[Hadrian_II]

1) in the full version you have more nations to choose from and much more spells to research and cast, so you get lots of stuff.

2) in the patches are not only but fixes, but often new nations and spells

3) You dont have to select the province and then select the leader, you can just press the 'n' key and it will automatically select the next idle leader then you can press shift + 'r' and he is set to research. The target commander option would be much to powerful, as it would be very easy to set up sniper commanders that would kill of enemy mages without much problems.

Also 55$ seems to be lot for a game, but after a year of playing it, the cost i paid per hour of game comes very close to zero.