As we did with Civ2:MGE and CTP1, we are happy to present you with a preview of the latest civilization game, Call to Power II. Beyond that, we present you with reviews from actual players of the game, as well as links to the entry of CTP2 in the Apolyton Links&Products Directory(where more player reviews can be found) and to the previews and reviews of CTP2 in various gaming sites.

Three Years Review

After three year of Call to Power 2, Locutus reviews what was happening in the last three years about mod making and the source code release. Read.

Player Reviews

Christoph Nahr's Review

Originally posted on the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic newsgroup. Quote: " Too many flaws for a classic but a good game still, and could be great if it's properly patched." Read.

Tilemacho's Review

Review after the first game. "Once again I felt that "one more turn feeling" which to say the trough had missed since Civ2!" Read.

JDI_Falcon's Review

Quote: "I cannot put my finger on it but CTP 2 has something that CTP did not that actually makes you want to play the game" Read.

DarthVeda's Review

CTP1 Hater turns into a CTP2 Lover. "I don't doubt that I may very well finally put my copy of Civ2 to rest" Read.

Apolyton Preview, Part 2: CTP2 Previewed, The Real Thing

Coming very soon, no release date though... Or won't ever.

Apolyton Preview, Part 1: Daily Impressions

Day One

Mark's first day with ctp2: Installation, System Requirements, Difficulty Levels, Screen Resolutions, Moving Units, Right-click Menus, Great Library, Diplomacy Impressions, Great Autosave, 32 Civs, No Crash. Read.

Day Two

Second day for Mark: Explanations, Replies, No Crash, No Crash, No Crash, Manual in electronic format, Army Management, Units stats, Music, Radar Map buttons, Append to Multiple Build Queues, Retreat Button, Comparing Governments, Not yet 32 civs. Read.

Day Three

Explanations, Replies, Yes 32 Civs, New Way For Resource Gathering, AIPopCheat, Too Many Screens, Borders and Trespassing, 1280x1024 With "Clear" Map, ICS still there or not, CTRL+S CTRL+L Read.

Day Four

Text files, Trade Routes, Commerce Tile Improvements, Scientific Victory, Screens and LDL Files, Alexander's Way To Victory Read.

Day Five

Map/Scenario Editing, Why He Hates You, Mayors Do Tiles, Control Panel Totally Gone, Threats Work, Advices In Unit Manager, Flanking Units Read.

Day Six

The Impossible Medium Game, Reply to Ralf, Reply to Slingshot Read.

Day Seven

Editor Documentation, Editor Experiences, Map Sizes/World Map, Diplomacy: The Friendly Side, Diplomacy: The Ugly Side, Diplomacy: Treaties Read.

Thanks to the brilliant insight of some of Activision's (former) game developers, the most distinctive feature about the Call to Power games is without a doubt their customizability. Of course, now that the source code has been released, this has feature has become infinitely stronger than it already was. The community that has been modmaking and customizing these two games and that has lobbied for the release of the code has a history going back 5 years. But only a handful of people have been regulars at Apolyton since the site's inception, so many people are probably not aware of some or most of this history. In this article I will dive into the deepest corners of my mind to try and tell the tale of the CtP modmaking community, and how the release of the source code came to be. (I apologize in advance for leaving out any important people, mods, events, etc -- my memory has more holes than Swiss cheese, so I probably didn't mean to.)

First things first:
I have a Cyrix 300 (225mhz) with 64mb of ram and a Voodoo 3 2000. One of the major complaints after the original CTP release was how slow it ran even on extremely powerfull machines, well with CTP 2 there is no such problem. Even on my weak Cyrix computer the time between turns is short, the unit movement smooth and the sound is clear and unchoppy. This is also on a decent resolution of 1280 X 1024.

Now the review:
OK, now I absolutely hated CTP. I bought it and within days had sold it again on EBay for something like twenty-five dollars. And one of the reasons I hated it so much was because of its sloppy, hard to decipher interface. This has been 100% remedied in CTP 2. The interface is clean cut, everything is easy to find and I had no trouble figuring out what button went with what option, etc.

As far as diplomacy and warfare improvements go, I don't see much. Part of the fun of Civ 2 was getting that attitude from the AI when in negotiations with them. In Civ 2 you really wanted to beat down the Mongols after a sneak attack or something. In CTP 2 you don't get the feeling that your opponent is a living breathing enemy (not that you should but it should seem like something more than just programmed responses).

Warfare is the same as CTP, the stacked unit method and such, but the "Army Manager" and "Unit Manager" make keeping track of specific armies far easier than in CTP. I never played CTP in very great detail but the government systems in CTP 2 are excellent and a side by side comparison to each other at the "Empire Manager" really makes it easy to decide which one you want to run your empire. The wonder cut scenes are interesting and the music decent but they don't compare to! Civ 2.

The AI is from what I can see at least a small amount improved. I played my first game at Beginner level in order to get the feel of the game, and I still found myself having mild trouble capturing some English and American cities, but after a few hours it was obvious that I was by far the most powerful civ in the game. But from what I can tell, the harder difficulty levels should prove to be near impossible.

From this point, I didn't see much that showed a great improvement over CTP and I was disappointed. However, when I played later and later into the game, I started getting into it, my empire started to take shape and I actually started to have fun again. There was that "just one more turn" feeling again, but I wouldn't say it was a strong as Civ 2's. I found myself actually wanting to build up massive armies and take out the next English city rather then just quitting and putting CTP 2 back on the shelf for years to come. I cannot put my finger on it but CTP 2 has something that CTP did not that actually makes you want to play the game, and take it from me, I have been playing Civ 2 since 96 and have purchased ever single addon. This is a good game, its no Civ 3, but its still a lot of fun, and I would recommend it to any die hard Civer. However, try to get it at a lower price, like on EBay ! or something, cus its a tad expensive for something that still uses 65-70% of the original game art and programming.

Rating for a new comer to Genre:
Graphics: 9
Gameplay: 8
Interface: 9
Multiplayer: 7
Sound: 8
Overall: 8.9

Rating for a player of CTP 1 (Improvements Over CTP):
Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 9
Interface: 10!
Multiplayer: 5
Sound: 7
Overall: 8

OK here you can find my thoughts during my first CTP2 game. I have a celeron 400 with 192 RAM and Voodoo 3000 16 RAM. I bought 128 RAM during the game so I compared 64 to 192 RAM: 64: Load= 32 sec next turn= 25 sec at turn 407 (year 1732) 192: Load= 25 sec next turn= 22 sec ... The huge difference was after playing for 5 hours continuously. With 64 RAM loading a game took about 2 min and next turn 1 min15 sec, whereas after I upgraded there was no difference at all no matter how long I played. The game didn't crash at all although I didn't try any scenario or the cheat options.

Hey civilization fans, four months ago I told you I would not buy Call to Power . Two months ago I could still be found heckling the game on the Apolyton Civilization Site forums. Two weeks ago I announced I would buy the game in lieu of a review. Time has an interesting effect on everyone and everything. The same seems to be true of Call to Power II. When Activision left us civer's with what seemed like Call to Power version 5000 last year, for all the patching effort, many gamers still felt cheated of their money. Many felt that they had bought a good game that showed promise. I made little room for ambiguity about where I stood on the issue. I hated Civilization: Call to Power, and I expected to hate Call to Power II. I was offended that they had even announced the game.

So far I've won one game on Medium with a high score victory, and lost a second game on Hard to my ally's high score victory (I came in 2nd place). Grifman was annoyed that I didn't mention any good things in my last post so I'll start out with the positive aspects.

Saving a map

Saving a scenario. CTP2 takes care of all needed directories and files under the /scenarios folder

Loading my just-made scenario!

The Score formula

After Day 6, the final Day 7...

Editor Documentation
There is currently no readme for the map/editor. It seems that there wont be anything "in the box" as well. Activision is working on it though:

Dave White wrote on a mail replying to me about it
We're working on some extensive documentation for SLIC, the scenario editor and the save game files. Once they're all done we'll make them available on-line.

My diplomatic efforts finally show results

Science related screens

Select, cut and....

Paste!

Two days since Day 5, so Day 6, posted on Day 7. Real life came knocking my door....
Just a small comment on deity and two lengthy replies to posts with lots of questions

The Impossible Medium Game I've put aside my first game(although i want to end it to see well, how it ends ) and started a new one on impossible(deity) level so far I've survived... That's what I was saying. The deity game turned out to be a prince(medium) one. Somehow I put the wrong setting... And I was wondering why I do so well Anyway, on my second game on medium, the game seemed much easier. BUT the next game which was a really deity one, sees impossible after the first turns. More "research" is needed....

A battle with more modern units(from one side at least)

Battle view when you attack from the sea. What is missing? My ship...

Now I have some excuse for war....

Threats work some other times...

The Unit Manager screen also provides advice on where you need more units. On the bottom left my favorite choice for the radar map: no geographical or other info and just the borders

Bye bye Germans

Day 5. Spent most of my time playing instead of keeping notes like yesterday.

Map/Scenario Editing
Ralf asked about creating maps and scenarios. I've tried the editor a bit today. Cut/copy/paste works nicely. The major difference is that maps and scenarios are distinct. Maps are saved in and loaded from another folder. Also, when you save a scenario, you also set the scenario folder and the scenario name. All the appropriate files are created under /scenarios(where the official scenarios are as well). This means that the scenario you just saved is ready to be tested right away(in ctp1 you had to find the file, create the folders and the text files, move the file, etc etc)

Overview of the City Manager tabs, except from the units one

The other two tabs of the Intelligence screen

Charts on the Statistics screen

Ralf asks "The .txt tweak-files is much more userfriendly and powerfull then CTP/Civ-2/SMAC, they say. Is that true? In what ways?"
Well, my involvement in the modification of ctp1, was not exactly big. I mainly organized and added the pieces of the apolyton pack, so I didnt get into more imprortant stuff like unit attributes, slic, aip files, etc. Therefore I cant say much about it. Still, here is an interesting example of the personalities.txt which replaces the .fli files.