I've played Civilization games for over a decade and love them. I was pessimistic when I heard it would now have DRM. This is the only game I have ever bought with protection. My buddy went out and purchased a copy at the store, and I downloaded from Steam itself. I figured that if they are in charge I might as well give them the money. He thought that he would get a manual, and I downloaded one. So he now has a copy of a game he can't play and no manual to read either. His internet is down until Wednesday.
When I went to download Steam it did not trip my firewall to request a port. I wasn't sure what the port was and I just wanted the game to install. Frustratingly I removed my firewall, since disabling it had no effect. It kept telling me that Steam can't find the internet. My computer reboots and I'm ready to go. I'm informed that Steam is already running. I check my task manager and I don't see anything. So I click again and it launches. It begins installing and when it gets to the end it informs me that it can't replace Steam.exe. The program terminates. I launch again and it finally completes the installation. Then I wait two hours for the game to download. When I close the game it actually pops ads up on my computer. I frown.
I love the game itself. I'm sure most of the issues with game play will be ironed out with patches. Firaxis has always been pretty good about this regarding it's Civilization franchise. If they do drop the ball as they did with Colonization it's easily modded and the community steps in with patches. Maybe they'll sneak corporations or religion into an expansion pack. If they the community most likely will figure a way to do it. That's what I love about Civilization. I played Beyond the Sword since it first came out and it never got old. If I got bored doing something I'd just load a mod, problem solved. This game is very nice, but it's a rip of Rome Total War spliced with an updated Colonization engine. Worse, it's lacking the full army on army wars of Rome Total War which makes it kind of cheap. That is something they aren't going to be able to mod around. My first impression was that this looks exactly like RTW, about 8 years after it came out with the resource requirements of far more graphical RTS games. What I like the least is that wonders in Civ IV were very well done with animated movies. Now you're just given a dull picture, which makes it seem like you just bought a downgrade. Still, I love Civilization and I'll definitely tough it out. My friend might not.
