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Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword

User Rating:

ESRB: Violence
Publisher: 2K Games
Genre(s): Strategy
Home Page: http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/beyond...

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By: Jarno Kokko Jul 31, 2007

It's a better Civilization

In summary, Beyond the Sword adds so much to Civilization IV that one has to give credit to 2K Games and Firaxis for keeping it as an expansion with cheaper sticker price; I'm sure someone like EA would have called this "Civilization 2008" and charged full price for it. Beyond the Sword also does not require you to own the Warlords expansion - it adds all the Warlords additions as well, with the exception of the mostly irrelevant scenarios that were included in the Warlords expansion.

Visually nothing much has changed - the most notable change is probably the inclusion of different unit graphics for different ethnic groups. In essence, there are several sets of graphics for early age units, tailored for the ethnic background of the civilizations. If you seek shinier Civilization experience, there is always the Blue Marble fan addon that you can use to replace the terrain graphics with more detailed and realistic ones if you so choose - and it also works with Beyond the Sword.

Ugh! Sitting Bull and his generic Native Americans are one of the new civilizations available.

Early units now actually look different depending on the civilization's ethnic group.

In total, the expansion adds 25 new units, 18 new buildings, 8 new wonders, 10 new civilizations, 16 new leaders (some for the new Civilizations, some as secondary leaders for existing ones) - but these really are not the important metrics. The new AI and the major improvements in naval warfare, espionage and economic side of the game with Corporations are far more impressive and truly make this a must-buy for any Civilization fan. For the rest of you, if Civilization IV wasn't already your cup of tea, Beyond the Sword probably is not going to change that for you, unless you specifically disliked the old "AI cheating with massive bonuses" aspect of the single player game.

Yes, there are some bugs and rough bits - the AI fumbling with Privateers (and Stealth Ships in the Final Frontier mod) and Corporations is inexcusable and indicates lapses in QA, but Firaxis has always been dependable with patches, and I'm sure these problems are fixed soon enough. Even with these problems, the game is a vast improvement over the base Civilization IV.

For the usual technical summary, detailing system requirements, you can check out our review of the original Civilization IV - the same notes apply to this expansion as the game engine remains unchanged. Performance has improved with the expansion, but it's mostly related to the CPU use of the AI. The graphics engine itself still has the same base requirements, so the performance gains are truly noticeable only when playing with a large amount of civs and units, on very large maps. Normal games run as before, so the system requirements are therefore the same - except that the recommended system gives you a bit smoother play if you go nuts with the map size or civ count.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	1.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent	1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent/better
Memory	256 MB	512
Graphics Card	64 MB Video Card w/Hardware T&L	128 MB Video Card w/ DirectX 8 support
Graphics Card Example	GeForce 2/Radeon 7500 or better	Not specified
Free Disk Space	1.7 GB	1.7 GB
Net Link	N/A	N/A

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 2800+ / Intel Pentium 4 2800 MHz	AMD Athlon 64 3800+ / Intel Pentium 4 570
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon 9550 128MB / NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 128MB	ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB / NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 256MB
Free Disk Space	2 GB	2 GB
Net Link	Broadband (for multiplayer)	Broadband (for multiplayer)

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	95	It's Civilization IV, only more refined and polished, and offering a far better challenge due to the AI improvements. Additional mods also spice things offering very different gameplay using the same underlying framework.
Graphics	81	3D graphics trickery is not that important for a strategy game, but Civilization IV has always looked good. It's yet another case of good art assets triumphing over shader magic.
Audio	76	Background music has taken a notable step backwards, and the new tech voiceovers clash a bit with the old ones (those that were voiced by Leonard Nimoy).
Technology	78	Still enjoys lots of CPU power, but there are performance improvements over base Civilization IV, most notable when playing huge games with hundreds of units. Modding support is as good as ever - as proven by included mods.

OVERALL

One of the most impressive expansion packs ever published. While the Warlords expansion was mostly just a couple of nice things and a set of unimpressive scenarios, Beyond the Sword actively improves Civilization IV in many ways and throws in a couple of mods that are better than many standalone games.

If you would like to comment on this review or discuss the game further, please head over to our discussion board - please click here (registration not required).