well

Endless Universe is a standalone of the two expansion packs that is : Dark Avatar & Twilight of the Arnor, it also gets the original Dread Lords campaign and is just missing the Dread lords engine if you ever wanted to play in the original dread lords rules & feature set

Ultimate Edition has it all except, currently it is not possible to update it to 2.x because it seems the original deal between distributor and stardock was that the distributor would handle support ... Stardock is trying to sort that out though

OR you could also buy the 3 games directly on impulse for download

Either way impulse is required for updates

overall I would personnaly refrain from Ultimate Edition and choose between the other two

EDIT: ho and there's nothing wrong with playing the game at a friend's house ...

EU should be on CD

Digital version (purchasable directly from stardock with impulse )  of galciv2 has no limitations at all you can even use an archive function to put the thing on CD (although it will require impulse to reinstall it)

when I said the 3 games on impulse I was talking about this : https://www.galciv2.com/Purchase.aspx

the "ultimate bundle" (NOT the same as galciv2 Ultimate Edition)

wasn't really talking about buying the 3 separately, though I don't know how this compares for the price...

It's a shame that you waited until now to ask because Play.com (UK) deliver to Finland for free and only want £4.99 for EU.  It would probably be the New Year before you got delivery though.

As for the Utimate Edition, it is only a single DVD so it is convenient to install and once the registration issue is sorted it will be a good option.  I'm still enjoying it while I wait.