There are some extremely exploitable mechanics in 1.1 - none of which have so far been addressed by dev comments on mechanical alterations or on the AI. To illustrate some of these problems, I've gone and busted the game using a sovereign with 92 unused points during sov creation.
World difficulty and AI difficulty are set to Hard. I've made this strategy work consistently all the way up through Ridiculous, when using all my sov points. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this sovereign and strategy would still win on Ridiculous, but I expected to do worse given my massive point wasting.
It's Winter in year 180. I have a cash income of ~35 gildar per turn and research of ~25 points per turn (both outpacing the AI). The only map resources I'm using are two farmlands and a gold mine (the latter of which spawned from the first adventuring tech, not from random map generation). I am completely secure militarily, as I outclass the neighboring AIs in every way - and though I might need to grab another level of combat equipment to fight mobs, that would take approximately 6 turns given my research curve. Oh, and I've never built a single military unit. Soon my cash curve will explode into the hundreds, and I'll roll over the AI using my heroes.
The save is available from the following link:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16960898/92_points_wasted.EleSav
To reach this point, I've exploited four major mechanical flaws in Elemental. The first is that certain sovereign abilities are completely overpowered relative to other options - specifically, the resource granting abilities (Green Thumb, Attuned, Brilliant, Meditative, and Merchant) allow for an enormous head start compared to anything else you can buy (and I didn't even use them all with this sov - remember, 92 points free after sov creation). The second is that heroes require no resources but gold, so I don't really need to worry about any map resource spawns. The third is that trade routes give flat bonuses to gildar (road development, which governs trade route bonuses, is based on distance, but is so slow as to be totally irrelevant), meaning that spamming tiny cities across the map produces enormous cash multipliers in my home city (which I configure for maximum population growth, and thus maximum taxes). This extremely productive city spam strategy, when combined with heroes that require only gildar for hiring and equipping, allows me to support a military while simultaneously building and supporting a super-powered research engine (just build studies in all those hub cities - you can non-stop build studies and your net cash income will still increase due to your capital growth modified by ever-increasing trade modifiers). At first, that research goes into basic equipment techs, housing techs, economic techs, and hero recruitment techs. Later on, my research and cash curves rapidly permit a final exploit that inevitably ends the game: armor invincibility. Use your research to snap up the tech for Legendary Plate and magical weapons (one could also do conventional armor and weapons, but that's actually slower), and use your cash to equip a hero or two. Because higher level armor makes a unit totally invincible to lower level weapons, your speedily equipped heroes can single-handedly obliterate every AI and win the game by conquest.
I wish to emphasize that the problem is not that powerful, game-breaking strategies exist. The real problems are twofold. First, this one strategy completely outclasses all others (with the possible exception of Arcane Arrow + Blink, though that's not mutually exclusive with this strategy). There are no other crazy busted strategies that can compete - this is it. This is Elemental, as it exists now, and it doesn't help that the AI doesn't realize it. The second problem, which exists independantly of the other issues that make this particular strategy work, is that sovereign creation lacks competitive options: you can either be good (take the resource granting abilities, and then stats and background according to your preference of fighter or arcane arrow abuser), or you can suck (take anything else). There is no real variety aside from choosing clear inferiority. Don't get me wrong: discovering this strategy and these mechanical imbalances was fun, but now that it's known, there's really nothing left - currently, neither random situation nor opponent strategy can force me to adapt this one winning strategy.
I firmly believe that unless the following four problems are addressed, Elemental will ultimately remain one-dimensional:
1) Resource-granting sovereign abilities are overpowered relative to their cost (or perhaps the alternatives are under-powered - these abilities mostly eliminate the slow paced start that I read many starting players complain about)
2) Heroes require only gold. This allows a player to totally ignore resource requirements.
3) Trade Routes are flat-rate boosts to gildar only, no matter the development level of the connected city. This means that it's more productive to spam undeveloped cities without regard to map resources, rather than carefully placing and developing a few larger cities.
4) Armor doesn't just grant survivability, it grants total invulnerability. I remember when attack was far too powerful relative to armor and made all battles about the first strike, but this was the wrong solution. Instead of making one or two levels of armor advantage provide total invulnerability, HP totals should be higher to mitigate the swing factor of a single additional strike. The only alternative would be a total reworking of the attack/defense system.
I really hope that demonstrating these problems will convince someone out there. Someday I hope to record a multiplayer game to show, step by step, how various strategies interact (IE, this one wrecks them all).
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