So Merk Vilson confirmed our suspition about the editor vs. renderer settings being the problem:
"[...] It is worth mentioning that the most common mistake is when user works only with Subdivision Editor and leaves Subdivision Renderer unchanged. Subdivision in trypogen is split into two parts. If he has subdivision renderer set to 0, it will not give the same results that he can see in the viewport. [...]"
But I am quite surprised that the "Use original Cinema 4D scene" setting makes a difference! It should only concern the material preview! If it does something else, that's a weird bug that you jsut uncovered.