Are we paying more for less?

[Agrajag]

Gandalf Parker said:
Its not like its a 50 cent CD (as one person said).

I think you took my post out of context.
What I said was that the cost of making a game CD itself are very (very!) low, unlike costs for a manual, which can be many many times more expensive. This is to say that the cost of actually producing a copy of dominions 3 is probably much higher than other commercial games with crappy manuals.
Obviously, on top of that there's employee's wages, paying Illwinter and other costs.

Another point I'd like to make (specifically to marc420) is that the Dominions 3 manual is very different from other manuals. It isn't the usual 10 pages of "Press the left mouse button to 'click'".
This is what I know about the manual from what has been said on the forum:
1) IIRC it was written by game guru Bruce Geryk.
2) It contains pages of reference sheets and lists that are very handy in playing the game. Viewing every item in the game for example can be very helpful when deciding if you want to empower that mage for forging.
3) It explains the game mechanics, which is obviously very useful.
And I suppose there's lots of other stuff I don't know about (or that my puny brain has filtered out)

All of these help to make sure this manual is a keeper, rather than a coaster.