I've never actually had the chance to play the board game. For people who have played both the board game and this one, how does this compare? Should I play the board game first or does it matter?

You can safely play just this version without playing the board game first.

I own this on Steam. Boy, how I hate never knowing which games are ever going to be released here as well...
Nothing Free to Play, Pay to Win here on the roadmap as far as I know.

A good rule of thumb that I've devised is that when people just "gotta have" a game enough that they buy it on a DRMed platform like Scheme, the less chance there is of it coming here DRM-free to GOG. Now, for all I know, someone gifted it to you on there or something, but I'm just saying in general. I am glad to see the more board game type of releases coming here lately though I still have concerns about the weight of the online presence in all of them.

Thank you, I'm happy to check out the board game as well but I just wanted to be sure I was playing things in the proper order haha

there is no proper order

if this is the same as that TripleA free game then it is very simple game
you have a few unit types you move on the territories , territories prod points you buy units from and basically thats all.

all you need is to blob an army and attack the smaller enemy armies and you will win, simple shallow strategy :(

I'm all for DRM-Free. But there are games you buy because you want to play with friends and family, you want to talk about, and so on. On top of that, GoG curators are deeply involved in which games are released here and which ones are not, and GoG has disappointed me in the past regarding this. Board game adaptations are relatively new here in this platform so yes, Steam has been my to go store for this type of game. GoG never tells us beforehand "hey, we are trying to bring X or Z to the store, stay tuned!". Same goes for Pinball, GoG has really few options. Same goes for Fighting Games... not to mention the huge number of devs that release here and then drop support, treating us as second class. Then there was that China fiasco last year...

I have almost 700 games here in this platform, but nowadays I really don't feel bad when I buy a game I think has a low chance of ending up here. I would however appreciate if GoG would hint us more often that X or Y game may appear in the store in the future, I'd still rather give my money here than there.

if they say 'hay guys we are trying to get Mass Effect 3' & it doesn't show up then that is worse than saying nothing... just look at Cyperpunk or No Mans Sky to see how games that promise bullshit get on

I do agree with you that Gog does more damage to themselves with their lack of comunication to users

Another game that has cross platform multiplayer including with Android players on the Steam Linux native port but no Linux port at all on GOG due too no Galaxy SDK that you won't even open up so third party clients can use it if you never plan to release Galaxy yourself, which has been 'in progress' since March 2015, over 6 and a half years.

Thanks for the amazing Linux support GOG.