" It's not like there's a shortage of cool strategy games for me to play that actually look like someone cared. "
They do care. Have a look at the
documentation page. There is a huge manual and a table of everything in the game.
What would you play instead, though? I can't think of very many strategy games.
Actually, one of the weak points of dom5 is the maps. Most of the dom4 maps were done by the community and haven't been updated for dom5 yet, so there's only 3 maps at the moment plus the random generator. Though the maps are a little more readable now and change colour to show cold areas, show magic sites as icons, but things like farmland and hills have been moved to a less readable spot.
Also, its funny I mentioned how I hate the Civ style DLC because they're announced Civ6 as an expansion to 5.