Certainly, Civilization 4 has proven to be a highly customizable game; user-made scenarios have found widespread popularity throughout the Internet's hulking network of tubes. Clearly, the folks at Firaxis have taken notice and, in addition to offering several new scenarios themselves, they've included a bunch of the most popular user made scenarios as well.

So, if you grow tired of the basic Civ routine, there's plenty more to explore. While most scenarios offer up an era-based version of the root Civilization 4 experience, like Charlemagne, others completely change the nature of the game, such as Final Frontier (Civ in space) and Afterworld (think mini X-Com-lite). The strongest scenarios, however, really are the ones that stay the closest to the Civilization 4 formula. Scenarios that practically try to create a new game out of the Civilization 4 engine are an interesting diversion, but trying to create a new style of game out of an engine not designed for it limits the their scope and their appeal. The Civ Defense scenario, for example, consists of you defending a city (or small number of cities) with a purchased army against an ever-increasing horde of opponents, ranging from lions to, I kid you not, zombies. It’s fun for an hour or two, but that’s about it.

Getting lost in the shuffle of all these new features and scenarios is the fact that Firaxis didn't just shovel a heaping layer of new content on the game; they also considerably tuned the AI to perform better and not require as many artificial handicaps to stay ahead of you on higher difficulty levels. With Beyond the Sword's improved AI, you can expect to get the kind of challenging game on Prince that you used to get on Monarch and it comes without the AI getting as many massive artificial bonuses as it used to. More so than ever before, when your civilization is crushed beneath the collective heels of its opponents, it feels like you've really lost a strategic battle for global supremacy, rather than because you're just stuck too far behind the 8-ball. You’ll even find yourself losing games to victory conditions other than a space race, something rarely –if ever- encountered in any previous version of Civilization.

Also often overlooked is the fact navies are now able to play a much more crucial and realistic role in your Civ's dominance of the high seas. It's not just the new naval units, like the Stealth Destroyer, Attack Submarine and the very handy Privateer, which allows you to plunder your opponents without fear of repercussion (only the owner knows their nationality). That's all well and good, but the real treat for Master and Commander aficionados is the fact that you can now use your navies to create naval blockades of trade routes or to protect your own ports. This is a long overdue improvement to how naval units are handled in the Civilization franchise.

Other welcome changes that affect gameplay include the fact that siege engines can no longer eliminate enemy units. They can damage them, but at the point of victory they now must withdraw from combat, forcing you to eliminate the remnants of your opposition with conventional forces. New modern combat units such as paratroopers, mobile artillery and tactical nukes add plenty of new strategic options to modern warfare. And a few refinements to the technology tree, such as Aesthetics (placed in line ahead of Drama and Literature) and Superconductors (required to study Genetics), fill some gaps in the tree, while also extending the end game a bit, which makes it at least a little more likely you'll see a victory that doesn't involve a space race.

While the added complexity all these new features lay onto the game may go over the head of some, and certainly there's some play-balancing Firaxis still needs to address in the forthcoming patch, there's no question that Beyond the Sword is one of the most ambitious game add-ons you're likely to find and the vast majority of these changes are welcome ones that add significantly to the experience. Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword is turn-based strategy at its absolute best. If you've been on the fence about giving it a shot, wait no more.