Well, It has been a few years since we talked about this but basically because they did such a bad job with this game they gave all those people that bought it the option to get the newer versions for free. I saw the newest version on Steam and ?25 and wanted to try it, checked Stardock account and had the option to download for free, so guess what, I did!
If Elemental was the 1st edition, the newest game is the 3rd edition and it seems much better than the old one, I have only played about 4 hours, seems quite solid though. I dunno if it is worth ?25 but it's pretty fun now. I kept getting emails from them telling me what they had changed and done to put things right for years, they obviously significantly regretted pissing off their fan base with a crap game and have totally turned things around and given out free copies to boot!