Dale_

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="242" id="2615749"]Sure can, however DRM isn't about stopping piracy, it's about stopping re-selling games. Piracy is the all-purpose excuse of this generation's businesses. Game didn't sell enough? Pirates. Multiplayer severs messed up? Pirates did it. Game shipping with restrictive DRM? Response to pirates. Nine sequels to a single game? The effects of Piracy. Global Warming? Pirates downloading too

[quote who="Myles" reply="188" id="2614564"] Quoting Dale_, reply 187 Quoting Myles, reply 182 Quoting KickACrip, reply 180Civ5 is not a Steam exclusive - other retailers are offering it (boxed) as well. It requiring steam is nothing new - stockdock requires Impulse in order to receive updates... People keep bringing this up, but the fact is that you never need Impulse to play the game right out of the box. You can't say that about Steam. If you can't see the d

[quote who="Myles" reply="182" id="2614546"] Quoting KickACrip, reply 180Civ5 is not a Steam exclusive - other retailers are offering it (boxed) as well. It requiring steam is nothing new - stockdock requires Impulse in order to receive updates... People keep bringing this up, but the fact is that you never need Impulse to play the game right out of the box. You can't say that about Steam. If you can't see the difference there than this discussion is pointless.[/quote]</

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="156" id="2613981"]If you honestly don't have an issue with this, that Valve is forcing other people's customers to use their service so that they go shopping on Steam to establish a complete market dominance, then you don't understand the principles of a fair and open market, the repercussions of not having one and have no place in discussing the matter.[/quote] Isn't it ironic that the "fair and open market" you talk of led to a situation where Valve's supe

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="117" id="2613452"] I'm not arguing the perspective of 2K, Firaxis or Civilization as a series. Your original comment implied you wouldn't participate with Civ5 due to the deal struck between Valve and 2K to use Steamworks. From a purely business point of view I can totally understand that you would not want to favour Impules's direct competitor. That I totally understand. I was arguing the point that if you re

[quote who="Strand" reply="115" id="2613441"] Quoting Dale_, reply 113So what you're saying to me is that there is a difference between: 1. Buying Elemental from a brick 'n mortar, or Amazon, or D2D, or to hell with it Steam, and then be forced to use Impulse for multiplayer and updates? 2. Buying Civilization 5 from a brick 'n mortar, or Amazon, or D2D, or to hell with it Impulse, and then be forced to use Steam for multiplayer and updates? There's

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="112" id="2613357"] Quoting Dale_, reply 110...I'm saying that Brad shouldn't accuse 2K of doing exactly what he's doing with Elemental... I understand your reasoning, however there is a difference between Elemental being Impulse exclusive and Civ V being locked to Steam. Firstly, Civ V is a third party game. Valve titles won't be made available via Impulse, Direct 2 Drive, etc., because Valve choses to sell them via Steam only. It's a fi

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="108" id="2613320"] Quoting Dale_, reply 106 Reading their Elemental product page reads very similar, that an Impulse account will be required for updates and multiplayer. Elemental is a exclusive of Impulse anyway, as Sins. The price to pay for no disk checks or other bs that usually plagues PC games is that patches and multiplayer are with Impulse (which per se isn't bad. Would you feel better if intead they forced you to Filefront and Game

[quote who="joasoze" reply="102" id="2613300"]"The Steam happy people" seems to miss the point of the "The Steam not so happy people" The problem is not that it is on Steam, its that it is Steam only. You have to install the Steam software even if you buy it at Gamestop. This is what many have a problem with. Many players play single player only and dont want the Steam functionality. The "Steam only" thing also raises the question of Steam getting too much

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="86" id="2613142"] How is it any different to Elemental requiring Impulse to be installed and active to play? Impulse/Steam install an invasive client. Impulse/Steam is required to authenticate those two games. Impulse/Steam have "exclusives" with those games. Impulse/Steam are used as the DRM system. Impulse/Steam force you to join their communities with all the good/bad that comes with that. Impulse/Steam MUST b

[quote who="bonscott" reply="87" id="2613145"] Quoting Dale_, reply 81 Quoting Frogboy, reply 15Well clearly I won't be modding or getting Civ V now. How is it any different to Elemental requiring Impulse to be installed and active to play? Impulse/Steam install an invasive client. Impulse/Steam is required to authenticate those two games. Impulse/Steam have "exclusives" with those games. Impulse/Steam are used as the DRM system

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="15" id="2612545"]Well clearly I won't be modding or getting Civ V now. [/quote] How is it any different to Elemental requiring Impulse to be installed and active to play? Impulse/Steam install an invasive client. Impulse/Steam is required to authenticate those two games. Impulse/Steam have "exclusives" with those games. Impulse/Steam are used as the DRM system. Impulse/Steam force you to join their comm

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="20" id="2147495"] Col2 is awful micromanagement-wise. You need to babysit EVERYTHING to run it at the near-top efficiency. Civ4 is far more forgiving so you can play a fast game without much micro and with enough strategic choices. Col2 swamps you with micro. [/quote] You only need to babysit everything if you don't know what you're doing in Col2. Seriously, the game is such that if you know what's going on and use some thought you do not n

I thought EA haved moved the rights to SimCity etc from Maxis to Tilted Mill?

So Spore has sold 2 million, and cost $30-40 million. I think typically devs see about $15 / unit on full-price items ($30 wholesale less publishing fees). That means if every unit sold was at full-price then we're talking wholesale revenue of about $60 million ($30 * 2,000,000). Split down the middle for EA and their RIO is $30 million. Not too encouraging, probably only just covers their investment in development and marketing (if that). The real winner is Ma

[quote who="Vicente" reply="14" id="2128508"]This remembers me so much to the Birthright Campaign Setting from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons:[/quote] I LOVED that game! Played that one to death. :D

[quote who="Serik55" reply="8" id="2127313"] Quoting Dale_, reply 7Not necessarily. Civ has never been able to resolve the 40 city MM nightmare through UI. That issue stems from a city-based architecture and has nothing to do with UI at all. To resolve THAT MM nightmare you'd have to convert to a Empire-based architecture and eliminate the City-based, thus redo the entire engine not the UI. CTP2 make great inroads down this line of thinking, but it's a shame that

Nice roadmap! :) I won't be in the pre-order beta stuff (other priorities of life confine my time for the next year) so will wait patiently for later. However if life priorities change I'll be jumping on the pre-order beta train. :D

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="6" id="2127007"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 5I don't like someone else (read a game designer) forcing me to view the map a certain way. That's one of the reasons why I love strategic zoom. well, sure. I was just making a point towards the micromanagement of it more than anything else. I believe there are other UI soluctions to micromanagement problems.[/quote] Not necessarily. Civ has never been able to resolve the 40 city MM n

I putting my vote in for the retreat if faster than other army option. [e digicons]:moo:[/e]

[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="13" id="1951704"]Has been here and growing. The last real CPU Intel or AMD made that wasn't 64-bit was the Core Duo (not to be confused with the Core 2 Duo, mind you), which for all intents and purposes was merely a rebranded Pentium M. This is not to say that the Core Duo was useless, as it was essentially a necessary stepping stone for Intel at that point in time, but the point still stands. Not only is 64-bit the future, but it is here n

[quote who="arstal" reply="11" id="1951371"]People didn't want to switch to Vista due to the bloat?[/quote] Actually, Vista is the equivalent of Windows ME. It is the transitional version between major upgrades. Vista was always going to be an interim between XP and Windows 7. They did the same for Windows ME in that it was transition from Windows 98 to XP. Vista is pretty good now, but you MUST have service pack 1. Otherwise you're stuck with all the

Windows 7 is pretty much just Vista less Windows XP support. It also fixes a lot of the issues, such as UAC and stuff. Should be pretty good really. :)

Epic story generator == [e digicons]5*[/e]

Try 15 years that we've been waiting for it. :P