Episode 53: Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword

Retro Spectives

The Civilization series is one of the most consistently successful 4x titles throughout video game history. It saw its first entry way back in 1991, and would continue to refine its history spanning empire building over the years. Perhaps the most well regarded of them was Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword, a standalone expansion pack for Civ IV that promised the deepest and most complex strategy up to that date.

Civilisation V, however, seemed to break from a lot of what defined the main series up to that point. Unit stacking, global happiness and the removal/replacement of the civics system saw fans outraged. But with time (and more expansion packs) the love for Civ V’s systems grew, and it quickly became the most popular Civ game ever.

But were all the changes that were made actually improvements over the systems present in Civilization IV? Was the game changed for the better? Were they sidegrades, or even worse, downgrades?

On this episode, we discuss:

• How does the existence of combat stacking affect both the tactical skirmishes and strategic positioning of your forces? How does it compare to a one unit per tile system?
• How well does Civ IV communicate the details of your empire to the player? How easy is it to read the broader landscape of all out war in a glance?
• How much shit will Patrick get for pronouncing 4x as ‘four times’? I’ve only ever read it online before, please forgive me!

We answer these questions and many more on the 53rd episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Civ IV OST: Various Composers (see under each video in playlist)

Civilization IV BUG mod (recommended)

Did we misunderstand anything fundamental about how the combat system works? Does one unit per tile lead to more sophisticated combat encounters than we gave it credit for? What 4x title should we tackle next? Come let us know our our community discord server!