I want Stardock to start publishing in UK/Europe so I don't have to get limited editions of their games shipped internationally from the States, which costs me extra! > 

Apparently, as far as I know from my last chat, Elemental isn't even getting a retail release here, or at the very least, no special LE deal local. 

Anyway it is a shame Civ 5 has got the Steamworks lock in. I've got the whole series so far, played them since I was 5 years old. I don't like the direction of PCs going closed but given the trends, it seems people, even with the internet in general with growing fears of security and what have you are seeming to tolerate this closed, gated community sort of thing when it comes to digital products. 

OK, that explains a lot about how steam is operating in a business sense. They do want monopoly control and I would not be surprised if they are connected to microsoft in some sort of shady, back alley way. Even if there is nothing in the official paper trail of either that connects the two.

While I was dubious about using steam for any product, I'll be certain to boycott them completely now.

And that's why they have released Steam on Mac three weeks ago...

To be honest, I don't understand TBS and Civ enthusiasts claiming that they won't by Civ V. Actually, I don't believe the claim either - I'd bet most of you will in the end buy Civ V anyway. To me it feels stupid to skip a great came (if it turns out to be one, that is) just because of a move by 2K that is bad from their producer point of view.

To recap, I understand and agree with

1) Brad thinking the move by 2K is stupid

2) Brad not going to mod for Civ V as a statement (still have a hunch that he might buy and play it, depends on does his businessman or tbs-gamer side win)

3) Impulse not selling in-house games on Steam and vice versa

4) Steam trying to get deals such as this one with 2K

5) Steam's business model in general being very successful and making sense (even though I don't like it)

6) Stardock's business model in general being very successful and making sense (and I like it too, until they get the monopoly and become the monster Brad keeps talking about)

7) Consumers here not being happy with this news, even though it doesn't really affect their lives all that much

What I do not understand is

1) Consumers here saying they will skip a game they would love and have been waiting for years just because it is only available from store X

2) Why it's so hard to understand that it's 2K who is at fault here, not Valve, and that this isn't a consumer issue, but rather a producer issue

If games being released as Steamworks-exclusive becomes commonplace, this will be a big problem for us consumers. However, I'm not going to sacrifice not playing Civilization V just because of some possible future scenario. I let Stardock (and other publishers) fight the good fight for me, and I will always support Impulse over Steam when possible. But let's be real here, we're talking about Civ V, not some random average game we can live without.  

That sounds like something that will probably change (via number tweaking), but units don't stack. You don't have anywhere to put 50 swordsmen, so you don't need the ability to build that many at once anyway.

Religion was removed because of your first reason: it just didn't do a lot. It was dumbed down in Civ 4 so as to not "offend" anybody, and you can remove it entirely with a minimal impact on how the game actually works. Really it wasn't done overly well.

BTS doesn't have unique leader traits. Each leader has a unique combination of the standard traits, and each Civ has a unique unit/building.

Tech trading was removed mostly because the computer tends to cheese abuse it anyway.

I understand that removing stacks will change how you deploy units, and it seems like the Civ team wants to lower the amount of units trained in general, but I don't like at all that one resource = this many units. I also don't like 1 resource providing unlimited units right away. I'd prefer that resource provide finite material per turn so that a few turns after acquiring iron you could only produce a few swordsmen, but hundreds of turns later you could have produced many. The whole 1(or x) units at a time per resource feels too arbitrary and forced.

Ah, the strawman approach.

The religion model in Civ4 was one of the reasons I never cared for Civ4. There were others, such as the units having 1 number for both offense and defense, the ai was only marginally improved from Civ3 and the difficulty of modding the game are some of the others I can think of right away. The combat/unit changes in Civ5 were inspired by the way it's done in the old SSI Panzer General series from the 90's, from what I read in an interview with some Firaxis guy. That would be an improvement over Civ4, but still, this is using a model that is 15 years old and already fairly dumbed down (to make the games more appealing to a less specialized gaming market). An improvement for Civ, yes, but still very primitive when compared to military strategy gaming now. From what I've seen of the directions the developers of Civ have taken the last several years, I'm guessing that the combat/unit model they'll use wont even be as sophisticated as the 15 year old PG model and will be an adaptation of the Civ3 model that will be somewhere between Civ3 and that of PG.

If we are going to be real, there isn't a single game ever made I can't live without. It's a game, and there have been plenty of ongoing series I have "exited" from for one reason or another. I have never been such a loyal fan that publishers and developers could do whatever the hell they wanted, and I would still open up my wallet for them. I don't like the decision 2K made, and I am not alone. You don't have to understand my decision, but there isn't a darn thing you can do to change it. Personally I already said I might buy the game at 20 bucks on steam, but not full price because of Steam. I am not even sure I like the other changes they are making. We'll see. The Civ series has put out duds before you know.

1) It's to discourage that future scenario.  Companies respond to sales, not opinions.  If people called Elemental the greatest game ever, but didn't buy it, no more games like Elemental from Stardock. 

2) People blame 2K for doing this, with some dislike of Valve for the business model.  I think people are blaming both, though 2K more, as it should be.

The question I'm curious about will be this: do TBS gamers have more impulse control then MW2 players?  I think they will, though the percentage of boycotters will be low.  Some boycotters will buy cheap (If it drops to 20, I'll consider it then)

I dislike and distrust Steam, but I don't outright boycott it.

Um, you know some units get with advantages such as +50% city defense? So even though its "one number" it changes under different circumstances.

Civ 4 was hard to mod? No, Civ 4 was pretty easy to mod, even without knowing python there is alot that could be easily done. What in your opinion is an easy game to mod?

You trash the one number system of Civ 4, neglecting the modifiers to this number, and then you trash using a PG type system. What I know from playing PG is a unit will have different "ability to damage" and "ability to resist casualties" for different unit types (hard, soft, naval and air) and then there was also initiative. I don't even know if this aspect of the PG system is in Civ 5 but it sounds more like what you want. The trick in PG wasn't just matching your strong attack unit vs a lesser unit, it was making sure that your strong attack unit isn't open to attack on the opponents turn to something its weak against. Combined arms unit placement was critical, along with scouting. Its a great system that fits well with Civ because it has complexity but not the kind of complexity that results in spreadsheet type games.

when i read the steamworks/civ5 news it means the following to me:

+1 for steamworks features (i like steamworks features, and i like steam)

-1 for steam exclusive (civ5 will only be on steam, right? i like steam but also like competition to be more toward what people would call fair. i guess in a way, steamworks is valve's way of competing with other distributors trying to show why their service is "teh best", but I dont want exclusives. if you knew how long i waited before i bought DG...)

-2 for steam special editions that have extra maps that should all be part of the base game anyway (i dont like special editions where people end up paying more for stuff right at release that was probably intended to be part of the base game. i don't like the whole "for your extra $10 you get a few extra maps" pitch; the whole dlc thing is getting just abusive in some places.)

so overall, I rate myself as at -2 about this.

Steam claimed a special edition for Tropico 3 too which was total crap. I got my copy from Impulse and had the same maps they claimed was a Steam exclusive. It was on the forums for a bit... brought to Valve's attention even, and they couldn't be bothered to change the description. I am like you though, i really hat this exclusive crap, especially involving pre-orders from various stores.

Fallout: New Vegas has easily the most disgusting set up since Dragon Age: each seller gets their 'Special Kit' which is supposed to appeal to a certain type of player.  One for Melee Focused, etc.

I very much dislike thte exclusive content options (most are really not that useful thankfully - for now).

IMO if you are going to do that, you need to offer that 'extra content' later for free or as (very cheap) DLC later.

I agree with this, but the "special" versions aren't really Steam's or Valve's fault. Those things are usually dished out/sold by the publishers for advertising and getting first day sales. A lot of the pre-order crap is also done for that reason, as well as to combat used game sales. It's ok to hate these things, but let's aim the hate at the right people, the publishers.

fair enough

I can't speak for anyone else, but if I believe that Store X infringes on my rights as a buyer, then I will no longer do business with them.  I put Steam squarely in this category.

If you as a consumer accept online registration as a condition of a single-player game, you're giving away your rights.  What happens ten years from now if the company is bankrupt and the server is permanently offline?  Your DVD is a coaster, and your direct-download is nonexistent.  This is flatly unacceptable to me.

Yeah, I'd like to get Civ, but I'm not putting up with this crap any more.  No Mass Effect, no Starcraft 2, no Civ V.  No Majesty 2.  No DOW2.  If that's the way game companies want to play it, that's their prerogative.  If I think they're a bunch of f*ckbags who aren't getting a dime of my money, that's mine.  And when I jones for a game, I can always reinstall MechCommander or JA2 or Civ 3 or GalCiv because, hey, I still have the DVDs.

Not bothered, Sorry guys but im a big fan of both Steam and Impluse, both offer very good value, and support. Really looking forward to Civ5, and im happy its locked into steam, because I can buy it cheaply on disk from amazon or somewhere, and then download it anytime anywhere from steam.

While your response to your displeasure is perfectly legitimate, my response is a little less extreme. When faced with a situation like you are suggesting, I will pay less, a good deal less, to make up for that restriction which will probably cost me my ability to play the game sometime down the road. 20 dollars is pretty close to bargain bin prices, and that's what I paid for DA and ME2, which both should work down the road without server access, but the DLC won't. Tropico 3, pretty much all stardock titles now and paradox titles horde their patches behind servers that can disappear so I won't pay full price for those games either. There are really only a few circumstances I refuse to pay for even at bargain bin prices, games made by Ubisoft, for example, or that have installation limits (don't give a shit how many limits they give any limits is not okay to me), and that weird thing where the stripped down pc version of Ghostbusters had no online component but required the Internet to authenticate.

I wish I could find the court results now, but in Australia we've already had a precedent case where a Digital Download company went bust and the courts ruled that since the DD was only a service, and the product had been purchased through the service, the producer of the product was still liable to allow the consumer to use the product.  Thus, all people who had downloaded games through this DD company received DVD's from the publishers of the games distributed through the DD service.

It was likened to purchasing a product through a retail company.  Just because the retail company (distributer) went bust, the manufacturer (publisher) was still liable to allow the consumers to use the products.

So if Steam went broke, the publishers would be liable to ensure the consumers could still use their products, hence we would get DVDs of any games we bought through the service.

In Australia.  I'm not sure what would happen in the United States.

That's actually what I believe.  A (single player) game is a product.  If you buy it, you own it, just like a movie or a CD. 

On the other hand, an online game is a service, and the company asking for registration or setting other conditions on the customer is perfectly legitimate.  It's an at-will situation.

In the US, there's a court case of a botting company vs. World of Warcraft, and I think either way it goes that it will set a bad precedent.  If it goes to Blizzard, I suspect that the game companies will start asking for blood samples and social security number to register a game, and if it goes the other way, then Welcome to World of Botcraft.

International precedent is a very common and very often used method of arguing in courts.  I would imagine that the Australian precedent would weigh heavily in a US court, specially since our society values and legal thoughts are extremely similar.  It's common practice for courts to consider precedents not just from their own jurisdiction, but outside and international precedent as well.

Add yet another dedicated Civer to the "won't get Civ5 due to steam" list. 

Civ provided near all of my gaming needs.  I've just a handful of other games, and rarely play them.  Civ + Mods provided what I needed.  I haven't bought a game since Civ4:BTS and didn't plan on buying any games outside of the Civ series.  I was a guaranteed sale, and a loyal, committed fan of the series... until it was announced that steam came bundled with the game.  I researched steam and Valve; and I read what steams users had to say.  I googled around and read a variety of industry aware opinions.  I am satisfied that I have come to an informed opinion.  I will not buy Civ5 unless steam lessens its hold on the game. 

I do not want a persistent gatekeeper between me and my games.  I do not want some 3rd party using my systems resources, to scan my machine, and then use my bandwidth to transmit my private data to Valve HQ.  I do not want to add another failure point to an already failure prone game.  I do not want to add another security vulnerability to my machine.  I do not want to add yet another piece of software which needs constant updating.  And I do not want to support an entitywho would use ESD exclusivity and forced bundling of their client, to further reduce their competition.  There's more, but that's more than enough. 

I support vendor neutrality and I stand with the publishers and developers who stand against steams methodology. 

I vote with my wallet and pass on Civ5. 

The good news for me, is that all this researching has lead me to Stardock!   And then to Elemental!  As soon as I can manage it, I will be buying Elemental and then GalCiv.  I've already installed Impulse to show my support.  Thank you Stardock for doing what you do!