You know, when I saw that they had an expansion coming out for Civilization 4, I was a little skeptical. I mean, how do you improve on a game that was very close to perfect as it stood. Well, Firaxis has put together one of the best expansions I have seen with Warlords. Since I got the expansion, I cant count the times I have sat down to play, then looked at the clock in shock to notice that several hours have gone by in what feels like five minutes. My poor World of Warcraft characters stand around most of the week wondering what happened to me! Anyway, on to the review.When Civilization IV was released back in 2005, I was thrilled. I love the Civ series, and had been tracking the game development since it was announced. Now, I am a semi recent Civ convert, Civ 3 being the first one I had purchased (unless you count Alpha Centauri), so a lot of the elements of Civ still feel new to me. Civ 4 was bittersweet at launch, as I am sure some of you remember the massive amount of bugs/system issues that showed up after launch. What Firaxis had was an awesome game that had some major issues when it came out, but they resolved fairly quickly at least. Well, Civ 4: Warlords (at least for me) installed and ran without any issues whatsoever, which is a major point in its favor.
The game offers the same basic options for play the the original did, with eight new scenarios thrown in for variety. For example, you can play as the Genghis Khan and attempt to conquer all of Eurasia, or another option is set in early China, where you must bring the seven dominant Warlords under a common rule. The game also offers several new civilizations and leaders for existing civs. One of my favorite new leaders is Churchill for the English. He also has one of the new leader traits, charismatic, which gives +1 happiness in all cities and +1 happiness from monuments and broadcast towers. Monuments are a replacement for the obelisk (an early culture producer). The new civs include the Vikings, the Korean empire, the Ottomans, and several more.
There are several new world wonders as well. My personal favorite is the Great Wall, which completely blocks out all barbarian activity inside all your cultural borders (on the same continent). This is a huge bonus, especially in the early game, since it allows you to focus your attention on improving your cities more, instead of having to constantly work to repel the barbarian hordes. I will say this backfired on me while playing as America. The Ottomans approached me about open borders, I told them no, and they proceeded to declare war on me, and make their own path through my lands. Since I had not really focused much on military buildup, I couldn't offer much resistance at all. Well, live and learn I guess! Also, they added the temple of Artemis, which gives a major boost to culture output, and also adds to trade route yield, gives a free priest, and adds to your great person production rate. And the University of Sankore, which also adds a big boost to culture, and allows your religious buildings to generate extra research.
A couple of new units were added. The trebuchet (4/1), which is an early siege engine which is very effective for knocking down cities defenses, and also incredibly effective for reducing an enemies strength with collateral damage. They also added the trireme (2/2), which is very effective against the standard galley. The monument (which i already mentioned) and the stable, which give bonus experience to mounted units, are the two new buildings that have been added.
Now, I saved the best for last. Warlords added a new type of great person in the expansion, the Great General. These are military units that can have several effects, depending on how you use them. They can be assigned as a Military Instructor, which gives a +2 exp bonus to all combat units created in that city. They can also be instructed to create a Military Academy, which gives a +25% speed increase to military unit production in that city. And last but not least, they can be assigned to a stack of military units as a Warlord (hence the name of the expansion). This causes the general to become part of one of the units in the stack, and gives 20 bonus exp points to the stack, spread evenly through the units. This also gives the unit that the general is attached to free upgrades when they become available, and access to some high level combat abilities that are not normally available to combat units. Several times during the course of a game, the birth of a great general has been the turning point for my armies, the experience boost they offer to a unit stack is huge, especially early on in the game. Also, the production rate increase was great, several times I have had cities that could produce higher end units in one or two turns, which again makes a huge difference in the game.All in all, the game play was more challenging then the original, it seems like the civs are all a little more aggressive in the expansion, which makes for some very fun games. It was rarity for me to lose a game in the original Civ 4, even if I made a couple mistakes. Now, if I screw up early on, I'm paying for it for the rest of the game, which usually ends up being fairly short. The graphics are still top notch, and I love the music. I did find a feature under audio (this is not a new feature, just something that I just figured out) that I love however, which is the ability to point the built in music player at a custom folder and have the game play whatever music is inside. This was a very nice extra, and I wish that other games would add this option in, as it's nice to be able to have some music variety after you have put in hours and hours on end listening to the same thing.
I don't think that there is any way I could have been more surprised by this expansion, unless I had opened it and money had fallen out! Its a great addition to Civ 4, and well worth the $30 price tag. If you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for? Go get it today!
