OK fellas. I really wasn't trying to come off as a cheapskate! I guess I was questioning whether it made sense to just wait for the newer version before buying the game.
Can I ask one more question? Desert Dave mentions that the game has a very high replayability factor. I haven't purchased many historically based games. Most of my experience has been with games like Age of Empires, Gal Civ, etc where a new random world is created each time. For this type of game, does it really play differently each time? I am more than glad to be wrong, but I get the feeling that once you figure out a way to win, will the AI change up its strategy enough to make it feel like a different game the next time I play it?