Ever since installing Civ V on the new pc, when I try to load it up via Steam, it would plant me on the little "updating news"  screen.   And after a few minutes, the text "game ready to launch in 3 hours" would pop up.  Now, I haven't used steam before (though I somehow have an account which is still confusing me), but I'm pretty sure that's not normal.  My internet connection is working fine and I haven't found any other issues with the newly built pc other than one other, which is Starcraft 2's profile screens taking a long, long time to load.
 
Does anyone else have similar issues or know exactly what's up?  I'm getting the feeling its because of Windows 7 since I didn't have any issues with SC2 on my old pc other than needing to run everything on low.

I'm not even sure what the little updating news screen is.

Right click on Civ 5 -> Properties -> Local Files - > Verify integrity.