Customer Reviews

Civilization: Call to Power

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've been a fan of Civilization for years. In fact, I play almost no other game. Call to Power's graphics are greatly enhanced beyond those in CivII. The animations and sounds are really cool. This game offers many new units, city improvements, and wonders to build.

Call to Power adds the ability to establish production queues in each city and to maximize the exploitation of each city's resources at the touch of a button.

You now have the ability to build terrain improvements using a "Public Works" tax based on your total production. You no longer have to use settlers or engineers for this function.

You can now "stack" units for movement and battle. A battle window pops up with close-up animation of the battle scene. This is pretty cool, with the animation and sounds.

The interface takes a while to get used to, however. If you're not paying attention, you can send a unit off on a long trek across the map.

I have a 400 MHz PC and have to turn off some of the animation features later in the game to keep the graphics from getting too sluggish. I can only imagine how the game would play on a slower machine.

Overall, though, this is a really fun game. I recommend it for anyone who enjoys Civilization.

Civilization: Call to Power makes some needed changes to the "Civ" line. The previous games were very well done, and nicely balanced. But they were more like games. The addition of the "dirty tricks" units is a reflection of the history of empire building and technological advancement.

Take for instance the slaver unit. The slaver unit can travel to other cities and steal the population from them, giving their civilzation more manpower. If the victim civilisation is not careful, they will be crippled from the outset. Just like the Portrugese (and others) in Africa. Historicaly whole african empires were decimated. However, those that use slaves in the game must be careful. If someone creates the abolitionist, it is pretty much all over for the slave using nation economicly. Just like Portugal. So CTP reflects the fact that some civilizations in the real world did not get far due to another's dirty tricks.

As militray units go, combined mixed forces have always fared better then more technologicly advanced units. And just because a unit is more advanced than another does not mean that it will always win. Look at the Native Americans. Look at the Scottish fighting under William Wallace. Look at the Philipenos durring the 16th century. CTP mirrors this fact quite well. Greater numbers employing several modes of attack will always destroy lesser numbers employing one method of attack. And then there is also random chance. I thought that the terrain defence modifiers were very accurate. A city built on a mountain, with walls and three phalanxes is almost impossible for anyone to take!

As for the graphics, I think CTP is a great improvement. The interface is much easier to use on the management level. However the tactical level can be a little squirly if you get to tired. The designers have made it so that nothing happens if you right click. This will get you out of the messed up path that may have been created. Still if you do not know this secret, the game can get annoying at times. This will cost a half star.

The improvement system is better now than with the old settler based system. Improvements are a result of empire and wealth. Irrigation and mines as we know them today were not arround until someone had money and power. Before that ore was either picked up off the ground in chuncks (as it was in the bronze age), or quarried for. Besides, no one ever separated a large segment of a city's population to build irrigation and roads. Those people and their production were always considered part of the city.

One thing I did not like was the fact that you cannot move populations arround like you did in CivII. No longer can a settler join a city. (at least I think, i was kind of tired when I tried this) This ignores the entire idea of human migrations. So minus half a star for this.

Another improvment is the tech tree. No longer do muskets come before cannon. (It was always the other way arround) In civII there were a lot of problems with the tech tree. For one communism came with the industrialisation and philosophy. Communism is not a result of industrialisation but rather trade and wealth. Also democracy was arround long before what CivII calls invention. And why did medicine give you the ability to build shakespeare's theater? Would that not be more associated with Writing and Philosphy? What they have done is made the tech tree more accurate in a historical perspective.

Also they have made the game more easily customisable. Changes are easier to make in the tech tree by just editing a file. The player can now change what units are allowed and also in what era you begin.

All in all I think that CTP is an accurate representaion of the factors that dictate historical development. If you are looking for a game that is all about conquering and starting even with everyone else, look elsewhere. Civilzation: Call to Power is historical simulation. And in history not everyone wins easily and with the same formula. In CTP you may take the world by storm, or you may never get started and be crushed by civilzations with more advancements.

The Civilization collection is one of the best of all time. This has the same idea as civ 2 and family but has a diffrent game play. The game has changes in three major ways; 1, you now use the mouse alot more instead of the keyboard. 2, Instead of seattlers to build roads you now use Public Works or PW. I like this idea of the game better. 3, you can now bombard units. You basically attack them without attempting to take over their square. This is one of my favorite additions. The diplomatic options are better and you can build more units and improvements. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND to anyone anyone who likes straitgy games

This game is a VERY VERY poor follow on in the Civilization genre. All they did was make the game more turns (and therefore more tech adv). They added a number of sub rosa attacks. User Interface was tough to get used to for moving units. (I often ended up clicking a unit into a long move series...) Finally, the end game graphics stunk...

In fairness, their trade model is better, as well as the tile improvements model (no more enigneers/settlers). They kept capitalization and infrastructure (from Civ II). Very good is the ability to save a production queue to use later.

Go to the Alpha Centauri page now and buy that instead.

In my opinion, this game is the best one of all the various Civilization games and close cousins. It is much more realistic and (therefore) challenging - a wide suite of governments, new units, and wider range of actions and consequences. It also has eliminated some of the most annoying and limiting features of other civilization games, the most notable of which is allowing a string of city improvements to be specified (and, applied to other cities in similar stages of development). On the whole I heartily recommend it to anyone who are looking for more than zowie graphics or blowing up aliens for hours on end.

As a serious addict of the previous Civilization games, I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, the user interface is so agonizingly slow and unwieldy that I've never been able to muster the patience to get past the medieval era. Their main priority seems to have been beautifying the look of the screen (and they even failed at that, in my opinion -- the graphic design is pretty cheesy), but as a side-effect they made the game unplayable. There is no excuse for software that takes a 10- or 20-second disk access to bring up a menu on the screen. Even making allowances for the fact that my PC is slightly out of date, the graphics are just really hard to make out visually, especially the teensy-weensy icons of military units that show up on the dashboard. I eventually started getting used to the hard-to-read map and the confusing, multi-layered controls, but they were a big barrier to getting started. The whole timeI just kept wishing for the old interface. To be fair, they have made an effort to automate some of the repetitive tasks, but at the same time they cut down on the number of user actions by 30-40%, they made the user interface so crusty that every action takes literally 10 times longer to accomplish.

If you know someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and you're tired of having them straighten the fringe on the rugs around the house, buy them this game.
The granularity of city and civilization control is overwhelming at first, but can be extremely gratifying if slowly squeezing AI opponents to jelly in an iron-mailed fist is your kind of thing. I own dozens of strategy games, city-builders, and sims, most of them newer than this one, but I always come back to Civ CTP. There is just something fascinating about the drive to thrive in CTP's unique and modifiable maps that can't be touched by, say, Civ III's over-simplified and restrictive environment.
If you are not of a meticulous turn of mind, and if you prefer short games, please do not play your daddy's copy of Civ CTP. You will advance from annoyance to frustration to destroying the CD before reaching the medieval period.
Even though the graphical display is ancient (late 90s), the color, beauty, and edge-matching of the map tiles is absolutely magical; this game was drawn by a fanatic. The wimpy, dull earth-tones of more modern games are very smooth, true. So is cold porridge.
Yes, the interface is bizarrely labyrinthine, occasionally intrusive, and very much a part of the challenge.
No, this isn't a "Civilization" game, per se. Civ CTP gameplay is much more involved, and consequently much less predictable than the run of turn-based strategy games.

This game was recommended by a friend, who'd played all of the Civ games. It was my first experience of turn based strategy. And WHAT A BANG it made!!! I spent hours and weeks trying to win my first game. Then all of a sudden I was in such a position of power I was almost giddy. The concepts in the future years are amazing and a lot of fun.
This game promises to give hours and hours of enjoyment.
I've since played Sid Meier's CivIII, and while some of its concepts are more polished, somehow it's not quite as interesting as CTP.
I then went back to CTP (after CivIII) and found it a little less easy to play than CivIII. Some of the war battles happen off screen, such as the sinking of ships, which is a little annoying. But it's still just a bit more fun than CivIII.
CivIII's diplomacy is far more satisfying than that of CTP.
I am looking forward to the upcoming expansion for CivIII ("conquests").

I'd not played previous versions of Civilization so this was a new experience to me. The only level I haven't yet won on is the highest, "Deity". I have to contradict what other reviewers say, for instance, that the new "Slaver" unit just makes him mad. The Slaver is one of the keys to building up your civilization quickly at the higher levels. If you play with "roving bands" of barbarians, when they come and attack your city when you have a slaver in it, as long as you also have sufficient military units to defend your city and manage slaves you capture, you will enslave the attacking barbarian, and the increased population will make your city much more productive. Just be sure to build the Emancipation Proclamation before anybody else, so that your cities with slaves don't riot. Otherwise, a couple of crucial wonders are Edison's Lab and the Internet, as they randomly give you advances for free....if another civilization builds those before you do, you better go and take the city where they built it militarily.

If you've played Civlization or Civlization II, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! It is an unworthy successor and almost unrecognizable as a Civ game. While the graphics may be better (and slower), the entirely new format for managing cities and battles is annoying. For example, one new feature is grouping multiple units into armies. This grouping seems cool at first but quickly becomes cumbersome. Perhaps if I'd never played another Civilization before, I would appreciate A Call To Arms more. However, as it stands, Call To Arms is inferior.

SUGGESTED ALTERNATE: "Civilization II: Test of Time" remains faithful to other Civ games, has improved graphics and many new features. Among them: internet play, multi-player, science-fiction and fantasy Civ games as well as an Original Extended Version. The Extended version requires you to not only conquer Earth, but also Alpha Centauri as well, using new, futuristic weapons. It's unbelievably fun (even better than previous Civ installments). It succeeds where Call To Arms fails: it improves upon the Civ legacy. It's even cheaper than Call To Arms! If you want a new Civ, get that.