Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Review
The biggest Civ expansion pack ever
by Sergio Brinkhuis
reviewed on PC
Espionage (cntd.)
Your success also depends on the 'spy rating' of the city itself. A number of buildings help protect against spy attacks and spies can be stationed to further enhance a city’s spy ratio. Keeping your spy in position for a couple of turns will influence the success rate as well, and will decrease the mission costs. Obviously there is also greater risk of discovery. It is a tough choice. A word of warning; the AI makes frantic use of spies, and word of successes and failures of enemy spies will show up in the 'notice list' (now located at the top of the screen rather than left of it) regularly.
Events
Another new addition to the game emerges in the form of events. There two types of events. The first are random ones that can range from small natural disasters to requests from a city to join a neighboring country. It is beyond me why one would ever want to agree to the latter, but there it is, and you will have to click ‘No’ every time. Most of these events will have some sort of impact on your city, or even your nation. A wedding between one of your highly-placed citizens and someone from the upper classes of one of your neighbors’ can improve relationships; but if they do not practice the same religion, it may cause some unrest. A popular artist may write a great book that -with a little funding from you- might grow into a play that will be enjoyed by millions of people around the empire, generating more culture as a result.
The second new event type is more of an expanded version of an old one. The Apostolic Palace is available very early in the game and it replaces the United Nations wonder. Through it a number of new proposals can be made. Some of these proposals can cause quite a shock. Losing a vote caused me to cede a city to my neighbor once. If that is not shocking, I don’t know what is!
Advanced starts
Of all the new features, the 'Advanced Start' feature proves to be the most fun. Ever felt your starting location was so poor that you didn't really have a chance? This feature fixes that once and for all. Starting a new game with the Advanced Start option active, allows players to spend gold to customize their starting situation. A small part of the map is revealed and it is up to you to place cities (and yes, being advanced and all, more than one is possible), units, buildings and improvements on it. You can even expand your cities' culture radius and add additional population to them as well.
Scenarios
The scenarios are a bit of a cop-out and, except for one, do not really manage to excite me. The first I tried felt as if it didn't belong there... or I didn’t belong there. Afterworld is a sci-fi scenario that can hardly be called a Civilization scenario. Closer to being a Tactical RPG, it lets you roam a dungeon-like area where undead creatures assault the 5 characters that you start the game with. After playing it for 45 minutes, I was bored to tears and decided to play something else.
7.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
