Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Same game in a new wrapper! By what stanard this game became a game of the year is beyond me. It has all the failings of Civ5 (see various reviews on the game), you still have to go through steam to play the game, something that is not advertised. This is a basic game if it is anything. It was not developed by Sid Meier's despite it having his name on it. They have so simplified things that the game is boring beyond belief, that is if you can even get it to run without crashing. The wonders are a wonder why you would even build them, they offer little extra for the expense and time. Having more cities (a larger empire) is counter productive. The smaller your empire the betterr for some of the more useful wonders such as the national bank which appears early in the game (???) but even still building it seems all but impossible since you have to have markets in each of your cities and even if you do it will tell you you dont. Yea a glich that has never been worked on becuase the game has so many other gliches that. There is no reason to upgrade builds such as roads to railroads, it wont do you much good in the trade area since there are no caravans. Trade is simplified beyond belief - with everything dependant on a route to your capital. The relationship AI is flawed! After good relations with another empire you may suddenly find your self at war with them for no reason what so ever. It is easy to get the AI to give up a war but rebuildign relations is nearly impossible without your handing over the store. Did I mention that even after a successful war you can stil llose .. meaning once peace is declared you will find your production down, your resources down, your income down all sorts of nasty things happening that make no sense at all. Did I mention you have to go through steam to play the game? What this means is there is no exe file for the game. You have to have an internet connection and a login to steam. This is in case you want to play the game interactive with well no one ... I have yet to play a multiplayer game via steam - no one seems to be around maybe its becuase the game crashes at wierd times all the time. By game crash I mean a complete shut down of your system. Did I mention boring?? There really isnt much to do turn after turn. This civ misses the flavor of previous games, in developing your empire - well in the case of civ 5 your city state - you really dont want an empire. And the music is boring as well. If fact the game is boring. The tech tree is easy amd you can plan your tech growth easy enough, maybe that is the problem with the game - it is too easy, there is no challenge. Each of the civs built on the last one. Taking out what was not so good and building something new and challenging. If this game were properly numbered it would be civ 0 (zero) since civ 1 was mpre of a channgle and interesting than this version of the game is. Not to make excuses for Y2K - but this is a huge failure, in large part because of steam and the requirement for internet connection to be able to play the game, but also becuase the development team had no real old civ hands on it so they created a basic game fit more for 8 year olds. Update: Someone is worried. I received an email from amazon asking me to withdraw my reviews of this game - I imagine both here and on the civ 5 mainline. Why they are worried about little ole me I dont know. Why amazon would go to such lenghts is also above my pay grade. I wonder is anyone else has gotten an email from amazon asking them to retract their negative review of this game? Is it only this game? What relationship does amazon have with Steam in that case? What hornets nest did we step on?