Absoultely last post about the big download.

As I understand it, if you have your serial number, no matter where you purchased the game, you can download the game from the website as well as the bonus pack and extras that comes out in the year ahead. Absolutely positively free.

If you pre-ordered from Stardock, they'll e-mail the serial number to you when they ship it.

If you pre-ordered from somewhere else, they probably won't e-mail you the serial ahead of time.

I would guess this is what will happend.

You buy the game and get serial, when you have the serial you can go to download, type in your serial and then download the game. It will be free as you already payed for the game itself. How big it is I dont know, sorry.

/Andreas

As I understand things, the only way you will immediately get an e-mail containing your serial # is if you order it directly from Stardock. In that case, you should almost instantly get an e-mail containing the serial number and be able to use that to start downloading the game. Then they will (if you ask them to and pay an extra $5[U.S.] or $10[International]) ship you a physical copy of the game CD. But the point is that you can start playing it as soon as your download finishes.

Anywhere else you buy the game from (whether it's an online retailer or your local software store), you will only get your serial # by looking on the CD case. In these instances, the ability to download the game is more of a safeguard in case something should ever happen to your CD. You can always download a backup. So, the only way for an online retailer to e-mail you with a serial # would be for them to open up your box, check the CD case, and then type it out in an e-mail to you. I'm about 99.99% sure that's not going to happen.

So, the moral of the story is that if you want to play it the day of the release, either buy it direct from Stardock and download or else go to a local retailer and pick it up. Then again, it's possible that if you pre-order it ahead of time from some third-party online retailer, they may ship it in time for you to get it on release date, as well.

As far as where you get the download from, I believe you'll need Stardock Central to download it. I *think* a copy of that may come with your GalCiv CD. But regardless, I know you can download SDC for free on one of Stardock's websites.

Hope that helps.

As for the download size, the game itself is around 60 megs and the extra multimedia is probably around 200+ megs. Sucks if you have dial up.

But great if you got 10 mbit

Brad announced that you also can dl SDC from the galciv site as from the date of release of Galciv, so the 26th. If you want to be sure to play the game on date of release you either buy it through Stardock or buy Drengin. Than you can immediately DL the game at that date. Specially if you live outside the US this is a nice option. Drengin is more expensive but you get alot more than only galciv as well as a one year free subscription on updates, new releases etc. I recommend buying Drengin, I did it and I'm very happy about that.

'and the extra multimedia is probably around 200+ megs.'

350MB, as of the last gamma, or at least that's what the SDC tells me I need to make discspace for.