Honestly it probably will blow Civ5 out of the water in reviews, but it won't matter. It's marketing they need to focus on. It doesn't matter how good a game is, if people don't know about it.
Civ already has a following, Elemental needs to get it's name and face (ok ok screen shots, and info, games don't have a physical face) in front of all the Civ players and scream at them "Give me a shot, you won't be disappointed!"

It just could blow Civ out of the water. It already is looking better than Civ.

I think they are marketing it as a remake of sorts of Master of Magic, which does have a following too. Their collector edition looks very good too.

Why are people around here hyping Elemental so much? It looks like a Cartoony Heroes of Might and Magic Rip off.
While I may not have heard much about Elemental as it seems no one but GoGers are even talking about it (Impulse should work on PR, I hadnt even heard of it until I saw people mentioning it here) Civ 5 is a big name and will probably rack up better reviews and sales, it looks pretty good.

While Elemental may be interesting, I know I won't be buying it until it's being sold for around $5 to $10 and that's simply because it's only going to be available via Impluse here. The game itself may well be worth far more in terms of enjoyment and all that, but being tied to Impluse devalues it significantly in my book.
Since installing Win 7, I've reinstalled a number of Steam based games and GamersGate bought games, a few D2D bought games, a couple of GOG bought games and a couple Big Fish bought games. I still haven't reinstalled a single Impluse bought game. I just can't be arsed.

As much as I give credit to Stardock for the games they create, how can anyone seriously compare a product by Sid's team and Elemental? Sid (and his team) was creating masterpieces in the early to mid 80's ffs!
I didn't like the extended religion in Civ 4, although I bought it and its expansion packs, but as a TBS game it is still one of the best ever created. Elemental going toe to toe with Civ 5? If Sid and his whole team had a stroke a day while creating it, perhaps.
In general, no one is so much complaining about the job Stardock does as a developer. They make very good games and software. They just need to remove the banana out of their ass and fight hard, not whine like a bitch. You want sales of Steam size? Start selling in the rest of the world. Make better deals and more. Reduce prices, create sales that matter. Sure everyone likes top down shooter 5 from few years ago and it going on sale, again, is not a problem, but add some more games ffs. And sell them to the rest of the world.
And above all and everything else, stop your bitching.

Thats the uphill struggle Elemental has. For strategy fans even if Elemental is good they will choose Civ in a choice between the two. It's an established brand that will sell with little marketing effort and Sid Meyer as never let his fans down. We all might have a favorite Civ but the fact remains it's Civ and no other game does what it does as well.

Very nicely put. Now if only someone could say that to Brad's face =)

This is really a major aspect, and they don't seem to understand how important this is. They're trying to run a global download service, but if people come to your service 2 or 3 times and what they want is not available to them, they will never ever ever come back. You're dead in their books. That's pretty much my experience with Impulse.
Regional restrictions simply do not work any more in today's world. Sony learned that with PlayStation 3. HD DVD would have done away with them (Blu-rays are at least usually region-free for re-releases). And don't forget TV shows: episodes are usually only available to U.S. residents on the network's official websites, which is why there were 100'000s of peers on every new torrent of LOST.
I know Steam does it too. But it is really a rare exception there, which makes a big difference. I don't think it is purely a publisher's decision if the same games are usually available to me on Steam, but not on Impulse.

While I completely agree about Impulse needing to get worldwide availability for their games, and Brad needing to stop his constant whining, I can actually see this being a publisher decision. Seems counter-intuitive, but it could very well be the case that there's an exclusivity agreement with another distributor (such as Steam) for other countries/regions and Impulse isn't allowed to sell in those areas. Likely this is not true in all cases, but it (or something along those lines) certainly could be for many.

what about games that are available in more than USA through Steam and another service, like GG or D2D, but has region restriction on Impulse? Do you still think that the publisher has a special deal with ....who? to ....what? not allow Impulse sell the game, but everyone else is allowed? Tough to swallow that one.

Did you read the last sentence in my post?
I'm really not interested in getting into an argument over this. I completely agree that Impulse needs wider coverage if they want to get bigger. All I'm saying is it's entirely possible that it's a publisher issue in the case of some of these games. Remember that each publisher has different branches in different regions and an agreement to sell has to be struck with the publisher of that region. That's all I'm going to say about it. I'm personally fed up with Impulse as well, so I don't care if they sink or swim.

My questions were more rhetorical than anything else. I read what you said :)

Impulse just too weak = lazy, against the publishers .

I think Impulse isn't needed to run any games downloaded from it, including Stardock games.

That was mentioned too on the impulse community forum, but most games are available on steam, gamersgate, d2d, and such, except for Impulse. Did all those download services sign an exclusivity agreement to keep Impulse out?

Why would they even bother with an agreement like that, though?
Exclusivity agreements usually come about when a couple of roughly equal groups are competing for IPs to sell units (Sony and Microsoft, for example) or when someone is the big fish and can offer enough incentives and built in sales that it's worthwhile for the developer (Steamworks). What possible reason is there for the other retailers to make sure Impulse can't sell certain games in certain areas? ESPECIALLY for Steam to even care about it?