If it was a beta I'd understand, but my understanding is that this is the actual release build we're talking about (if I'm wrong about this please correct me). And my experience has been that generally if a game has quite a few bugs and stability issues upon release it's not something that ever gets fully fixed with patches. And frankly I just value my time too much to gamble it on games that look like they'll waste my time with stability issues and bugs.

Fair enough. I was referring to the fact that his impressions were based on the game that was two patches away from the official release version which hits tomorrow. The patch released tonight contains a bunch of fixes...I assume the one tomorrow will too.
PS, anyone who's having trouble, here's a bunch of tutorial vids:
http://www.screencast.com/users/draginol/folders/Default/media/f0f0207e-c9bf-4464-82a1-20ef87d179c2
Edit: Day 0 patch details:
"Here’s a few highlights:
1. The UI is updated to be somewhat more intuitive.
2. The campaign is significantly updated (though only for those starting fresh).
3. Resources are treated more like units. This is hard to explain but essentially the game will let you know of what resources you’re not using and how to make use of them.
4. There’s a lot of performance improvements the day 0 build, particularly for those with lower end CPUs.
5. The “day 0” AI is in it.
6. There’s been a polish pass to the spell books and tactical battles.
7. There’s been a general polish pass to the main game UI overall.
8. There’s been a lot of balancing to monsters, units, etc.
The day 0 version, as most of you know, is the version that was originally expected to be the first version most people would ever play. We’re definitely glad, however, that people got to play the pre-day 0 builds because we got a lot of very useful feedback and some crash reports that were not known about. "
See? It's all gonna work out. ;)

I can't seem to find this in any stores, is this only being sold on Impulse?

Is the game actually quite good like I imagine it would be? If there are issues, I imagine they'll be ironed out thanks to Stardocks past history of patches and free content updates. And yeah, I've heard what's been played atm wasn't the proper release version.
Of course, like with every game released, the game's forums aren't exactly great. So, it's hard to tell by going there. ;)

No retail presence in Europe/UK far as I know. You can order box version from Impulse though I think.

I think it is for sure. And yep, Stardock's rep is a big factor for me.
Yeah...I like to think most people are enjoying themselves...you're obviously not going to see the forums filled with 'this works!' posts.

Good to hear. I've been considering buying it, but waiting a bit. Not waiting on critic reviews, but more because of finances. One aspect that seems appealing is designing units. It seems it'll have more of an impact than in Galactic Civilizations 2 as a lot of that was cosmetic. Not all, but a large part. I've not heard much about the game's combat though. It sounds more involved than Galactic Civilizations 2 though because that was strictly hands off.
As a side-note, I remembered reading that you could name places etc.? Is that still in or been taken out? Imagine it might have been taken out due to reading that random map generation isn't a feature anymore.
Same thoughts about forums. But, I think people make things look worse than they are, and that's if the people are even being truthful. (Jaded with the internet if you can't tell ;) )

From reading the forum the maps aren't even truly random. It's just a bunch of predefined maps with set starting locations (which may change for you), and only the resources etc, those are random.
Disappointing to say the least.
Can't say this game has impressed me so far. It has an interesting idea, but it's lacking a lot, doesn't seem very balanced and certainly isn't polished.

correcttry it

I've played a bit of Elemental last night, and so far, it's been underwhelming. However, it's still the early game, so it's entirely possible that the middle/late game changes those impressions. I do hope so.

Going to take the chance on the game later I think. The issues people are experiencing might be fixed with the day 0 patch. Notes can be found here:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/391747
Quote from Frogboy (Brad Wardell):
This is a day that the team has been waiting for for three years!
As some of you know, some retailers broke the street date and to make sure our beta testers and pre-order customers didn’t get the short end of the stick, we released an interim build of Elemental (internally called Gold Edition++).
It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise because we have gotten a tremendous amount of useful feedback from those of you who got the game before release. The results of this comes in two parts.
First, tonight we released a new interim build. This version is basically bug fixes and such based on player reports. You can see what’s new in it here. Looking at the change log gives you an idea of the complexities of making a new PC game in 2010 with a brand new engine.
But tomorrow (or later today as I write this) is the big one. The official day 0 update that the team and I have been working on since Beta 4 (the beta group can go into more detail on this but in brief: After beta 4, the game tree was split in two. One version went on to be the gold version which is what those people who have it early are playing. The other tree went on to become day 0. These two trees were merged today already and will be going up tomorrow.
So what can you expect?
Here’s a few highlights:
1. The UI is updated to be somewhat more intuitive.
2. The campaign is significantly updated (though only for those starting fresh).
3. Resources are treated more like units. This is hard to explain but essentially the game will let you know of what resources you’re not using and how to make use of them.
4. There’s a lot of performance improvements the day 0 build, particularly for those with lower end CPUs.
5. The “day 0” AI is in it.
6. There’s been a polish pass to the spell books and tactical battles.
7. There’s been a general polish pass to the main game UI overall.
8. There’s been a lot of balancing to monsters, units, etc.
The day 0 version, as most of you know, is the version that was originally expected to be the first version most people would ever play. We’re definitely glad, however, that people got to play the pre-day 0 builds because we got a lot of very useful feedback and some crash reports that were not known about.
Now, a couple words on multiplayer. The servers are up but we are not going to enable multiplayer until next week. Part of this is, to be honest, team exhaustion. The early release meant a lot of people who were expecting this weekend off to rest from the grueling last few weeks had to come in. So we’re going to let them get a couple of days off later this week and open up the MP next week.
One piece of good news on MP. Originally we had planned to eliminate tactical battles from MP entirely because of balance. Some people correctly guessed the misguided (in hindsight) reason for this: We were approaching MP from a purely competitive point of view. Based on the persuasive arguments made by our players, we have decided that tactical battles will be made available in MP – as an option – at a later date as a free update.
So that’s all for now. After the day 0 update, I plan to take a day or two off too. I hear sleeping is the new “in thing” and you guys know me, I’m all about being cool and…um..what not.

Urgh, that's lame, especially seeing the current price, need to try and find out what they charge for shipping, if anything.
Did they give any reasons why?

Same reasons as usual. Stardock hates Europe and VAT/other issues regarding distribution in Europe.

You can name people and places, yep.

Already posted the patch info. :P

I didn't say there was just one user. Read again. :P