To buy, or not to buy...

[Sombre]

I won't address your list of points, because other people have that in hand.

I just thought I'd say on the subject of 'getting bang for your buck' that Dominions 3 has a pretty active modding community which has produced well over 20 new nations (I've lost count) of varying quality and content. There are also balance mods, pretender mods, some minor graphical mods,...

Modding dom3 I have found both easy to learn and very rewarding. I spend more time tinkering and building new nations than playing the game most of the time. I also leave 3 mods on every time I play the game, namely...

Conceptual Balance Mod (A huge balancing mod)
Streamers and Standards (Spruces up the Dom3 flag graphics)
Worthy Heroes (Adds more heroes to the game and increases their power / utility)

Anyway, as with games like Half Life and Total Annihilation and whanot, you get a lot of customisation and user made mods for your money, on top of what comes in the box.

It's also worth mentioning that these forums, for the most part, kick ***. Useful information, helpful people and very active. They beat using the manual by a mile most of the time.