to work again tonight if i can!

I've never had the experience of a hero changing levels, but I know the map.  That map has a figure 8 of roads, well more like a really squished 8.  That map is almost always heavy on heroes for whatever reason and the roads make getting goody huts easy.  I can say it's not the map that caused the excess of midnight stones, but that does happen sometimes.  Still other times you have the quest and can't even find 2 let alone the 3 you need.

I started a game once with NO opponents.  I blitzed past the choose opponents screen, thinking I'd selected 10 opponents when in fact none had been chosen.  Took me a bit to figure out I was all alone...

This was circa 1.07.  Dunno if the game still allows you to do this, or how the resource seeding is cirrently done - i.e. if you'd have enough resources on a solo map to make it a worthwhile exercise in tech tree exploration and trying out city building strategies.

I have a medium map with a very weak opponent i boxed in the corner - he has only one city and on top of this, i got millions of guilder from that kill pioneer bug. This was the perfect game for learning how it all works, but i gave up when i realized i had no one to fight and my sovereign had been gaining strength, strength that i have to be able to put to the test or it's all just pointless.

What i really want is a large map with at least five or six gold mines and a contained opponent that will be worthy for me to test my forces on as i go along in the game. I can get that with the map editor or by popping in allot of AI opponents - whichever turns out to be the easiest, i will do. But if i can get the map editor working then i can put the AI difficulty level much higher knowing where that AI opponent will spawn and can be contained according to plan.

Over the weekend i have managed to get the game i want!

I put in 4 AI opponents on easy level and quickly defeated to of them early on. The third one is extremely remote and the forth one i have not even found yet!

Since i conquored 2 AI opponents, i have some very nice cities overflowing with resources, oh happy days! and now I'm getting into level 3 treasure which seems to be producing monumental amounts of guilder too, so i can finally start arming all my hero's with longbows!!