2KGreg n' friends: Help me (us?) make a good preorder decision

ZimbuTheMonkey

ZimbuTheMonkey

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So, I think a lot of us have narrowed it down to:

Steam Deluxe Edition
Direct2Drive Deluxe Edition

With Steam, you get:

Deluxe bonuses
Cradle of Civilization: Mesopotamia

D2D:

Deluxe bonuses
Civ 3 Complete
The first DLC free-of-charge basically

I think what's confusing me, especially, is weighing the importance of the first DLC versus the Mesopotamia map pack. The problem is that we don't know what the heck those Cradle of Civ map packs are exactly. Are they scenarios? Are they just pre-made maps that look like the region (similar to Earth maps in Civ 4)? Or something entirely different?

Thanks.
 
The price is the same.

I'm not talking about the DLC prices because:

A) I don't know how much they will be
B) Knowing nothing about the Cradle map packs, I can't make an informed judgement on how much they are worth in monetary terms
 
ZimbuTheMonkey said:
The price is the same.

I'm not talking about the DLC prices because:

A) I don't know how much they will be
B) Knowing nothing about the Cradle map packs, I can't make an informed judgement on how much they are worth in monetary terms
Click to expand...
Direct2Drive is offering the first DLC, which is said to consist of two civilizations and one scenario. Although it's not yet known which civs that will be, I'm sure they want to attract attention to their DLC and won't start off with Belgium and Sudan (no offense intended). Balanced against a "map pack" that may be one or more maps and/or scenarios, I'd go for the Direct2Drive offer.
 
Mercade said:
Direct2Drive is offering the first DLC, which is said to consist of two civilizations and one scenario. Although it's not yet known which civs that will be, I'm sure they want to attract attention to their DLC and won't start off with Belgium and Sudan (no offense intended). Balanced against a "map pack" that may be one or more maps and/or scenarios, I'd go for the Direct2Drive offer.
Click to expand...

Yes, but consider this; What if the DLC is very cheap?

Everyone will have access to it when it is released. For the sake of having everything (and assuming the Cradle maps are a cool enough bonus), it might be better to get Steam and then just pay for the DLC.

That's why I want to know what the Cradle maps are.

EDIT: I'm just the type that likes to have all the possible features and bonuses. If the price is reasonable, I don't mind paying for them.
 
I'm going the D2D Deluxe route myself. To me "map pack" is a map pack. Two civs and a scenario pack > map pack, atleast to me. When it comes to later dlc release prices I'd suspect two civs and a scenario are more expensive then a map pack. So for the same "Deluxe" price D2D offers a better value, in my mind, including buying the map pack when it's released, compared to Steam Deluxe with map pack, then buying two civs and scenarios later.
 
Looking on steam I found these prices for DLC for Empire: Total War and Fallout 3. It may serve as an indication of what the DLC prices for Civ5 will be. My guess would be that the DLC pack with two civilizations and one scenario would be like $9.99 at release. It seems more valuable than "just" a few units. The map pack would maybe have a value of $3.99 or so by comparison. Of course pure speculation on my side. Right now they're charging $10.00 and £ 10.00 for just one Civ (Babylon), so who knows.

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Mercade said:
Of course pure speculation on my side. Right now they're charging $10.00 and £ 10.00 for just one Civ (Babylon), so who knows.
Click to expand...

More like $10.00 for one civ, a making of DVD, and the game's soundtrack.
 
I've bought a lot of stuff thru D2D and will most likely go that route unless a better deal pops up, since their deal looks like the best so far. The only bummer with the D2D route is having to install Steam to activate the game, but whatever.

I'm still holding out on a pre-order though because you never know what other crazy deals might pop up.

And, no clue what a map pack is, but regardless of whether it's static maps or scenarios, I'd have no interest in either. If it was map scripts for generating random maps, that might be worth getting.

The whole DLC thing makes me wanna hurl because it's all overpriced.
 
I hadn't thought about them being scripts, also seeing as the game is only coming with a few different ones, this would make some sense, and be worth buying.
 
I had been thinking of cancelling my amazon preorder and going with either D2D or Steam, but then I thought about having to wait for 8 GB to download and decided I'd rather have a physical disk. Extra civs is nice, but it'll take me a while to play all the ones that come in the box, and I can always buy extra content later.

The only downside to that I can think of is succession games. I'd guess everyone would need to be playing from the same set of content.
 
Well, you shouldn't have to wait any longer than you would for a retail copy, as most steam-released games offer 'preloads' where most of the game's data is downloaded before the release date.
 
bjbrains said:
Well, you shouldn't have to wait any longer than you would for a retail copy, as most steam-released games offer 'preloads' where most of the game's data is downloaded before the release date.
Click to expand...

Indeed, some people buy heavily anticipated games off steam simply so they can start playing them right at midnight of release. It's actually much quicker than waiting for the mail or driving to walmart and installing.

I'm certainly not that fanatical, but its a big plus for some people.
 
I guess I'm just thinking it'd annoy me to have a massive file downloading while I was doing other things.

I don't buy a lot of games. In the past five years, counting Civ 4 and 5, it would be... hmm, let me see... right, two games. :lol:
 
One thing to keep in mind outside of pure pricing and content, is the patching history of the various retailers.

Steam is pretty bad about patching on non-A-list titles, but should be good for same-day (or next-day at worst) patches on a game this big. It's been a while since I used D2D, but I don't recall they were quite as fast on the few things I tried several years ago.
 
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