New Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword expansion

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If your machine can't run Civ4, it's time to upgrade mate!

 

You're right, Barmy. I haven't tried to run Civ 4 but I'm pretty sure that the graphics are too much for my computer. I couldn't justify buying the game only to have it not work properly. I tried Age of Empires 3 and that was really sluggish so I just assumed that Civ 4 wouldn't work. I need more RAM and a new video card. That would probably do the trick.

 

I just completed a Monarch level cultural victory. I didn't fight a single battle the whole game. Took me 16 attempts before I finally made it.

 

Well, Beyond the Sword is now out. Came out in Australia a couple of days ago and comes out in New Zealand today. Has anybody here got it yet?

 

I've been chomping at the bit for this. It doesn't come out here until Monday. I'd gotten my hopes up a few weeks ago as I thought it was coming out on the 10th. Much to my disappointment, I guess that was a foreign release date.

@ Dinsdale,

The game isn't so much graphics dependent as it is processing speed. The graphics aren't that complicated, but one your game has to start keeping track of all the units, and tiles, and cities, and actions of all the AI players...that's when it starts to chug. RAM for sure, but I don't think the video card will be as much of an issue.

What specs does your machine have now?

 

Bought it, played it, LOVE it.

By far the best expansion pack I think I've seen to date in almost any game. Extremely well done. Everything runs faster, the graphics are more polished, and how the earlier-era units are all more visually in line with their civilizations - BEAUTIFUL touch. So now the Zulu, English, Greeks and Mayans don't all have a white guy with long dark hair for their warriors. When you're playing an Asian or African civ, now it really feels like it. Even the native american civs all wear feather headdresses and stuff. Ethnic diversity, woohoo!

More to come as it digs its meathooks in.

Edit - I'm STILL pissed off that they added a third American leader yet after two expansions there's still only ONE Japanese leader. Lame. Minor kvetch, though.

 

Out of curiosity, how many new leaders are there? Are there new leader traits? Are there any new buildings, etc., or are we talking more graphical improvements over game mechanics?

 

Who loves ya.

Short version: There are 25 new units, 18 new buildings, 16 new leaders, ten new civilizations and eight new wonders. The 10 new civs make for a total of 34, and 16 new leaders, for a total of 52. There are no new traits, but nearly all the trait combos are filled now.

 

My favorite combination - it hasn't been around since the pre-Warlord days when Washington had this trait combination.

 

Exactly the point I was just about to make, Aldeth. You can now play a leader who will make bucket loads of cash from a medium sized early empire.

 

I'm hearing that there is an option to pair any of the 52 leaders with any of the 34 civs. Cyrus (Imp/Cha) or Bodica (Agg/Cha) in charge of Rome is scary. Churchill (Cha/Prot) of the Chinese could be nasty, and Tokugawa (Agg/Prot) with the Turks would be vicious as well...

 

Gnarff,

That may be available in a mod, but so far I haven't seen any such option in the game, even on custom games. Sounds like a terrible idea to me.

So far I keep consistently having great games with Pericles - the new Greek leader. He's creative and philisophical, two of my favorite traits (they didn't make anyone industrious and philisophical, for obvious reasons). Another bonus is that they've changed around several of the unique units. In the case of the greeks, the Phalanx now replaces the Axemen, and gives them 100% attack vs. Chariots, nullifying their advantage. A great change IMO.

Of the new civs, Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch are both great fun so far.

 

That's what I was thinking. With espionage now part of the breakdown in how you spend your money, having a thriving economy is more important than ever. Of course, that has been true of all civ games from the beginning. Cash is always king, as the player who brings in the most money almost always wins. Not only does having a good economy enable you to speed up construction, but it indirectly speeds up technological advancements, as you usually have to donate less into taxes.

About the only downside to this is that the civilization is the Persians, who IMO, have one of the worst unique units in the game in the Immortal. First of all, I'm rather curious as to why they make immortals fight on chariots, as to my knowledge, immortals were foot soldiers. Regardless, about the only advantage that the Immortal has over a standard chariot is +50% against archery units, but they are still pwned as soon as someone gets iron.

I have to agree with DR that this wouldn't be a very good idea due to balancing issues. To site your example in particular, the Turks unique unit is the Janissary, which already has a 25% bonus against archery, mounted, and melee units. Add in to aggressive and protective traits, they'd also be "born" with Combat I, Drill I, and City Garrison I, and that's before you take into account any other bonuses they may get for barracks or other city improvements.

It's not obvious to me. About the only advantage I can see is that it would be unbalancing in terms of great people? You'd build wonders faster, and then basically get double the effects of that wonder in terms of great people? That's an advantage, but IMO, it's no bigger of an advantage than being both organized and financial.

Well, it's great if you're playing the Greeks, but it kind of stinks of you're playing against the Greeks, as it makes the chariot a useless unit, like it was in pre-Warlords. The only point to making chariots was they were an effective counter to axemen, with a +50% bonus against them. I thought that the change was good in Warlords, because before that, you were better off just making horse archers, which were superior to chariots in every conceivable way. They had the same resource requirements (horses), and due to needing animal husbandry to reveal horses, by the time you had your horses hooked up, the extra technological requirements of archery and horseback riding weren't a big deal. With the bonus to axemen though, Chariots were an easy counter that allowed you to skip horseback riding for a long period of time. If Phalanx units get +100% against chariots, it not only eliminates their advantage, but actually throws the advantage back to the side of the Phalanx. You'd have a chariot attacking at 4+2 = 6, vs. a Phalanx at 5+5 = 10. If the Phalanx still get the +100% against all mounted, and the +50% against all melee like axemen, they should mow down anything in their way until longbowmen arrive.

[ July 27, 2007, 16:50: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Since philisophical doubles your generation of great people, and Industrious greatly eases the construction of wonders (which in turn generate more great people, especially the Parthenon), and since corporations require a great person to build them...an industrious / philisophical trait combo is, to me, very imbalanced given the new game mechanics of the new expansion. If you wanted to you could easily build every early wonder there is before you even get to the Renaissance with little effort. While a wonder here or there is no biggy, the cumulative effect of having a monopoly on wonders would be devastating to your rivals. Which, though I'd love that, would be a bit on the cheap side.

I agree, which just means that when you're playing against the Greeks either A) don't piss them off until Macemen, or B) rush horsies.

Is it was, I thought the Phalanxes were pretty useless in Vanilla and Warlords, and thus never liked playing the Greeks. Now I love 'em, because I always build a ton of Axemen anyway.

 

I forgot about that - I'm still in Warlords mode. I didn't quite get the description, but it appears it basically allows you to convert one type of resource into another type of resource. Which means, if you have two locations of a given resource, you can convert one of them into a different resource, with no penalties, which is useful. I don't completely get the spreading of corporations though. Does it mean that anyone who has a given resource has to pay you to use thier own resource?

 

I'm still figuring all that out, to be honest. Since I've been so anxious to try out new civs, I've only played one game so far long enough to get corporations.

The way it worked was similar to a state religion. An executive goes to a different city and spreads the corporation. In my case - the Mining corporation - it seemed to subtract a small amount of production in that city while providing more than double that amount in gold. I could build a Mining Corp. headquarters (and spread it) to any city with access to iron, aluminum, coal, copper and something else I think. I can see how this would be particularly useful when spreading your corporations to other civs, as I think you still get the money while it drains on their city.

Don't quote me on that, though. As I said, I'm still acclimating.

Here - good review.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/808/808215p1.html

 

I'll have to go back to look at my source on the rumour I heard. I got the game today, and haven't found that variant either.

I played a quick opening to get a feel for it. It gave me Roosevelt, but my neighbours were HRE, Sumeria, Brennus and Pericles.

I did complete a quest to build 6 chariots before anyone else and before the Classical age. As a reward, all Chariots got Combat I free!

I would like to try the Cover Crossbow trick to deal with Crossbows (and Landschnekts).

I also tried the defence mod. Kind of repetitive, and the further you go, the mroe the timer will be a factor unless you just turtle...

 

Sorry to veer off-topic but I can't let that nonsense go unchallenged. The Immortal is one of the big three powerful early unique units (along with the Quechua and Praetorian). The Immortal is peerless if you are looking for an early domination or conquest victory, especially at higher levels. At Emperor and above, where the AI starts with archers, you can declare war on all enemies at once and send Immortals racing to all their capitals to bring everyone to their knees.

So what if they are vulnerable to spearmen? Immortals can easily cut off enemy access to copper and iron. The only enemy who will be invulnerable to an Immortal rush is the enemy who has metal in their capital. But if you were unlucky enough to encounter that, you just deal with them later.

Hmm, again I disagree. There are so many occasions when you would just not ever bother to research archery, which is usually a dead-end technology that is not on the critical path to anything that you need to win the game. I will often finish a game without ever getting archery. Therefore, chariot based units have a huge advantage over horse archers in that you only need horses and the Wheel. The axeman bonus is the cream that turns them from being good to being great.

 

First off, I think that the thing I brought up of any leader with any civ may have been a hoax. I was really looking forward to trying Boudica of the Romans or Churchill of the Chinese. Tokugawa of the Ottoman Empire would have been way cool too...

Secondly, The Imortal is very cool. The bonus against both Axemen and Archers makes it the quintessential harrasser or anti barbarian unit of the early age. It is also a key component to one Persian Strat I saw online. Basically build the Great wall and declare war on everyone, killing off their harrassers and expanding where you want, when you are ready.

Thirdly, the Espionage system kicks ass! If you can generate enough points (settling a Great Spy or two and building courthouses everywhere makes a huge difference) you can steal technology, and you can cause a one turn revilt in a target city. This enables a huge death stack to take an otherwise troublesome city with many fewer casualties. Spies can also cut crucial resources and let you know what your neighbours are up to...

 

Gnarff - you were right.

There is indeed an option in the "custom games" menu where you can pair up any leader with any civ. It was way down the list and I didn't notice it my first play through. The catch is when you turn on this option, it randomizes all other civs in the same manner. I still think it's cheesy, though.

There's also the option to choose which religion you found when researching a founding tech, which is one of my favorite "nice touch" features. No more Spain as the founders of Buddhism or other such nonsense (unless you want them to, anyway ).

Thus far, I've been having the best luck and the most fun with the Khmer. Which is odd, because neither their unique unit or building are all that remarkable. I guess it's just that they're creative and expansive (making early land grabs a breeze) and start off with Hunting (getting better results from goody huts, which often turn out free settlers).