Civilization: Call to Power

Rating: 3.5/5

Civilizations are at war... for your gaming cash. Fans of Sim Meier's pioneering Civilization series effectively have three new titles to choose from - Microprose's Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition, Alpha Centauri (Civilization in outer space) from Sid Meier, who designed the original versions and this version, from Activision, which emerged after a furious legal battle over the Civilization name.

Civilization has apparently sold more than 2.5 million copies in its various incarnations, and it is widely considered to be one of the best strategy games of all time. But processing power has shot ahead in the years since it was launched (Civilization II ran on a 33MHz 486!) so it was only natural that designers would take the basic framework and build on it.

For those who somehow missed all the fuss, in Civilization you started as a stone age tribe in an unexplored world. You had to build cities, manage your economy, do scientific research (to get from the stone age to the information age), explore and then deal with the other civilizations you met. You could trade with them, share technology, form a military alliance with them or (if you were feeling particularly brutal) you could build mighty armies and try to wipe them out. You could win by conquering everyone else or by building a starship and colonizing the stars - either way, the game

The folks at Activision who produced Civilization: Call to Power (CTP) didn't have the principal designers to work with (they were off producing Alpha Centauri). They nonetheless recognised the importance of making the game feel familiar to players of the earlier games.

Feel, but not look - they have taken advantage of the processing power at their disposal to make all the units and the terrain look much better. The units look different when they face in different directions and they animate when attacking, defending or dying. Areas of the same terrain type no longer all look exactly the same - some desert squares have cactus in them, others have dead cattle skulls - which makes the maps look more interesting. It can also be slightly confusing if you are trying to figure out at a glance whether a square contains a useful trade good or is just differently drawn for variety's sake.

They have also re-designed and rationalised the interface, making it easier to use. In earlier Civ games, the display to examine or change a city's production filled your whole screen - now all the city information you need fits into a panel at the bottom. If you want to move units around you can now click on a destination and you will see the path your unit will take and how long it will take them to reach it - you can also group units together for movement and for combat.

The game can have quite a steep learning curve, particularly if you haven't played the earlier Civilization games. It has a "tutorial" mode, but that only covers the most basic game features. Sometimes things happen during the tutorial that you don't get help with at all - at one point my city rioted and I had no idea why or what I was supposed to do to stop it. There are no help buttons scattered around for help on the particular function you are performing at the time - instead you have to consult the online help and try to figure out which part of it you need to be looking at (there is no search function). There are a few tools to make managing large empires a little easier - you can set up and save default production queues so you can get your cities going with a few clicks. Similarly, if you want your cities to concentrate on growing, building units, research or other functions you can click on a button and the computer will move your city's population around to try to maximise the element you want.

Combat is improved - but not not as much as it seems at first glance. In older Civ games there was little point in putting several units together to attack - if one unit was killed, they all would be. In CTP, whenever units meet in combat, a little mini-map opens and up to nine units on each side fight it out. Long range units like archers or artillery can attack the enemy from behind the protection of front-line units. Unfortunately, you have no control over how the combat goes - there is no maneuvering - and it's still a fight to the death.

Trade and the practice of building city improvements has been rationalised. In earlier Civilizations, you had to move "caravans" between cities to establish trade routes, and to build roads, farms and other improvements you had to use settlers, which meant more units to keep track of. Now both are "virtual". You build up a stock of construction points which you use to buy new roads and the like across your empire. Similarly, when you build a trade route, it isn't displayed on-screen - instead you can set up all of your trade using the trade window. CTP adds special trade resources dotted around the map so you can choose to build your cities close to them and try to (for example) corner the market in oil or opium. The trade routes are visible on the map, which allows other players to sail over and pirate your resources unless you protect them.

As you would expect, CTP adds more options in each of the game's main areas. There are more units available - though not as many as you might think. Considering that the game now goes to the year 3000 instead of 2020 you might expect dozens more - in fact there are still only 67 possible units, including 12 different "non-combat" units with special powers. That seems like a lot of options, but remember that as the game goes on units become obsolete and that by the third millennium war and development can cover orbit, air, ground, sea and underwater. Especially in the early years you often don't have many military unit choices.

It's only a personal view, but I feel the profusion of special units with often frankly silly powers is an irritant more than a benefit. Some might even be offended by them - for quite a long period in the game you can purchase "slaver" units to capture enemy populations and carry them home in chains - realistic, perhaps, but more than a little controversial. The "televangelist" and "lawyer" units are likewise jokey, game-unbalancing and certainly offensive to some.

While Civilization had the traditional seven wonders of the world (which if you built them gave your whole empire a big advantage) and Civilization II introduced seven more, CTP brings no fewer than 35. There are also 12 different forms of government you can choose, adding options like fascism, ecotopia, technocracy and virtual democracy to the later game. There are now ten different "branches" of technology to study, with more than 100 different advances possible.

Unfortunately, for the first several hours, while your civilizations are in their infancy, technology develops very slowly. In fact, a key weakness of CTP which it shares with its predecessors is just how long it takes. There are no pre-created scenarios available (and there is no map or game editor), so every game has to start with the (rather dull) stone age. It takes hours to progress further. Although there is a multi-player option, I can't see how you could get enough people together for long enough to play through to completion.

There is much more to mention about this game than I could possibly fit in, but what it boils down to is this. CTP is a good game in its own right, and a significant advance over Civilization II. But I fear it will be too complex and too slow-moving for many. Most damningly, though, it is just not as elegantly designed as the recently-released Alpha Centauri. If you insist on fighting on Earth instead of a new planet with weird rules, or if you have enough cash to buy both games, it's worth getting CTP - otherwise, Alpha Centauri is a better investment.