BtS little things Pros: Some excellent flavour (ethnic units, religion picking), numerous small, yet pleasant, changes.

BtS little things Cons: Some space race changes are dubious. Ethnic units may take a bit to get used to.

As if all the previously mentioned improvements were not enough, Beyond the Sword also adds some other options and little things that I will briefly mention.

A new mode of gameplay is available through Advanced Starts, allowing you to buy components of your empire (such as cities, units, improvements and technologies) and starting the game with those. In essence, this is taking the option of starting in a later era a couple of steps forward. Advanced Starts allow you to jumpstart the game’s early part, if you want to start with more, and there is strategy in them, too – you can try different approaches, such as buying more cities or perhaps sticking with just a couple cities, but have them well improved.

An excellent flavour option is “Pick Religions”, which allows you to pick which religion you found when you get a religion-founding tech. You can found Judaism at Meditation or Islam at Code of Laws. The main effect of this option is that different religions will dominate different games. Players have noticed how most games are dominated by Buddhism or Hindiusm. With Pick Religions turned on, Taoism or Islam may well be the world’s biggest religions. AI leaders will also have their own preferences as to which religion to found if the option is on.

My favorite new game option is “No Tech Brokering”. It means that only technologies you have researched can be traded way. Technologies obtained from trade, goody huts or espionage can not be sold. It slows down the overall tech rate of the game, as well as creating a larger technology gap between the most advanced and the most backwards civilizations. It is quite challenging to dig your way out of being behind in No Brokering games.

The AI also understands what No Brokering means. They may occasionally go for techs no one else has just with the goal of selling them to several other civs, and they will refuse to buy techs they have nearly completed research on themselves, so you won’t be able to exploit it that way.

Space race has been enhanced and changed, and this is actually a dubious change. You now win when your spaceship arrives at the destination, not when you launch it. You can launch it without some components, but it will have a chance of failure and be slower than a full spaceship. While there are situations where you might actually get a race with two civs launching a spaceship and the winner being decided after that, most of the time, you’ll still have one civ (hopefully you) launching the spaceship and winning, with the waiting period being tedious pushing of the End Turn button most of the time.

On the other hand, a full spaceship now needs more components (such as 2 Engines), and SS Casings have also been pushed back to Composites, delaying the spaceship’s completion some. That is a good thing, as it gives more time to use some Modern military units before someone can launch their ship.

BtS added lots of little things here and there, some of which have been requested by fans. For example, the game will now remember if you set turn on the Show Grid option and it will allow you to automate your Missionaries (and Executives, too). Vassal states are a little bit less annoying now that they can no longer own tiles within the fat cross of your cities.

And of course, I can’t fail to mention ethnically diverse units. Units from different civilization culture groups now look different – this applies to units from the first half of the game. Chinese and Japanese units have a distinctly Asian look to them, and there are other ethnic graphics, too, such as a Celtic look, a Greco-Roman or a South American one. This is an excellent change from all units looking European, as was the case previously.

I believe it is the presence of little things such as this that is one of the defining differences between a very good expansion and an excellent one. [ ... Previous Page | Next Page ... ]