Welcome to the forums
Hello, I have a question about purchasing AI War.
(A salesman appears in a puff of smoke, with an insufferably ingratiating smile)
If I get the "base game," I assume that means I'll download AI War 5.0
Right, the AI War 5.0 download is the basis of all of it. The expansion installers don't actually have separate .exe files or anything like that, they just have the extra art and music and whatnot that's expansion-specific. The base game actually has all the code the expansions use, too, it just isn't actually "used" without them.
The question is, if I download the latest expansion, which I believe is LotS, does it come with the other expansions too, or do I need to download/purchase those separately?
LotS is just LotS, it neither requires nor provides anything from TZR or CoN.
If separately, is there anything in those previous expansions that I will need to get full functionality in the base game?
Since there's only one actual game, the base game gets all functionality, only explicitly expansion-specific stuff (like ship types, ai types, map types, minor factions, etc; NEVER something like a UI feature) is... well, expansion-specific.
Or that I would be missing out on even if I didn't technically need them?
TZR and CoN each have quite a bit of content, yes, and it's not included in either the base game or LotS.