Civ5 already available for pre-order
And it includes a bonus civ... odd. As it is announced by 2k:
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Steam promotional blah blah: Quote:
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Can attest to that. I have a disk of Napoleon Total War and after installing it found out that it is hard-bound to Steam. So, cannot play offline. And there is no usable deodorant. Good thing, the disk is not needed. Also, the Steam client is very glitchy piece of software and is essentially a malware/spyware combination with undisclosed mechanism of copy protection. They also update it constantly and then you need to restart everything and this is very annoying.
But, if one does not want to play online, there are a number of options to bypass these connection requirements via regular Windows options. I'm sure you need Vista/Win7 or XP Professional to do that. On a positive side, and considering heavy patching history of previous Civ versions, there is essentially mandatory save game compatibility with older saves. Which means that key features cannot me modified and multiplayer games should still be playable after patching. This might be able to take care of annoying assets compatibility problems and synchronization issues as well as P2P communications which are very screwed in Civ4. It also adds a good layer of quality control which had been essentially missing from Firaxis products. So, IMO, it is a positive thing. For offline/no internet connection issue, they can include some limited feature version of the game. But seriously, there are very few places left where you cannot connect, even in not so civilized world (I mean Russia). Price is apparently standard as well ($50), no surprise there. |
I am against such practices, no surprise...
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There's an upside to steam though, it's absolutely brilliant for communicating in-game. I'm also happy with the automatic updates. Valve is also very good in supporting their own games. But I wish there was something like a "verify once a week" thing for games that don't need constant internet connection.
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I play lots of steam games in offline mode, completely disconnected from the internet. I don't know what Akots and Shabba are talking about in regards to being forced to play online only. Perhaps Shabba is thinking of TF2, which actually is an online only MP game.
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As I said, the only thing I have is Napoleon TW. I tried to start it offline but it did not start. I think though that I had drop-down battles enabled. May be, it would work if these are disabled. Will try tomorrow.
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If you actually unplug your computer and try to load Steam, it should try to connect for a bit, and then come up with an error message asking you if you want to try again or work in offline mode.
If that is not the case, then there may be a checkbox somewhere in the preferences that requires the software to prompt for offline mode if disconnected. I've been using it for years and, in the beginning, it was as described. But they changed around 2007 after some notorious Seattle area internet meltdown (may have just been Valve, but I seem to recall it was out of Valve's control). After that, Steam created an offline mode. http://support.steampowered.com/kb_a...3160-AGCB-2555 |
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Ok, after 3 or 4 additional client updates, finally it worked! Need to restart steam in offline mode and then the game can start just fine. Moreover, for some strange reason, I can still play multiplayer online via in-game interface. But steam remains dormant. I think a few more updates are coming though to fix that. [lol]
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