Yikes!

Ahem, so any of you who have purchased the expansion, do you consider it full price material if I'm so so on Civ V?

I am not defending our local pirate here, but ToA is quite comparable to Rebellion...both brought lots of awesome new content and fundamentally changed the game (mostly for the better), but both also have serious AI and balance issues....

Now to Civ V....

To confirm what has been often stated, if you don't like Civ V you won't like the expansion...I for one love the new implementations of core mechanics that Civ V brought to the series so the expansion is fine for me as well...

The introduciton of late game replacements for ranged units was a nice touch, as was the distinction between melee and ranged naval units (though the system might need some balancing)...

I have mixed feelings on religion and espionage, and don't think they scale well for different map or empire sizes...as an example, having more cities does not necessarily lend to more science since smaller empires can have higher population densities and vertical growth...but with religion, more citites = more faith and I'm not sure I'm a fan....

Espionage doesn't scale well either since the number of spies you have is independent of how many players/city states there are...

Overall though I'd say the tech tree and progression of unit upgrades enhance the core game nicely and overshadow any weaknesses of religion or espionage...

Yup the AI is much better at the little things involved in managing troops in the field. For example evil Dido of Carthage took my third city early on with a army of 1 warrior and 5 archers..I thought..no problemo but Dido arranged her archers in such a way that I couldnt get to them all before they drop the health of the to super low levels. The warrior then ran in and took the city, and when my army finished off the archers it was able to retake the city. The warrior stayed just long enough to buff the D then left on the last turn right before the city fell. (units in a city when its take are destoyed so it was smart to leave at that point) Diplomacy is still a mess of confusion however as I have no idea why Dido declared war twice against me nor why Alexander keep sending me mean messages. I think the unsung element in G&K are the City State changes..I really like the more detailed interface and all the new quests. Again stuff that really should have been their on release but whatever.

If we are going to call people who avoid be cheated by downloading software a dramatic name like "pirate"..can we call developers who arnt honest about the condition of their products "wallet rapists"?

I think the term "wallet rapists" is offensive to those who have been raped.  You have the choice not to buy and not to use games you don't support, so why don't you exercise self-control and just choose not to play the game at all?

This is whats wrong with our legal systems.

There is a morale deficit in both, theft and piracy.

If I do immaterial work for someone for 50 hours, let's say I build them something out of their own materials. And they don't pay me. I would call that stealing, just like I would call piracy stealing.

I'm not 100% sure of the differences between the words stealing and theft. In finnish we have just one word for the whole thing. Piracy, incidentally, is simply called "illegal copying". Fancy words sometimes hide true meanings.

In other news, the expansion looks good, but I'll be waiting for the price to drop. Too many good games to play already. Crusader Kings 2 awaits..

Mmmm no...If there is a car dealer who regularly sells cars that turn out to be held together with duct tape I think its reasonable for someone to test drive the product first. And the "creators" aka Wallet Rapists have a long history of con artistry. With one side of the mouth the developers are saying protect our intellectual property from thieves while with the other they are Raping Wallets by repeatedly hocking generations of dysfunctional products.  Worse case scenario you are "stealing" from thieves. And no one is holding a gun to the wallet Rapist head saying they must sell their products in ways that risk harm to the customers while maintain maximum possible profit for the Rapists.

As I said they are charging you for work they left out of the original release. Something Jon Shafer has ample time to discuses with the community before they raped our wallets. Alas his loyalty was to corporations and his job not to fellow gamers or the quality of games in general. So the cycle continues.

Rubbish. They clearly stated what was in their game and if you didn't like it then you don't buy it (and you sure as hell don't steal, sorry, pirate it). If you can find me an article where, for example, Firaxis claimed religion and espionage were in vanilla civ 5 then I'd certainly be interested to see it. If you think the product is inferior who the hell gave you the right to get it for free anyway? Who?

Boycotting is the ultimate form of showing one's displeasure at a developer. Don't try to dress up software piracy as something more noble than theft, because it isn't.

I'm not going to do your homework for you..there are plenty of stuff about religion being in and then removed. The are even screenshots of the old system. Boycotting rarely works because the the consumer is on the very bottom of the money cycle. That said I tried to organize a boycott prior to the original release of Civ5 at their offices and no one showed any interest. When a game has to sell millions of copies to be successful, one person, or a small group of people have no ability to create change. The customer they care about is Walmart, Best Buy, Steam ect ect. The customer is not you and me.

And priates with their boats and hooks and parrots arnt robbing the Creator. 2kgames robbed the creators like the artists when they paid them 5$ an hour and laid them off along with the guys who made red dead redemption a month or so before release. The "creators" have already been paid one way or another before the customer get the product. If there are any victims to a "pirated game" its the wasteful, meaningless bureaucracy who care about 100,00k estimated pirated versions when you've sold 5 million aka the publishers/bankers. They need those extra 100 sales for the macro picture, because big clean numbers get them the next big load for the next big project. The Macro doesnt cares if some kid in Uzbakastan doesnt get to play the game because pirating is the only way he can get it. 

It is a good expansion pack imo.

If Civ5 was released like this I would have enjoyed it a bit more.

Enough with the idiotic flawed analogies.

They produce something. They have the rights to license it in whatever way they want. If they say it costs 100 000 dollars to buy, that doesn't make it more right for you to take it for free. Your only choice should be whether you decline or accept the terms. But you think it's ok to take the product and ignore the terms.

Piracy may not be stealing, who cares. Your actions are MORALLY WRONG if you are getting access to their product without paying your dues.

Besides being ethically in the bad zone, you also have the nerve to complain about their product as if you had paid. As if your opinion holds any relevance when you blatantly admit to not adhering to their terms for accessing the product. Why should they EVER listen to you, who does not pay the man? What is your opinion worth to them?

And finally, if you are not paying your way for the product, then you the worst kind of scumbag because it means your fellow gamers are paying for you. And not only that, but you come here and flaunt the fact of your idiocy in our faces.

In conclusion, you are garbage.