I'm quite excited about the campaign. ( I'm a sucker for a good story. )
But I think I'll play a few sandbox games first just to get a hang for the game ( after the tutorials off course. )

No, the Dreadlords have not shown up on any of my "sandbox games". However, there is a custom scenario that pits everybody against the dreadlords... in essence you -can- play a sandbox game with the DL...but they dont just randomly join your games.

Ill be going campaign first. Im fairly new to the 4x genre and I havent played GalCiv2 yet. I heard that playing the campaign was the best way to get a feel for the game. So ill probably play about halfway through the campaign..till im comfortable with it.. then move over to sandbox for a little while.. then finish the campaign.

Regardless of where you get the game, definitely make sure you download the BonusPak though. The guys are really putting in some awesome stuff in there and I've been tweaking the AI further and further as well.

I personally don't play campaigns in strategy games. But the Dread Lords are pretty neat.

I love campaigns and will certainly play it, but not first. Set up a nice little galaxy then mercilessly take it over. Once I have figured out how I like to play and what works for me I will hit the campaign.

2-torial baby!!! Then I'll dip into a 'sandbox' game (random universe stuff)

Probably the Campaign (after the Tutorials, of course) unless it seems like the Campaign just throws you into the fire, so to speak, without a decently gradual buildup in difficulty to let me get acclimatized to the game. In that scenario, I'd play some Sandbox games before taking a serious crack at the Campaign.

- Ash

I never play campaigns until I think I've got a handle on how to play the game itself.

Campaign!

I lust for the storyline. Then tutorials, because I'll get my arse handed to me. Then campaign, then sandbox.

lol

I'll play the campaign first for the story.I hope the Dreadlords also appear in the sandbox mode.

Brad has said the Dreadlords *currently* do not show up in sandbox mode. However, a number of people have requested the ability to "toggle" them so that they can appear in sandbox mode (kind of like how you could choose whether the Borg appear in Birth of the Federation), and Frogboy said he would look at including such an option in one of the updates later on. So keep your fingers crossed!

As for myself, I think I'm actually going to play the campaign first (after going through the tutorials, of course), and then go into sandbox mode. As long as the difficulty for the missions are scaled properly, I almost always play the campaign in strategy games before anything else. It's become sort of a tradition for me.

Tutorial first, then about 50% of the campaign before I decide to try out the sandbox/skirmish/personalized/? mode and completely forget about the campaign until a year or more later. That's my typical pattern at least.

LOL. Don't feel bad, Crustacean; I've done the same thing myself.