Against two medieval cannons and a musketeer fortified in a city, you need to use at least six tanks or comparable infantry units to win. This has two main effects on gameplay. Firstly, war is doubly expensive, as you need numerical as well as qualitative superiority. Secondly, civilisations that have fallen behind in technology can still defend themselves. The key to attacking in CTP 'ts bombardment In true Nato style, you should pound enemy cities and strong points before you attack on the ground.
Cannons and ships of the line are your first bombardment weapons, and should arrive in the renaissance era. No city can stand bombardment for long. Once you've ground down the defences, move in with your land forces. Without doubt one of the greatest games of all time, Sid Meier's Civilization has built up one of the strongest, most recognisable brands in the history of computer gaming.
From the original Civ as aficionados are wont to call it in , to the classic Civ II in , gamers of all different age groups and backgrounds have learnt to spell the word civilisation incorrectly, as well as appreciate the work of a gaming genius at every click of the mouse. One out-of-court settlement later and both MicroProse and Activision gain the right to publish their own game under the Civilization banner.
Meaning potentially two Civ games for the price of one. While most Civ fans will no doubt be sitting out there in consumerland thinking: Mmm, dat is good, ja? Which will be the best? Should I buy both? Will these games turn out to be remarkably similar, making it more difficult for you to choose between them? Well, we can't yet say in the case of MicroProse we've not seen hide nor hair of their offering , but Activision seem to be on the right track, as the recent unveiling of Civilization: Call To Power quite clearly proves.
As many of you will already know, the whole concept of Civilization - that of growth, research, war and good breeding - is a magical slice of historical hokum and turn-based strategy, all wrapped-up in a deliciously addictive coating. Call To Power already shows signs of retaining that classic Civ depth and feel by sticking, pretty much, to the same tried-and-tested routine that we've all come to know and love.
And what is it exactly that makes the core of this game so good? Cecilia Barajas, Producer on Call To Power and ex-criminal lawyer , explains: We identified two critical things that pretty much form the backbone of Civ's design.
Number one is the essential fantasy of watching your civilisation go through time. It's a very simple concept, but it's a very powerful fantasy. In Civilization, as you know, you start off with a couple of settlers and by the end of the game you're huge. It's a big buzz after all that time you've invested in it. The second thing is that there are literally millions of strategies for winning and playing the game. Civilization is pretty much the most replayable game ever made. Every single person has a different way of playing the game - and winning for that matter.
Which, with the benefit of hindsight, gives Cecilia and her team a firm base from which to start. A captive audience. With their mouths wide open, gagging for more. But what can you, Mr Joe Public Civ boy, expect by way of improvements? We're going much further into the future with this game, says Cecilia. What that means is that you get new units, new governments, new wonders and new technologies. Also, you get Cownership' of the future.
In games such as Alpha Centauri or StarCraft, you are presented with futures that are cool - kind of given to you on a plate. In this game you create your own future. If your future is a Blade Runner future, where everyone is unhappy - there's pollution, crime - it's because you brought it about. If your future is a peaceful democracy - a Star Trek future, where everything is good and people are happy - then that will be your doing, too. Cecilia continues: The second thing we're doing is including more strategies.
Generally, there are two kinds of Civ players. There's the militarist, who just wants to kill everyone, or the peaceful scientist, who nurtures a democracy and wants to max out and enter the space race. We've added more what we term Cunconventional warfare' - the recognition that not all wars are fought on the battlefield, which as we know, because we live in our world right now, is totally true.
For example, McDonalds has done more for capitalism than any war has. Mass markets are now infiltrating governments in a way that we never anticipated in the past. Cecilia's experience as a criminal lawyer and hardcore gamer has helped her mould some of these new ideas and elements into a playable form. For example, injunctions can be imposed on other players when a system of law has been implemented, halting production and disrupting growth. Religious freaks can even go Chead hunting' in enemy territory, in order to embezzle cash from rivals.
Anti-pollution units can raze whole cities to the ground in favour of grassland. Plagues can be released into rival towns in the hope that they will spread. Plus loads of other weird and wonderful subversive features that will only become apparent when the game is finished and properly balanced. And will no doubt scare Charlie Brooker half to death.
On top of all that there will also be - da da! Something sadly lacking in the Civilization series until very recently. Cecilia agrees: I think it was such an incredible compliment to Civilization II that it was able to sell so well, even shipping in , without a multiplayer component. In the scientific victory you have to research a specific technology and build a specific wonder.
The easiest victory to obtain is the survival victory since its requirement is that your civilization survives up to the year AD. The diplomatic victory occurs only when you forge an alliance with every nation in the world. Although there are a whole variety of nationalities to chose from, the nationalities are basically all the same. There's not much individuality in each of the nationalities. The only thing that would set one nationality apart from all others are leader names, flags, and city names, and that's basically all that's different.
There is a lot of depth in the empire-building aspects in Call to Power II but virtually nothing in the cultural aspects for each nation. The sequel still has several flaws, but its gameplay value makes up for most, if not all, of them.
Call to Power II made up for the failure of its predecessor and runs second only to the critically acclaimed and innovative Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Call to Power II is an excellent choice for die-hard fans of the Civilization iseries and is definitely worth a try for fans of turn-based strategy games.
Though it can't compare to Alpha Centauri, it's still number two and ain't bad. How to run this game on modern Windows PC? Contact: , done in 0. Search a Classic Game:. Call to Power 2 screenshots:. While the morals and ethics are fine in that the wonder means that our planet now comes before anything else the wonder has no effect on your people's happiness and this leads to a thoroughly useless wonder that is potentially dangerous if built so clean up your cities before building it The Library is where you can get all the information you need about a game concept, unit or technology.
It is usually accompanied by a little spinning image and both historical and game-related text. In boxes to the left are the requirements for the object in question, i. This is great information, and ought to be displayed whenever a new tech is discovered.
The details of every technology is available even if it has yet to be discovered, making it possible for you to plan ahead with a certain goal in mind. In Civ2 you were able to "ask" your science advisor when selecting a new tech to research, which tech would lead towards a certain goal in the shape of a unit, tech or city improvement. Sadly, this is not possible in Civ:CTP. There is the option to create different templates that you can use for your cities.
You create a build queue and this can then later be applied to a city either in this game or in a future game. For many this will be a very useful tool, as the first things built in a newly founded city are almost always the same: A warrior, a granary and then a new settler for instance. While this is helpful, it would be easier with a system like in SMAC where you assign a governor to fulfill a purpose of improving your city in a certain direction. The timeline and the speed with which it moves in Civ:CTP means that it's not likely you'll be able to use a queue for very long as new improvements become available very fast and a build queue can not involve units or buildings which are not yet available.
One of the truly new things about Civ:CTP is the battle system. In Civ , Civ2 and SMAC you were forced to attack one unit against another, without being able to combine more than one unit in an attack. For many, this was the major problem with the games, and Civ:CTP has found a new system.
You can now join up to nine units in an army and have them attack as one. They will be put in three lines with a maximum of five in each and never more units in the 2nd or 3rd line than the one in front. The front line will have the best assault or defense troops, depending on your part in the battle and the second line has the ranged weapons. The attacking army's ranged troops shoot first, followed by the defender's long-range troops.
Only front line troops take damage, and after both long-range lines fire, the front line of the attackers and defenders engage in melee combat. After the first such round, you regroup or rather, the AI does it for you and start over until one side is eliminated.
While a retreat option would have been nice not to mention realistic , the new combat system is excellent since it both allows for more depth in the combat and also lets superior technology dominate the less superior. In Civ2 if you had a rifleman, odds were he could handle a lot of older units without taking too much damage because of the unit vs unit system. Now, provided your opponent amasses enough forces, you can't rely on technology alone.
One advanced unit, say a Machine Gunner isn't likely to defeat five Samurai, because of their superior numbers. One problem that is not really worked through is the issue of aircraft. I believe in bombing my opponents into submission, but I'm sorry to say that this is not possible in Civ:CTP. I tried my luck with four stealth bombers my air force's pride against five old units and to my horror I got my ass severely kicked.
Apparently, the units are no good in melee combat huh? Had I bombarded from a distance, with token melee units in my attack force, I would have survived. Still, why the B2's dove low enough for the musketeers to hit, I'll never understand.
The whole issue of aircraft is troubling and must have caused a few grey hairs on the Civ:CTP design team. In my opinion, airplanes fight on their own battleground much like the sea and dry land are different. While, granted, they do attack units on the ground or on the water, they do so from the air and there are certain ancient units which should not be able to hit an airplane while the airplane will have no problem hitting the unit on the ground.
How this is best portrayed in the game I can't say, but my feelings are that units from the pre-modern age should not be able to hit airplanes.
While this could lead to a race to reach airplanes first and then bomb your opponents without being subject to harm, that could be countered by having airplanes be available a bit later or be a bit harder to obtain. Accompanying a new battle system is a set of units that go beyond the traditional forms of war. Lawyers, slavers, clerics, corporate branches and ecoterrorists are units which take from your opponent or fight in a way that goes beyond the traditional attack vs.
A corporate branch can infect an enemy city and gain a certain percentage of its gold, while a slaver can grab citizens and make them work as slaves. While especially the latter to most, if not all, countries would be considered and act of war, it is not. There are several ways to prey upon your opponent and it does have its advantages. One corporate branch unit is expensive but it can infect many cities and cripple an opponent's economy while benefiting yours. The units are many but they don't all seem too well-balanced.
The slaver is available at the start of the game and the problem is that at this point, the loss of just a single citizen is as devastating as the loss of a city can be later in the game. The abolitionist is also a problem as she is not available until later in the game and you thus do not have a defence against the slaver besides expelling the unit.
Expelling him may sound easy, but he is unfortunately invisible to you unless you move a unit into the square he occupies. Civ:CTP also moves into new areas for a civ-game -- the bottom of the sea and space. It is now possible to build space colonies in stationary earth orbit and colonies on the bottom of the sea. While I have yet to try a sea colony, I did manage to build a space city in a game played on the beta-version.
Building the star ladder wonder I got an automatic city at the top of this wonder. The problem with this is that the star ladder with accompanying city is available before terrain improvements in space are. So my Memphis was stuck with one worker who could not produce anything and the city was thus frozen until I discovered the tech that allowed me to build food pods and assembly bays up there. It's not the smartest of design decisions and the Star Ladder ought not to have been made available until space cities in general were.
Similarly, the Labyrinth wonder which grants free caravans can also be made available through research Ship Building before Caravans in general are Trade. Bugs are a part of every game I have played for years and this one is no exception. Problems with the new battle system have, on occasion, resulted in me not having all units acting as defenders.
On one occasion I was rushing a phalanx to help the defense of my city one legion but the only unit defending the city was the phalanx and the legion just disappeared when the city was lost. Reports online speak of other minor bugs and problems with the CD-check.
In order to start a new game, the CD must be in the drive and apparently this is failing for some people. Also reported are slowdowns on supposedly lesser PC's, even some at the size of mine see above , but I never had any problems on the three machines I tried the game on.
All in all, the bugs are not too bad, but at a level where I would still expect a patch or upgrade soon. Critical to any game is its balance.
It does not matter if you have a great-looking game with splendid graphics and interesting gameplay if it's not well-balanced. Civ:CTP 's balance is questionable at best. While there are a few complaints about other balance problems, the main one seems to be the way the game favors numbers over technology.
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