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We picked up Civ4: Beyond the Sword a couple days ago. This is the newest expansion for Civilization IV, and I’ve been going through it like a kid in a candy shop. This is because they put considerable effort into making the scenarios different, often very, very different.

Expansions, naturally enough, always include a little more of everything. In Civ’s case, this is more units, more leaders, more nations, more wonders. Ho hum. Only rabid Hellenophiles will care whether you can conquer the world as Pericles as well as Alexander, and the inclusion of a wonder that didn’t make the cut for the original game isn’t going to change anything. New rule sets are the treasure, because figuring out working strategies for a different balance of rules is the most interesting part of the game, and this expansion pays in spades.

Generally, radically new scenarios don’t work very well, so I play them long enough to discover they’re broken, and stop. But all the scenarios I’ve tried so far are at least workable. Just as important, you can use many of the scenarios as mods, which you could not do with the Warlords scenarios. Because you can play fresh games with the new rules, you can replay scenarios, or tweak them to your taste, instead of winning once and never returning. In my case, that means I can test new rule sets without chaining myself to vast, grinding 100-city showdowns on huge maps; I can explore different tech trees and units without taking three hours per turn or twiddling eight hundred infantry divisions. Massive games are there, if that’s your cup of tea, but you don’t have to play them massive. Nor do you have to play tiny games tiny. Or on featureless terrain. Or from the same starting position every time.

Two scenarios go so far into experimental territory that they no longer resemble Civ. One of these is a space-faring setting, with solar systems replacing cities. Rather than working the surrounding tiles, your citizens work space available on the various planets, and planets can be upgraded independently. The strategic resources lie almost entirely outside your planetary reach, so the designers revived the Civ3 device of outposts, sacrificing a worker to create a space station from which strategic resources can be shipped. The military and development techs are sharply divided in the tree, almost independent; it is possible to become socially advanced with a crappy navy, or vice versa. A second scenario plays more like a dungeon crawl, calling on you to direct a squad of supersoldiers through a complex infested with crazed mutants. There’s no production or technology at all, but you can upgrade your soldiers with gear. Ultimately, these two radical experiments will probably prove inferior to games designed specifically for these themes, but it’s amazing to see the Civ engine work this way at all.

To date, I’ve only looked at three of the mods. The next one I’ll explore is a fantasy version pitting you as much against the environment as against your rivals; the winter god threatens your lands with encroaching glaciers, and you must recover a legendary sword to slay him before your land goes barren. Wild, huh? Some other interesting offerings I’ve seen so far: random events, qualitatively different religions, and the inclusion of an espionage counter in your budget. The random events are a nice touch. Unlike the rightly detested random events in Civ1, which arbitrarily struck with small penalties, these events take a page from the critically acclaimed Galactic Civilizations, giving you a choice of responses to both good and bad events. Do you excavate a recent archaeological find for the scientific boost, or leave it pristine as a cultural landmark? Do you pay a chunk of your treasury to earthquake victims, or suffer a morale hit for leaving them to fend for themselves?

The much-anticipated corporations haven’t proven very interesting. To found a corporation, you must have spare resources appropriate to the company, which is easy. But you must also generate and sacrifice an appropriate leader, which is difficult and expensive. So far, I’ve preferred to use my leaders for their existing purposes, instead of founding a corporation for a little extra cash.

This is just an enticing sampler; a proper review will have to wait until I’ve seen much more of the game. What I’ve seen so far suggests that will take a while. If the measure of an expansion is how much it adds to explore, Beyond the Sword is a success; if the measure is whether all these new features add to game play once the novelty passes, the jury is still out.
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