Seems Eugene and I are the only ones excited for this.

I never finished the original. I played it at launch and encountered a game-breaking bug after about 60 hours of playtime. By the time it got fixed I had lost interest. Plus my older PC would spontaneously combust every time I tried to start it. At least now I've got a new GPU that can handle the new version and its improved visuals.
But my download is going to take about 13 hours, and I have to schedule it between 12 and 6am. I thought Telkom were upgrading 2Mbit/s accounts to 4Mbit/s this year?
Going to give the new Tactician mode a try when I start playing. It looks nice and challenging.