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The Civilization franchise has earned its place in our hearts.  It combats the tedium of turn based strategy with a vast complexity that really feels like you’re guiding a budding culture to power.  Expansions are always a welcome addition because they take a game that’s huge and make it just a bit huger.  This expansion satisfies that requirement but not nearly as much as we’d hoped.

Suffering by Comparison

What makes this expansion disappointing is that the previous expansion, Warlords, expanded the game play while fundamentally changing it.  The emphasis on military matters and barbarians forced you to play more aggressively.  This was refreshing for conservative players who’d gotten tired of the game and needed to be goaded into playing differently.  Additionally, the expansion added items like culturally specific buildings, such as the Great Wall of China, had a broad impact on the game.

Too Little, Too Late

Most of the additions to the game come in later play, which is great.  Civilization games have long suffered from the problem of game play drying up when you hit the end of the tech tree.  Beyond the Sword spices things up with some additional technologies and the addition of corporations. This power-tie wearing late game wonders allows you to spread your economic grasp into foreign lands.  They operate a lot like religions, but with less effect: they offer no diplomatic influence and actually cost you when spread within your own borders.  The result isn’t worth the bother.

That’s true of too many of the additions; they come at a point too late to be meaningful.  Most games are decided long before you hit the modern era, so super-sweet nukes and corporations don’t really offer anything new to the experience.

The Fundamentals Stay the Same

 
Warlords demanded different tactics out of you.  This expansion tosses in a couple of unrelated additions: increased spy activity, corporations, and a couple of new wonders in a haphazard fashion.  The stated intention is to take you “beyond the sword”, but it doesn’t add up to anything like a coherent pattern of play.

Random missions add a nice twist to early gameplay. A pop-up menu lets you know that a number of swordsmen need to be built in a set time or a city needs to be built near a sacred mountain before anyone else does.  This is great. The missions set you on a course of play early on that influences your society with all the random whims of a soothsayer.  It makes your Civilization feel like a real culture and the bonuses offered are enough to make them worth your time.  The problem is that there are not enough missions.  When you get that Scared Mountain Mission, however, you’ll literally have to turn over every stone to please your deity.

The other really classy addition is the Apostolic Palace, which allows for un-U.N. like diplomatic relations but ONLY within the religion of the building culture.  It allows for holy wars, religious solidarity, and even diplomatic victory, but only if you build the wonder while simultaneously making sure your religion is widespread enough.

Body Modification

The meat of this expansion is the modifications and scenarios.  Built both by Fireaxis and Civ fans, the scenarios take the core game play and apply it to scenarios with a clear direction with varying results.  The best, like a mod set in medieval Europe, manages to evoke the best of the gameplay while making it feel like a wholly different game. The worst of the bunch gets weighed down with soggy cut scenes that push along a story no one cares about and slices off the vastness of the game to slow, anachronistic tactical fighters.

We like Beyond the Sword because it makes the vastness of Civilization 4 just a little bit bigger.  Getting to play the Dutch and Portuguese is worth a lot, but we wish all the expansions could have the cunning to make us look at the game in a new way without losing the rich complexity that make us love it in the first place.

Article by: Guy Branum