Civilization: Call to Power

The Good
Activision paid big bucks for the Civ license, so of course they'd want to do a good job on the product. Sid Meier purists will call me a traitor, but there are good points about this game to be commended on. For example, the concept of stacked armies for combat makes sense. No battle in the real world was fought without coordinated military units, so why shouldn't that be the case in the Civ world? The graphics are the most beautiful in any Civ game to date, and various parts of the game are really beautiful to look at.

The Bad
Unfortunately, despite all the innovative features, the folks at Activision crashed Call to Power to the ground by bloating it with unnecessary frivilous accessories and skimping out on the real essentials. The interface is by far the greatest downfall. Activision tried to radically alter the interface in the hope that the player would be able to do things more efficiently. The interface is streamlined and almost all interactions take place in the bottom area of the screen. Such familiar items as the City Window are gone. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything wrong with the original interface, and the adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes instantly to mind. You'll notice when playing Call to Power that you get to see the map a lot. Now where do you get that usually? Yes, in real-time strategy games. Activision slapped on an RTS interface on a Civ game, and that's why most people will not like it (myself included). The graphics, although very nice, also really put strain on the system. Animations are somewhat slow, and one gets anxious getting on to the next unit while waiting for the first to lumber along. There is no "railroad speeding" in this game (as in how units seem to zoom along railroads in Civ II or the maglevs in Alpha Centauri). The unconventional warfare units are also very annoying. Perhaps there'll be a day when I'll master unconventional warfare, but the effects of ecoterrorists and lawyers are just too large to make the game enjoyable. The tech tree also leads to extremely advanced units, which take a horrifically long time to build even the simplest defender on a conquered city, whose population will obviously be reduced to low levels to make it even more difficult to defend. The battles favour defense to an amazing level, where fresh stealth bombers can be brought down by machine gunners without any SAM assistance. This makes offensive drives extremely tedious and depressing.

The Bottom Line
The folks at Activision obviously tried very hard to put a new spin on the Civ franchise, as the massive battle and interface changes show. However, they had failed to see what made the original Civ formula so successful, and in this they have created what many see as a very disappointing product. However, the license does show promise, and one hopes at least some of the problems will be remedied in the upcoming sequel, which, by the way, does not carry the Civ title.

The Good
Great mix of units, lots of non-combat unit-types, trade is handled a lot better than in "that other Civilization game", managing lots of cities is not as much of a drab as in "that other etc...", gamplay is at least as good as in "that other and so on", interface is smooth and powerful once you shake the habits from "that other ya-ki-ty-ya-ki-ty", game mechanics have been refined so you can't just go republic and buy the opposition out like in "that other oh-so-holy-and-untouchable game by that fabled and much revered whiz-kid of computer game design".

The Bad
It hasn't got Sid Meier - but then neither has "that other game" any more.... Apart from that there are minor flaws in design and mechanics, but they wouldn't have caught anyone's attention for at least another five years if Sid Meier had been the designer.

The Bottom Line
It's not perfect, and yes, the interface takes some getting used to if you have been living inside Civilization II for the past few years. Besides that, it deserves a lot of credit for actually trying to make some improvements to a game that is now close to five years old. And it's not like the developers of the afore-mentioned classic haven't had the chance to improve it themselves. Four full-priced addons later, and nothing really substantial has happened. Hopefully this will change once Civilization III is released, but until then, if you're a Civilization fan finding yourself on the winning side a bit too often, I see absolutely no reason to leave this on the self. Pick it up - It's a challenge!

Ps. Sorry Sid, none of the above is meant as a personal insult to you. Rather it is intended for the cult of dead that seem to follow you around.

The Good
After playing Civ 2, and then playing this, you'll notice a complete overhaul in graphics. The terrain and models look much better than Civ 2. There are a TON of new units and governments and wonders and other stuff. You can't really say Activision wasn't trying. There is some really nice wonder movies. The game has a very satirical sense of humor and will make you laugh out loud at some points with the funny units. Like having televangelists be people with TV's for heads.

The Bad
Although i put the graphics in the "good" section, they are also a libability. Load the game and you will be assualted by bright, garish colors that are almost painful to look at. The interface in a word, sucks. Instead of the beloved cty window, they put all these sliders and buttons on the bottom of the screen. Trying to select units and cities is difficult and you'll click a bunch of times to try and select it. They even ruined how you move units. instead of the arrow keys, you have to click where they move, which causes many accidental clicks. The game is very slow. Even at the beggining. It takes forever to build units and improvements. Although it's at least reasonable in the begging, as the game progresses, you will begin to see glaring problems. Musketmen and phalanax will defend against fighter planes. Machine gunners will take down robots and tanks. When at the end of the technology tree, units and wonders become ridiculous. You'll be assualted by televangelists, lawyers and mind controlling ads. The Eden bombs (or whatever) will completely remove a city and all the improvements. Wonders will destroy all nuclear weapons, put super powerful shields around all your cities and cause all unhappy enemy cities to join you. Speaking of stuff like roads, etc. THEY COMPLETELY RUINED IT!!! Instead of just having a settler build roads, you have to allocate some of your income to public works and then build it when you finally get enough. So, in the beggining, you can build almost no roads or irrigation. Finally, it is really annoying how for each government type, there is some limit to the amount of cities you can have or else most of your cities revolt.

The Bottom Line
YUCK!!! Go buy Civ 2 or 3.

The Good
I've been playing Civilization since number 1. I've spent LOTS of time playing Civilization 1 & 2 and have even tried CivNet. So I think I can talk about the Civilization series and put it in perspective. Well, to me, Call To Power is a quite nice, although not perfect, successor to Civilization 2. Let me please explain why it is good before killing me ;-)

First, the graphics are nice and clean. The difference between Civilization 2 and Call To Power is far more pleasant than between Civilization and Civilization 2 (with its ugly pseudo-cultural background bitmaps). Ok, if you really search, there might be one or two units which are not splendid, but it's no graphic disaster at all. It is indeed quite nice, which is not Alpha Centauri's case (rotfl). By the way, you can play with very high resolution (I played it at 1152*864, yes, I'm sure of it) which is really useful. Sure, graphics aren't really important in this kind of game, but it's a good point nevertheless. The same goes for music.

But the fact is, there ARE lots of good innovations in Call To Power. Well, there even are so much that I'll have to be quick about each of them.

All the futuristic stuff is cool. The new scientific victory condition is amusing ; the space and robot units really add something to the game. The technologies of genetic and diamond age are not as imaginative as Alpha Centauri's, but aren't bad. Some futuristic wonders are symbolically great (who said Space Escalator ? :-) even if they don't have much impact on gameplay.

The undersea cities are a long awaited new features, as far as I'm concerned. So sad they didn't push this idea farther, but it's still a nice try.

The new public works system, although I was sad not having any more settlers at first, is really useful. The new terrain improvements are useful.

The governments : very important aspect. First, the old ones are often better balanced, like Communism which now can really be a choice. Second, the new ones are so great : long live Technocracy, Virtual democracy, and Ecotopia !Fascism is also a good point for historical credibility. Your citizens happiness is much better managed.

About the fights : stacked armies, so badly needed, are finally present. There are less absurd results (although there still are). There are a bunch of new interesting units. The different alert states for your units is a blessing for non-aggressive players.

Diplomacy has been really improved : ecology becomes a real preoccupation ; you can now have real allies and help them/be helped by them for centuries, if you are pacifist like me.

Globally speaking, the increased amount of wonder and technologies corrects some well-known balance problems and offer the good players more strategic possibilities. Hollywood and Internet, for example, are so cool :-)

But THE major innovation Call To Power introduced stand in three words : non-conventional warfare. Yes, these units are very, very powerful. Yes, the AI uses them too much (enslavers are especially irritating in the beginning). But, simply put, it opens a wide new branch of gameplay possibilities. Being myself a very pacifist Civilization player, I know how hard it is to win games at a high level of difficulty, or multiplayer games, if you don't like making war. With non-conventional units, you can compete for the first time with aggressive players. The economic aspect becomes much more important : just consider tele-evangelists combined with the Hollywood wonder. Eco-terrorists also are an excellent idea.

Let me get this straight : Call To Power deserves to be bought just for this. It's simply huge.

The Bad
The AI is not excellent, but it has always been a Civilization flaw...

There definitely are some balance problems : theocracy is too easy to obtain considering the advantages it gives, Edison's laboratory almost make multiplayer games pointless, and so on... But do you remember gunpowder and railroad impact in Civilization 2 (not to mention Galileo's Telescope) ?

The game becomes quite slow in the modern and futuristic eras when there are many AI players. But again, Civilization 2 had the same problem.

The multiplayer engine does not work very well, players are often disconnected.

Due to the bigger maps and more cities possibilities, the interface needed to be changed. The new one is not horrible once you get used to it, but it surely could have been better.

So sad there aren't undersea and space specific city buildings and technologies.

There still isn't any upgrade possibility for military units. That's definitely the next feature to include...

The Bottom Line
Civilization fan, but not too conservative ? Don't hesitate and give Call to Power a try. Written from scratch, it's a quite good Civilization 2 successor, with many new features, some of them really great. Yes, it has flaws, but I don't think Civilization-like games can be perfect : these are simply too complex ! Take time to discover and accept the various changes (how can one proudly say that he has played it only 15 minutes ?!) and have fun ! :-)

The Good
The game has some nice Wonder movies.

The Bad
Other than the movies, everything:
* Interface: Clumsy. It takes quite a while to get used to it, and every minor task requires a lot of other minor tasks.
* Graphics: Ugly. The units are small and unrecognizable and the buildings are poorly rendered.
* Stability: None. The game constantly crashes.
* Gamplay: Terrible. The AI barely moves, and the first turn of the game takes 15-20 seconds, not even mentioning the later ones. There are many one-purpose units which require a special defense, there are many units (like the Slaver) which drain your resources and require a special defense just for them. One of the wonders actually has a chance of 3% a turn to make you lose the game.

All in all, this game is a terrible miss, trying to ride the fame of a popular game to sell more copies.

The Bottom Line
This game is full of flaws with almost no advantages. There are other, much better strategy games available, so you better try one of them.

The Good
Beautiful cinematic cut scenes, interesting music (very similar to the music in Gladiator!)

The Bad
Extremely slow and clumsy gameplay. Way, way, too many unit types, wonders, and improvements. The game tries to be everything to everyone, it fails at this. Unstable platform, crashed on me several times.

The Bottom Line
On occasion, I can play through 6000 years of Civilization II in one evening. Civ CTP is so slow, and there are so many choices, playing this game is more like a chore than an evening of leisure.

The Good
Nothing - I played it for fifteen minutes, then it was out the door so fast even gravitation didn't bother to work its magic on it.

The Bad
This game is just SO lacking in every respect the only game sequel I ever enjoyed less is Dune 2000. It's like Activision took everything that made the original Civilization what it was and spat on it, making this game a dull, graphically and musically inferior waste of time... and worst of all, they didn't even consult Sid Meier!...

The Bottom Line
Don't touch it, don't get near it. If you see it in the store take it, wave it in front of the salesman, scream "BLASPHEMY!" and tear off one of your arms! It's that bad!