and never ever complain about support or forum mods

I got Civ 4 a few weeks ago on Impulse sale. I think I'll pass Civ5 with this choice in sticking to Steam.

I'm not too fussed about the game using Steamworks, I'm more concerned about the whole "exclusive Civ & map for people who pay more". It smells a lot like the BS DLC the Total War games have been pushing since Empire. (Not that "pay more and get more stuff" is nessarily a bad thing - I'm considering buying Starcraft 2's Collector's Edition - however this digital-only Collector's Edition is suspiciously similar to Empire and Napolon's special editions, and we all know what Creative Assembly followed them up with)

Now <span class="bold">THIS</span> is even more fun than Civ5 being Steam exlusive. :D Is Firaxis/2K intentionally trying to alienate the Civ fan/modding community or something?
Oh and all steam haters unite and vote here, well, if nothing else then lol's sake :P Only civfanatics members need to apply ;).

Incoming 10+ pages of Steam kvetching.
It's good to be me.

Already Steam kvetched.

Yeah but it will go on for another six or so until we hit Godwin territory.

First of all... I love Valve. I really do. I have nearly all of their games, and love every one of them. But I hate their Steam team.
I've had so many problems with third party games purchased through Steam, few years forward, the problems still exist, not to mention that now I run Windows 7, and they are noticeable even more. I contacted them many times, but they always to with the usual stuff. I quite know how to fix some game related problems, but that is NOT how it should be. The game MUST be COMPATIBLE and WORKING 100% when I give MY money for it.
Just for example:
Company of Heroes (all three), problems with that additional whatever launched or something. I keep getting UAC prompts whenever I start the game... Decided to delete it as it was making me so freaking angry (no problems with the retail version).
Medieval 2: Total War, not directly compatible with Windows 7. You need to manually install DirectX and some other dlls for the game to stop bugging you with script errors (does not do that with the retail version) and other stupid stuff. Result, deleted.
Valve's support... Could not care less. I don't need a freaking generic reply. I need a real fix.
Thats why I don't buy third party games from Steam / Impulse anymore. I just want to be on the safe side.

I really don't like securom and most of the time I refuse to buy any game with online activation but...
If you looks 2K recent games : single activation after installation/re-installation, unlimited number of activation, no need to run a third party application, no regional restriction, possibility to activate "offline"... so I really fail to see how this can be is so "very annoying" when compared to Steam.

Okay, I don't have a problem with Steam, but that is pretty damn shitty. One of the selling points of Civ4 was it's genuinely awesome moddability, which ensures the game basically will never die ... what are they thinking if they want to remove that?
They're probably trying to copy Blizzard, you know, for the online purposes. Here's a heads up; you're not Blizzard.

It really depends on how it is handled. All we know is that there is a centralized way to get mods and that some random person assumed that the EULA would make every other method illegal. And it isn't even cited :p
Let's assume this is true. As long as the mods are still free (and they likely will be, at least until Civ 6 :p), this just means that it will be easier to find the mods.
Unless you actively hang out at the various modding forums (and there are a few), you would never even have heard of Fall from Heaven until Beyond the Sword included an older version of it (and many people don't even realize that was an older version :p). With this, you could theoretically browse in-game. More exposure.
Is there potential for bad stuff? Yup. But let's not immediately assume the worst :P

I'm going to stop you right there and point out that Bioshock 2's use of GfWL had none of the bolded and I'm not sure of the "activate offline" bit.
Oi! Desura had the idea first! (And if they get their arses into gear, they might also be first to put this principal into practice).

Well both concerns GFWL and not Securom (the poster I was answering to was talking about securom), and GFWL is not needed for offline play.

I'm not surprised by the steam integration, I'm fine with it (if it's available worldwide).
What I'm really surprised is a (digital) deluxe edition already. This will be another Empire: Total War: a base game which should be developed for a longer time, and with less DLCs.
I'm cool with expansions like Civ4 was... but, map packs (DLCs) for Civ5? FUCK. :(
LOL. Simple, but good points there.

OM NOM NOM DLC SALES TASTE LIKE MONEY.
If you want to sell a ton of DLC without having to compete with free mods of equal or better quality, the first thing you do is ensure that modding is as dumbed-down as possible or outright impossible.