Still no support for EU.  Any news on when us EU purchasers will be able to lay our sweaty palms on the shiny new update?

I would certainly hope that the Upgrade 2.0 will be available for normal (NON Impulse) download

 also.

I live in a rural area...there's NO DSL or Cable, my only broadband option is satellite provided by

Hughes Network. They happen to have a very restrictive Fair Access Policy where I can not

download more than 210MB in any 24 hour period without getting my speed cut down to 52K

(old modem speed) for 24 hours. They suspend this policy from 0300 to 0600 each day and if I

can access larger downloads with IE7, then I'll be able to get most of them, although it looks

like I'll have to go to WAL-Mart or GameStop to get the boxed versions of your games.

(HUGE Sigh!!)

There are a LOT of gamers who are in the same situation and I would think you'd consider

them and the possible lost sales when forming a policy like Impulse Only. It's a great idea

if only we ALL had DSL or Cable.

Bill

Wow, this was a bad move by Stardock. Releasing such a promising update to only those who go through Impulse, it's a slap in the face to fans/customers. Although some may argue "but hey, it's free!" it really isn't when it's being used as a tool to lure you into signing up for yet-another-online service you don't even need to play the game. Try CALLING IT LIKE IT IS for once in awhile, you'll feel better. This update is only being provided to people with conditions attached. So it's improper to tell me who do not accept this deal to "be grateful that it's free!" - this makes no sense, and you don't know if people would in fact rather pay $$$ than to sign up for a useless Impulse (just more clutter).

Stardock has had such a wonderful ear listening to fans and what they would like to see in the game. They've provided plenty of updates in the past but for this one, resort to this tactic. It's disappointing. Is this going to be a common practice going forward concerning patches and updates?

The whole point of patches/updates is done for customer service reasons, for repeat business in the future.

Although subscribers to Impulse may rise, temporarily, but Stardock should have considered it's reputation. I will not buy anything else from Stardock only because I'm afraid for any other game I get from them, they will tack conditions, like this Impulse crap, on anytime I need a patch for a buggy game or any fixes/updates. I don't have time to deal with this clownish BS. If they can't figure out how to tend to their fanbase...wow I'm concerned at how hard this seems. Please put the 2.0 update/patch up so it is not held hostage on Impulse. Once they put the patch up normally, they will have my loyalty again. If a = 1 and b= 2, then a+b = 3. Not until then. Thanks!

Well, Alphonse, you're entitled to your opinion, but to arbitrarily write off the people who live in rural America as not worthy of support is a mistake. There may not be as many of us as live in cities, but there is a significant number of gamers who live in the boondocks....what else do we have to do for entertainment when not working???

In Western Europe, it's a social policy to make sure everyone is hooked up to fast broadband. Barring that though, just how hard would it be to put the various updates on a server where you could log in with your Stardock/Impulse name and password and just FTP or browser download what you need? I can download, but I have to be able to schedule it to automatically start at 3:01AM and stop at 6:00AM when that Fair Access Policy is suspended. I've had to spend days in the past downloading large files, especially when I was a tester for Ubisoft. I can't do that with Impulse.

Seems like Impulse is just another way for the company to avoid the expense of boxed copies in their on-line store while still charging the same amout of $$ and then trying to tell us we're getting a really good deal. I'm of the same opinion as WhatTheHeck in that I will no longer buy any of these games as long as Impulse is the only way of getting updates. And I buy a lot of games each year. Plus I do computer support and have a large client base, most of whom are gamers and I'll make sure they know about this problem.

Ignore my previous message. I had to restart Impulse and all was well.

• It's a central location for accessing, downloading, updating, and managing my games and software.
• It's a platform that allows developers to concentrate on their game rather than mundane things like managing installers, communities, e-commerce sites, etc.
• It's a great place to get games with little to no DRM.
• It allows me to play games instantly, without have to search for CDs.
• It allows me to buy games without having to drive to a store or wait for a CD to arrive in the mail.
• It allows me to re-download all of my software in case of data loss.

You're right, I do feel better .

Impulse is what, 20 MB on my disk? All of the games I own are larger than that. It's not cluttering my disk any more than my games.

I think there needs to be some complaints sent to the satellite providers - their policies are absolutely insane. If anything, usage should be in bytes/second, not bytes. If I download 1 GB in an hour, I'm hogging a lot more shared bandwidth diring that hour than if I were to take a day to download that GB.

In addition, those caps are simply too low. Sure, they're great for email and web browsing, but not much else. Multimedia, games, and other stuff is becoming more common, and even their "business internet" cap can easily be hit by somebody watching some YouTube.

Perhaps consider StarBand instead? They allow 4 GB/week, which might work better for something like Impulse. Looking at all of the satellite providers, HughesNet looks like the worst choice for anybody who wants to do some gaming.

Well, for my part, TA and DA are both upgraded to v2.0 each. Didn't need to uninstall, or do anything wierd other than wait a good day to download the DA full update, only 250 Mb overall. Impulse, despite the annoying 2 hour wait to update that as well before I could DL anything, ended up being a good program utility to use, since the ability to remember a paused/cut off DL even after my comp was turned off for a night, is leagues better than how normal DLing goes.

As for the game itself, enjoying what I paid and waited for. Personally building up a star empire is sorta my life version of making oil paintings, an enjoyment to see all that hard work billow up into a nice and strong star realm. Personally, I thank Stardock and it's hard workers for the effort they put into this game, even if the wait and DLing stuff over a 56k connect is a tic annoying. Anticipation was a good equalizer anyway.

I await the next GalCiv2 expansion eagerly, while I make more ship classes than I need. =^^= Well done overall Stardock, well done.

Updates break savegames 99.9% of the time.

This is not new.

The devs even went out of their way to specify that this update in particular definitively would not be compatible with earlier savegames.

Turn off auto-upgrade when you colonize/conquer/flip a planet?

I agree that it would be very nice to have a civ-wide setting for this, though.