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REVIEWS

First, may I bore you with a history lesson (fitting, concerning the games content, right? Right?). A small game company, Hartland Trefoil, creates a board game titled Civilization. A than well-known wargame company, Avalon Hill, decided to purchase the rights to publish the game. It enjoys immediate success for a long time to come. Sid Meier, now a legendary computer game designer, enjoys the boardgame so much that he decides to create a similar version for PC users, published by Microprose (still with me?). It too enjoys immediate success, spawning a well-received sequel and three add-ons (Scenarios, Fantastic Worlds and Civ II Gold, which is the multiplayer version). Now it gets a little confusing. Sid Meier moves on from Microprose to form his own game company, Firaxis games. He also creates what most people feel is the true sequel to Civilization II in the form of Alpha Centauri (with Brian Reynolds, of course). So, with Sid Meier out of the picture, things looked a little grim for the Civilization franchise, now owned by Microprose, right?

Maybe not. Activision, in an attempt to branch into new areas of PC gaming, decides to create their own Civilization game. Now you may be asking how they can do that if Microprose owns the rights to the name. Here goes; Microprose received permission from Hartland Trefoil, the original designers of the game, to use the name. Activision went to Avalon Hill, the game company with the rights to publish the boardgame, to receive permission to use the name. A lawsuit develops over who legitimately owns the right to use the name in the PC gaming world. An agreement is reached. Microprose retains the name Civilization. Activision is given permission to use the name once (the series will be changed from Civilization to Call to Power). Now, while they continued their petty squabbling, they failed to notice the real threat on the horizon, the Borg…uh, I mean Hasbro. Hasbro, now reaping a nice profit by converting board games to computer games, decides it wants the Civilization brand name to themselves. They assimilate Microprose (who own the name from Hartland Trefoil) and Avalon Hill (who gave Activision rights to use the name), all to own the Civilization franchise. Interesting background for a computer game, huh? Fine, I’ll start the review.

Activision attempted to refine, update and expand upon the Civilization theme. Whereas Civ II went to the modern age, CTP goes beyond to the year 3,000 A.D. They also wanted to have a new battlefield. They created a stack unit measure, and some new covert units. With multiplayer right out of the box, the game was destined for greatness. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, when a game tries to do too much, it fails somewhere along the line.

Let’s begin with the interface. Most people find it confusing, whereas I found it much easier to manage a large empire than in previous titles. Whereas in Civ II you had to enter a new screen to micromanage your cities, CTP offers all that information in the bottom of the main window screen. Yet perhaps the reason for that seems to be game speed. CTP has problems when it needs to load a new window; namely it takes a little longer than it should. CTP also seems to be geared towards mouse users. The keyboard movement and associated commands are a bit cumbersome, though the use of the mouse is intuitive. Be wary though of plotting courses for units with the mouse, one wrong click and you may send them off in the wrong direction (though I’ve had fewer problems with this than others have).

Next stop, aesthetics. The graphics are great for this type of game, coming equipped with a high-resolution feature. The units have their own sounds and unique movements. The terrain features are much improved from previous titles. The music is adequate. The Wonders of the World movies, on the other hand, are blocky and uninspiring.

Now the core of the game, gameplay. Compared to previous Civ titles, CTP feels like more of an empire building game. That is we don’t have to worry about things like unit support. Your empire works together to create public works, these points than being used to create terrain improvements like farms and roads (as opposed to the old way of using settlers, which only added to your unit support problems). But that’s about where the positive ends.

The combat system is flawed. While CTP introduces stacked units (up to nine in a square), it does not execute it well. This is true when archaic pikemen are able to take out a squad of modern day bombers. This goes beyond unrealism into the realm of outright stupidity. A weird window is also present (remember those loading times for excess windows). It basically shows the units squaring off and any modifiers. Useless. Why didn’t they instead include a strategic mode within that window ala the Heroes of Might and Magic series? I would welcome the opportunity to move my nine stacked units around on a strategic level in attempts to outflank the enemy. Subversive combat also takes a hit. CTP has clerics, televangelists and slavers. Units that can cause heavy damage to your empire with difficult defensive measures required to defeat them. This in and of itself would not be a problem save that to be defensive prevents you from being offensive and effectively playing the game. Why?

CTP suffers from a slow unit creation rate. In the early game, each turn is 50 years long. In the later half turns become five years long to even two years long. Yet it seems that to create units still takes, say 8 turns, regardless of how many years it is. Same goes for the construction of buildings and Wonders of the World. By the time you have created a Wonder of the World, another culture has created one that leaves yours obsolete. This creates one of the biggest gripes I have with CTP. Why do turns vary within the game? Everything you do in the early part of the game really is an attempt to prep yourself for the latter half, or the modern era. I would not mind attempting to create a medieval Roman type of empire using archaic units, but due to the time limit (units becoming obsolete) and long production times, by the time you have a sizable group of knights, your opponent is fielding musketeers. Than again with the screwy combat system, you can still win a fight. It just does not feel realistic and robs the fun of it all. (In otherwords they rob you of the chance at creating and running a medieval empire and that pisses me off). And for whatever reason, the archaic time frame seems much more speeded up than in Civ II. You have no reason to create ancient Wonders of the World that will become obsolete shortly (they should at least give you extra gold in the latter half to represent tourism). It would be wiser to expand to new cities and concentrate on science endeavors. Now, the last half of the game is more enjoyable with the futuristic units and combat possibilities, but the first half has bored you long before you get there.

Speaking of science, or the tech tree, it appears that you get no satisfaction from new discoveries. It’s more like here’s another one, next. Again, its more of a rush up the tech ladder in order to prepare yourself for the last half of the game.

CTP suffers from lack of options in order to tailor the game; combat features, time limit, etc. Most glaring of all is the lack of a map of Earth. Instead they created it and posted it on the web site. But how did it not end up in the box? A majority of players use predominantly a map of Earth.

In the end, Civilization: Call to Power suffers from a lack of play balancing (or should I say beta testing?). Activision promises a patch to fix things, but in no way should we have bought it in the current state. The multiplayer support out of the box suffers from crashes. But as the game stands, it has huge potential. Meaning that if the patches do come in a solid state, they will make CTP what it should have been. Unfortunately, games like Sierra’s Lords of Magic prove that a patch might be too little too late.

If you like to comment on this review, please post a message at the forum.
Reviewed by A. Sage

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