I've got the Pirated Gold Version right now, had it since last year. I can only imagine the unplayable craptitude of such a build Even 6months ago seems like ages in game-disign time.
Heck, we'll be saying that about the real gold version eventually.
The original GalCiv II still gives me the creeps.
GalCiv II shipped with a problem that caused high end video cards to overheat (nearly all our testing had been done on low end machines because we were paranoid about working on low end machines). Plus GalCiv II crashed a ton, had memory leaks, and on and on.
Comparatively, Elemental is a lot better in its golden state but still, the day 0 version will be significantly better. Though, in 2010, it's all academic since most users will never play any of the various RTMs but rather whatever the latest version is.