There always has been something off about all the Stardock games I've played. Even when they do stuff right, there's this aura of generality that clings to everything they do: from the graphics, to the mechanics to the humor. Gal Civ 2 to me is a good example of where the game was mostly solid but everything surrounded it was not great. Elemental is an example of where pretty much everything fell apart: performance, mechanics and atmosphere. Which is really sad, because if you consider some parts of Elemental in isolation, there were good systems that were interesting and had room to grow. But the instant you apply the mechanical balance of the game to these things....whatever interest factor they had is subsumed in being too easy or just just plain not working right at all.
Like monsters. One of the coolest ideas from Elemental was pushing back the wilderness, having your realm surrounded by ever increasingly difficult monsters. In practice, the game puked out far too many of these things, in too large of numbers, the level scaling went to complete shit and then the AI decided to prey on the player in ways that violated the supposed rules of engagement. (Having monsters enter your realm to any large extent was never supposed to happen. But it did, constantly.)