Civilization IV - Beyond the Sword

By Cyrris

As I have stated before, I have been a big Civ fan, but the release of Civilization IV was marred by bugs which really stopped the game from being all it could be. Fast forward 18 months, and this game has now seen extensive patching and two expansion packs. If you had asked me a week ago what my opinion of Civilization 4 and it’s Warlords expansion pack was, I would not have been able to say a bad thing about it. The original game is fantastic, and the expansion only built on it in positive ways. Warlords effectively raised the bar in the Civ4 experience, but didn’t really change enough for me to be bothered making a review.

Beyond the Sword, however, has not just raised the bar. It has put the bar on a rocket and launched the damn thing in to orbit.

Initial Impressions

Let me start by saying that unless you love scenarios, which I don’t, then there is no longer any reason to buy the Warlords expansion pack. Beyond the Sword contains all the other changes - new civs, wonders, great generals, and the like which debuted in Warlords. Rather than waste time recapping all the major new features and new civs which you can read about on any other review site, I’d like to go through my experiences with the expansion pack so far. If I were to list every change and it’s repercussions, this piece would take days to write and no-one would have the patience to read the whole thing.

That in itself was my initial impression. Despite being a seasoned Civ player and having read up on the changes in the expansion, my first game was quite overwhelming. The team colours of the new Sumerian and Khmer civilizations were similar enough for me to get mixed up early in the game. This resulted in some rather dopey diplomatic decisions to say the least.

Finally, something else to kill tanks

Generally with Civ, I like to play games with lots of civs on small maps (to cram it all in and get more action going). This proved to be a problem in my first game, as keeping track of everything with the additions quickly became a problem. The new “Random Events” did little more than to add more chance and less skill to the game, and by wasting time and interface space they were the first new Beyond the Sword feature which I turned off. The events may make slow games more interesting, but I prefer to play fast, and they were really just getting in the way.

New Wonders

The new wonders in the game make things quite interesting. The Shwedagon Paya is effectively another form of The Pyramids, except instead of allowing the player to choose any government civic, it allows you to choose any religious civic. This became especially handy for me in one game, where I had failed to sufficiently expand my own religion. By switching to Free Religion early on in the game, it meant my relations with the other civs didn’t take a big hit, not being of a different faith to them. The Mausoleum of Maussollos, meanwhile, adds an extra 4 turns to your golden ages (to make them last 12 instead of 8 turns). While this seems a bit lame on it’s own, it is actually easier to spark a golden age in the game than it was previously, increasing it’s usefulness a fair amount.

Easily the most crucial new wonder, however, is the Apostolic Palace. By remaining on good terms with most of your religious colleagues, you can ensure that wars against you are ended quickly - either by voting to end the war, or voting to have everyone declare war on the infidel you’re fighting. One game I was playing recently ended up showing that 7 out of the 8 remaining civs had converted to Judaism. Thanks to the Palace, that 8th civ didn’t last long. Thankfully it wasn’t me. The interesting thing with the Palace is how the votes are weighted. Your voting influence appears to be relative to how many cities you have containing that religion. So if I have all my cities as Hindu and another civ has only one city as Hindu, I can effectively outweigh their decisions and drag them in to wars or other deals, unless of course they outright refuse - defying is something anyone can now do (both with the Palace and UN resolutions) but the AI doesn’t abuse it.

New Units

While in most games, the addition of 25 units is bound to cause balancing issues, I’ve experienced none so far. Anti-tank guns and infantry finally bring a viable counter to early tank hordes, and grenadiers have been pushed back slightly in the tech tree so people don’t get them too much earlier than riflemen, which never made much sense. Airships bring an earlier form of aerial recon and bombardment which is extremely useful, up until the first anti-air units or actual planes arrive. Mobile artillery finally makes it less of a chore to bring bombardment capabilities with you. The 1-movement limitation of regular artillery was pretty damn inconvenient before.

Navies can finally move beyond WWII

Navies are now more modernized as well. Battleships can be upgraded to missile cruisers which, while doing the same 40 damage, can also carry cruise missiles which can make quick work of other ships. Destroyers can be upgraded to stealth destroyers - again, with the same 30 damage as destroyers, but they are now invisible and better at shooting down aircraft. Finally, submarines now give way to attack submarines which are, in fact, much more powerful. All in all it’s nice to see that a World War II style navy is no longer the technological limit in the game. Along with their ability to block trade routes and better guard shorelines, I’ve had a lot more fun using ships than I have in the past.

Finally, tactical nukes mean that late-game wars are no longer subdued by the fact everyone has SDI. These missiles all have a 50% evasion chance so enough of them can ensure that nuclear wasteland you always wanted can now finally be yours.

Corporations

At last, something has come along which makes other economic civics more worthwhile! Previously in Civ4, the only civic in this class which I cared about was Environmentalism, because by late game I needed it to prevent my cities from stinking. Now Mercantilism and State Property have corporation-specific attributes which drastically change their usefulness.

Corporations spread much like religions. For every city they set up shop in, they suck out money and return other benefits. In the case of Sid’s Sushi corporation, the more fish, crab, rice, and clam deposits you own (or get through trade), the more money is sucked out of your coffers, and in return, each city with the corporation gets a small food bonus and a rather large culture bonus. Other corporations suck up other minerals - the Mining Inc wants iron, gold, silver, and the like, and provides more production in your cities.

The thing is, these bastards are hard to keep track of and if you are rich enough in resources, they can become a serious financial drain. Its particularly frustrating when other players are setting up their shops in your cities - sucking out your money for bonuses you don’t necessarily want. Thankfully, the Mercantilism civic now effectively stops all foreign corporations inside your borders, and the State Property civic stops all corporations, even your own. In my most recent game, despite having the mercantilism civic, I was losing $1000 per turn by the end of the game, after conquering a rather large enemy. The conquest meant I had more land, more resources for my corporation, and more cities with that corporation in them, completely sucking my coffers dry whilst blasting out never-seen-before levels of culture. State Property was the only choice, of course. Clearly I need to learn to play smarter with this aspect of the game.

Espionage

Espionage in Civ4 and Warlords amounted to little more than sneaking around for additional line of sight and destroying the odd resource deposit. How times have changed. Spies are now everywhere all the time, doing all sorts of things from poisoning your city’s water supply to destroying it’s buildings, and plenty more. To be honest it’s actually not something I have really gotten the hang of yet - partly because I don’t actually find it all that interesting to use myself. Having it used against me is also not so much challenging as it is annoying. That said, this may all be because I haven’t given it enough attention and done the more expensive espionage missions. Generally I prefer using guns.

Decisions, decisions…

The new AI

Here is where things get a bit confusing for me. Despite the AI reportedly being upgraded, I’ve seen copious amounts of stupidity which I never saw before in Warlords. Generally speaking, previously it was the case that if you had infantry situated on a forested hill with a 75% defense bonus, the enemy with similar units would not attack, and would instead would walk past, forcing you to abandon your defensive position. In Beyond the Sword, at least at Noble difficulty (which I have always used), this no longer seems to be the case. The AI will happily throw it’s men at your fortified positions with no hope of winning. While it’s amusing, it’s not the added challenge I expected.

One report of the AI improvements which I was excited to read about was that it was now more adept at launching invasions between continents, utilizing navies. This was something that never worked overly well before. I was glad to see that, upon Spain declaring war on me from across the ocean, a very sizable force of frigates and galleons quickly made its way towards my shores. I am not entirely sure if the invasion AI was that much more adept though, as it never made it to shore. I had destroyers…

Finally, the AI improvements to automated units seem to have gone forwards and backwards at the same time. Workers can now automatically make use of airports to travel between islands, appearing (though not still automated) at their destination city, ready to work. While this is extremely helpful, the actual work that they do seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Workers no longer make sure to cover every inch of your territory with road and railroad. They will now road most of your empire and then add railroad to some of those roaded tiles, but overall it’s lacking. It’s not as though the workers were busy elsewhere - they were sitting in Athens lazing about when there was work to be done. While the rail lines might not be needed for economic purposes, they sure might be for defending your land effectively. This was never an issue in Civ before so I don’t know why it is now.

The other stuff

And thus begins a long list of excellent small additions and the odd problem. One thing I like is the ability to gain favour of other civs by “liberating” their cities. This can be done by giving them a city that is yearning to join their empire, or by conquering one of their cities after someone else has already captured it, and then returning it to them at the negotiating table. The odd thing here is that if you take the city and instantly choose “No, return the city to their rightful owner”, this liberation bonus doesn’t apply… despite being the most immediate form of city liberation possible. Something for Firaxis to think about.

Voting for someone in the UN also gains you favour with them, which is a nice touch. Small, but logical. A change that isn’t so small is the idea of colonies. Cities on an island other than your capital’s can be made in to a vassal state of yours if you want - such as if maintenance costs are becoming too high for you alone. This is something I am yet to try, but I just love the idea of it.

Blimp Unit? Check. Goodyear Corporation? Not yet

What I am not sure on are the race-specific models for early game units. American scouts now look quite different from Chinese scouts, which look the same as Korean scouts, which again look different from Persian scouts. It is likewise for warriors, archers, spearmen, axeman, and a few more units. The differences disappear come the middle ages, but while the diversity was nice, it hampers quick visual identification of what you’re up against.

Perhaps the change which bugs me the most is the presentation of the new technologies which were inserted into the game. Not that I have anything against Sid’s own voice, but having a few Sid’s thrown in against a legion of Leonard Nimoy quotes is jarring to say the least. Of course, I’m just being picky, and the new technologies themselves really do assist in balancing the game.

Along with those techs, a few new buildings and national wonders make themselves useful. Levees can add production to nearby river tiles. The Easter Island statues can be built as a national wonder to get production from sea tiles. Both of these fix issues I’ve had in the past on unproductive cities, and show just how in tune Firaxis has been with it’s players. So many small changes at the behest of specific requests - it’s quite impressive. At the pinnacle of this, the menu screen can now revert back to the original Civ4 menu/music, or the Warlords one, or the BtS one. I love the original so I was very happy to see this, even if they did misalign the background image a bit.

In the end

That misalignment, however, is an example of the sorts of things that need working on for the next patch. I have come across a few bugs so far - one time I could not build anything in a city (no buildings or units at all) except for wealth, culture, or research. This was most certainly not right. Also, unit animations now often lose sync and upon losing a battle their death animation will disappear. This one is actually quite prevalent, but not too serious as far as the gameplay goes.

But of course, there’s plenty of other good stuff I just haven’t covered here. The space race works quite differently, and there is an animation of the actual rocket launching. Forts are much more flexible, no longer removing forests (for killer defensive bonuses), and being able to protect minerals. Interface changes are everywhere, and to be honest, I am not sure if the current interface can really handle all of the additions. Game length has also been extended by a few turns, and I wasn’t willing to play a whole new game for the purposes of this review - which explains the relatively few screenshots. But there’s plenty of media elsewhere for that.

Beyond the Sword, in my opinion, is an amazing expansion to a solid game, and given the sheer amount of content they’ve packed in, the few bugs are forgivable - as long as they get fixed. All in all, this expansion pack is definitely not for Civ newbies. It has been added to keep the Civ veterans entertained and I believe it has met and exceeded that goal by far. Every expansion pack for every other game I’ve played now seems like terrible value for money.