(P)REVIEWS - Civilization IV: Warlords Review by Solver
The Final Verdict
Despite the fact that I have enough experience with Warlords, I am
finding it pretty hard to give my final verdict on this expansion. I can’t
easily say what it is, so I will begin by saying what it isn’t.
Warlords isn’t an awesome expansion. It doesn’t have things that, after
playing with them, you won’t be able to imagine Civ being without. It doesn’t
really address the shortcomings of the original game, such as weak espionage,
and it doesn’t improve the UN or add exciting diplomacy options, outside of
vassalage.
Warlords, however, isn’t a horrible expansion, either. Most importantly,
it maintains the good balance of Civ IV and doesn’t break the game in any way.
The new additions, while not always creating extra strategic choice, are
consistently fun to play with.
If you are a fan of Civ IV and want some more of the same, you’ll enjoy
Warlords for what it is. If you appreciate having new civilizations and
leaders, and are content with additions that don’t change the strategic layers
of Civ IV drastically, you’ll enjoy Warlords. If you’ve always wanted to try
playing as the Barbarians, buy Warlords, because the Barbarian scenario is an
interesting concept with a good implementation.
If you want to see fundamentally new features included that add new
layers of strategy or change the gameplay very significantly, then Warlords
will probably disappoint you. If you are expecting major AI improvements or
similarly major improvements to diplomacy or espionage, then Warlords doesn’t
have what you want.
Ultimately, I think that Warlords is a good expansion as far as content
quantity goes, and a good expansion for adding some flavour and fun elements to
the game. Seeing, however, that it doesn’t change the grand strategy too much
(vassalage is the only change to grand strategy in Warlords, and it won’t be
that much of a factor in every game), I would say that, for the hardcore fans,
it would make sense to wait for the price to drop instead of paying the full
30$. Fans of scenarios and the less hardcore players, though, will get their 30
dollar’s worth out of Warlords.
And the very final thing. Be sure to check out AI behaviour on a land
map with the Aggressive AI option on. It will be different from what vanilla Civ
IV provides under the same settings, and it will be interesting. [ ... Previous Page ]
