I'm in TW: Rome II I agree, lots of crashes and bugs. There are several parts of the new version that I like over the old ones. For example, the limitation on number of armies you can field and the standing garrisons. The original was all about who could build "stacks of doom" the fastest. This one at least has some strategic limitations.
On the down side, I have one city, Medlhun, that every single battle takes forever to manually control because it pauses every time a scorpion shoots an arrow/bolt. I got in a situation where the nearby faction was attacking it every round with one or two units against my fully equipped army. It took like half an hour to kill them off each round, and when I finally got to the point where I just hit automatic, they ran my army off like it wasn't even there. Very painful.
and yes, you are paying $60 for a beta. Games get to market as fast as they can, just like many other types of software, and worry about fixing bugs in later releases. Any time you buy a new release game, you are pretty much paying to be in the public beta.