I bought into the hype surrounding this expansion and grabbed Beyond the Sword. Wow, what a letdown. After you take away the mods and scenarios, you are essential left with some barebone new features. The spy feature is useless. It forces you to use another slide bar to take away money, and fails most of the time. Great job guys. You may spies just as frustrating as you did in Civ2.
The game does support new civs, but honestly, what does this really had to the experience? All civs act the same in my experience. If they want one of your techs, they will almost always fork over all their money in a trade. The diplomacy always feels scripted to me. Can't they make it more realistic? Why not have actual voices? I loved the multimedia advisors in Civ2. Why can't we get back to that?
Another supposely cool new feature is world events that affect your game. NOT. THese events are just text burbs like "a forrest fire broke out and destroyed your crops". Ok thanks.
The worst part about the expansion is the game is now a resource hog. I am into 1800s now, and the game is stuttering and no longer scrolling smoothly. Since most of the mods and scenarios can be found for free on the internet, I feel ripped off on this expansion.
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