It's 25feb and still no sight of the game for me yet (and because it's sunday tomorow, I will automatically have to wait for another two days...). The reason I ordered from Paradox is because of cutting the heavy custom-fees I would have had to pay if I pre-ordered the game from Stardock itself or some N-American distributor (I live in Europe...). But right now I'm quite dissatisfied with my choice. I should have chosen the download-option from Stardock. That way I would have got the game some days ago, in stead of running home every day now only to find an empty mailbox (I only by today found out that Paradox shipped the game to pre-orders on the 24th feb). Why did I not go with the download-option? Because I'm quite eager to get a real box and manual and stuff (together with the tech-tree fold-out and such).

What should have been otherwise? Paradox should have had the same policy as Stardock (seperatly or in co-operation). I.e. that pre-orders should have been able to download the game from the moment it was released (from Paradox itself or from Stardock Central), in expectation of the physical copy to arrive. From what I have seen now, Stardock is very genuine towards its customers, but at this exact point, it somewhat puts its European customers to a disadvantage. We have to choose between higher costs (pre-order from N-America; custom-fees), no box or other physical goodies (download-purchase from SD) or a setback of a week (pre-order from Paradox) (and I'm not even mentioning European retail-releases...). Before people go thinking I'm blaming Stardock, I'm not. I only voice my slight miscontent for the right people to read it and take appropriate measures for future-releases, so they can be reckonend in.