It can be classified as rpg but that does not make up for the game being bad at being a rpg.

I would say the concept of living in my own Personalized Empire is a marvelous idea.

Especially if I get to do things like ... build my empire from the ground up, fight other Kingdoms with my Empire, ect.

skdyer, it's not DONE yet, the features aren't all included.  Perhaps you didn't mean it as a criticism, but I don't think I'd judge Elemental's strategic depth yet; it's not a "game" yet!  I think once economy is fixed and implemented there are going to be a lot more units in the game and more battles.  Battles are currently abstracted but I'm pretty sure they're aiming at turning that off once the testing phase is further along and it's less like an alpha testing, more like a beta testing.

I stopped caring about what categorization companies themselves put on products these days long ago. Even Mass Effect 2 is labeled as a RPG, if you ask Bioware themselves.

I love the fact that we'll feel more 'invested' in each and every citizen instead of the usual 'send the masses to their deaths'.

The best part though is ".......we’ll take as long as we need to get it right." 

I don't think it will be that immersive. Not like how we were attached to our soldiers in x-com, or how we were attached to heroes in MoM. I think it's going to be more strategic (military might vs. people available to gather) rather than "OMG, Thorin Razorback died in that battle! NOOO!"  

just remember, "right" in their eyes isn't going to appeal to everyone out here in the peanut gallery. Don't just assume your going to love this game. They could slave away at this game for the next 10 years and many people at the end would still say it sucks. It's just a part of the industry. 

hmmm an army of blue people.

When I saw the art style of Elemental for the first time i was skeptic. It looked like old PS2 third grade titles.

But now, when I looked at the third pic... It works out pretty well. Only one thing: In the pic, it looks like the spiders are rushing through a forest towards the infantrymen. PLEASE make a collision detection so I won't see the spiders go *through* trees. many games don't bother with it and it really hurts my suspension of disbelief.

Screenshot #3 is now my new desktop. Please let those battles be as awesome as that picture looks!

These ^pictures are really hot.

I can't wait for the graphic part being intergrated in the beta

Kingdom personalization ideas.

In addition to the excellent ideas already presented, here are a few more.  I do not know if they would be reasonable from a programming perspective or not.

1.  Soldier customization - mild differences in (same grade) gear, perhaps colors, amount of wear, and mildly different textures of armor, weapons and accessories.  Eye patches, missing ears, limps and tendencies to spit on the ground.

2. Population customization - hair/eye/skin/coloration, height, build.  Your people may look like tall blond Vikings, or short, lithe, tanned Romans...but you would have recogizable population traits.  Once you interact a lot with another kingdom you may start to see children with mixed traits as your citizens inter-marry.

3. Architectural cutomization - stone/wood  building materials type, design type (light and open with porches, huts, tipis, etc

4. Town lay-out customization - Your cities may be made of fishermen and follow the shore of the stream or ocean, long and narrow.  Or your population might be farmers who tend to spread out with room between houses, or perhaps you have tight and crowded cities so it is easier to enclose them in a protected wall.  You may lay your streets out in organized grids or you may have them twist as the follow ancient cowpaths.

5. Settlement/Agricultural customization - you might have land ownership based on a grid system like in the US, or in narrow strips extending back from rivers (like in Quebec), or in scattered and intermixed inherited holdings (like in Normandy and South England) or another form.

Other 'customizations' might follow your initial civilization and channeller choices.  For ecample, if you choose scouting/ranger type strengths, your citizens may tend to wander further from the cities, establish more hunting camps, and give you better information about what is happening in remote parts of your kingdom as well as soldiers dressed in forest garb.  If you are an engineer, you may not only get buildings built faster but they may also look better.  If your leader is lazy then the people will take a cue from him and you will see piles of offal behind houses, more rats, and more soldiers with obvious warts and sores on their faces.  If you are a beast master (beast tamer) then your citizens would have more pets in town, dogs and cats and monkies and parrots and the occasional raccoon.  Hmmm, perhaps you could train units of skunks to defend your cities or make the enemy capitol uninhabitable.

Does that mean we will not be able to create our sovereign for the campaign?  I was hoping the customization would also be there for the campaign also, at least to a degree.

How will this impact the engine and loading these models into memory? I love having individual models for each unit, but won't you hit the 2 gb ceiling very fast or do you have a strategy already to deal with that?