Civilization 4 is arguably the best Civ game to date. And while the premium pricing of its first expansion, Warlords, didn't seem to justify its modest feature set, the new expansion, Beyond the Sword, suffers from no such problem.
In fact, the expansion’s feature list, which could fill the Grand Canyon, makes Civilization 4 perhaps the best turn-based strategy game of all time. For your money, you get a host of new gameplay features, civs, leaders, units and scenarios. If there’s any downside at all, it’s that some of the new features take an already complex game and ratchet the volume up to 11. Beyond the Sword doesn't sacrifice any of Civilization 4's old addictiveness, but it does raise the question of how complex is too complex?
Headlining the new features list are Espionage and Corporations. Corporations have been compared to late-game religions, in that once you found one, you own it and can use the new Corporate Executive unit to spread it to both your own cities and those of your opponents. At that point, however, the similarities end. Instead of spreading cultural influence, corporations are designed to give you access to resources you may not have at the expense of those resources of which you –hopefully- have an abundance. For example, if you're having trouble feeding your Civ's citizens you might found Sid's Sushi Co., which gives your Civilization an extra half a food per Crab, Clam, Fish or Rice resource available to your Civ’s cities.
Espionage, on the other hand, comes into play much earlier in the game. Prior to this expansion, the commerce your civilization generated was used to cover maintenance expenses and produce some combination of cash, research and culture. Now you also have to factor Espionage Points into the mix. These points can be used to send your civ’s spies far and wide on espionage related tasks, like sabotaging terrain improvements, poisoning a city’s water supply or inciting open rebellion in a city. The more damaging the task, the more espionage points you must have up to execute it. The espionage system works quite well, but taking full advantage of it means diverting resources that would otherwise be devoted to your research pool, expansion of culture or cold hard cash. The addition makes the choice of where to devote your resources even more complicated. Civ veterans should love it, but more casual players will struggle to make effective use of the new system.
While you have to appreciate the creative thinking that went into these new features, it's hard to escape the fact that putting these complex new components into the game is hard to do successfully. And there is evidence to suggest that both Espionage and Corporations are forcing the game through some growing pains, even for the game's AI, which sometimes seems to have as much difficulty managing them as some players. For example, AI is much more likely to waste valuable espionage points on destroying land improvements that take your workers a mere three or four turns to rebuild, rather than engage in more destructive missions that would genuinely slow the growth of rival empires.
Corporations, on the other hand, are an incredibly complex beast to manage. While they can prove beneficial to your empire, they also have the potential to cripple it. The last thing you want to do with a corporation is spread offices throughout your own borders - nor do you want the AI to do it to you. Since you have to pay an increased maintenance fee for each Corporate Office in your borders, the resulting maintenance penalties you pay—particularly as the game's new inflation model increases your civ-wide maintenance over time—become crushing, making adequate revenue generation all but impossible.
Considering you have to use up a Great Person unit just to build a corporation in the first place, the notion that you could actually be hurt by them seems extreme. The good news is that the game’s forthcoming patch aims to better balance the costs and benefits of building a corporation. Still, figuring out exactly how to make the most of a corporation all-but requires a degree in advanced mathematics and right now even the gods among Civ players are having a rough time agreeing on exactly how to judge their benefits (relative to their costs). Given that, to expect the average player to understand the infinitely complex forces at work in successfully integrating a corporation into you civ's empire is asking a bit too much.
Of course there's plenty of other stuff here to play with. As with all Civ expansions there's a host of new civilizations and leaders with which you can experiment, including Sitting Bull of the Native Americans, Pacal II of the Mayans and Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire. These additions, along with the new unique units and buildings that come with them -as always- add a little extra flavor to the game, without drastically changing the gameplay.
