A DRMed game can't be a good service. That's a capitalist game controled by a police device.
I don't like capitalism, being state driven as the communists, or privetaly driven as our usual capitalism. They are both for monopolies against liberty.
I hate DRMs and such State or private police, smashing on the honnest people.

if you don't want the economy to be state-driven or privately-driven, what do you want it to be driven by exactly?
God? Aliens? Chance?
Edit: We're getting off-topic here. (Also, fixing broken quoting)
As for the lay-offs at Firaxis, it's not very surprising. 2k have no reason to pay extra programmers and artists while they aren't working on a new project.
They'll probably be rehired as soon as Civ 6, or whatever their next game will be, starts getting off the ground.
Only developers who jump from one game to the next as soon as they're finished (usually making sequels) can afford to keep their whole staff all the time.

Followed by
I am only typing this because I really dislike it when a post is nothing but a quote or a link. That being said, i don't really think any additional response is required, other than me laughing hysterically :p

So you don't understand why your previous example was horribly wrong? In fact, it is self-defeating as it contradicts itself. If you're going to defend your flatheaded argumentation with supposed "real-life" examples, at least take the fucking effort to come up with something that stays together logically for more than three seconds of scrutiny.
Also, that has nothing to do with my reply to a completely different person, on another reply to myself from fucking weeks back.

Topping a gratutitous bump with a less gratutitious one, here's the minimum specs.
Operating System: Windows® XP SP3/ Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: Dual Core CPU
Memory: 2GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 9.0c
Recommended specs are as follows:
Operating System: Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 512 MB ATI 4800 series or better, 512 MB nVidia 9800 series or better
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 11
And usual Steamworks bells and whistles (DirectX, Virtual C++ Runtime Libraries, Steam) will come on the disc.
That graphics card requirement is surprisingly high, and rules out many notebooks. Although it looks like DirectX 11 is in (although I don't know what the point of having tesselation in a Civ game is).

Giant Bomb has a video where they play a little bit of Civ IV, Civ Rev, and the new Civ V (near the end for those who just want to see that).
http://www.giantbomb.com/civil-service-the-road-to-civ-v/17-3013/

Its funny, actually. I find myself more and more interested in ELemental, and less and less interested in Civ5.
Admittedly, they are very different approaches to the genre and I'll probably end up buying both. But at this point, Civ5 feels like an afterthought (at least, to me).

people have said much the same about civ 2 3 and 4

People have been looking forward to Elemental for that long? Damn :p
No, what I mean is that Civ5 just feels overshadowed by Elemental. Civ5's biggest improvements are streamlining the Civ4 formula (from what I have read), whereas Elemental is a pretty radically "new" game ("new" as in most people haven't really played the games it draws the most from :p). So I look forward to Elemental more, whereas Civ5 is just a happy thing that happens to be coming out later this year.

from the first reviews trickling in already say theres some big changes people are either loving or hating on the new city states though...

I have to admit I was greatly looking forward to this but now -- with all the recent developments over the last month or so -- I'm not so sure.

I have to admit, I haven't been keeping tabs on Elemental, but Stardock's stick-head-in-sand approch to European retail doesn't impress me.

I love the Civ-series and most of Meiers other games. Normally I buy the complete set with all expansions later. With all the bad news this will hopefully be the same with steamless edition for non-online players like me.
Knowing the system requirements gives me another good reason to wait, at the moment my system only fulfill the needed hard disc space and maybe the minimum video-power.