Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am not going to belabor the points made at great length already; I wish merely to point out that this game is really not a Civilization game. Many of the innovations are promising, and perhaps a forthcoming expansion pack will restore what made Civilization great (I have been playing since the first version): freedom to play in different ways. This version allows really only one approach: save your gold and fight. Sometimes combat is fun, but it shouldn't be the only approach. With BTS, I have still to exhaust the possibilities for different strategies and approaches and playing styles, which is why I am still not tired of playing it. Perhaps I have yet to discover something, but after a week of playing intensively it seems to me that every single game I have played of Civ V has allowed only for the aforementioned approach. It almost seems as if the game were designed by someone who hated the previous versions. Incidentally, the head designer was a modder who was brought in with no previous experience with Firaxis or the Civ team. I feel a bit betrayed. I didn't expect a mere tweaking; but I also didn't expect the fundamental soul of Civilization to be discarded. And Steam sucks. SUCKS. If I wanted to look at pop up ads, I'd turn off Norton. To whomever is responsible for this nonsense: I already paid 50 bucks for the game, so I expect to own it outright, and to be able to play without spyware on my system. So, **** you.