IMO, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress/Legendary Heroes (whichever one is the most recent release) is still shoddy. It does equipment better, but if you want a fantasy 4X game, just get Civ4 Complete and Fall from Heaven (or various FFH modmods and modmodmods).
It has absolutely nothing on Master of Mana and MoM should not be denigrated by trying to compare Elemental to MoM*.
*I've actually never played MoM itself, (FFH and its subprojects, some HoMMs, and Age of Wonders are my experiences with fantasy TBS) but all flavours of Elemental are really lacking. The biggest difference in an empire's strategy is whether they're realistically magic-capable or not, or when they have access to unique (but usually borderline inconsequential) equipment. Tech and magic research may as well not even exist. The tactical combat maps are also poorly done, in terms of actually being able to apply any kind of actual tactics to your combat. It doesn't even have actual random map generation; resources are randomized but the map shape is selected from a variety of presets. I think there's about a dozen by default, even shared (more or less) across map sizes. Not sure if you can go looking for more (e.g. whether a map making tool exists for community use).
I'm glad Kael got an actual paid job out of his work with FFH, but its too bad that job is the impossible task of cleaning up Wardell's mess. Maybe he can polish it up a bit more and add some newer/deeper mechanics, but the basic design/mechanics are still limited, and if you're going so deep as to fix those you may as well scrap it all code-wise and start over.