As for eye-candy, there is an all-new spaceship screen, where you can customize the visual appearance of your spaceship.

Following on from the previous question and a query long on the tongues of Civ fanatics - when is Alpha Centauri II coming out and when it does will there be an option to carry over a Civ IV civilisation to the stars?

I'm afraid that none of this will happen any time soon. Firaxis does not own the rights to Alpha Centauri.

As a player piped to the post too many times by the AI ganging up on me around a virtual round table I'm most curious as to whether there will there be an option to remove UN victories while retaining all the other effects of the building?

There were no plans to do this, and I've never heard this request before, but since you ask so nicely, we may consider it.

Can you flesh out the details on the kinds of events that players can expect to encounter and how they will affect the gameplay?

Some events simply ask the player how to deal with a situation that has arisen, while other events are quite intricate, sending the player on quests in order to receive some reward, for example. The effects on gameplay are not dramatic, but the effects on replayability, historical flavor, and therefore, immersion are significant.

Although personally I'm not a fan of the scenarios can you describe some of the new additions to more interested readers? For example, the Aftermath scenario that was touched upon in the first developer diary suggest some quite radical additions to gameplay which, in combination with the mention of X-Com, make me eager to play a scenario for the first time.

"Afterworld" is an impressive scenario that displays the awesome modding potential of Civilization 4. You are right that it has certain gameplay similarities to X-Com. "Final Frontier" is another scenario, set in space, which makes you want to double-check whether you actually launched the Civ 4 executable, or a totally new game. Some scenarios have a fantasy setting, and others have a heavily-researched historical setting. And not only do we have our own brilliant game designers working on these scenarios, but we have also recruited the most creative minds of our fan community to design a couple of scenarios especially for this expansion pack.

Some of the scenarios have been created by fans not working directly for Firaxis. How much input have fans had in the new expansion and have any of them been drafted in to work on the game mechanics as well as in scenario creation?

The fans have had an enormous impact. I may be listed as lead designer for this title, but in reality it is the fans who have designed this expansion pack. Thanks to them, we knew exactly what we needed to focus on in BTS. We have dozens of loyal fans that were willing to sacrifice hundreds of hours of their personal time to help us make this the ultimate Civilization game. Many of them have been playing Beyond the Sword for almost a year now, happily shooting down some of our silly design ideas and helping us come up with even cooler ones.

Will there be any new options when players start a game, from new world-types to terrain balancing?

Yes, there will be new world-types, but even more importantly there will be some new game options. For example, you will have the option to play as any leader-civilization combination, therefore allowing you to explore some intriguing "what-if" possibilities. Many players will appreciate the option to trade away a technology only if you have researched it yourself. Also, there is an option to actually choose the religion you found when you discover a technology, so that you don't always have the same dominant religions in every game.

Will there be any graphical enhancements, say the option to utilise some of Direct X 10's feature set?

The graphics in Beyond the Sword are more polished, and the new features have some impressive graphical representations, but our graphics engine is basically still the same, and hence does not take advantage of DX 10.

Are there any new options and will it be fixed so that in Hotseat games all players get to see any movement in your turf at the start of your go, rather than just player one?

A feature that may revitalize the traditional sequential turn play mode (as opposed to simultaneous turns, which seems to be more popular in multiplayer) is the fact that now all players on the same team take their turns simultaneously. That way you can combine fast play with traditional game mechanics.

In Hotseat, you see the movement of any AI players that take their turn between the last human player and you. Therefore, you can always make it fair by spreading out the human players in the turn order so that there are an equal number of AI players between humans.

And finally, have you guys come across some new tech which will allow for the stated July release to come quicker than a three month wait?

Yes, of course. We'll trade it to you for your World Map and the tech that makes "one more turn" last all night. Thanks.

On a personal note I would like to offer my thanks for creating my favourite game series and cause of the 'mystery illnesses' which once necessitated weeks off of school. Then I would like to thank you very much for taking the time out to answer our questions and wish the best of goodwill in creating yet another masterpiece of gaming goodness.

Glad to hear you're a great Civ fan! Thanks for the interview!

By Sam Gibson