Developer/Publisher: Activision
Reviewed by IceWolf
on 03/09/00
Article
Discussion Forum
Some
background: I love turn-based strategy games. I own every Civilization
title from Civilization II onwards. This includes Test
of Time, and Call to Power. I also own Alpha Centauri,
which I consider to be part of the series. So, naturally, I
got my grubby paws on a copy of Call to Power II. This
review was originally written before Christmas, but I ran into
a bug (see Gameplay), and it took Activision
quite a while to get back to me. They did eventually give me
a solution, so I rewrote my review, much of which compares and
contrasts the title with other games in the genre.
First
Impressions:
I
was extremely pleased when I first started up Call to Power II.
The graphics are beautiful. Virtually every aspect of the world
can be customized. The ability to change animations, tutorial text,
size of the world, difficulty level, and the number of opponents
provides the player with a significant amount of control. You have
your choice of any of 41 nationalities (though it has no effect
on game play). You can customize your own name, and choose your
gender (again, no effect on gameplay). The interface is fairly intuitive
for those who are used to turn-based strategy games. There are,
however, a few things that may throw CTP I experts: the "city view"
is gone, for example. While all this is great, and I wish more games
were like it, the biggest problem is that it just doesn't seem all
that different (or that much improved) from the original Call to
Power, which has most of the same options. Indeed, as the game rolled
on, I found myself getting somewhat frustrated. But I'll cover that
in Gameplay. I would have given CTP II top marks for a first impression,
had it not been for the copycat effect.
Graphics:
As
I said, these are terrific. Nevertheless, they aren't much of
an improvement over the previous game.
Sound/Music:
Everything
sounds fine, but there are numerous times when a unit will get
stuck in a loop with its corresponding sound file and cause the
game to crash. Also, the music seems repetitive: the same track
plays over and over again. This became grating after five minutes,
and I turned the speaker volume down just to avoid it.
Gameplay:
As with most games of this genre, one starts out with a couple of settler units, and a mostly unexplored map. Settlers are used to build cities. Cities produce gold, and can build military units, city improvements (which can have all kinds of effects), and Wonders. Wonders are one-of-a-kind great projects - the Pyramids, for example. Although there are lots of different Wonders in the game, the civilization who builds a specific Wonder first is the only one who reaps its benefits.
CTP II departs from Civ II (and not in a good way) in the way Wonders must be constructed. If you are building a Wonder, and one of your opponents completes that Wonder first, you lose all accumulated production. You get a one turn warning when this is about to happen. If you have enough gold you can rush your own Wonder to completion, but this is the only way to avoid the loss of your efforts.
In the early stages, the game is about exploration and getting your basic infrastructure in place by building lots of cities. It is crucial to build settlers often, although you will need at least one defensive unit in each city. It is also important to pick good sites for your cities. For example, if you build up in the mountains, your people may starve to death.
Managing cities is easier than in Civ II, although there is still a lot to do. You can choose to assign a "mayor" to a city, and let the computer handle it automatically, based on where you tell it to concentrate. Unfortunately, here Activision chose to discard the City View from CTP I which allowed you to position your workforce according to your own preference.
You research technologies, choosing from a list of those available to you. As your civilization gains knowledge, you can build new units and old ones will become obsolete. This is only sensible, since you probably won't want to build phalanxes if your opponents are building machine-gunners. The tech tree is not the same as it was in CTP I, so tactics that worked there will not work here.
Diplomacy is vastly improved over the first Call to Power. In that game, there was no rhyme or reason to the computer opponents' behavior. Here, they at least behave sensibly until you do something to annoy them, such as parking a military unit in their territory. However, it isn't all that it could be, by any means, which has been a major topic of discussion on the Forums.
Enjoyment:
Activision made a few annoying decisions that had a serious impact on my enjoyment of this game. First, the End of Turn logic seems buggy. In Civ II, the player cycles through all of his or her units, and receives a popup warning if he or she clicks End Turn before all the units have moved. This feature does not exist in CTP II, which makes it very easy to forget about a unit.
Another annoyance is the number of turns that it takes to build units and improvements. I found myself spending too much time clicking End Turn because all of my cities were busy producing items and all my units were occupied. Reducing this across the board by about a fourth would definitely have increased my enjoyment level. 12-14 turns to produce the earliest military unit is far, far too many.
In many ways, this game is simply the original Call to Power with a few modifications and some enhancements in the diplomacy. It's more of an expansion pack or a patch and bug fix pack than an independent game. There is one patch out for it already, which definitely improves game stability.
Finally - if you play on the easiest difficulty level with fewer than the maximum number of opponents, and you customize the world (yes, that's a lot of parameters), you'll get the game into a configuration where you cannot restore a saved game. It will apparently load, but you'll receive an error every time you try to move a unit. This is annoying to say the least.
The good news is that there's a fix for the problem. In the directory where CTP II is installed, there's a file called userprofile.txt. Edit this with Notepad, and find the line that says "DebugSlic=Yes". Change "Yes" to "No". Make this change while the game is not running. This allows you to restore saved games properly.
CTP II does keep the quasi-open architecture that started with Civ II. This allows you to modify almost any aspect of the game, though you do so at your own risk. There is no real documentation on what to change. Most support for this sort of thing is done on a third-party forum, rather than Activision's own boards.
Multiplayer:
Not tested. Like my better half, I rarely get involved in multiplayer games. However, Call to Power II provides support for IPX, TCP/IP LAN, and Internet play. Given that it is a turn-based game, I'm surprised they didn't include "hot seat" and "play-by-mail" as options.
Overall
Impression:
It
looks pretty. Activision did fix many of the problems that existed
with the previous title. Unfortunately, they didn't go far enough.
I wouldn't pay $49.99 for it, but at this point in time, the price
has dropped enough that it's worth getting if you're a Civ buff.
Marketing
Efforts Towards Women:
Nil. You can choose your gender, but it has no effect on the game. The computer personalities are quasi-fixed.
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