Is D3 worth the $55 upgrade from D2?

[Nethog]

Thank-you all for your very informative and honest responses. I see that modding, multiplayer, and the Dominions community are the primary motivators for why many of you are so into D3, and from this perspective I fully understand your recommendations to upgrade to D3. For me however, when it comes to turn-based strategy games, I am not really a modder nor do I seek out multiplayer matches. This is just the way I am. I guess I could be interested in checking out new maps, and perhaps trying highly-recommended mods, however for whatever reason I typically stick to single-player and the vanilla versions of the TBS games I like to play. BUT, for any game I purchase and enjoy, I always DO like to get the latest and greatest version. Like I said in my original post, with the D3 demo, I didn't get the impression of playing a new generation of Dominions. Reading the D3 features, I do feel the lure of: more maps, nations, units, items, spells - MORE MORE MORE is GOOD! Also I love large paper manuals (BTW is the D3 manual good?). Then there are all of the minor but great UI changes (auto-tax and zoom with mouse scroll-wheel!! YAHOO!).
But then comes the $55 price - honestly if it were $25-$30 (or less) I would have already whipped out my credit card and bought the game. Or if it was 2006, and I was heavily engrossed in actively playing D2 I also would have paid the $55 if D3 was just released. But here we are almost 5 years after the release of D3 and the price is a steep (at least to me) $55. Within a month I will have upgraded my 8-year old computer to a new powerful machine, and will likely move on to Civ 5 (which barely runs on my P4 system), and/or Total War: Shogun2, and later this year other games from various genres, and will likely not play Dominions again for a while after my present "dominions fever" focus. So I will likely skip the upgrade and check back in a couple of years to see if either the D3 price is reasonable (again given my point-of-view) or D4 is released! But who knows - a week from now I may just bite-the-bullet and upgrade to D3 ;-).