Such as?
I don't know about overshadowed...The only people I know who even heard of Elemental are regular customers of Stardock/Impulse. Where Civ and Civ 5, everyone and their granny knows it is coming out this year.
I am very eager to this year's release of Civ. It looks like things from 4 I didn't like, didn't make it, which is super for me. Of course since I don't have the game, nothing tells me that they haven't managed to screw the game somehow, but I will just have to wait for that. I am not sure if I will pre-order or wait for the reviews etc yet. The problem of Steam release is the fraking price hike in Europe. I guess I could still find it on retail cheaper...

The firing of numerous developers who were working on it and the inordinate amount of DLC-ification of scenarios and civilizations. It was going to be a day one... well... wait for Black Friday sale... purchase for me but now it is something I'd probably wait on a GOTY edition after they're finished milking people for $1.99 or whatever they charge for the privilege of playing as the Babylonians.

I don't see what the problem is with DLCs. It's not like Civilization is a stranger to expansion packs. Civ 2 had two IIRC, plus 3-4 different versions ( got most of them lol), Civ 3 had 2 or 3 (again), Civ 4 had a couple. If Civ 5 has DLCs, I can't say I care much. I agree it would make better sense to wait for a gold version in a year or 2. But then again in 3 years you will be able to buy the game, the DLCs and the expansion packs for a fiver. lol

Exactly thats probably the concern of the people.. the price. DLCs seem a bit overpriced lately and you never know how many of them there will be.
If money is abundantly available, thats not a problem, you just buy all DLCs, might get a bit tedious if there are a lot. Otherwise people have not yet much experience with DLCs yet, so they are a bit skeptical.
Actually I think that zero Day DLCs are a bit of a bad habit. Having the Babylonian DLC announced even before the publishing day... feels not right to me.

DLC is just a simple way for companies to make money.
I never played any Civ games much, always was busy playing Age of Empires and such, but I'm going to try the new one. Looks like they improved things that bugged me before. (The combat, squares etc)

Hey, I am not made out of money either. I don't think I can even afford to buy the game next month. Still, if say there are 10 DLCs each with a civilization, I am fine with it because all the civilizations I am interested in are already in the main game and if there is one or two, I prefer to get them as DLCs for 1.99 each than paying 20-30 euros for the lot.
I agree that it is wrong to announce DLCs before the release of the game, but let's not kid ourselves. Anyone truly believes that not announcing them would change anything? Or that if there were no DLCs but only expansion packs, they wouldn't already be working on them or have a clear plan about them?
The thing is, with DLCs, you can easier avoid buying them since they contain very few things. Where expansion packs, at least for the Civ series from 3 onwards, they are an almost MUST HAVE buy since they include huge changes.
Closing, if anyone wants to send a clear message regarding DLCs, don't buy them.

You are right that in principle with smaller packages it should be possible to better assemble you favorite Civ 5 pack, like having Greece and skipping Germany... :).
I just say that I am sure, DLCs are currently in general overpriced.
I would not be very much interested in only a single additional civilization. For a Civ add-on I would prefere interesting scenarios with several new civilizations. So I will just wait for bundles of DLCs with a reasonable price which I will then order happily. Not buying at all seems not right, since after all DLCs are like old-style add-ons, only smaller and not disc based anymore.

Some are, some aren't. The thing to remember is: What are you actually getting?
Let's use Just Cause 2 for example. Each DLC is, what, 2 bucks? Each DLC contains either two or three vehicles or two or three guns (for the most part).
So let's go with the 20 dollar expansion pack price point (more like 30, but the math is easier this way :p). For 20 bucks, you get either twenty to thirty new vehicles, or twenty to thirty new guns. That sound like an expansion pack to you? :p
Same with factions and the like.
Admittedly, Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 are in the range where it gets kind of harder to justify, but there is also the argument that most of those enhance the core game, and you already got an amazingly good deal on that :p
And let's not really discuss Modern Warfare 2 (although, honestly, those probably price out to what most multiplayer-oriented FPS expansion packs are, anyway).

Actually since turn based strategy is very rare these days, I think that the new Civilization will anyway be very successful. I just hope, its not too much war-centered. The one unit per tile rule is new and good but I also like the economy and diplomacy parts. Hope they are strenhtened as well.

"Live Broadcast of Civilization V Gameplay": Monday, September 13th, at 1pm PDT (that is 1h20m from now).
http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/live_stream
http://www.ustream.tv/2kgameslive

Damn............ wont be able to check it out
Tac you gonna give us a review of how it looks??

Hello Mr., hmm I'm not the best reviewer you could find on GOG... and I won't have time to watch the whole thing, too.
No worries because it will be archived and you can watch the 2 hours of footage later, any day. I'll post the links when available. ;)

sweet thanks,
just with my slow a** connection, i figured id ask heh

Even with a good connection these live streams are shitty... I have to find a way to download these videos, but you only can download them after the live streaming finishes. Probably a file size of 1 or 2GB.
Anyone know this? How to download the original .flv file from ustream?
EDIT:Started.

WOOOOOOOT STEAM is allowing PRELOADING!!!!!!!!!!
You guys cant imagine how happy this makes me, considering it will take at least 3 days to get it installed :)