Hey, you've got nothing to worry about from me. I'll be buying both games. There is such a dearth of good TBS games that you gotta get em all.

The civilization series is great, and I'll probably buy civ V just to see where they decide to take it, but Civ IV was a combat simulator junkie's worst nightmare. An army of archers should NEVER EVER EVER defeat an army of Industrialized Artillery....sigh. That was really my only problem with the game...that and you end up pissing off everyone as a result of simply trading with other players. You are practically forced to make enemies in that damned game. I have yet to find a strategy that is a guarenteed pacifist victory. So I'm forced into war. When I go to war, I get fucked because of the horrible combat system. Its cyclical process with me....piss people off go to war, get fucked.

Uhm, I would say that Civ 5 is in fact a substitute product in relation to Elemental, so yes, those with limited budgets may have to choose between the two.  I for one will buy both. 

So what happens if you just order a copy from the states? Or have someone sends you one. Does it somehow know you're in Spain? I know DVDs have that sort of thing but PC games?

Meanwhile, in europe ;_;

Well, at least the stardock games are available worldwide...thats one reason to buy elemental instead of Civ5. But I will probably still end up buying a boxed version of Civ5 if they don't overdo it with the DRM (hello there, Ubisoft). They removed the disk checks from Civ4, so maybe they will do something reasonable with Civ5.

I will also buy Civ5, but I will mod EWoM, because EWoM will be a much more complex game in many aspects.

That's awesome. Go tell the Firaxis dudes to stop screwing off and get to work on that X-Com sequel.

Faraxis is working on an x-com sequel? I knew 2K were rumoured to be working on something but I thought it was Irrational Games?

2k Games, which recently went back to being called "Irrational Games", also owns Firaxis or they're partners or something. From what I understood there are two games in the works. One of them is a FPS set in a X-Com universe (like X-Com Enforcer) being done at 2K/Irrational and another full X-Com strategy game being done at Firaxis. The one being done by Firaxis will be the full re-boot everyone's waiting for with squad based tactical missions, researching, capturing live aliens, the works. I want to say the schedule that was discussed said to aim for a release in 2011 so I'd expect a announcement some time this year.

I haven't heard anything "Official" from Firaxis on it yet so I don't know if they set it on a back burner or aren't ready to announce or just plain don't have anything to show yet as it's too early of a stage, but, I do know that was the plan as of 3/4 months ago.

Unless it's extremely well done I don't know if I could get into a X-Com shooter, but I can't wait to see what Firaxis does with a full blown X-Com re-make/re-boot. The only other company I'd like to see take a shot at a X-Com game is Stardock. There have been a few X-Com clones made over the years but none of them had that same punch as the original and Terror From The Deep. I know Firaxis can pull it off if anyone can and I think Stardock could too.

The new combat will be change the game heaps. Civ has never had tactical combat, now it will and it there won't be any "going to the mini-map" stuff, it will all occur on the main game map.

What I'm interested in is if they will go full Panzer General style and retain the "battles where units don't always have to die but just get damaged" or retain the Civ style "always one must die" approach. Personally I hope it will be PG style.

Hey Jon,

Which one will you be modding?

Just kidding...

Civ 4 Colonization.

They will use the Civ 5 engine to release a sequel to SMAC. Its already planned, along with the features missing in the Civ 5 release that will be in the Civ 5 expansion packs.....

You mean you haven't already bought it???