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I promised a more thorough description of the latest Civilization addition—Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword—once I had made a more thorough examination of it. I’ve had my look, and I’m surprised by how little I have to add. Apparently, a once-over was enough to see it all.

First, a correction. The new scenarios are not generally usable as mods. Only three are: “Next War,” “Gods of Old,” and “Final Frontier.” Of these three, only the third is radically new; the others are barely distinguishable from the existing Civ4 line. “Next War” is a near future scenario, merely adding a few more units and techs to the end of the tree (on top of what the expansion adds to the default rules), nothing to change your strategies. “Gods of Old” takes inspiration from Mesopotamia, adding distinguishing features to religion: each temple provides a god-specific benefit as well as a morale boost. Unfortunately, this doesn’t change your strategy, either, since expanded temple powers simply reinforces the desirability of having as many religions as possible in your empire. (The scenario implies that you should be working to wipe out rival religions. Lies.) The space scenario in “Final Frontier” is very fresh and interesting while it lasts, largely because the engine departs so radically from the basic Civ model. Unfortunately, it is too small to remain interesting for long. The tech tree is small, and largely devoid of compelling crossovers between military and socio-economic advances. Star systems are sparse, and leave no choice of just where to settle. Terraforming is almost removed from the game, appearing only as anachronistic “warp lanes” (roads/railroads) and “space stations” that extend your boundaries to include asteroidal resources. This revival of the outpost model of resource harvesting from Civ3 could be very refreshing, moving the military focus from conquering stars (cities) to occupying unsettled territory, but, sadly, the resource list is too small, and the computer opponents do not pursue them aggressively, in any case. Five out of the nine available resources merely speed production of certain units by 20%, rather than enabling unit classes. “Final Frontier” is a real eye-catcher, and plays well, especially as a two-hour quickie on a smallish map. Its only fault is a lack of the kind of scale that made Civilization such a hit.

Of the remaining scenarios, three make heavy use of triggered events to make Civ jump through hoops it was never meant to jump. “Defense” requires you to buy defenses between ever-deadlier waves of attackers with gold earned by scouring the map for goody huts even as your sparse units try to hold onto your base city. “Afterworld” removes cities entirely, pitting a five-unit squad against a zombie-infested complex of rooms and corridors. The fan-made “Fall From Heaven” gives you a single city on the only patch of decent ground in an icy waste. Your armies might hold the line, but victory lies in the use of three heroes to destroy barbarian cities and recover a weapon capable of slaying the evil god of winter. As artifacts of game design, these are amazing, twisting the Civ engine beyond recognition. As actual games with play value…meh.

“Broken Star,” “Charlemagne,” and “Crossroads of the World” are more traditional scenarios, asking you to grow and conquer from kingdoms built by someone else in various historical and speculative settings. “Next War” really belongs in this category, too; the new units are not remarkable enough to warrant labeling as a mod. All highlight some new feature of the expansion. None are any more interesting than a default game using those features.

So much for the scenarios. Once you’ve looked them over—and there’s no need to do it twice—you’ll return to the basic package. What’s in it to warrant an expansion?

Not a whole lot. A couple new leaders. A couple new wonders. A rule tweak here and there. Another two map types. Random events of negligible significance. Two new ideas bear examination: corporations and espionage.

Espionage is now meaningful, which is nifty. Spying is a function of income; you pay for espionage missions with cash, and the cost of missions depends heavily on your investment in espionage relative to your victim, said investment coming from your trade meters, right along with your science and cultural output. Even without paying for specific missions of sabotage and insurgency, however, superiority in espionage points earns rewards: tracking rivals’ demographics and scientific progress, viewing access to their city displays, and even immunity to their spies, if your advantage grows large enough. Even if you don’t want these things, your enemies will, so you’ll want to invest at least a little in counterespionage. A few buildings—the courthouse, jail, security center, and a few wonders—generate espionage points on their own, which can save your budget. So can specialists, but I’ve always preferred to turn whatever specialists I can support to other functions.

Corporations allow you to put your spare resources—your second, third and beyond—to use, without trading them away (and without a trading partner!). Like missionaries, corporate executives spread corporations between cities; each city with a corporation enjoys its benefits. One corp turns excess minerals into a production boost. Others turn excess grain and seafood into actual, population-expanding food, or gems and minerals into culture points. But before you get too excited, hang on: there’s a price, or rather, several. First, you have to reach a fairly high tech level just to be allowed to build a corporation. Second, you must sacrifice a great leader to found a corporation, although you can build corporate “missionaries” thereafter, and each corporation demands a certain type of leader, so if you want to found Sid’s Sushi but have no great merchant, you’re out of luck. Third, corporations compete for resources to one anothers’ exclusion; a city with Civilized Jewelers cannot also host Mining, Inc., since they both use gold and silver. Fourth, most importantly, and contrary to all sense, a corporation sucks money out of each hosting city’s trade production, as much as twenty gold per turn. Multiply that by ten or twenty cities, and you’re on the fast track to bankruptcy. The cash price largely negates the benefits of a corporation: increased production gets funneled into the wealth project, and increased food just supports more merchants desperately trying to cover the trade gap. This final handicap discourages players from using corporations at all, and a weapon unused is a useless weapon. Corporations could have been exciting. Instead, they’re a white elephant, a luxury for players who have already won to prove the completeness of the victory. Two corporations could, in theory be worth the price, turning relatively useless grain and coal into vital end-game oil (ethanol) and aluminum, respectively. But frankly, if you reach the end game without claiming some territory with natural oil and aluminum deposits, you suck.

My strongest feelings concern what isn’t in Beyond the Sword: a full editor. I’m glad that Civ4 returned to Civ2’s approach to editing, allowing you to enter a cheat menu from the game and rearrange the map to your heart’s content. Civ3 did not have this feature, or even the ability to lay cities and units; it had a glorified map editor, and was rightly castigated for it. But it’s one step forward, one step back. While Civ4 returned the ability to place units and cities, it removed the power to edit other features of the game. Players wishing to create mods of their own cannot readily change the tech tree, or rename wonders for a more space-age feel, or tweak the combat strength of musketeers for a swashbuckling mod, or change the food production of flood plains for a scenario that takes place entirely along the Nile, as they could in Civ2 and Civ3. These things can be done, as the awe-inspiring “Rhye’s and Fall” fan scenario proves, but Rhye didn’t create his magnum opus with a built-in editor; he did it by hand, from outside the game, using programming techniques few of us can employ.

This is inexcusable, given that Civ2 and Civ3 had editors capable of changing rules as well as the map, and that some very good scenarios came from fans using that capability. The internet has given financial incentive to sharing editors, because fans can readily share their creation, adding legs to successful titles with their labors of love (for which the company pays not a dime). Firaxis could have a dozen Rhyes if they brought back the universal editor available with Civ2, a whole new expansion disk for peanuts. The Civ community would remain more excited, for longer, over the product. I could fix the new corporations to my liking, and rebuild my Civ2 Caveman scenario.

But no, no editor for you today. Is the expansion worth your money?

If you’re a Civ addict, yes. The space scenario alone is worth half the price; the less creative scenarios will hold your interest long enough to justify the cost, too, despite the fact that you need only see them once, or maybe twice. Real fans should be fascinated by the more tortured uses of the basic engine, even if they don’t work as games. Once you return to the basic game, the new espionage feature is something to tinker with, and some rules tweaks are all to the better. For non-addicts, the expansion is a definite no. The changes are compelling to the fans, the players who get right down into the guts of the game and look to squeeze out every advantage. Players who tinkered briefly with the original game won’t even notice those same changes. Nor will you see any real change until the boys at Firaxis put out a proper editor—at which point, the sky will be the limit.