Tridus

[quote who="GaelicVigil" reply="11" id="2784506"]Agree with the OP. Let's face it. Civ 5, along with Civ 4 and Civ: Revolutions are for what I call, the "Squishy Generation". In the squishy generation, games are more automated, they usually have lots of sliders to manage things for you, and they have a "less is more" feel to them. Graphics are more stylized, quantity has been severely cut for "quality's" sake, and the interface is laid out with giant but

There's two ways to handle something like this: 1. A professional downtime announcement, like what Steam did. 2. Pretend to be closing, cause a lot of people to be worried that they just lost access to their games, and in general act like nitwits with no idea what they're doing. This thing was a disgrace. I especially hate how they mention "oh we're ending beta now!" They've been quite happy to take peoples money for years without mentioning that the ser

[quote who="Firbolg" reply="22" id="2783425"]This is bad because it stifles progress and is only possible due to the partial monopoly Intel has. We put up with the bad aspects of a market economy like boom/bust cycles, inequality, and constantly struggling to survive in exchange for the benefits it provides. Those benefits basically boil down to us constantly getting better and cheaper stuff as time goes on. What Intel is doing violates the purpose of a free market. They are selling both spee

[quote quoting="post"] I been hearing a lot of problems are going on with Civilization V. I am curious if that game will be judged by the same merits that Elemental was judged? What do you guys think? [/quote] Yes. If you compare Civ 5 at launch to Elemental at launch, it goes something like this: - Civ 5 is having crash issues for some people in DX11 mode. Dropping to DX9 and/or updating drivers seems to fix it. Elemental had sim

Apparently if you don't hate Steam and the children of those who made it, then you're working for Valve. That's what I get out reply 714 anyway.

[quote who="dragoaskani" reply="269" id="2782752"]I enjoyed the hell outta my day of playing civ 5. The pacing is feels alot slower then with Civ 4. But that could be my mind playing tricks on me. Spend most the day on a small 6 civ 12 city state earth map as Babylon on prince to get a feel for the game. I technically have the game won now. Need to take out the Iroquois capital and that will be domination. Just getting tired will finish it in morning. Hopefully as I get more familiar game wil

[quote who="Mobella" reply="241" id="2781879"]any initial impressions will be most appreciated... thinking about adding this one to my collection as well, but i want to hear from players, as opposed to editors (not that those are mutually exclusive mind you)... [/quote] Played most of today (gogo vacation day!). It was rock solid for me, with no crashes, memory leaks (that were apparent after five hours straight, which is when I quit for a break the first time), or even slowdown. Frie

Coop isn't implemented, so there's not much for me to play MP wise. Far as MP goes, I'm currently thinking I'll just play Civ 5 for a while and check back on Elemental in six months.

[quote who="Thoumsin" reply="12" id="2781462"]Not really a bad idea from Intel... both them and customer can have some benefice from it... Let see a usual situation... a processor with 2 core at 20$, a other with 4 core at 40$, a other with 6 core at 60$ and a other with 8 core 80$... First, at the fabrication level, it is more expensive for Intel... yes, it is more cheap to build a lot of identical thing that a few of each different thing... method will allow huge mass

[quote who="FutileEmotion" reply="234" id="2781426"]I remember the first time I saw religion in Civ 4. I did a double take, and was totally swept up in forcing my own religion on everyone else. It added a huge sense of history to the game.[/quote] It also added some major game problems. If you managed to found a religion you were at a huge monetary advantage over if you didn't (+1 gold/turn/city with the religion). If you could get AI players to adopt it by spreading it th

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="32" id="2780912"]Tridus - No co-operative multiplayer? Yea, um i saw in another thread, you got that with one of the Beta releases then it was withdrawn but is due in another patch, can anyone confirm?[/quote] I think I saw a post about that somewhere, but can't find it now. I do know it's not there right now (the custom game option doesn't give you a way to add AI players).

[quote who="Melamine" reply="660" id="2780975"]The primary reason behind 2K's decision to use Steamworks: Piracy. All other features are secondary to Steam's ability to reduce piracy. Steam is the most beloved DRM system on the market. Its fans zealously defend it, the press adores it, and while publishers would prefer to keep more control over their products, Steam is a potent DRM system that doesn't generate negative press, publishers welcome it. Other than the forfeit

[quote who="Brillig" reply="648" id="2780859"] Why would they do this? Simple. They are going to sell less copies of Civ V with Steam than if they offered both Steam and non-Steam versions. How many less, no one knows, but it's non-zero. Why would any company decide to limit their sales if they're not getting something in return? This isn't nefarious, it's just business. Now it's possible that they think the hit will be so small that it's not wort

[quote who="coreimpulse" reply="645" id="2780848"] Quoting WhiteElk, reply 642Bah! So no go for Civ5. A steam free version requires a change to the DRM method, patch distribution.... It is technically possible to rip out the Steamworks component, like in the cases of the games I mentioned. Whether D2D will do it, who knows.[/quote] It's up to the developer to do it. D2D can't legally change Civ 5 and release it witho

[quote who="Brillig" reply="640" id="2780828"] It doesn't matter where exactly the money goes - any sale of Civ V, in any venue, is a vote saying that this form of DRM is okay. Steam doesn't care about the bandwidth for supporting this. Bandwidth is cheap. In exchange for this, they get a pile of new users, which looks good on the bottom line *and* they get to sell them DLC as well as other games. While I don't have any idea what the financial terms look

[quote who="Snarl" reply="78" id="2780443"] Looks like many are getting a second copy shipped, is this a shipping error ? [/quote] Seems to be. People have reported that Stardock sales have said to just keep the second copy when it happens. I guess the cost of returning and shipping it again isn't worth it for them. I got mine today in NB too, and I got a second suspiciously identical box that I haven't opened yet. Didn't have customs due on either of the

[quote who="coreimpulse" reply="630" id="2780702"]Since Impulse and D2D are starting to sell Steamworks games with the Steamwork component removed, this could be the best way to get Civ V. [/quote] ... what? Where? The D2D version of Civ 5 most definitely has Steamworks. In fact if you buy from D2D, they give you a *steam* activiation code for it. You download it in Steam.

[quote who="searro" reply="628" id="2780627"]Btw the demo is tomorrow right ? [/quote] It is.

[quote who="psychoak" reply="42" id="2779856"] When the game made it's money isn't relevant since we're talking about the online store and not the developer/publisher. Yeah, it is. It's all in the margins, and your margin on a 200 meg game from the 90's looks real damn good at 6 bucks a pop with no risk to the publisher. They need to expend a lot less work and have a lot less bandwidth than they would if they were selling new games with ten times the sp

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="5" id="2773695"]Thanks Dave.. and Drago.. I see it has co-operative multiplayer is that correct? I am a huge fan of co operative multilayer games - ever since Quake1 (later Quake games dumped the idea much to my displeasure and did not get purchased by me). Then there is Battlezone 2 combat commander, Lionheart and Dungeonsiege2 which all mesmorized me with co-operative multiplayer ... i crave that feature in a game! I dunno if Neverwinter nights 2 has that

[quote who="ice27828" reply="602" id="2779711"]Not only the fact that I need to be online just to play single player[/quote] Also not true, in the case of Civ 5. It supports Steam's offline mode.

[quote who="psychoak" reply="36" id="2779632"] If you sell fifty thousand copies for fifty bucks after a two million dollar development cycle, you just busted your balls big time at retail. When you sell fifty thousand copies at 6 bucks for a game that already made it's money 15 years ago, that's a solid three hundred grand and little to no costs to get it ready, with the cost of putting it out for dissemination being a small fraction of the return.[/quote] If you sell 50,0

Certainly seems plausable that it's going down. The problem with selling old games is that they're old. The volume isn't there compared to new games, and the price per unit (and thus revenue per unit) also isn't there. You don't make a lot of money selling $5.99 games. If that's a part of your business along with new games, it's certainly a good thing to have. But as the *only* thing you do? Servers aren't free.

[quote who="PyroMancer2k" reply="596" id="2779110"]I figured this thread was a great place to post this give it's title. So the my friend who lives in Missouri calls me up today to tell me the store near by broke street date on Civ 5. But because it requires a steam activation he still can't play it. He's sitting there stuck with a copy of a game he's already paid for that he can't play because of some stupid DRM. Now I know some of you may argue that h

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="5" id="2777401"] O M G !! That has so many problems in so many ways. How are these decisions even made? I'm guessing roulette wheel.[/quote] There were a lot of decisions around MP that seem to have been made with the intent of having a SC2 style competitive league game. I have no idea why that decision got made, but it spawned a lot of other ones that make no sense on their own for the genre (like how the turn timer works).