fishbaits: Another heads up for that pre-order.
The only thing you get from doing that, is access the Aztec pack:
*EXCLUSIVE PRE-ORDER ITEM FOR 90 DAYS, AFTER WHICH THE CONTENT WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE TO ALL OWNERS OF THE GAME."
To me, this looks too much like "this is in game, but we're restricting anyone that doesn't pre-order from playing with these bits for three months".
Definitely dodgy stuff, combined with you also don't know if it'll run well etc.
You're right, the pre-order "incentive" is pretty much garbage. I was aware of that, and I have no idea why they even bothered. But the real incentive for me, is the 30% discount. That won't be there at launch and I have a strong suspicion that it won't reach that "high" during the Black Friday/Winter sales. I suspect it'll see around 15% if it gets discounted at all. (It'll still be "new" so there are no guarantees.) So if I want to play it "now" the best deal seems to be the pre-order, unless I want to pay full price. (I don't.)
For the record, I'm not basing this on blind hope. I've been watching Quill18 & TotalBiscuit doing Let's Plays on twitch & youtube with pre-release copies for the past few weeks. The game looks good and I didn't notice any major technical issues in the coverage I saw.
Still, I appreciate the advice from you & dyscode. The Civilization series is definitely an Achilles heel for me when it comes to losing objectivity.