Go beyond the stars and beyond history with Beyond the Sword's superb new rules and scenarios.
As if Civilization IV wasn't addictive enough, here comes enough new content to swell the ranks of CivAnon meetings around the country. Beyond the Sword has pretty much everything you could want in an expansion pack, and then some. A few aspects are disappointing, but most of it is really good.
First the bad news: The fancy new espionage feature that lets you spend money and send spies running around the map to wreak discreet havoc? It's a mess. It adds a lot of busy work from the get-go, which wouldn't be so bad if the interface wasn't so clumsy. Pretty much everything about it runs counter to the clean, cool elegance of Civilization IV. Spying is fussy, expensive, and often useless. Unfortunately, it can't be switched off, and it's wormed its way thoroughly into the core game. Hopefully, a patch can clean up the interface.
The new corporations aren't as bad, partly because they're limited to the later stages of the game, and partly because they can be useful. However, they're also very demanding, requiring a lot of attention and resources. What's worse, they're often a crap shoot. Found a corporation and you can either run away with the game or shoot yourself in the foot. How lucky do you feel?
The new units add more endgame shenanigans, but overall, the game actually needs far less. Fortunately, these are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to Beyond the Sword's new parameters. Many changes to the basic gameplay are actually fantastic. For instance, the new rules for naval blockades, privateers, and overseas trade add a lot of extra strategy, lending powerful teeth to the naval game. It's nice to see all those blue squares matter for a change.
The new random events (optional, thankfully) present a menu of choices whenever disasters or opportunities strike. They're a wonderful addition in terms of adding flavor and atmosphere. Similarly, there are changes to forts, spaceship victories, air combat, and sieges that have significant effects on how the game plays. Kudos to Firaxis for rolling up their sleeves and making such subtle but important improvements.
Where Beyond the Sword will really win you over is with the new scenarios and mods. There is some truly wonderful stuff in here. Final Frontier is a complete makeover that sends Civ IV into space, rendering it all but unrecognizable and inviting comparison to classics like Master of Orion and Galactic Civilizations. This "mod" isn't just solar systems instead of cities and space ships instead of armies. It's a vividly realized sci-fi setting, with distinct factions, interesting terrain, and a lively unit balance among capital ships, squadrons, missiles, and star bases. If you buy Beyond the Sword for just one mod, this one would be it.
The Gods of Old mod fleshes out the godly subgame by introducing ancient religions with powerful magical effects. It's also an example of a mod that almost falls apart due to poor documentation. Next War adds a whole new sci-fi stage with distinct units and technologies at the end of the game. It even gives you an epic 5-faction world scenario to play with if you want to jump straight to the mechs, clones, and automatons. Defense is an amusing puzzle style diversion. Broken Star is a whimsical scramble to secure stray nukes in a crumbling Russian empire. Charlemagne is a clever scenario built around developing papal favor, while Crossroads of the World is a medieval money-making scenario that makes clever use of the rules for corporations.
Two of Beyond the Sword's fan-made mods deserve special recognition. The fairly dry and meticulous World War II scenarios are Dale Kent's shout outs to old-school wargamers who love shuffling armies around giant maps. The real stand out, however, second only to Final Frontier, is Rhye's and Fall of Civilization (creator Gabriele Trovato's online moniker is Rhye, hence the name). This mod combines the elegance of Civilization with the historicity of Europa Universalis. It's easy to jump into at the historically timed birth of the civilization of your choice, and it's infinitely replayable. See if you can accomplish each civilization's unique victory conditions, which play out like fiendish historical puzzles, or just try to survive while the ebb and flow of history plays out around the world. Rhye's and Fall is one of the most exciting and robust mods you'll ever see for a game. Bravo, Mr. Trovato!
On the other hand, two scenarios are particularly disappointing. The weird zombie X-Com mod called Afterworld gets points for style, and then immediately loses those points for tedium. Age of Ice, drawn from Derek Paxton's epic Fall from Heaven fantasy mod, is a canned puzzle map that plays like a Heroes of Might and Magic scenario. You're better off waiting for Paxton's latest version of the Fall from Heaven mod.
On the balance, there's really no doubt about Beyond the Sword. Whether you're a Civilization fan or someone new to the series, you're not playing Civilization IV to its fullest potential unless you're playing it with the Beyond the Sword expansion.
With nearly enough features to qualify as a sequel, this is one expansion you can't pass up.
Sid Meier's Civilization IV has already enjoyed one solid expansion pack, but this week's release of Beyond the Sword brings so much new stuff to the table that it nearly qualifies as a sequel. Adding in a comprehensive new espionage system, a political element to religion, new options for colonies and corporate competition, the expansion energizes an already lively strategy game. Add in improved AI, more combat options, and nearly a dozen scenarios and mods and you've got an expansion that you won't be able to put down for months.''
''As expected, the expansion includes a whole bundle of new toys: leaders, units, buildings, technologies and wonders. The 16 new leaders (and one reshuffle for Rome) almost bring us up to covering all the trait pairings. Some of these new trait pairings make for exciting strategies. Joao's Expansive and Imperialistic traits make him a powerhouse in terms of quick development while Pericles' Creative/Philosophical combination gives him a definite edge in terms of research. There are other combos that are just as interesting, especially when combined with the new unique units and buildings for the new civs.''
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''The naval units benefit from some gap filling between galleys and battleships but aside from privateers and ships-of-the-line, most of the new sea units arrive very late in the game. On land, siege engines have been taken down a bit in terms of effectiveness but that just means you'll have to plan your assaults more carefully. Fortunately, by the time you'll start planning tank invasions, you'll have much more mobile artillery and cruise missiles that can keep up with your advances. The new air mission system makes air combat a bit more realistic, but you'll need to worry a little more about land and sea units intercepting your sorties.''
''Firaxis promised us that they'd improved the AI considerably with Beyond the Sword and after playing more than a few games, we have to admit that they've succeeded. Those of us who usually play on Prince have had to step down to Noble just to preserve our pride. Even so, the AI is much better at waging war now in terms of using the right number and mix of units on attack and defense. We've also seen some truly terrifying stacks appear right on our borders with little to no warning. More than once the AI has offered us peace only to gain time to rebuild their army for phase two of the conquest.''
''The espionage system is one of our favorite additions to the series. You can set aside part of your budget each turn for espionage spending against each of your rivals. The more points you spend, the more you'll find out about your rivals and the more opportunities you'll have for your spy units to perform espionage missions. Knowing just what your opponents are researching or being able to investigate their cities whenever you want is a huge benefit.''
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''The best thing about the espionage system is that it works perfectly well for players who don't want to take much of interest in its finer points. Just by adjusting your new espionage slider, you'll accumulate points that will allow you to spy on enemy cities and will increase the cost of their own espionage missions against you. To get the full effect of the new espionage elements, of course, you'll have to tinker with the balances and use your own spy units to perform missions but players can get as involved as little or as much as they want without seriously jeopardizing their success.''
''Ever since the first Civilization was released, fans have been asking for ways to split empires up through war or revolution. While we're still not quite to the point where we're likely to see the Confederate States of Egypt or the People's Republic of Portugal, there's now an option for players to liberate large portions of their empire and make them vassals under the AI's control. The only hitch is that the colony has to be on another continent. You can then liberate individual cities and have them join your existing colonies.''
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''Ultimately, the best argument for creating a colony is that you'll save the time you would otherwise spend managing it. Since the newly liberated colony starts with a significant bias towards you (+10 just for being granted their freedom, plus bonuses for open borders, etc.), you're bound to have a solid vassal for the rest of the game. If you can manage to spin them off so they share your religion, so much the better. This can be particularly useful if you're head of the Apostolic Palace.''
''At first glance, the Apostolic Palace seems like one of the more significant additions but its influence is going to vary quite a bit from game to game. It seems like its overall effectiveness is increased when you have lots of different civs that share your state religion and plenty of war between different religious groups. It works a lot like the United Nations, both in terms of passing resolutions and allowing diplomatic victories, but the resolutions require very specific circumstances so you won't be voting on new measures every few turns like you are with the UN.''
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''We're less happy with the way Corporations work. In their attempts to model the international aspects of modern business, Firaxis have basically turned corporations into offensive weapons you can use to stifle a rival's economy. Much like religions, corporate influence is spread by non-combat units. You'll want to establish branches in other cities to offset the corporation's maintenance cost and to pass some of that cost on to your rivals. In this way, corporate executives become like chain letters or pyramid schemes between cities. Found a business in a rival's territory and he or she will have to screw somebody else in order to make up the penalty.''
''It seems weird that you can cripple an opponent's economy simply by selling them cereal or sushi. We can't argue against the benefits that some corporations provide in terms of resources, but it seems like their maintenance penalty is too severe. Granted, you can always rely on State Property to keep rival companies out of your borders but by the time that's an option you'll probably need the extra health allowed by Environmentalism more than you'll need the gold corporations will cost you.''
''Our only other objection here is the convoluted requirements to establish these companies to begin with. Never mind having to gain access to the right resources and the appropriate technology, the fact that you have to sacrifice a specific kind of Great Person for each corporation you want to build makes the system more complex than is justified by the potential profits. Admittedly, by the time the corporations become available you should be pumping out a regular supply of Great Persons, but as often as not you'll find yourself with an artist or scientist when what you really need is an engineer or a merchant.''
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''The Advanced Start is a great feature for players who dislike the slow build of the early game, or for those who begin in a later age with a little more control over their starting position. A point system allows players to purchase cities, cultural influence, units, improvements, techs, buildings and pretty much anything else they want for their empire. Unfortunately, the AI doesn't seem as capable of purchasing a setup that allows for early expansion so if you spend more points on workers than population and also load yourself up with galleys and settlers, you can definitely get out to an early lead.''
''There's not much to talk about in terms of presentation. The new flavored units and buildings add a lot to the visual style of the game, and the new units and leaders are, for the most part, very well done and fit the style of the game nicely. We were definitely disappointed that Leonard Nimoy wasn't used for the new technology quotes. Sid Meier himself provides the new readings but it just isn't the same.''
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''Beyond the Sword also ships with a number of scenarios and mods. For us the appeal of the expansion is more in the additions to the core game than in the scripted scenarios or non-historical mods. Nevertheless, there are a number of intriguing mods here that are worth trying even for fans of the vanilla game. Rhye's and Fall's unique historical timeline and civ-specific victory conditions make it a lot of fun for players who want to play a slightly more "realistic" version of Civ, while the Next War mod extends the experience into the otherwise ambiguous realm of Future Tech. Final Frontier is a very attractive mod for those who want to experience Civ in a more Gal Civ style setting. ''
''In terms of scenarios, the appeal here will depend on your tastes. Longtime fans will be happy to see a brand new series World War II scenarios focusing on Europe or the Pacific. It's certainly not for impatient or inattentive types but you have to respect the scale and detail of the scenarios. Things get a little weirder with the game's lone fantasy scenario, Age of Ice, and downright perplexing with the X-COM inspired AfterWorld.''
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Firaxis team redefines "epic" with Beyond the Sword, a massive and amazing expansion pack for Civilization IV.
Making an expansion pack is easy. Cobble together some new units, a few maps, maybe a new campaign, and you've got something to put on shelves while a developer works on their next real project. Making a great expansion pack, though, that's hard. A great expansion pack needs more than just bullet points on the back of the box. It needs to revisit the underpinnings of a game -- explore what makes it tick and then adjust it to make the experience richer without losing what made the game great in the first place. That's a pretty high bar, one that most developers never even try for. Fortunately, Firaxis isn't most developers and Beyond the Sword isn't most expansion packs. It's an amazing addition to an already-brilliant game.
The heart of Beyond the Sword's brilliance lies in three new mechanics. The first is a massive re-working of espionage to make it more integral to the experience. Religion gets a good workover with the new Apostolic Palace and the late game race to the finish line is spiced up by the addition of Corporations. Corporations are best described as a latter-day replacement for religion without all that monkeying-about-with-God stuff. The impact of each of these changes is profound and will throw a wrench into many of the tried-and-true strategies of die-hard Civ players.
One of the biggest -- and doubtlessly most controversial -- additions to the game is the change to Espionage. Spying is now a much more integrated component of the game as espionage itself and agent units now become available after the discovery of the alphabet. More than that, espionage has now become a line item in allocating a civilization's production output -- part of the player's fundamental "guns and butter" decision-making between putting production to work creating wealth, research or culture. The "espionage points" that are produced can be used to empower spy units to perform a variety of functions against other civilization. Spies can poison the wells of an enemy city, for example, steal technology or money, switch a city's religion and even foment unrest. Espionage points also generate passive effects that allow a player to peek into enemy cities and determine what enemy civilizations are building and researching.
The reason espionage will be controversial is because it simply won't be useful to certain kinds of Civilization players. I'm a "peaceful winning" kind of guy. I love building a space ship to go to Alpha Centauri. I live to culture-bomb border cities and stick my tongue out at war-mongers when their citizens like me better and keep joining my empire of joy. I like playing factions off one another, acquiring vassal states and offering covert aide to folks like Tokugawa and Shaka and letting them fight wars for me.
Therefore, I love spies. For players not looking to fight, spies are also insanely useful for disrupting production, fostering unhappiness and unhealthiness in cities and pulling all kinds of dirty tricks that can let them win without firing a shot. The problem is that once the fighting starts, they cease being so useful. They're too easily discovered and killed and their effects just aren't strong enough compared to some of the civics that players can use against them and the amount of resources it takes to run a successful war.
The Apostolic Palace, easily the best new addition to the game, suffers no such imbalances. The palace is a sort of medieval version of the United Nations that makes religion (already a major component of player strategy) the central feature of the game. The Palace (which is based on the structure of the Catholic Papacy) offers players who have at least one city of the Palace's religion the chance to vote on holy edicts such as trade embargoes, forced peace or even declaring holy war amongst all those who share the faith. Players can also use the Palace to win a religious victory by getting all the civilizations in the game to vote for one divine leader. This, by the way, is not an easy thing to do as it requires every civilization in the game to have accepted the Apostolic faith in at least one city and vote for the Palace Resident as ruler of the world.
What makes the Apostolic Palace so much fun is how it shifts the strategic "feel" of the middle game (the Palace is nullified by the invention of Mass Media). In much the way that real-world Popes of the Middle Ages were above yet part of international politics, players who use the Apostolic Palace are forced to consider every action against enemy civilizations in relation to how the Apostolic bloc will feel about it. Going to war against brothers of the faith requires considerably more diplomacy and being a member of a non-Palace religion can get pretty exciting when every member of the bloc decides to declare jihad on you. Peaceful players like me are forced to deal with trade embargoes and keeping good relations with the heathens I've been trading with for badly needed copper when the rest of my co-religionists are champing at the bit for a Crusade. Warriors, on the other hand, will just love being able to gin up said Crusades.
The seven new corporations in the game are Wonders that function in many ways like religions. They're founded by great people units and, for an often-hefty maintenance fee from each city where they have a "branch office," will kick back some great benefits to the civilization that controls them. Since corporations are dependent on resources, they'll often cause a lot of negotiation, horse-trading and diplomatic realignment (not to mention a few brush wars over particular resources). This adds a lot of spice to the end game.
The major problem with these corporations is that getting one is a bit of a crapshoot. Each requires a different type of Great Person and a different set of resources and since each provides a different benefit, that makes them really hard to plan for. If a player can found Civilized Jewelers (which provides a huge boost to culture), that's great, but it doesn't help much in the middle of a protracted modern-day war. Standard Ethanol can be a life-saver for players without oil, but otherwise is just a resource drain.
These three elements alone would be enough to justify the purchase price, but they're far from the only things on offer in Beyond the Sword. While the full laundry list of additions is too long to go into, all of them radically re-shape the game's strategic landscape, usually for the better. The AI seems to have been enhanced, meaning computer-controlled civilizations respond better to tactical situations even at lower difficulty levels. Multiplayer is as much fun as ever and the net code seem much stronger. I found it remarkably easy to get in and out of multiplayer games and the game seems to update much faster, which can cut down on the colossal amount of time larger multiplayer games require.
On the gameplay level, new abilities for forts now actually make these seldom-used elements a viable part of strategic operations. New random events and quests offer a fascinating (and occasionally frustrating) random element to the game that can turn things around on a dime. The game sports a bunch of new civilizations that fill in every combination of leadership characteristics. There are also new units like the anti-tank infantry that can finally blunt that flood of tanks that always seems to crop up the second anyone discovers Industrialism in a multiplayer game. The new Wonders are fun to use and slip so easily into the game it almost feels like they've been there the whole time. For example, I have no idea how I survived earlier games without the Statue of Zeus.
Even mastering these new elements -- by itself a daunting prospect -- still doesn't exhaust everything Beyond the Sword has to offer. Like Warlords, Beyond the Sword offers a number of mods and CivIV conversions to play between rounds of the main game. Some of them were created by the development team, others are polished-up version of popular offerings from the Civilization mod community. The best of the bunch by far is "Final Frontier." This turns Civ IV into a space expansion game not unlike Galactic Civilizations II (though considerably less complex). More than just a redress, "Final Frontier" creates a very different strategic feel with an elegant "Rock, paper, scissors" spaceship combat model that seems inspired by real-time strategy titles.
The other variants available in Beyond the Sword are equally radical modifications and redesigns of the original game. My personal favorite is "Age of Ice," part of the popular "Fall from Heaven" mod series which adds some RPG elements into the game and turns it into one giant puzzle map. That means it's not really replayable, but it sure is fun while it lasts. There are three excellent new WWII scenarios, a "commerce victory" scenario that challenges players to accumulate wealth rather than conquering cities and the "Next War" mod that adds near-future toys like 'Mechs and cloned armies to the end game. The only real clunker of the bunch is "Afterworld" which turns the game into a simplified squad-based tactical game -- though even that mod gets an "A" for effort and major style points for its super-cool comic-book-style opening. There is, of course, the question of paying for stuff available for free on the 'Net, but as those scenarios are such a small part of what the expansion offers, they're more of a bonus than an actual feature.
One of the game's few weaknesses actually stems from its greatest strength -- the sheer amount of content in the expansion. Civilization IV was already a complicated game but the level of complexity (and the resulting need to micromanage) that Beyond the Sword adds is just unbelievable. When fifty-two factors combine with every move a player makes, there's always the possibility that Beyond the Sword might exacerbate the "Dead Game Walking" syndrome in which a player loses the game but doesn't realize until another 200 turns have passed. Civilization IV fans will love it. Heck, I love it, but I eat strategy games with my morning Lucky Charms. If Civilization IV reminds you more of Microsoft's Excel than a fun way to pass the time, Beyond the Sword will do nothing to bring you into the fold.
A bit more problematic is the game's interface, never one of its strong points. With all the new data the game adds, the UI has become a riot of buttons, numbers and symbols throwing a colossal amount of not-very-well-organized information at the player. Want to find out what's going on with the Apostolic Palace? Don't look on the religion information screens where it would make sense. It's under "Victory Conditions" despite the fact that winning an Apostolic Palace victory is by far the most infrequently used function of the Palace. It sure would be nice if my "Corporation Adviser" and the resource trading screen could be found in close proximity since the location of particular resources and who holds them is crucial in managing them. It's not like this level of information can't be managed well. The hyperlinked elegance of the UI in Galactic Civilizations II is one the Civilization IV team would do well to study.
In the end such complaints are far, far outweighed by the sheer amount of awesome content available in Beyond the Sword. It's easy to imagine a "gilding the lily" scenario where just throwing random additions into the game threw off one of the most elegant strategic titles currently available today. That the Civilization IV team didn't do this and instead gave us some great new additions to the game is remarkable in itself. That these additions make the experience deeper and richer and way more fun can be considered nothing less than a "Wonder."
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved