Civilization: Call to Power

by Activision

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00003IE7T
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,129 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Updating a legendary game franchise is tricky business, but Civilization: Call to Power successfully revitalizes an old favorite with revamped art, interface, and concepts.

Completely redesigned in gorgeous full color, the new artwork bears as much resemblance to its predecessors as primitive man's cave scrawls do to the Mona Lisa. The animated units prove that turn-based strategy can have some flash, and new movies celebrating the completion of civilization-boosting wonders are equally stunning.

The goal of the game hasn't changed much (create a civilization that can stand the test of time), but the playing field has been greatly expanded to include ocean and space colonization, with more technological advances, wonders, diplomatic options, and government types than ever before.

Generally, the new interface successfully simplifies control while keeping you close to the action. The occasional awkwardness (it's easy to carelessly mis-click and send units in the wrong direction) is counterbalanced by welcome game-play enhancements, such as the ability to group units together, tile improvements being funded from a pooled public works budget, and view a pathing line that shows you where (and how far) you can move your units.

Boldly improving on where Civilization II has gone before, Call to Power stays true to its heritage and makes the struggle for civilization come alive as never before. --Jack Gardiner

Pros:

• Beautiful, new animated art
• New units, advances, and government types
• Challenging, turn-based strategy is a worthy addition to the Civilization lineup
• Mac vs. Mac and Mac vs. PC Local Area Network or Internet play

Cons:

• Interface, though improved, is still occasionally awkward

Amazon.com Product Description

Civilization: Call to Power spans from primitive history to the techno-future of 3000 A.D. Experience new units, such as Genetics, the Spaceplane, the Superconductor, the Nanite, and more. Your goal is to lead a conquest of land, sea, and space, where every choice affects your future world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Such a wonderful game, such a horrible design, June 27, 2000

By 

Rod D. Martin (Grace Hall, Destin, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Civilization: Call to Power (CD-ROM)

There's so much to love here, you almost fogive it. Almost.

This is the best-ever Civ game (assuming you prefer Earth history to space-future; if not, see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri); it truly is. At least from the stand point of what it tries to do. If you have a G4 tower and abt 256MB of RAM, you'll just adore it. You won't be able to get enough.

Unfortunately, most of us don't. I tried to play this on a 233MHz iMac. Oh Gosh! 48MB of RAM "recommended"? Hello! It ran, all right -- with 150MB of virtual memory (and in case you've never tried it, the trade-off in processor speed for running all that VM just ain't worth it). You might as well try to run Windows 2000 on a 286, or Mac OS 9 on a Macintosh Plus (if that were possible).

Again, if you have the processor, go for it: this is truly wonderful. But if you don't, just forget about it. All you'll do is kick the box it came in.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's not Civ II, February 7, 2000

By 

Eric Thornton (Chicago, Il) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Civilization: Call to Power (CD-ROM)

As a HUGE fan of Civ II (I've spent more time with that game than I spent in High School), I was pretty excited when this came out. Sure, it looked different, but it had lots of really cool additions. Now, a week has passed, and I must say that this game kinda sucks. It lacks the primary component that Civ II has. PLAYABILITY. It's so freaking slow as far as game play goes, and the battle scences are simply horrid. Civ was like a nice little chess game on the nth scale. This is Might & Magic with four billion rules. There's a difference. Wait for Alpha Centauri. Sid Meyer actually had a part in that.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It's just unplayable, June 13, 2000

By 

David Tepper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Civilization: Call to Power (CD-ROM)

It's a great idea gone horribly wrong: up the complexity of Civilization and Civ II, put in more units, more types of government, and watch the Civ addicts go into paroxysms of ecstasy.

Hollow laugh. Instead, I got a game that took a full minute to one move just one piece, even with the 48M of RAM that the makers recommend. It would take me hours to finish one full turn in the later stages of the game, and I just don't have years to waste with this mess. With every agonizing minute, I was able to think about what I was missing away from the computer. Fresh air. Swimming. Human contact in coffee houses. Let's face it, when a computer game can't keep your interest sustained, when it actively drives you to shut the contraption off and get a life, it's just not a very good computer game. Stick with the livelier, faster Civ II.