I downloaded the game overnight last night. I decided to play a bit earlier today, that was in the afternoon. After 7 or so hours I still can't play the game. You see even after you install a game in Steam, you need to have it connect the first time you run the game. But for over 7 hours now it can't connect, stops at 2% and eventually gives me an error 10 and/or 16 to try again later when their servers are ok.

I FRAKING HATE DRM. HATE.

Maybe related to this?

It's not because of DDoS but because of the trading cards. Or so I've heard...

Sorry you're having issues, I bought Civ V Gold Edition on Steam about a week ago and had no trouble installing it. As you alluded to, it might have something to do with their servers, I know that I've had a few issues connecting to their website the last day or so, but I figured it was due to everybody buying up the games they wanted that were never a Flash Sale or whatever.

I purchased Civilization 5 Gold from Amazon's Firaxis pack and Brave New Worlds DLC, both installed without issue. The only problem I noticed was very slow load times when I started Civilization V last night (like 3-5 minutes of a taseful splash screen before the main menu would load); hopefully that's temporary.

Nope. The load times at startup are really bad. The video intro is there to mask it.

You're not missing anything, move back to 3 or 4 and you'll be much happier.

If I want to play a more fun civ game I will play Test of TIme, but that's not the problem. The problem is I can't play the game I want to play now.

I can trade you a can of Hapi Hot Wasabi Peas (Wasabi Peas not included).

It's a matter of taste, 5 is my favorite. I think it is because there is a lot less micromanagement.

That changed with the first expansion. Civ V out of the box was an alright game, but IV was much better (3 though, ugh, I would not touch that game). But once Gods & Kings was released, Civ V got a lot more interesting, to the point where I think it is better than Civ IV.

If it is still one unit per hex I am not interested.

2. One military one civilian.

But then you were just telling someone to not bother with a game based on your own preference, without backing it up. The 1 unit per hex-based system comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages compared to the old system, and neither can be considered objectively better or worse (unlike things like lack of content, bugs or poor AI, which would have been legitimate claims against the game pre-expansion)