[akots]

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.