Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword

Worth buying? What 274 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 274 Steam reviews actually say.

Overwhelmingly PositiveOverwhelmingly Positive · 97%2007

$9.99

US Steam price, checked 5 h ago

The verdict

A deep, hard, endlessly replayable 4X classic with strong AI and a huge mod scene. Skip it if you dislike doomstacks, dice-roll combat, dated UI, or run Windows 11.

Great for

Veteran 4X fans who want deep, challenging, moddable strategy with unit stacks

Main risk

Combat feels rigged and doomstack-driven, and the old engine may crash or fail to launch on modern Windows

What players love

Best Civ in the series

Mentioned in ~2 in 5 positive reviews

“After 1,000+ hours across Civ IV - VI, I can happily say that IV is the best in the series.”
Steam review · 206.5 h played ↗

“Parts 5, 6 and 7 are out already, and I still play part 4. The best entry in the series.”
Steam review · translated · 11.8 h played ↗

“Civ 4 BtS remains the pinnacle of the old-style Civilization games that has not been surpassed or even matched by its sequels or imitators.”
Steam review · 34.2 h played ↗

Huge, excellent mod scene

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

“The best Civ with the best mods, Fall From Heaven is still unsurpassed as a Fantasy 4x, especially with all the submods still in active development.”
Steam review · 318.9 h played ↗

“the modding scene in general is the most robust and developed in the series”
Steam review · 64.8 h played ↗

Deep, balanced and highly replayable

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews

“THE most replayable game of all time.”
Steam review · 865.7 h played ↗

“Great strategic depth with lots of ways to play and win.”
Steam review · 355.7 h played ↗

Challenging, strong AI

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 positive reviews

“The AI offers a challenge even on middle difficulties.”
Steam review · 402.6 h played ↗

“the AI is so much better in this version, than the later versions, such a great challenge.”
Steam review · 949.2 h played ↗

Addictive one-more-turn gameplay

Mentioned in ~1 in 15 positive reviews

“But be careful, or you'll fall into the "one more turn" trap!”
Steam review · 404.6 h played ↗

Great music and era soundtrack

Mentioned in ~1 in 21 positive reviews

“My favorite part is the music, which changes by era to match what it might have sounded like historically”
Steam review · 631 h played ↗

What players complain about

Won't run or crashes on modern Windows

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“Does not run on Windows 11. Don't waste your money!”
Steam review · 11.1 h played ↗

“ONCE THE GAME ADVANCES TO 500+ TURNS THE IT CONTINUES TO CRASH TO THE POINT OF ANNOYING.”
Steam review · 399.5 h played ↗

“it stopped launching just because, for no reason.”
Steam review · translated · 6.7 h played ↗

Combat RNG feels rigged

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“I have 4 different units with an 80% to 95% to kill and enemy unit and they all fail.”
Steam review · 15.4 h played ↗

“If your chance to win a fight is below 99.9, you'll always lose.”
Steam review · translated · 85 h played ↗

“The luck based combat completely ruins the game and it's flow”
Steam review · 34.9 h played ↗

AI cheats and gangs up on you

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“ai spawns units by cheating and spams your cities even at easier difficulites.”
Steam review · 39.2 h played ↗

“the AI is extremely dumb, which completely kills the desire to play.”
Steam review · translated · 504.4 h played ↗

Limited multiplayer and Steam issues

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 negative reviews

“Steam still doesn't support more than 4 people in multiplayer.”
Steam review · 29.4 h played ↗

Doomstacks and tedious warfare

Mentioned in ~1 in 12 negative reviews

“a single longbowman with 1 city defence was able to hold his own, agaisnt 3-4 units.”
Steam review · 63.6 h played ↗

“For military, I have to gather doomstacks of 10 units each, which gets tedious fast.”
Steam review · 80.9 h played ↗

Dated graphics and clunky UI

Mentioned in ~1 in 16 negative reviews

“There's also no UI scaling so even if it did work at high resolutions, it would have an unreadably small interface.”
Steam review · 0.1 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Unsupported

Minimum

OSMac OS X 10.4.11, 10.5.6

ProcessorPowerPC G5 or Intel

Memory1 GB

Graphics(ATI): Radeon 9600 Video Card (NVidia): GeForce FX 6600

Storage2.5 GB free disk space

OSMac OS X 10.4.11, 10.5.6

ProcessorPowerPC G5 or Intel

Memory1 GB

Graphics(ATI): Radeon 9600 Video Card (NVidia): GeForce FX 6600

Storage2.5 GB free disk space

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