Civilization: Call to Power

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
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
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 ! :-)