Y'know, I wonder.
What is with the strategy genre on PC and aggressive DLC?
Like, both Sega and Paradox have this thing going on where they have boatloads of $10~ DLCs that add little to the game. And that's not to forget XCOM 2's DLCs (Thank god for LW2).
Is it the lack of any real competition in the genre?
It's essentially a variant on the f2p model. These games can (and should) have very long lifespans where people play thousands of hours in them. There's not very many ways to monetize that play time. The paradox model is perfect imo, you can spend as much or as little as you want, there's a steady stream of new stuff, and they can maintain development and profitability without having to push people towards a full sequel every year. It's far superior to things like the Madden series which abandons support yearly and requires a full game repurchase when dlc upgrades would have been perfectly sufficient and less expensive.