1. It's broken.  Theoretically it works in IE, but it hasn't for me.

2. Interesting.  Why would DL have the gold edition manual in the first place?  Gold = DA + DL, and if you're only playing DL there's no reason to have the DA manual-the spying changes (which were revamped in 2.0 to be more similar to DL, so that's almost irrelevant), the super abilities, the asteroids-none of it matters because none of it is in DL.

3. In the dev journals area of the forums, changelogs are posted, but apart from the most recent updates, they're still hard to find.  There's a history link on applications within Impulse, but it only appears to have the changelogs for the versions that have been Impulse-specific.  It's possible SDC has the information on the rest, but I honestly don't remember.

4. GC2 Wiki

I got the DA manual at some point while updating DL Vanilla during my first attempt at the game last year sometime.  I'm not sure how though, it just appeared.  Anyway, it's gone now.  I can't believe Stardock wouldn't just post an "updated manual" since they are constantly adjusting their titles.  Anyway thanks for the help.  I will try pecking through the wiki for help, but I think Stardock is shooting themselves in the foot with this oversight.  If I can't be sure to get well organized and updated information, I will be skipping GC III, IV, and V.