Call to Power 2

Rating:
Summary: Terrible, don't waste money wait for civ3
Review: Activision can't make Civilization, only Sid Meirs can. don't waste money wait for Civilization 3

Rating:
Summary: I have to admit... I was dissapointed...
Review: After hearing so much about CTP 2, about the "great" campaigns it would include, and everything, I have to tell you, I am dissapointed in it. I had read in some site that CTP 2 would in include a World War campaign (don't remember if it was WWI or WWII) but anyways this was what I had been looking forwards to the most... Sadly there was no such campaign.... It is also still TOO similar to CTP 1, i mean I expected new units, a whole new things... If it was going to be like this, they should have just made an expansion for the first game and sold it cheaper. If you've never played CTP, I highly recommend it, but if you already own CTP, either wait until the price goes down or dont get it because its current price is NOT worth it since it's almost like playing CTP with only SLIGHT changes

Rating:
Summary: Call to Power II is a big improvement over its predecessor
Review: Although the graphics are poor, as in all games of this type, the game is excellent. It is hard to tear yourself away when one sits down and starts playing. From the great installation to the superb videos, and from the exciting gameplay to the fine multiplayer options, all aspects of the game were gone over with a fine comb. The gameplay spans many millennia, taking you through various different ages. There are also a great number of units, cities and buildings, and all are unique. However, it may seem peculiar that Susan B. Anthony builds the Great Wall or that Napoleon Bonaparte build the Chitzen Itza. The various civilizations that one is able to play do not show any particularities, and they are all identical. Which brings us to the diplomacy manager. This, along with the rest of the interface, is the best I have ever seen in a game of this type. Although it may seem a bit confusing and overwhelming, you'll quickly get used to it. To finish off, I strongly recommend this game to everyone, except for the most hardcore gamer, who might find the game boring. Activision has outdone itself (again), without the help of Mr. Meier.

Rating:
Summary: a fairly cool game
Review: Call to Power II is a pretty cool game. I'm new to the turn based genre and although I liked it at first, I decided to stick to real time. I mean it's still a good game and the level of complexity is staggering, allowing for hours of gameplay and that's only the first 20-30 years out of 6000+. You start out in an ancient land around 3600 B.C. and build a capitol for your empire. From there you create units, build more cities, and explore the "world" which is quite vast. You can "research" all kinds of stuff and will be informed when something new has been "discovered". As you progress thru time your options, units, and cities get more and more advanced and you go all the way into the distant future. The control panel is easy to understand and gives you complete access to every aspect of the game. There is also the "Great Library", an immense resource of knowledge with concise info on your empire and the various advancements you can create for your cities and units. The graphics are great and it runs 100% smooth on my PIII 500. Overall a very well done game. I prolly won't play it again but I give props to the game's authors!! Any Civilization fan will like this game!

Rating:
Summary: Not part of the Civ series
Review: Contrary to popular belief, this title is not part of the Civilization series. This is Activision's attempt at a Civ clone. In some areas it succeeds, but in most it fails. This game had no affiliation with Sid Meier, creator of CivI and II (the latter arguably the best pc strategy game ever).

Pros:

Good government selection. Some new governments are included, like Fascism, Technocracy, Theocracy, Ecology, Corporate Republic, etc.

Armies and Fleets. In CivII a stack of units could be killed in what attack. This is not so.

Automated Improvements. The government automatically does terrain improvements.

Diplomacy and Trade: Both are well planned and fairly extensive.

Cons:

Diplomacy and Trade: Neither are used to their full extent, and if you try, other civilizations refuse. There's all types of stuff, like trade embargoes, etc, but the AI never does them.

Civilizations: Over 30 Civs to choose from, but there's really no difference in between them. Also, whenever I play, I'm always up against the same Civs: French, British, German, Irish, Scottish, American, and Native Americans. That gets boring very fast.

Slow: The interface is slow, even on a 128MB Ram P3 500mhz machine.

Scenarios: Only 4 of them, and none are any good.

NO CUSTOMIZATION OF UNITS OR CIVS: In Civ2 anyone could make their own units, terrains, technologies, scenarios, maps, etc. You can't do any of this in CTP2.

Conclusion: Civ3 should be out in the US within 2 months, it's coming to Mac, and to Europe. Civ3 has Sid Meier working on it. Civ3 has elaborate diplomacy and trade. Civ3 has culture points, great military leaders, many unit animations, civ specific units, new paths to victory, total customization of units, civs, techs, maps, etc, has better graphics, more realistic, more units, will ship with 12 scenarios, and so much more. The bottom line: save your cash for Civ3, it's just months away.

Rating:
Summary: A rush job?
Review: CTP 2 is very difficult to compare to the first Call to Power (which is itself quite different from the original Civilization series). Many new features have been added, and a few taken out, which in the end makes it feel more "real". Suggestions from users were the basis for most of the revisions, making this almost a game "for players, by players".

One of the most powerful additions is an apparent revamping of the senario system. Now, the senarios are not just limited extentions of the main game: they are almost games in themselves. Although only two (save the World Map, which is just a game on the good ol' planet Earth) are included the potential for development is huge. This of course means that individual users will have a bit of a time actually creating their own senarios, which would involve lots of programming no doubt, but I believe this to be one feature Activision will be sure to push.

Overall, however, the game feels terribly rushed. Every other version of the game, from the first Civ on, has been carefully constructed with practically few bugs or faults present in the initial release. CTP 2, however, has a number of little glitches which, although they do not hamper gameplay or crash the program, are a bit annoying. Also, the interface seems to be geared exclusively with people who played the orignial CTP in mind and does not seem to have the beginer in mind. With most of the computer users in the US devotees of the Civ series, however, this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Given a few design and possible planning faults, this game still has some room for improvement, perhaps in the form of a downloadable patch. Even so, this still does not keep it from deserving 5 stars. This game, once a person gets used to the new interface and concepts, has a lot to offer players.

Rating:
Summary: Dumb
Review: CTP2 is most frequently compared to Sid Myer's celebrated civilation series, which I've never played but read many opinions of. The CTP2 competion frequently gets the better review, but if you notice, the reviewers were already loyal fans of the Sid's series and may have been biased toward their darling empire builder game and designer. Who has played CTP first, besides myself?

This turn based strategy game allows the empire builder to mull over the empire's statistics: units, cities, government, diplomacy, scientific research, and the ruler takes as long as required until there is enough cofidence to hit (end turn) thereby allowing the empire to advance a few more years. Your descisions will include focusing on scientific research, the need for a viable defense, or an aggressive offense, deciding wheather to negotiate with neighboring empires, descideing wheather to allocate resources to war units and research or building cities filled with effecient factories, universites driving sciense research, or happiness increasing shrines, theathers and clinics to keep the masses sustained.

I've played "real time" strategy games like Age of Empires, but much prefer this "turn based". If being rushed to constantly pick items as quickly as possible with your mouse, with speed being more vital than strategy to the games outcome, then this is not your cup of tea, however, if you enjoy strategic board games like chess or risk, well then you can expect that the computer can and will do GREAT WONDERS to the depth and richness of game play -- with thanks to games like CTP2. It really stirs the imagination of the gamer. And it does really consume LOT AND LOTS of time to play a single game (thousands of empire years will elapse, a few years at each turn, and there is lots of data for the perfectionest to ponder over before making the "everthings ready" decision to advance to the next few years.

AS I've said, I've never play Sid's famous civ series, as CTP was my first experience to this genra. I don't know how I would respond to playing CIV without the CTP2 interface and features that I've come to expect. Civ does NOT have, as I understand it:
1> unit stacking (more than one unit per tile, with direct, ranged, bombard, and flanking unit abilities)
2> The Empire manager (allows naming mayors for individual cities to focus on strategic goals without micromanagment, if desired) Gold & public works points shared accross the empire.
3> Public Works, allows for tile improvements using public works points without migrating settlers to those tiles.
4> a multi-player option, network or internet

I wish I could say that this is a FUNNER game than the Civ servies, since I am now such a loyal CTP2 fan. But being that I can't really compare the two, I won't say that. But I do wish I could get an oppinion from someone who played CTP first, and then CIV second (is Civ really superior?)

CTP2 is an excellant game. The game takes 30mintues strategy investment, then ADDICTION comes as the problem solving mandates you stick with it, to fix the current crisis or eminant danger. And then before you notice you've cancled your weekend to finish the game, and then you contemplate burning the software in a bonfire once the weekend is over and you sat infront of the CTP2 all that time.

Rating:
Summary: turn based addiction
Review: CTP2 is most frequently compared to Sid Myer's celebrated civilation series, which I've never played but read many opinions of. The CTP2 competion frequently gets the better review, but if you notice, the reviewers were already loyal fans of the Sid's series and may have been biased toward their darling empire builder game and designer. Who has played CTP first, besides myself?

This turn based strategy game allows the empire builder to mull over the empire's statistics: units, cities, government, diplomacy, scientific research, and the ruler takes as long as required until there is enough cofidence to hit (end turn) thereby allowing the empire to advance a few more years. Your descisions will include focusing on scientific research, the need for a viable defense, or an aggressive offense, deciding wheather to negotiate with neighboring empires, descideing wheather to allocate resources to war units and research or building cities filled with effecient factories, universites driving sciense research, or happiness increasing shrines, theathers and clinics to keep the masses sustained.

I've played "real time" strategy games like Age of Empires, but much prefer this "turn based". If being rushed to constantly pick items as quickly as possible with your mouse, with speed being more vital than strategy to the games outcome, then this is not your cup of tea, however, if you enjoy strategic board games like chess or risk, well then you can expect that the computer can and will do GREAT WONDERS to the depth and richness of game play -- with thanks to games like CTP2. It really stirs the imagination of the gamer. And it does really consume LOT AND LOTS of time to play a single game (thousands of empire years will elapse, a few years at each turn, and there is lots of data for the perfectionest to ponder over before making the "everthings ready" decision to advance to the next few years.

AS I've said, I've never play Sid's famous civ series, as CTP was my first experience to this genra. I don't know how I would respond to playing CIV without the CTP2 interface and features that I've come to expect. Civ does NOT have, as I understand it:
1> unit stacking (more than one unit per tile, with direct, ranged, bombard, and flanking unit abilities)
2> The Empire manager (allows naming mayors for individual cities to focus on strategic goals without micromanagment, if desired) Gold & public works points shared accross the empire.
3> Public Works, allows for tile improvements using public works points without migrating settlers to those tiles.
4> a multi-player option, network or internet

I wish I could say that this is a FUNNER game than the Civ servies, since I am now such a loyal CTP2 fan. But being that I can't really compare the two, I won't say that. But I do wish I could get an oppinion from someone who played CTP first, and then CIV second (is Civ really superior?)

CTP2 is an excellant game. The game takes 30mintues strategy investment, then ADDICTION comes as the problem solving mandates you stick with it, to fix the current crisis or eminant danger. And then before you notice you've cancled your weekend to finish the game, and then you contemplate burning the software in a bonfire once the weekend is over and you sat infront of the CTP2 all that time.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite on Meiers level!
Review: Don't get me wrong. 4 stars to me is a very high mark for a game. However, it is not quite as good or intrguing as Sid Meiers version of civilization. The graphics are all very nice and the audio is very well developed. It just lack that little extra in order for it not to receive 5 stars. Other then that I would give this game in question, i.e., Call to Power 2
by Activision the following verdict: recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Good game, a needed improvement over the first Call to Power
Review: Finally Activision has made the needed changes to the original Call to Power. The original game created huge expectations but failed to deliver on a lot of levels. Even if this new version does not revolutionize the concepts of the classic Civilization series games, at least it addresses the many deficiencies of the CTP 1.

There are some new features, but these offer only a small improvement. Diplomacy is the most notable new feature, with the ability to trade proposals and counter proposals with other players. However, the vast majority of my carefully constructed offers met a frustrating blank wall of unexplained rejections. The original's easy to use interface has been upgraded to give greater depth and content, it takes a bit of learning but it's effort repaid. Gone are most of the city management features in the pursuit of a true empire-building concept. Mayors can be employed to manage all the mundane decisions using the same approach as computer players. Unfortunately the AI has not improved greatly, the computer will struggle to give a medium skilled human player a run for their money. The real good news, I think, is that it looks like this effort is more open to player customisation than the first attempt, which had to rely heavily on customer mods to reach the level of playability.

This is still not a great single player game. Unless you are among the small number who bought and liked the original title, which bore the time honoured label, best wait for the release of Civilization 3 next year.