• 10 new civilizations
• 12 new scenarios
• 78 new units and 64 new buildings
• 16 new leaders
• 5 new technologies

Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword will deliver new themes never seen in Civilization, many recommended by the fans. The expansion will focus on the late-game time periods after the invention of gunpowder and will deliver 12 challenging and decidedly different scenarios, ten new civilizations, 16 new leaders, five new wonders, and a variety of new units. Five new wonders - The Statue of Zeus, Cristo Redentor, Shwedagon Paya, the Mausoleum of Maussollos, and the Moai Statues Earn a diplomatic victory and unlock the United Nations - then create new resolutions to expand your diplomatic options Advanced Starts let players buy an empire's components & begin play in a later part of the game -- experience new features of the expansion in a shorter time Enhanced AI is tougher to beat on the higher levels, and expanded its strategies for achieving victory

I bought this enhancement after installing Leopard on my Mac. (Beyond the Sword is not available for Mac). It has great new features, that bring further layers of complexity into the game, like Espionage, Corporations, and the diplomatic use of the Apostolic Palace.
If you have played Civilization IV before, I certainly recommend buying this add-on. If you haven't, you will probably want to wait until you have an understanding of how the game works: the plain vanilla version of the game is complicated and addicting enough by itself.

That big whooshing sound is the sound of my life whizzing by as I sit completely absorbed into this game. Lots of fun, endless hours of gameplay, and guarranteed to annoy your wife / significant other / house pets.

Tip: You're not going to be able to jump in and play out of the box (the game has a steep (but rewarding) learning curve. Go to Civilization Fanatics Forums on the web to get tips and tutorials.

A great game gets even better. Add to it the fact that you can mod-out features many features you don't like with very basic knowledge of XML, and that the developers actually provide C++ source code for the game so that professional programmers can rewrite the game themselves, and you have a recipe for the best. Even my non-gamer friends have fallen in love with it, especially girlfriend types once they realize you can play cooperative team games on a LAN.

One word of warning: this game is hard at first, especially if you have never played anything similar. It does get easier, though.

This is not a mere expansion pack but a major update to a fun but flawed game. It is simply much more polished and better thought out than the original. It also comes with tons of great mods. Overall the value is excellent. My only complaint is that the difficulty level seems to have gone up a notch as well, but maybe I am just not very good at this game.

Provides hours of challenging fun. I like the new additions to the original Civilization 4 game. Its nice to see that spies have returned to the game.