* No invasive DRM, an excellent record of updates and patches (although that's going to taper off, now that the current game is near the end of the life cycle), and a pre-order/open beta for user feedback. All of that is worth supporting with my money.
That's a good point. You do get a nice warm glowy feeling just for buying the thing and supporting an actual customer-friendly business model, instead of something that demands you log on to the internet for an hour every time you want to play it and makes you feel as though you must have done something wrong. That the game is good does help though.

And to be fair, it is a proper TBS so I think we've all been spoilt a bit by Total War if we're expecting fancy real-time tactical battles (although that would be fantastic). It does what it says on the box - it's Civilizations, in space.