Weird...I was able to pay for, download, and install it through Steam two weeks ago...and I know for a fact they were advertising "pre-loading" it at least two weeks before that.::shrug::
I pretty much follow the same line of thinking, with a few rare exceptions. Civilization V is one of those exceptions. (Not to mention I actually rather enjoy Steam. I've had good success with it, and it makes multiplayer gaming really simple.)
Still, I can see where you're coming from, as far as DRM is concerned.
I think you think Starcraft II is more complicated than it really is. Think about it, honestly...what is there to keep track of behind the scenes, second by second? Hit points, unit locations, resources, and build queues. That's about it. Now look at a Civ game, and all of the things that simultaneously happen each time one turn ends and another begins.
You honestly think there is less to compute in a Civ game than in Starcraft II, just because Civ is turn based?
So why not buy a copy of the retail game, then download a cracked torrent? The devs get their money, you get another Civ game minus the DRM, and everyone's happy.
DRM is generally a publisher's decision anyway. Don't take it out on the developer.
Well - yes - when playing with people I know, it becomes a very person very exciting experience, as no one is really in that "I NEED to win" attitude, its more of a "Let's have some fun and see what happens" kind of mood.
This was my favorite part of playing it at a LAN. Very laid back. One of my fave Civ IV memories:
Super long weekend...me, my then-fiance (now wife), her uncle, and three friends all took a Thursday and Friday off. We all congregated at my wife's uncle's house on Thursday morning, and got everything set up. Early Thursday afternoon, we started playing a 6-player game. My wife's uncle and one of our friends were competing with each other, while the rest of us were focusing on culture, technology, or religion. Because there were so many people in the game, sometimes turns took 10-20 minutes to complete. While waiting for turns to finish, I played through the entirety of Mirror's Edge.
REALLY happy to hear that. I've been looking forward to trying to pair different albums with the game, but I'm still really glad to hear that the included soundtrack is good.
How "worldly" is it? As in, does the music cover different genres from different parts of the world, or is it all similar?
Hmm...interesting. I guess I have a different view of it, since every multiplayer game of Civ IV I played was either at a LAN or when a couple of friends stayed over for the weekend...never did any online multiplayer.
Speaking of friends coming over for the weekend, here's a fun Civ IV drinking game: Every time Nimoy says something, you do a shot of beer. Every time you take over a city (not build one, just take over), you do a shot of whiskey. Every time a player (computer or actual person) gets knocked out, everyone guzzles a beer.
One question I'd have is why the CPU requirements keep getting jacked up. Shouldn't a turn based strategy game be a bit easier on the CPUs than that?
There is an insane amount of behind the scenes tracking and calculations going on in a Civilization game. Frankly, I find it impressive that the game only requires a dual-core.
One of our many memorable Civilization IV LAN games involved one of my friends starting to take over the world with Christianity. Then, my friend playing as the Arabs came in and wiped him out...then, myself, trying to spread Judaism, shifted gears and started churning out units (I was on an island). I went on to murderate everyone and won a domination victory.
I spent lord knows how many hours with the Civilization series. Countless memories of LAN parties and late night solo games. I'm hoping Civilization V will provide more of the same kind of memories.
Everything I've read about the way things have been streamlined seems to be like a good direction to go. Not sure I'm keen on them dropping religion from the game, but nearly everything else I've heard about seems like a shift in the right direction.
YouTube, despite hosting tons of mostly pointless vidoes, has fundamentally changed the way a lot of things work. learning new skills, spreading opinion and information, etc.
Not to mention its effects on elections...at this point, if a politician has ever said something on camera, the proof can be quickly found.
They have a few arcade cabinets from back in the day that are in great condition...one of them is a Donkey Kong machine, with the high score on it being in the 600,000 range.
Certainly no where near the world record, but still amazing nonetheless.
Meh...they'd spend all day trying to prank-call pizza places by asking for pineapple, and shoving goths into back rooms who point at blinking lights all day saying "What's going on there?"
That's the advantage of having giant 1960s-style vertical bolt locks on your steel apartment door...they tend to make a bit of a noise when kicked in:-)
While my family has never hunted (nor have my wife and I), when i was growing up there was a family up the street from us that never bought any meat from the store...they would go out at the start of deer season, land a couple of decent ones, skin them (selling the skins), divide them up, wrap the meat, and put it in a huge deep freezer in their basement. A couple of weeks worth of hunting provided all the meat they needed for an entire year. The only exception to this was on July 4th weekend...they'd go buy some ground beef for burgers. You can't have 4th of July without burgers:-)
Still, Independence Day aside, I was constantly amazed at just how much could be done with venison.
Growing up, I had my step father to teach me firearm safety, whose Dad was a military drill seargent and 'Nam vet and whose Mom was an Army nurse in the Korean War. When my wife was growing up, she had her Dad, who was a Gulf War vet.
To this day, even when we have a firearm sitting in front of us dissasembled, we still treat it as if it could still fire off a round.
I have no problem with the group, I just don't want all the mail that comes along with it. Like I said, we have zero interest in the culture.
If we lived in a state where firearms were a serious problem and we wanted laws to be changed, then I would likely become a member and support them...but where we live (Maryland), gun laws are more than sufficiently lax for our purposes.
Slashdot Mirror
Weird...I was able to pay for, download, and install it through Steam two weeks ago...and I know for a fact they were advertising "pre-loading" it at least two weeks before that. ::shrug::
I pretty much follow the same line of thinking, with a few rare exceptions. Civilization V is one of those exceptions. (Not to mention I actually rather enjoy Steam. I've had good success with it, and it makes multiplayer gaming really simple.)
Still, I can see where you're coming from, as far as DRM is concerned.
Awesome, thanks very much! That's just what I was hoping to hear :-)
Not to mention the Civ games have notoriously had high-ish requirements, which is the opposite of pretty much everything Blizzard has ever released.
I think you think Starcraft II is more complicated than it really is. Think about it, honestly...what is there to keep track of behind the scenes, second by second? Hit points, unit locations, resources, and build queues. That's about it. Now look at a Civ game, and all of the things that simultaneously happen each time one turn ends and another begins.
You honestly think there is less to compute in a Civ game than in Starcraft II, just because Civ is turn based?
So why not buy a copy of the retail game, then download a cracked torrent? The devs get their money, you get another Civ game minus the DRM, and everyone's happy.
DRM is generally a publisher's decision anyway. Don't take it out on the developer.
Well - yes - when playing with people I know, it becomes a very person very exciting experience, as no one is really in that "I NEED to win" attitude, its more of a "Let's have some fun and see what happens" kind of mood.
This was my favorite part of playing it at a LAN. Very laid back. One of my fave Civ IV memories:
Super long weekend...me, my then-fiance (now wife), her uncle, and three friends all took a Thursday and Friday off. We all congregated at my wife's uncle's house on Thursday morning, and got everything set up. Early Thursday afternoon, we started playing a 6-player game. My wife's uncle and one of our friends were competing with each other, while the rest of us were focusing on culture, technology, or religion. Because there were so many people in the game, sometimes turns took 10-20 minutes to complete. While waiting for turns to finish, I played through the entirety of Mirror's Edge.
Such an amazing weekend.
REALLY happy to hear that. I've been looking forward to trying to pair different albums with the game, but I'm still really glad to hear that the included soundtrack is good.
How "worldly" is it? As in, does the music cover different genres from different parts of the world, or is it all similar?
Hmm...interesting. I guess I have a different view of it, since every multiplayer game of Civ IV I played was either at a LAN or when a couple of friends stayed over for the weekend...never did any online multiplayer.
Speaking of friends coming over for the weekend, here's a fun Civ IV drinking game: Every time Nimoy says something, you do a shot of beer. Every time you take over a city (not build one, just take over), you do a shot of whiskey. Every time a player (computer or actual person) gets knocked out, everyone guzzles a beer.
Things get interesting REAL fast.
One question I'd have is why the CPU requirements keep getting jacked up. Shouldn't a turn based strategy game be a bit easier on the CPUs than that?
There is an insane amount of behind the scenes tracking and calculations going on in a Civilization game. Frankly, I find it impressive that the game only requires a dual-core.
No offense, but are you surprised? People seem to forget how ludicrous Civ IV's specs were at release...
One of our many memorable Civilization IV LAN games involved one of my friends starting to take over the world with Christianity. Then, my friend playing as the Arabs came in and wiped him out...then, myself, trying to spread Judaism, shifted gears and started churning out units (I was on an island). I went on to murderate everyone and won a domination victory.
Classic stuff.
It uses steamworks. YMMV, as far as that being a good or a bad thing is concerned. (Good thing, in my opinion.)
I spent lord knows how many hours with the Civilization series. Countless memories of LAN parties and late night solo games. I'm hoping Civilization V will provide more of the same kind of memories.
Everything I've read about the way things have been streamlined seems to be like a good direction to go. Not sure I'm keen on them dropping religion from the game, but nearly everything else I've heard about seems like a shift in the right direction.
YouTube, despite hosting tons of mostly pointless vidoes, has fundamentally changed the way a lot of things work. learning new skills, spreading opinion and information, etc.
Not to mention its effects on elections...at this point, if a politician has ever said something on camera, the proof can be quickly found.
They have a few arcade cabinets from back in the day that are in great condition...one of them is a Donkey Kong machine, with the high score on it being in the 600,000 range.
Certainly no where near the world record, but still amazing nonetheless.
Computers aren't threatened by knives or guns.
Now, a degausser...THAT'LL get 'em to sit straight and fly right!
Meh...they'd spend all day trying to prank-call pizza places by asking for pineapple, and shoving goths into back rooms who point at blinking lights all day saying "What's going on there?"
That's the advantage of having giant 1960s-style vertical bolt locks on your steel apartment door...they tend to make a bit of a noise when kicked in :-)
Step 2: provide Dukematches and Quakematches on top shelf hardware circa mid-90s in the breakroom.
While my family has never hunted (nor have my wife and I), when i was growing up there was a family up the street from us that never bought any meat from the store...they would go out at the start of deer season, land a couple of decent ones, skin them (selling the skins), divide them up, wrap the meat, and put it in a huge deep freezer in their basement. A couple of weeks worth of hunting provided all the meat they needed for an entire year. The only exception to this was on July 4th weekend...they'd go buy some ground beef for burgers. You can't have 4th of July without burgers :-)
Still, Independence Day aside, I was constantly amazed at just how much could be done with venison.
GAH. Stupid apostrophe...authors*
I'm the least surprised that it was Terry Pratchett that made himself a sword.
Growing up, I had my step father to teach me firearm safety, whose Dad was a military drill seargent and 'Nam vet and whose Mom was an Army nurse in the Korean War. When my wife was growing up, she had her Dad, who was a Gulf War vet.
To this day, even when we have a firearm sitting in front of us dissasembled, we still treat it as if it could still fire off a round.
I have no problem with the group, I just don't want all the mail that comes along with it. Like I said, we have zero interest in the culture.
If we lived in a state where firearms were a serious problem and we wanted laws to be changed, then I would likely become a member and support them...but where we live (Maryland), gun laws are more than sufficiently lax for our purposes.