I picked up Elemental:WoM recently. I liked Sins and was a HUGE fan of GalCiv2. I've played 4 sandbox games to get my feet wet (won 3 via diplomacy, master quest, and spell of making respectably) and am itching for more. Right now I have a game going where I'm playing as a custom Kingdom, medium map, every other "race" selected (Kingdoms on Normal, Empire on Challenging) and I'm holding my own (those Yithril make some pretty tough armor though). And at this point I have a few questions.
1. The super stack technique is an old trick I utilized in the game Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria (a game very dear to my heart that in many ways reminds me of WoM). But is that considered a cheesy tactic? It feels a little cheap but maybe I've gotten away with it thus far because I'm starting with lower difficulty opponents.
Nothing wrong with super stacks - Stacks are limited to twelve units per stack, and the game is designed to allow for full on armies or for individual hero units. Since the game is meant to be played tactically, then the stacks aren't as powerful as you'd think. And once 1.3 is upon us it sounds like the tactical options will be much more than just who has more armor vs attack.
2. Food is really important, eh? I keep finding myself in positions of always needing more food. I've found that certain techs in the Civilization tree as well as the Lost Bounty tech from Adventure help out quite a bit. Is this just a mechanic to help pace the spread of towns and buildings? I just want to make sure I'm not gimping myself by not doing something essential.
Food is very important. I typically will cast Nature's Bounty on as many cities as I can as soon as I get it, prioritizing the cities that have food producing resources. Then if you can find a farmer hero for the % bonus, dump them in the city as well. With the housing bonuses later in the game, unless you want to rush a super city in the beginning, I would typically dump six houses in each city - Eventually (At least on empire) you'll get so that even without nature's bounty, most places are capable of producing at least as much as they utilize - Fungal storehouse, skath pit, etc.
The great thing about Nature's Bounty is it stacks with the % increases too, and you can cancel it at any time and recast it later if needed.
3. When does the AI start giving us fits? I'm having trouble with Yithril at the moment at Challenging but am still learning the game and feel confident I'll take him down. I killed off Magnar at Challenging earlier in this same game by killing his sovereign as he carelessly walked too close to my town sitting on our border. Is Challenging perhaps a tad easy for a noob like me who has experience with other 4X games?
Until the game mechanics itself are sorted out, i.e. 1.3 or so, it's a waste of time for them to work on the AI in case things change drastically later on. So for now the AI is being patched just to fix the basics, like not throwing away their sovereigns by leaving them vulnerable, resource management, etc. So the only differences you'll see on different difficulties is the multipliers for their economies and their attack values.
4. I'm really digging everything I've seen so far and I'd love to see a bit more depth. More NPCs. More items at the shop. More wild creatures. More spells. I know that this game is totally mod-friendly. Are there a group of mods out there that people here just consider "part of the game" at this point? What mods could you just not live without? I want to try the "essentials" out first before venturing into crazier ones.
1.3 will be bringing a lot of updates and changes. Also, there's a group of mods that is good for these.
Expanded Factions - https://forums.elementalgame.com/400551
Adventure Content Pack - https://forums.elementalgame.com/399062
I can't remember the others - I think it's Expanded Mounts, the Grimoire mod (Muertas Grimoire? Spelled that wrong, but still), and the weapons mods.
Also, Elementerra for generating fully random maps.
5. Tech production seems much more useful than Materials and Arcane production - in the late-game especially. I've tried generalizing and then specializing towns and find the most luck with tech-heavy towns. Is that the consensus?
I typically handle all my arcane production in my first city, and my materials production/tech in my next three cities. Once you're maxxed on Arcane, I demolish my arcane buildings (Except for wonders just so other civs can't build them) and replace them with the tech buildings. Tech is useful even in the late game because of the constant decisions of whether you want housing bonuses, income bonuses, etc.
6. Can transport ships be disbanded? In a previous game I built up a small navy only to realize that, besides being somewhat unnecessary, I had built them in what turned out to be just a rather large lake. Try as I might I could not disband them.
Not sure. Never tried it myself. Maybe cast a spell that damages target armies on the general map, and try for friendly units? OR, use the destroy land spell later in the game to build a channel to the main body of water. I like raising mountains and destroying land so that my empire is ringed in, then wherever I leave openings I build cities across the open spaces so that to hit my capital, armies have to either take those strong points or teleport past them.
I'm having a ton of fun. And that is the point of any game, right? I know that Stardock has a proven track record of keeping their games fresh with regular updates and very much look forward to playing the Elemental series for a long while to come.
Yep - E:WoM was rocky at the start, but I'm looking forward to the future - Whether it's through Stardock or the modding community, Elemental has a decent future ahead - At least I hope. 
