To buy, or not to buy...

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I believe its possible to get used to the GUI to such an extent most of the issues become irrelevant, especially if you ever played Master of Magic without a keyboard. Also, in multiplayer, these interface issues are much less pronounced than in singleplayer. If you're doing a turn every 12 or 48 hours, in three very different games, you're going to be checking over most of your empire anyways. In singleplayer, though, you'll will feel the lack of automation.

I believe there is some key to hide researchers, but I'm afraid I don't use it or remember what it is.

Also, the developers aren't afraid to make signficant changes such as new content, but they have mentioned how the dominions engine has become unwieldy, so it's not likely you'll see huge changes into interface and the like.

The empire overview screen isn't as effective as what you might find in some 4x space conquest games, but it will do a lot for reducing some of those problems for you. Try looking at it every turn in the demo, for ten or twenty turns early and late game, and see whether frequent use is enough to reduce your issues to an acceptable level.

I think shift+? can bring up a list of hotkeys, many easy to remember that can assist in play. As well, the virtually undocumented but simple control grouping can help you manage armies.

The manual covers quite a few timesavers at the end, but there are a few shortcuts I don't even know how I learned about, that I haven't seen in the shift-? or the list of hotkeys back in the manual, though I will admit I don't have my manual on hand to doublecheck right now.