From word on the boards, those who beta tested/pre-ordered (not sure how they are going to distinguish) will be able to download the Gold version some time tomorrow night and sometime on Monday (respectively). The 0-Day patch and the everyone else release will be on Tuesday, as planned.
As a point of reference: Apparently the Gold version (retail) of GalCiv2 had no starbases. So no idea how drastic things will differ for Elemental. So I plan to just play the SP campaign (which is all quest based and the like), and save the meat and potatoes (sandbox) for post 0-day. Knowing my luck, I'll build my entire strategy around something that gets removed or rendered ineffective with the 0-day patch :p

Anyone know if the LE will still be available at this price after pre-order period is over?

Asked the Stardock guys on the IRC.

Cool thanks. Looks like there's no rush for me then, maybe I'll get it next month.

At least it doesn't cost 60 bucks!

The LE may not be available a month after launch. They've said they're making a fair amount less of them then they have their other games. Add in the fact that if the game is anything close to what's being promised people are going to start buying them up right after launch.

Well I canceled my LE preorder, sadly. I just don't have the money to get that and the LE of Mafia 2 on the same day. I'm sure I will be able to find one somewhere, be it ebay or otherwise, when I am ready to get it.

Yeah, I really miss things like that. Along with manuals that are more than either bare bones, filled with illegible black and white thumbnails that illustrate nothing at all and have captions like "Attack your opponent!", or even any paper manual at all. And especially things like charts that show building orders, like you had in HOMM 2. Those were tremendously useful and vastly easier than flicking back and forth four times between pages of an oblique and poorly written PDF manual.
Probably mostly goood for the campaign, right?

I'm pretty much the same way, except that I usually try to play campaigns for a little while. But they almost always artificially restrict your options "just because," and become a puzzle in which you have to choose not the best way to win but the way that matches what the scenario designer was thinking. What really bugs me is when they don't even tell you what building paths they've artificially restricted before you've perhaps already invested your time and economy and battle choices into a restricted direction. That just feels like a massive fail on the designer's part resulting in a pointless slapdown to me for being creative or individual or both.

And now, Elemental is available to those who count as beta testers. Not sure if you actually had to ever download the beta, but worth checking your account, if you are excited.
Not the 0-day patch, but it is a post-gold patch so yippee.

Wow, at least there's a campaign. I bought Sins without knowing there's no campaign.
Anyways, the meat of the game is the random maps though like Civ.
Now waiting for the inevitable Lord of the Rings mods, and whatever works the modding community can churn out.

The lack of a campaign in Sins was truly a blunder... as well as that game sold it would have sold much better with an epic campaign added on.

Exactly, it had a nice backstory in the manual to begin with. I still wonder what is chasing the Vasari.

So, no tutorial in the game or am I simply blind?
I thought the campaign will serve as the tutorial but it doesn't seem like it :(
edit: Nvm, I've just finished reading the manual and it sounds wonderful. I am going to play right now.

Yeah, well, it sounded nice but the game itself is still miles away from being enjoyable. The amount of bugs is astounding. The UI clunky and unintuitive. The performance is, pardon me, shit. I got four CTDs in a span of four hours. It's hard to believe it's a Stardock game.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for the patches.

Whats a CTD?