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When reading the previews for Beyond the Sword I get a sense of both excitement and apprehension. While many of the proposed changes for Beyond the Sword are very ambitious, it is clear to me that most of them would never have occured on Soren's watch. I would even go so far as to say that in some ways BTS is a betrayal of Soren's original vision of a simpler, more streamlined, more newb friendly game of Civ. Let's consider some of the announced changes.
-More Units like anti-tank, curaisser, Privateers,etc: One of Soren's big goals for Civ IV was to remove unnecessary units like the paratooper. Now in BTS, they are being added right back in. This is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion.
-More Techs/Expanded Space Race:One thing that Soren said about Civ III was that it was about 100 turns too long, and one problem he wanted to avoid was dragging the game out when it was clear that a victor had been decided. In BTS, there are new techs being added to the modern era and a space race that is not won until a spaceship actually lands in Alpha Centauri (as opposed to merely being launched). Most players would agree that a game is already decided by the time the modern age is reached a majority of the time. All this does is drag the game out and is completely unnecessary
-Corporations: These sounded kind of interesting at first, being new religions of sorts for modern times and they give great merchants an interesting new use by being able to found Corporate Headquarters. They also fit in great with economic civics, with mercantilism and state property having varying levels of restrictions on corporations, while free market lets them run rampant.
However, their current implementation breaks the game by letting Civs do a complete end-run around the game's resource model. Previously, a source of tension in the modern age was the scarcity of key resources like oil and aluminium. Now with corporations, if you lack oil, you can simply use the Standard Ethanol Corp. to convert rice, sugar, or corn to oil! Need Aluminum? Use Aluminum Inc to create it from coal. All strategies of resource denial are right out the window. This may well be the most egregious of the changes in the game. Soren designed the resource model a very specific way and corporations allow players to completely bypass it.
Espionage: Beyond the historical absurdity that the new espionage slider presents (when has a country dedicated 10-20% of it's national budget to espionage?!), it adds an unnecessary level of complexity to the game. One thing Soren has said he wanted to do was avoid was the overpowered spies from Civ II. While I don't think things will reach that level in BtS, I think it will put a larger emphasis on espionage than Soren would have done.
New Wonders: This is more debatable, but five new wonders with most of them showing up in the early game is not a good call in my opinion. The only wonder whose effect has been revealed was the Statue of Zeus which adds more war weariness to the game. I don't believe that more war weariness is something the game needs.
Any Civ with Any Leader: While this sounds like it could be fun on occasion, a lot of the game's strategic complexity revolved around the strengths and weaknesses and amount of synergy that existed between different Civ's various leaders, UUs and UBs taken as a whole. I have a feeling this can lead to players only combining the best leaders with the best UUs and takes away a lot of the subtle balance that existed in the previous incarnations of the game. I certainly hope that this is not an option that is enabled by default.
Native Americans: While not a true betrayal of Soren's vision, it is just a horrible name and I highly doubt that Soren would have let such a bad idea gain any traction.
There are some who might recall that I was one of the most enthusiastic and optimistic posters regarding the Warlords expansion (which I still feel was an excellent expansion). This one reminds me all too much of a another certain expansion that notoriously focused on adding as many new "toys" as possible, at the expense of game balance, namely Civ III: Conquests. I am not totally pessimistic on this expansion though. There are a lot of features that do sound really cool like the new civs/leaders, actual trade routes, civil wars, and so on. If things are fine-tuned to the point that everything is implemented extremely well and throughly balanced, the sheer amount of new content could create a true Civ 4.5, if not though, it could be remembered as Civ's greatest misstep as an expansion.
-More Units like anti-tank, curaisser, Privateers,etc: One of Soren's big goals for Civ IV was to remove unnecessary units like the paratooper. Now in BTS, they are being added right back in. This is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion.
-More Techs/Expanded Space Race:One thing that Soren said about Civ III was that it was about 100 turns too long, and one problem he wanted to avoid was dragging the game out when it was clear that a victor had been decided. In BTS, there are new techs being added to the modern era and a space race that is not won until a spaceship actually lands in Alpha Centauri (as opposed to merely being launched). Most players would agree that a game is already decided by the time the modern age is reached a majority of the time. All this does is drag the game out and is completely unnecessary
-Corporations: These sounded kind of interesting at first, being new religions of sorts for modern times and they give great merchants an interesting new use by being able to found Corporate Headquarters. They also fit in great with economic civics, with mercantilism and state property having varying levels of restrictions on corporations, while free market lets them run rampant.
However, their current implementation breaks the game by letting Civs do a complete end-run around the game's resource model. Previously, a source of tension in the modern age was the scarcity of key resources like oil and aluminium. Now with corporations, if you lack oil, you can simply use the Standard Ethanol Corp. to convert rice, sugar, or corn to oil! Need Aluminum? Use Aluminum Inc to create it from coal. All strategies of resource denial are right out the window. This may well be the most egregious of the changes in the game. Soren designed the resource model a very specific way and corporations allow players to completely bypass it.
Espionage: Beyond the historical absurdity that the new espionage slider presents (when has a country dedicated 10-20% of it's national budget to espionage?!), it adds an unnecessary level of complexity to the game. One thing Soren has said he wanted to do was avoid was the overpowered spies from Civ II. While I don't think things will reach that level in BtS, I think it will put a larger emphasis on espionage than Soren would have done.
New Wonders: This is more debatable, but five new wonders with most of them showing up in the early game is not a good call in my opinion. The only wonder whose effect has been revealed was the Statue of Zeus which adds more war weariness to the game. I don't believe that more war weariness is something the game needs.
Any Civ with Any Leader: While this sounds like it could be fun on occasion, a lot of the game's strategic complexity revolved around the strengths and weaknesses and amount of synergy that existed between different Civ's various leaders, UUs and UBs taken as a whole. I have a feeling this can lead to players only combining the best leaders with the best UUs and takes away a lot of the subtle balance that existed in the previous incarnations of the game. I certainly hope that this is not an option that is enabled by default.
Native Americans: While not a true betrayal of Soren's vision, it is just a horrible name and I highly doubt that Soren would have let such a bad idea gain any traction.
There are some who might recall that I was one of the most enthusiastic and optimistic posters regarding the Warlords expansion (which I still feel was an excellent expansion). This one reminds me all too much of a another certain expansion that notoriously focused on adding as many new "toys" as possible, at the expense of game balance, namely Civ III: Conquests. I am not totally pessimistic on this expansion though. There are a lot of features that do sound really cool like the new civs/leaders, actual trade routes, civil wars, and so on. If things are fine-tuned to the point that everything is implemented extremely well and throughly balanced, the sheer amount of new content could create a true Civ 4.5, if not though, it could be remembered as Civ's greatest misstep as an expansion.
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