Well, we can hope he didn't hire these guys at top dollar so they could sit there and agree with him. I think a lot of Elemental's problems stemmed from the team just trying to make Brad happy, when they should have been going "This is a trainwreck d00d!"
What would you guys say sucks balls about this game, now?
At this point? Content. But I've played well over 30 games, so I've done everything and seen everything. Every new patch for me is just re-examining the game to see what's changed.
The AI has a fairly massive overhaul coming in the next build, that people say has improved the game a bit. (Having an AI that actually can threaten you tends to make the whole game more relevant.)
I'll use this metaphor: it's like trying to make bread without enough flour. You're working it, you can see the bread forming, smell the goodness that it promises to deliver....but as you mess with it, you realize it's still a gooey, un-cookable mass of wet dough because you still don't have enough flour, in the end, to bind it all together.
Elemental has felt that way from day 1, and gotten progressively less so. To me, it still needs two to three more handfuls of flour and tons of time kneading that flour in to make it into "bread" you don't regret eating.
In non-metaphor form: the game is essentially "done" now. Most of the systems work, most of the bugs are gone, most of the glaringly awkward things have been cleaned up. What the game is waiting on now is all the work to flesh out the features that never even came close to happening by release. (Diplomacy, dynasties, quests, items, spells.....yadda yadda yadda.)