I’ve been playing Civilization 4 by Sid Meier and Firaxis Games a lot lately so I figured I’d write up my impressions of the Warlords expansion that has now been out for a little over a year. First, a bit of background. I’m a huge Civilization fan! I’ve been playing Civ games since they first came out, I’ve owned every single one, as well as other Civ-style games (Alpha Centauri and Call to Power for example).The “Warlords” expansion for Civ4 added some new features and expanded some others. As with most Civ expansions, Warlords added more civs, more leaders, more wonders, more traits for the civs as well as some new scenarios. However, it also added two new features, Great Generals (Civ 4 already had Great Artists, Merchants and Scientists) and the concept of Vassal States.
Like the other Great People, Great Generals are a welcome addition to the game as they round out the quartet of Great People and give military powers a powerful reward for their war-mongering. Great Generals can create military academies that boost your military unit production rate in one city, lead your troops into battle, or give a major boost to the experience of all of the units in a stack. These features make the generals sought after and since you can only get them by engaging in combat, only the warlike (or the civs being attacked relentlessly) will get any.
Vassal States is a new concept in Warlords. It allows you to take limited control over civs that swear fealty to you. You can direct their technological development, see what they are doing in every city and in their territory, and your score reflects a portion of the vassals. In addition, when you go to war (offensively or defensively) the vassals follow. Vassalage is mostly used by computer civs as a form of capitulation after you’ve kicked their butt a few times.
The game performance was improved dramatically in Warlords and this was a welcome change. Civ4’s performance has always been one of the worst aspects of the game as the 3D rendering and python-scripted environment tend to cause lag and long turns later in the game. But while Warlords didn’t remove these problems entirely, it did push them back to later turns in the long games as well as making them less intense, especially on large and huge maps.
Other aspects that I enjoy a lot with Civ4 and Warlords are the ability to customize your victory conditions and customize quite extensively the type of game (world, resource density, and numerous other settings) you're playing. Civ4 also supports extensive modability so there are hundreds or even thousands of user-created maps, units, scenarios, civs, etc on the internet.
Overall, I feel that Warlords was an excellent expansion to Civ4 and one that anyone who enjoys the genre should pick up. The new features of Great Generals and Vassal States, the improved performance, and the numerous additions of new civs, wonders, traits and leaders (as well as some new buildings and bug fixes) really makes this expansion worth the cost and effort of picking up.
