Yes,hope it works on my comp .

My point of vue is that it's cool to have different games to please everybody .

Well, I hope some form of Religion/ Ideology functionality is modded back into Civ V ...

and if/when it happens, It'd be cool if it were "better" than the Civ IV version ... IE a city could have X% of a religion, instead of simply true/false having the religion ...

in other words, a city could be 33% Church of Water and 67% Church of Fire ... as a rough example.

Yea, I feel the same way ... religion only for mods (which is why I hope they actually still have "religion" just not "enabled" for the basic gameplay)

It also added some major game problems. If you managed to found a religion you were at a huge monetary advantage over if you didn't (+1 gold/turn/city with the religion). If you could get AI players to adopt it by spreading it then you got very large diplomatic bonuses with them. If you didn't, the AI would sometimes do insane things like declare war on you when it had no hope of winning due to the diplomatic penalties religion brought with it.

The idea of having religion in the game is good. The execution in Civ 4 was not. If they bring it back in an expansion, I hope they find a way to make it play better.

Well this is bullsh** the freakin game keeps crashing on 1st turn. I should have waited for the demo. I'll learn one of these days.

So far it looks like lots of crashes are problems with drivers or codecs.

I am going home in 1 hour ( am at work ATM) so I will see for myself pretty soon...

any initial impressions will be most appreciated... thinking about adding this one to my collection as well, but i want to hear from players, as opposed to editors (not that those are mutually exclusive mind you)...

Waiting impatiently for the Big Brown truck with my release day delivery...  Dam you UPS man hurry up.  

Just got done playing a 5 hours session.

I played as the Washington (americans) on a huge continents map type. Normal speed. 12 AI opponents and 24 city states.

First impression for a second was "oh no this looks like the console interface" few seconds later "thank god I was wrong"

Much like civ 4 this game is a blast to play. If you've played any civ game you can jump right in. The interface is alright. Not great but its not horrible either.

The graphics are extremely good looking. I was atcually sad to watch my industrialization of my lands. As the rolling forests and verdant hills turned into marketplaces, mines and farms.

That being said I have had no lag whatsoever. I have everything cranked up on high and the only time is slows down is when I zoom out and the giant continent I am on shows up in all its glory. I am on around turn 250 and with that many ais doing things turns can take like 20 seconds to load. Not bad. I have patience so it doesn't bother me at all.

The combat mechanics and a lot of other things are changed but no so teeribly much that it feels like a different game.

The biggest difference is the stack of doom. At first that was my beef before the game came out, no stack of dooms for me to march with to my enemies cities. After playing though, this is much more enjoyable. You cant just amass and spam some troops and roll over. Numbers still help, but so does positioning, flanking. The combat, in my opinion, is better for it. Its more tactical. They also improved that tool tip that popped up when you were about to attack. It really tells you whats going on. There is still some wiggle room and a little randomness but I like that. Thats how life is!

The City states are neat and add a little something extra to the game. They are not awesome but they can be usefull. early on they are too expensive to court or they demand to much (like asking you to wipe out another city state) but later on you can have a handful and the AI reacts to that. They either make nice with them or start gobbling them up. The bonuses are neat and get better as time goes on (as you reach different ages)

All in all I think its a great game. I have had zero crashes or other technical problems with the game so far. Only 5 hours in though. I have around 5 AI on my continent. I have no idea where everyone else it at.

If you liked previous civ games or like turn based strategy try it out. Between this and Elemental my free time just took a hit.

PS. The downside to Civ 5? No fall from heaven...

EDIT:
Someone PM my asked about my system specs I use to run the game.
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
8400 core 2 duo 3.00Ghz.
8 GBs Ram
2 (in sli) EVGA 8800 GTX 768mb video cards (no where near top shelf anymore but 2 of them get the job done!)

When you start up the game it asks you if you want to run direct x 9 mode or direct x 10/11 mode as well. If you have XP you are stuck with 9. There is not a very noticeable difference in the graphics between the difference, but the 10/11 does look a little better and (Seems too for my brief tests) play better.

As far as Steam goes, I'm not a fan of it. but it doesn't interfere with the game at all. Steam runs. Then the game runs. Done. I don't like having to use steam but like any game I have had with steam, I have had no problems, or steam acting stupid. Just my personal experience.

I just played the demo, and I don't think I can go from Civ4 BtS to Civ5: it just feels like I'm losing a lot, especially in complexity.  No, Civ5 isn't quite CivRev (which I hated), but it is definitely dumbed-down in my opinion. 

No city health management, automatic "no-rush" game mode by having cities with their own defense stat (it's a freakin chore just to take down this city-state; I don't mean hard, but just boring and drawn out, and cities getting ranged combat automatically is BS.  They hit you on their turn, then hit again with a unit, and then when you attack the city you get hit AGAIN), I don't find hexes all that more interesting (and I have played hex wargames like Blitzkrieg and A&A: Minis and Battletech).  The leader screen is nice, but I don't care about graphics that much.  The default graphic settings the game recommended for me don't look that much better than Civ4 anyway, so my current setup doesn't give me more graphics power.  So many less civs and leaders, less choices in terms of government and religion.

Oh, one of the worst changes was the music (oddly enough).  In Civ4, the music fit the time period.  Now, it is all Rhapsody in Blue style music (can't remember the name of the genre...late Romantic maybe?).  And I enjoyed when I zoomed in on my cities that it played Civ2 style music.

So, in my mind, the odd-numbered Civilizations suck (3 and 5) while I love 2 and 4.  Civ4 was a breath of fresh air in the market at the time, but Civ5 is just kinda a letdown.  I'll save my money for Fallout: New Vegas or maybe get a boardgame.

EDIT: I couldn't tell: is happiness now a global statistic?  I saw it at the top of the main screen but not the city screen.  Some people think the interface is cleaner, but I don't like it so far.  Forcing you to click on Next Research and Production and Units before ending the turn is nice, though.

1 unit per hex and limited horses/iron/uranium makes the game 10x more strategic. Ranged units and siege units are actually more practical now.

It seems like workers are worth their weight in gold now. Improvements take a long time unless you grab the policies that help that aspect.

Happiness as a global thing is strange.

Unit movement isnt that organic on the map they all have to "get in formation" before each attack which is rather slow.

I miss the complexity of Civ IV bts and mods such as rise of empires.

Coolest new thing so far is natural wonders kind of a civ rev type improvment that gives you a nice resource and a one time discovery happiness.

I think you are right. Disabling the intro video and using DX9 mode solved my crashing. I would rather play with DX10 mode, but I can wait for a fix.