Civ 5 is Steam Powered.  To experiment, I tried to run Civ 5, while not connected to the internet, and it failed to load, due to not being able to connect to Steam.  So, I am wondering if it is possible to play Civ 5 without being online.

OT: Yes.

...but only with cracks.

In all seriousness, Steam games only need to be activated online once, after that you should be able play offline the whole time, I think. You don't need a constant online connection, we are not talking about Ubisoft here. ;)

If you start Steam, then select "start in offline mode" you can play offline, the issue is that you need to connect to the internet to set it in offline mode

Why does everything run on Steam? I'm a Luddite and hate it.

Thanks. I will need to play with it to get set up.  A reason I have to play it is if I can't connect online.

If I buy the retail version does it force me to use steam? I ask because I have no desire to set  up a steam account, but I do want to get Civ 5 next time I upgrade my PC.

yes, you have to use Steam.

The main reason I still don't have Civ V. Actually I was a bit lucky it required Steam, it seems the game wasn't as good as expected. Well, I did sort of expect this and I'm still expecting them to fix the game. The first patch seems to have done a pretty good job so far, now we only need more patches.

Yeah, but that's what pretty much every other DRM besides Ubisoft's DRM does. Not really that much better than other DRM. In my eyes, tying a game to a single account (Steam) is worse than an otherwise similar DRM system (almost every other DRM system). I don't really have use for Steam's additional features. Messaging is the only useful part and I already use Xfire for that. And if I want to play without disc, I'll buy the digital version. A disc is no use if you still need to activate it online before being able to play, it's just something to save your bandwidth in case you have a limit.