if you buy the trinity pack or the two patchss serparatly, I would suppose that the lastest patchs would come with the game (as downloading the game will also download the patchs).
Whats wrong with downloading the patchs? it will only take less than a minute to install all the patchs.
and on a different point of view, play single player and get used to the features before coming online. Not knowing what to do and what to build etc, you will last barely 10 minutes online from an other wise 2hr multiplayer experiance. If you can beat a 3 hard AI vs only you, than I would recommend coming online, as that is a very good start.
Sins online is small comapred to other games, get ready for bad atitude, smurfing (better players pretending to be new etc), and other issues, but overall it is a pretty good game online. and always listen to more expericnaed players, by ignoring them, your learnining curve to the multiplayer experiance of sins will be VERY HIGH!
beleive me, I seen many new people who played 400 games now, and still dont know what they are doing, and still cant beat player who have learnt and listened and only have 150 games played.
My tips:
Read Forums on tactics and tricks
Watch replays from multiplayer games and learn from your experiance and observation
have hard skin and stick with it, you will get trashed talked and kicked from most games (like I did), but stick with it, and you will become really good. (like me and many others)
Play Singleplayer - get used to features and units - learn more effcient ways to expand, counter, and more tactics - move to mulitplayer - start with 1v1 then move to - 2v2 - 3v3 - 4v4 than 5v5.
AND LEARN THE COUNTERS!!!!
good luck comrade
