YouGamers.com

Reviews

Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword

Colonization in Civilization

The Warlords expansion introduced Vassal states - the ability to subjugate lesser states to do your bidding as vassals instead of crushing them completely - definitely a far less messy way of conquering a country. Beyond the Sword expands this concept with the addition of Colonies and map types that support them. Large overseas territories tend to get expensive due to the added city upkeep costs from range to capital and the new added "overseas maintenance" penalty.

The penalty scales with the number of cities in your colonies, and is insignificant with just a a couple of cities, but can get painful if you inhabit a whole another continent. However, if the expenses get too large, you can now voluntarily grant independence to the overseas portion of your empire. This creates a new vassal civilization, extremely friendly towards you.

While a Vassal state is not quite as good as holding the cities yourself, the benefits of eventually giving independence to your colonies tends to be financially very lucrative. You open up new intercontinental trade routes and get a prime target for your corporations to spread in cases where everyone else has closed their borders up tight. Colonies also keep on supplying you any strategic resources available to them.

Intercontinental trade is important, as it brings in double the revenue when compared to normal trade routes. You also get a new building, Customs House, granting further bonus for intercontinental trade revenues. This also plays well with the whole concept of improved navies and trade blockades, ensuring that any country dismissing the seas will pay dearly for it.

Diplomacy, wonders and other bits and pieces

The United Nations (UN) used to open up a whole new can of worms for the diplomatic side of Civilization, but it was always constructed so late that it rarely decided the game (except by a possible swift diplomatic victory). Beyond the Sword adds in the Apostolic Palace - a medieval "religious UN" of sorts. Apostolic Palace offers many of the same options as UN, but the vote for the leader is influenced by the state religion of the palace's owner - heretics don't get a vote. This adds a new twist to the whole game of spreading the religions around. Both AP and UN also get new types of resolutions that the controller can put to a vote.

Apostolic Palace nicely props up the early diplomatic game and religious scheming.

Advanced Flight - one of the new techs added to balance out the technology tree.

There are also several other new wonders and techs to flesh out and rebalance the research tree a bit more. Sid Meier himself has done the voiceovers for the new technologies, and let me just say that while he may be a great game designer, as a voice actor he ain't Leonard Nimoy, that's for sure.

Forts have also been improved - they no longer cost money to upkeep and you can use them as ports, airfields and canals as both ships and aircraft can enter them. By setting up fort-city-fort next to each other, you can now cross a land bridge three squares wide with your navy.

There is now also a whole new random event system spicing up the game. Events vary and depend in part on what you are doing in the game. Some might give you gold, some allow you to spend gold for things like new resources, and some might be negative, requiring you to pay gold or lose some assets. Some also act like quests, giving you benefits if you complete the listed task (for example, construct X buildings of certain type in your cities, or acquire certain resources) and do it before one of your enemies beats you to it.

There are also some new options - the random events can be turned off, if you don't like the randomness they add to the game. You can also disable tech brokering, so civilizations can only trade away technologies they invented themselves, and techs received in trade cannot be traded away. You can also add the option of picking the religions you gain from religion-granting technologies.

Space race victory mode has also taken a cue from older Civ games. Launching no longer grants you the win - your ship now has to actually reach Alpha Centauri, and early launch with a ship that has less components translates to a slower ship and the risk of failure. Another civilization might launch later with a faster ship and still beat you, or squeeze that conquest, cultural or diplomatic victory while your ship is still on the way.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: AI improvementsPage 3: Updates to combatPage 4: Diplomacy & ColoniesPage 5: Mods, mods and more modsPage 6: Conclusion & Scores

Related Stuff

Tags