It’s kind of a cheap cop-out from a demo though, isn’t it ? I mean, I enjoy the videos and all the dev in-house savvy and humour that goes into them… but if I wanted to make an actual opinion of the game for myself beforehand, rather than buying Civ 5 on the basis that I’m a fanboy and a junkie, I’d rather have a demo.
I’m also sort of worried about LAN stuff - my SO and I have been playing Civ IV with just the one copy of the game over our house network. AFAIK, Steam is an individual account sort of thing, and I’m sort of worried we won’t be able to play each other with just the one copy of the game and that we’d have to buy the game twice just to play it on two different machines at once. That would suck.
I’m not sure if you can put Steam on 2 different computers into offline mode and play a LAN game, it is (and probably was always) against the licence terms. Although I think I read somewhere that they would add Hotseat multiplayer (multiple players on one computer) in a later patch.
Has someone got a quick ling to find out if your computer has the capacity? I may have missed it above.
You can check out the requirements in this thread in the official forums. There also is an automated tool Can you run it?, but this sometimes gets things wrong (you also should be comfortable with giving this site access to your computer).
Thanks. I ran the auto tool and got interesting results on the recommended.
It suggests 1.8 duo core- I have 1.87 duo core and failed.
Video card it suggests 256 mb and I have 2 GB and it still failed.
I’ll risk it.
All these are “features” that are of no use to me. I have no need for Steam, no desire for a Steam account and I don’t want Steam on my computer.
I have nothing against Steam and I’ve bought several games using it. But currently, I’ve got Civ V on pre-order from Amazon. Why? I guess for a game as important as Civ, I feel like I want the actual DVDs because if it’s anything like every other Civ game, I’m going to want to play it for years, re-install on new computers, etc.
After all the comments about Steam, though, I’m wondering if that’s a dumb strategy. DVDs can get lost, for example, or the CD key can be lost. So it’s not like having the DVD version is somehow great insurance.
You can always re-download from Steam, right? And from what people are saying, you can install a game on any computer with the same Steam account, is that correct? So, for example, if I want to play on my laptop or on my husband’s computer or where ever, I just need to have Steam installed and it’ll put my games on it? What about if my husband wants to try out a game (he rarely buys them, but he’ll often grab a new game of mine, install it, and play for a while. Seeing as most games are limited by having to have the CD in the drive, that works out fine as long as we’re not both wanting to play at the same time.)
I used to go to Apolyton all the time, but I think CivFanatics has more strategy discussion. Apolyton does have the better podcasts though (I’m not sure if CivFanatics even has a podcast.)
Right now, there’s a lot of crazy people on the boards cause Civ 5 is so close, but I’m sure you’ll see a lot of interesting discussions once the game is out.
I focussed mostly on playing Fall from Heaven mod for Civ 4, and the strategy discussion for just that mod alone was quite extensive.
This may be a stupid question, but if Steam is required to play this game (and I love Steam, BTW) does that mean it won’t be available at retail stores at all? If so, this could mark an interesting transition to CD-free games going forward if it becomes more viable for game producers to just make games available digitally only.
Isn’t there also going to be a demo? I certainly hope so because I will definitely need to check whether the game runs well on my machine. BTW the video also shows the strategic view which is very barebones and apparently can be used to play the game. That could be an option for low-end systems.
They still have a physical box you can buy - I currently have it on pre-order at Amazon.
You can buy the disc version at a store but you have to still use Steam to play the game. Many games do this including the Orange box. It is useful if you have a relatively slow connection and don’t want to download the whole game.
Civ 5 is a 100% Steam game, even if you buy it at Amazon or some other store on DVD, you have to activate it with Steam. At that point it is in your Steam library, so you can dowload it again at anytime, even if you lose the DVD. It really does not matter, where you buy it, the end result is always the same.
The demo is out on Tuesday.
Yeah, this is all correct. Having a game on Steam is actually more reliable IMO than having it on DVD - I lost or scratch DVDs all the time, and steam will be around for a long time. You can always redownload it (and even if you buy a retail copy, once it’s registered with Steam they’ll let you download the digital copy).
Plus by buying it on steam you’d give more money to the developers. From a retail sale of $50 about $7 makes it back to the game producer (and the developers then get a cut from that), from a digital sale it’s more like $30-35 since there are fewer costs and fewer middlemen.
OK, I bought it on Steam. Now I don’t have to spend all day Tuesday cursing the UPS man who will surely not show up until 7pm. It’s only when I buy dull office supplies or non-urgent things for other people that UPS manages to get here before noon.
Is it Tuesday yet?
You indeed can always re-download from Steam. You can have it on multiple computers, but I assume you can’t play on several computers simultaneously.
I bought Empire: Total War retail, and it requires Steam. I installed from the discs and then activated it on Steam. Many months (years?) later, I bought a new computer and installed Empire via Steam download. Big games take a few hours, but you can set it to download, say, four games and let it download overnight (or during the day in the background, but resource-hungry programs can pause the download).
Incidentally, I already have Civ V installed on my computer. It’s locked until Tuesday, but those who pre-purchase it are able to pre-download it to avoid a bandwidth bottleneck. I have Tuesday off, so I’ll be able to get up, fix myself a mug of coffee, and start playing. I don’t even have to muck around with discs for installation, let alone drive to the store to buy them.
Steam is also kind of nice for buying old games cheaply. They’ll periodically sell old games at a massive discount, like 75% or more off. Just a few weeks ago they had Civ IV Complete (including both expansions and Colonization) for $10; just $5 for vanilla Civ IV. Civ III Complete is $5 right now, and I don’t think it’s a sale price.
Regarding Steam - I’ve never used it, so my info on it is second-hand. But I have no interest in multiplayer, and I’d rather have a hard copy of my games, so Steam seems like it would be useless to me.
Hypothetical situation time:
Say some really big movie - like Avatar - is announced to be released on DVD (I have no idea if it has or not, that’s not the point). And, the studio also announces that the only way to rent the movie is through Netflix. Or, if you want to purchase a copy, fine - you can do so anywhere. But in order to watch it, you must have a Netflix account, and somehow your DVD player will verify this.
Or, suppose your favorite band has a new album coming out, and they announce that the only way to get is it to purchase it from iTunes.
How would you feel about these? I suppose there are many people who would say “so what?” But I, for one, would be pissed. We may be a dying breed, but I think there are still plenty of people like me who don’t use these services. I don’t use Netflix because I don’t watch movies enough to justify having an account. I don’t use iTunes - and will always refuse to - because I don’t want an entire suite of useless software installed on my computer against my will.
Likewise, I see no reason why Steam should be required to run Civ 5, and this is just another mark against the possibility of my ever buying the game.
Because Firaxis is using Steam’s architecture to implement features of their game, like achievements, multiplayer matchmaking, and cloud-based saved games. It’s called Steamworks. It’s the same as complaining that Civilization 5 needs Windows.