How to play Civ5 without internet?

[aimlessgun]

I'm posting this from a library.

My internet went down, and will be down for some time. I cannot get steam to start in offline mode.

I searched extensively on the topic. Here is what was usually suggested, which I tried and did not work.

-Disable network connection
-try to launch steam
-wait for the update bar to go away and give you an error message
-click the "Start in Offline Mode" button.

I follow all that. But the "Start in Offline Mode" button simply gives me another error saying something about needing an internet connection (wow...), to which I can only hit "ok" and then steam exits.

Is there a way around this? People in the threads I found had the same issue as me, but nobody ever addressed it

I'm at my wits end, thinking of going as far as googling a hack to allow me to run the game without running steam ><

 

[civvver]

I want to know also, steam is a heaping pile of crap and no, I don't want to wait 30 mins while it downloads the latest patch to play civ5. If I could return the game at this point I would.