I have to say MoM is one of the best strategy games since the first Civilization (arguably better, I think the same thing about Alpha Centauri vs Civ). What often kills remakes is that they try to deviate from the formula instead of improve upon it.
I tried AoW a few times. They kept hyping it like some sort of MoM homage or remake, but I don't know at which point of the process they removed the Civ-style terrain map with some sort of Heroes of Might & Magic mechanic where you have roads connecting premade cities and there are all kinds of crap lying around like random monsters and mines and farms and...
IMO, Elemental comes pretty close to keeping the spirit intact. What it lacks is, well, any kind of polish... it's just... incomplete. Like they forgot to add 50% of the code to the game.
This Warlock Master of the Arcane game for instance, seems to respect the original MoM a lot more. It's an example of a change that doesn't remove from the game: hex maps. Some people might not like them, but at least it's still a large scale map: all I want is a mountain here, a desert here, gold resource there. If I want to build an outpost, I'll place it. None of this "this is a magic tower, claim it for magicks each turn! And that farm gives extra food!" nonsense. (not talking about nodes here)
EDIT: Wow, just saw the Warlock teaser, the guy sounded a lot like the narrator from Majesty. Then... Ardania? Ok, isn't that from Majesty? So a bit of Google later... well, apparently, it's based on the same fantasy world.