Now there are 3 Community Reps for 2K

[White Elk]

As for podcasts, for those of us with only dialup, who probably won't be able to play Civ V anyway, podcasts are worthless.

And if you aren't going to play Civ, won't articles and Q&As be just as worthless to you as podcasts? (If you mean it takes a long time to download them, we have transcripts - but if you aren't interested in the info, I don't know what to do!)

Poster clearly is interested in the information. Some value of the FAQ to this poster, is that it will tell him/her if Civ5 is playable with a dial-up connection. steam puts that in question.

Has there been any steam info released in the podcasts?

 

[Lillefix]

They've said again and again that you only need to verify the game through steam once. Then you can play it offline for as long as you want. They've also said you can disable autopatching. So I would guess dial-up is okay. Someone should probably have stickied this information a long time ago, so we don't have people asking the same questions all the time.

 

[ori]

stickied threads get ignored as a rule

 

[nerd]

And if you aren't going to play Civ, won't articles and Q&As be just as worthless to you as podcasts? (If you mean it takes a long time to download them, we have transcripts - but if you aren't interested in the info, I don't know what to do!)

I will probably not be able to play Civ V because of required large downloads at registration tied to steam. Your posts elsewhere reassuring me that there probably won't be such a download give some hope on this, and the possibility that your people could arrange a way to allow the downloads to be imported is still there. If I am unable to play Civ V, it will be because the collective of groups that are making/marketing it will have made it unavailable to me, given my internet connection.
This does not reduce my desire to buy and play this game, nor my desire to gather information, other than from self-appointed experts, as to whether I will be able to play it.
As for the effectiveness of your information releases, I only heard about your podcasts today, and still have no idea where to get them or transcripts. It would seem to me that someone, presumably Greg would have announced their existence, on this forum, but to my knowledge this has not happened.
The fact that I don't have information does not mean I don't want it rather the converse.

 

[White Elk]

Did you really think it was possible? Contracts must be long dry by now.

steam has freed the client in other games. And 2k has changed the DRM scheme for a game (pre-release). So why not? Clearly there has been enough fan uproar to give it consideration. If the delay was not due to re-negotiating the steam fix, then I gotta say, 2k is whacked! They shoulda kept their mouth shut from the begining. They did more harm by promising answers that never come. For me, my pre-order money for Civ5 has already gone to Elemental. It may be that today, I learn there is no need to set aside future monies for Civ5. I am just one of many long time customers who won't play along with 2k/steams data collection scheme. How do you grow a fan base, by cutting out a chunk of it's fanatic core?

 

[crismac]

2K Elizabeth,Is there any plans for those of us that are buying the box versions of the game be able to download Babylon from steam?

 

[evrett37]

Dont waste your breath talking to website flunkies. The 2k people are red hearings here to divert our attention and energy and nothing else.

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Dont waste your breath talking to website flunkies. The 2k people are red hearings here to divert our attention and energy and nothing else.

What? Like that Joe McCarthy guy?

 

[StStutter]

Dont waste your breath talking to website flunkies. The 2k people are red hearings here to divert our attention and energy and nothing else.

Wow, this is a breath of fresh air. If only it weren't so malicious. I hope that you've realized the futility of drum beating.

 

[2K Elizabeth]

I will probably not be able to play Civ V because of required large downloads at registration tied to steam. Your posts elsewhere reassuring me that there probably won't be such a download give some hope on this, and the possibility that your people could arrange a way to allow the downloads to be imported is still there. If I am unable to play Civ V, it will be because the collective of groups that are making/marketing it will have made it unavailable to me, given my internet connection.
This does not reduce my desire to buy and play this game, nor my desire to gather information, other than from self-appointed experts, as to whether I will be able to play it.
As for the effectiveness of your information releases, I only heard about your podcasts today, and still have no idea where to get them or transcripts. It would seem to me that someone, presumably Greg would have announced their existence, on this forum, but to my knowledge this has not happened.
The fact that I don't have information does not mean I don't want it rather the converse.

I know dial up can be problematic for gamers these days - and I don't know specifically how big our patches and downloads will be yet (won't know till they are done) but we're aiming to make this game as accessible as possible to people, so I'll ask the devs about dial up in particular.

As for finding out more about our community features, our official forums are at http://forums.2kgames.com - we post here because CivFanatics is a huge community and both Greg and I have been a part of it for years (Greg has been quite active as a Civ fan long before he started here in an official capacity. He actually ran CivStats if you know of it.) If you want to make sure you are up to date on what we're doing, check out http://www.civilization5.com/#/community or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll always be posting there about it - and we have an RSS feed and you can subscribe to our podcast in iTunes.

Hope that helps.

 

[mjs0]

Elizabeth,
Just to be clear...
I recall you indicating early on (and to be fair it is common practice) that you would be releasing information according to a fixed schedule.

Given that, can we ask questions like 'What size maps will be supported?' or 'What game lengths will be offered?'.

Doh!...of course we can...what I mean is can you answer this sort of question or are we restricted to simple clarifications of info that is already public?

For example, there have been a ton of questions about details on some of the released screenshots, such as...
Are rivers graphically finished or will the final game look better?
What is that tile full of tents next to Newcastle?
etc.
From the latter thread:

How easy would it be for 2k Greg to just say,"hey it's this". Give us a hint atleast, like it's not this for sure, but keep trying.

I suspect some of the frustration (other than the elephant in the room) comes from the suspicion that any questions like these, which many consider important, or at the least interesting and worthy of an answer, are being ignored and if raised more prominently will be answered with ... "We'll be ready to tell you that real soon now", rather than an actual answer.

It would be nice if some of those hanging questions were acknowledged because the lack of interaction on these and similar topics is clearly not helping 2Ks image here.

Anyway...please consider the bolded Qs above asked...thank you.

 

[2K Elizabeth]

2K Elizabeth,Is there any plans for those of us that are buying the box versions of the game be able to download Babylon from steam?

Right now the only place Babylon is available is through the Steam Digital Deluxe edition - but we'll post here if any other content (of any kind) comes available through any channels to make sure no one misses anything.

 

[12agnar0k]

Some users of this forumn just dont deserve 2k rep's bothering to even pay any attention to your posts, honhestly the rubbish some people come out with. Not all forumn users mind you, just the few that spoil this forumn for the others .

Steam won't be removed, nor will their be a non-steam version released, this has been made clear enough to anyone who looks. Technically 2k could reverse the decision to remove Steamworks, but why would they, Steam is a great DRM for them, Steam is the biggest digital distributor, Steam will sell more copies of Civ5 to Steam users who have never played a Civ game than people who don't buy Steam because of Steamworks. They have no reason to change their decision to use Steamworks it will make them a lot of money and that is the bottom line.
So how about people drop the issue. You do however have the right to better understand Steamworks before buying the game and the best way is too download Steam and see for yourselfs or raise queries on the Steam forumns.

If your worried about Steam and Dial-Up I can answer this, its true thats its not an ideal combination, any digital service is best combined with high speed broadband services. But if you buy Civ5 on Disk then you won't need to download anything other than updates if you choose to do so, which won't be a problem unless thiers a large update. Steam is only a 1.5 MB file to download, whether or not you will need to update from the Steam file on the disk I don't know. This could be an issue. I would try to find out but I already have Steam installed, perhaps this query need be asked on the Steam forumns, it is afterall where all the Steam experts reside.

And last but certainly not least, great work on the podcasts elizabeth, 10 so far you say and more to come, I wish they were all released already , but one a week gives me something to look foward too in the long wait for Civ Release, thanks for the vast amount of information you guys at 2k and frixasis are giving us with still 2 months before the game is released, I eagerly await every interview/podcast or whatever information comes out. Always entertaining to learn more about this very anticipated game.

 

[2K Elizabeth]

Elizabeth,
Just to be clear...
I recall you indicating early on (and to be fair it is common practice) that you would be releasing information according to a fixed schedule.

Given that, can we ask questions like 'What size maps will be supported?' or 'What game lengths will be offered?'.

Doh!...of course we can...what I mean is can you answer this sort of question or are we restricted to simple clarifications of info that is already public?

For example, there have been a ton of questions about details on some of the released screenshots, such as...
Are rivers graphically finished or will the final game look better?
What is that tile full of tents next to Newcastle?
etc.
From the latter thread:

I suspect some of the frustration (other than the elephant in the room) comes from the suspicion that any questions like these, which many consider important, or at the least interesting and worthy of an answer, are being ignored and if raised more prominently will be answered with ... "We'll be ready to tell you that real soon now", rather than an actual answer.

It would be nice if some of those hanging questions were acknowledged because the lack of interaction on these and similar topics is clearly not helping 2Ks image here.

Anyway...please consider the bolded Qs above asked...thank you.

Okay, fair enough. First, you get my standard disclaimer: This stuff isn't finalized yet. This is what is in my latest build, and could change, but this is closing in on final. And I'm not going to give you details on what each of these things are, but you can speculate, and will have more info soon.

There are three different land types (and random.) There are six different map sizes from teeny to gigantic, plus random. There are eight different difficulties and four different game speeds.

We are constantly updating the graphics and they are not finalized completely yet - with a good graphics card the rivers blend well with the landscape. (Although referring to the Newcastle shot, what do you think of that river? I can get more info on that if you would like.)

I'm not going to tell you what the tents are because there will be more details on tile improvements in the future, but suffice it to say it's an improvement that you can build around your city (like farms, for example.)

 

[2K Elizabeth]

And last but certainly not least, great work on the podcasts elizabeth, 10 so far you say and more to come, I wish they were all released already , but one a week gives me something to look foward too in the long wait for Civ Release, thanks for the vast amount of information you guys at 2k and frixasis are giving us with still 2 months before the game is released, I eagerly await every interview/podcast or whatever information comes out. Always entertaining to learn more about this very anticipated game.

I'm glad you are enjoying them. They take a fair amount of work, or else we'd release more for you - but we can only produce them so fast!

 

[mjs0]

Okay, fair enough. First, you get my standard disclaimer: This stuff isn't finalized yet. This is what is in my latest build, and could change, but this is closing in on final. And I'm not going to give you details on what each of these things are, but you can speculate, and will have more info soon.

There are three different land types (and random.) There are six different map sizes from teeny to gigantic, plus random. There are eight different difficulties and four different game speeds.

We are constantly updating the graphics and they are not finalized completely yet - with a good graphics card the rivers blend well with the landscape. (Although referring to the Newcastle shot, what do you think of that river? I can get more info on that if you would like.)

I'm not going to tell you what the tents are because there will be more details on tile improvements in the future, but suffice it to say it's an improvement that you can build around your city (like farms, for example.)

Fantastic...thank you.

I have to say from my perspective when it comes to questions like this I actually prefer hints and partial answers because the act of speculating is great fun.
These sorts of hints and tidbits of information sprinkled liberally across the threads on the forum would continue to allow people to talk and speculate about the game but also give the impression of involved and active 2K reps.

Thanks again for the (partial) answers, much appreciated.

Now I'm off to spread discord and speculate based on these 100% confirmed answers.

PS. Just because I'm greedy ...any chance you can say when we will know some numbers on those map sizes, even a hint at the rough size of gigantic?

 

[crismac]

There are three different land types (and random.) There are six different map sizes from teeny to gigantic, plus random. There are eight different difficulties and four different game speeds.

This was what I wanted to know also

Right now the only place Babylon is available is through the Steam Digital Deluxe edition - but we'll post here if any other content (of any kind) comes available through any channels to make sure no one misses anything.

Thanks for the response I will be watching for any updates closer to release date.

 

[mjs0]

We are constantly updating the graphics and they are not finalized completely yet - with a good graphics card the rivers blend well with the landscape. (Although referring to the Newcastle shot, what do you think of that river? I can get more info on that if you would like.)

The discussion on river graphics is in this thread.

Basically the lack of flowing rivers appears to be the main concern. All the water surface of rivers appears to use the same look as the ocean.
The 'Newcastle' screen shot is clearly this way, unless you have a better one to show us?

 

[White Elk]

Steam won't be removed, nor will their be a non-steam version released, this has been made clear enough to anyone who looks. Technically 2k could reverse the decision to remove Steamworks, but why would they, Steam is a great DRM for them, Steam is the biggest digital distributor, Steam will sell more copies of Civ5 to Steam users who have never played a Civ game than people who don't buy Steam because of Steamworks. They have no reason to change their decision to use Steamworks it will make them a lot of money and that is the bottom line.
So how about people drop the issue. You do however have the right to better understand Steamworks before buying the game and the best way is too download Steam and see for yourselfs or raise queries on the Steam forumns.

I've been all over the steam forums. My time spent there only made my concerns worse. The steam forums are remarkably full of unhappy customers. There exists a wide variety of problems. And there is little communication from steam to its displeased customers. I have little faith in steams ability, or desire, to service their customers beyond the collection of customers money; and the monetizing of their consumption data.

All of Steamworks features can work without having to make calls to a client. And the steam store does not need to be a forced install. They made these decisions. Technological limitations did not force it. steam seeks to deny its competitors access to large chunks of the digital market by signing exclusive ESDs. Then they force feed their store to ALL of a games user-base. They willfully add unneeded failure points to already failure prone games. They add running processes to already process hungry games. For this they force a greater market share and more exposure. They also gain marketing data on Every_Single Civ5 player by scanning your machines with their forced client. That is huge for them. It is huge for publishers like 2k. But none of this is helpful for the user. In fact, this method will interfere with many users ability to play their games. I see this all as a threat to the franchise. Civ is a niche game. TBS games in general are a niche market. You don't grow the franchise, or empower the genre, by cutting away at its fanatical core. Unless perhaps, you are looking to progressively dumb down the game to appeal to a larger market.

 

[aziantuntija]

Elizabeth do you have any info about the size of the manual in the standard edition?