Elemental: War of Magic Impressions

Fidgit's Tom Chick has conjured up some initial impressions of Elemental: War of Magic after getting his hands on a review copy of the game. Apparently there are some nagging issues present in the pre-release version, which will hopefully be addressed by the promised day 0 patch:
My problem isn't just the way Elemental assumes you know things you would have no way of knowing, or the amateurish mistakes in the interface, or the crashes, or how alt-tabbing kills the game, or the way the Farming Guild increases metal production by 100%, or that I didn't get the leather armor I was promised when I researched it, or even this picture of the dreaded Umberdroth Pack, which either has cloaking technology or is so skinny it can hide behind a palm tree.

...

Firstly, I see that I have a 50% bonus to research. This is actually present at all of my cities, so I guess my empire is five times more Educated than I thought. But even that doesn't account for the 9.4. If being Educated adds 50% instead of 10%, I should be getting 8.8 points of research. But I see now that my error is mistakenly assuming that Elemental can do math. It has somehow decided that 50% + 25% = 88%. Which it has then applied twice over to the Lost Library's 5 research points for a grand total of 17.6 points of research. Thanks, Elemental.
If you pre-ordered the game, make sure you check your email, too. It sounds like Stardock might release the game early for those of us who pre-ordered, thanks to retailers breaking the street date.