To comment on this myself ... as what I consider to be a casual gamer now. I am 36 and have a full time job and family. I found FE on steam during a pre-order, and thought it looked interesting. So I read up on the game and found that they had released a previous version years ago called Elemental. I found it for cheap on Amazon ($5 but I should have read how bugged and flawed it was). I attempted to play it, and enjoyed the concept of it when it wouldn't crash on me so much. I shelved it in anticipation of the new one, chalked it up as a $5 loss. FE finally releases with some improvements, some features omitted, but to my surprise MANY of the same bugs as I saw in Elemental. This led me to believe they used the same source code for most of FE, but just changed the graphics and other areas of the game. Very rarely have I been able to get through a whole map of FE without some sort of bug. Mainly because I am a casual player, I save my game and come back to it sometimes days later, and as I quickly found out there were many bugs with saving the game and the loading from a save (instant building finishes by AI, etc). This then led me to shelve the game until the bugs were worked out. Several times I would read about huge bug fixes, and I would give it a go again, only to find more and more bugs, and yet still many bugs from the first Elemental game coming back after being patched.
Then one day I see Legendary Heroes on steam for $40, and wonder what the heck is this. When I look at the screenshots and read the description I see it looks like many of the bugs, issues, and problems are highly addressed in this version ... but then after looking, it seems like its a new game and separate from FE, meaning I would have to drop the additional $40 to get it, instead of like a $10 expansion cost because I own FE. I had to contain myself from pitching my wireless keyboard down the hall in anger. At this point I felt like I had paid to be a beta tester for FE so they could release the better game of LH after we've all reported bugs and suggestions for improvement.
This is just my view as a casual player who just wanted to spend hard earned cash to get some enjoyment in my limited free time. Because of this I doubt I will ever invest in a Stardock game again, even if it wins awards and praises because I would not want to risk feeling this way again. Thanks for reading.
Edit: After researching I do see they are offering LH for 50% for FE owners, but that still is not enough for me to want to spend anymore money.