So bros, is Civilization: Call to Power any good?

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I've heard of this game, but never played. Is it worth my attentions or just a pathetic civ clone? I've heard of many a good thing about this game, like its much more interesting endgame. Are there good mods for this one? Which is better, Call to Power 1 or 2?

I eargely await your replies.

 

[commie]

I'm not an authority on the merits of these games as I don't play them all that much, but it seemed passable enough if you forgive the shitty AI which is the norm. It is basically somewhere between Civ II and Civ III but is competent enough I guess. The second one is basically an improved version of the first and that had the source code released for it along with better mod support so that's the one I'd look for. There's a lot more late game techs than Civ series did at the time.

Civ fanbois tend to hate it but I don't see much difference between the Civs and C2P.

Don't know what else to offer you bro. Give the second one a go and see for yourself.

 

[DakaSha]

CrP 2 is good (maybe even very good) if you:

a) get that fan patch on Apolyton (fixes AI btw)
b) use one of the mods on the same site (i cant remember which one I liked sorry)

The problem is that getting that all to work can be a pain in the ass. Its doable and ive done it. but the reason i havent played anymore is because i just dont feel like going through the bullshit

Vanilla ctp is SHIT (even with the fan patch)

 

[GarfunkeL]

Not very good but if you must play more Civ...

 

[Terpsichore]

You can blow away cavemen armed with wooden clubs with your orbital cannons, time-travel tech and tamed aliens.

But they are still able to bash and destroy your spaceships.

 

[visions]

Vanilla ctp is SHIT (even with the fan patch)

Care to expand on this a little?

 

[DakaSha]

The most obvious problem is the tech tree that doesnt make any sense. You can be a modern civ and still not know basic techs. (Which completely destroys immersion)
The mod i used did a great job at fixing this. (It *may* have been the cradle mod.. although sadly it had some bugs when i used that i had to mod out)

I said ctp in my post but meant ctp2. I have never played ctp1

 

[sser]

Been a long time since I played one, but IIRC they have pretty good infrastructure rules and superior combat systems. Also, a cool game box.

 

[Kaol]

I never played the 2nd one but as someone who was big into civ style games when this came out, i'll comment based on the first one (vanilla)

Firstly i'll say it's not just a Civ clone. It does try to innovate in several areas.

One of these that the game goes on until i think 4000AD with many futuristic technologies. Theres even a space grid that opens up once you get space ships.

The infrastructure system is also different, instead of producing worker units to build improvements you allocate a percentage of production to "public works" which then accumulates each turn and can be used to buy tile improvements. The tile improvemnts themselves are also quite varied including futuristic transport systems and the ability to transform tile types.

Theres quite a few units devoted to unconventional warfare like a priest and some dude with a tv on his head that i forget what he does.

In the end i think the game tried too hard to innovate and got abit bogged down with features while not really advancing the core of the genre.

I remember being impressed by some of the features but spending 10 times the amount of time playing CivII and Alpha Centurai. Also i've never actually finished a game of CTP. I think you just get overwhelmed by the amount of micromanagement towards the late game and it used to start taking up to 10 minutes to process each turn on my pc at the time which didnt help.

 

[GarfunkeL]

What happens in CTP1 is that at some point the entire map will be full of cities as you gain the ability to build them on-sea and in-space as well. Which was pretty lulzy.

 

[spectre]

In the end i think the game tried too hard to innovate and got abit bogged down with features while not really advancing the core of the genre.

That's actually CoP in a nutshell. It tried tobe good, but ended up a clusterfuck.

Theres quite a few units devoted to unconventional warfare like a priest and some dude with a tv on his head that i forget what he does.

Actually, one of the problems with the game is that they overdid it with all the special units. You get slavers, televengelists, beurocrats, heck, I vageuly reall they might have even been ecoterrorists there.

Problem is, it's too much of a hassle to micromanage all this shit, and the effects, from what I remember, were pretty miniscule.
What's better, the friendly and allied AIs will happily swarm you with this shit. I remember one ally kept sending the same bunch of guys at two of my cities, turn after turn, for little effect. I quickly got pissed and declared war just to avoid the annoying 30s worth of animation every goddamn turn.

 

[Archibald]

It's good if you're going to use cheats to get some cyber ninjas at the start of the game. Otherwise it's just worse version of civ.

 

[circ]

How bad can it be? Looking at some screenshots of CtP 1 and 2 on MG, and it looks like you can build stuff in outer space and water, and the game doesn't end in the year 2000. Which is one of the more annoying things about the Civ series. I wouldn't mind some kind of middle ground between Civ and SimCity. How do these run on Win 7?

 

[Phelot]

I have both. From what I recall, 2 pretty much completely replaces 1 so in other words there's no reason to play 1 anymore. 2 was fun even if it had some retarded moments. Wacky futuristic units, some weird governments (this is the one that has some nazi environmentalist government, no?) and some lulzy Wonders of the World like Contraception

I played the hell out of it, but once it was out of my system, I haven't played it since.

EDIT: Yeah, it was pretty funny having cities literally everywhere and in orbit. It turned the game into a grid-like warzone.

 

[mondblut]

It has fascism and fascist units. With SMGs. Typically available by the year 500 BCE. Oh joy! :D

 

[Blake00]

CivFanatics have put together a big tribute for the Civilization Call To Power's 25th anniversary (similar to the recent Alpha Centauri one) covering some of the fan projects going on at the moment including new CTP fan communities, a stunning 4K AI upscale of the CTP1 cutscenes, a new stable fan CTP2 port, and a new CTP1&2 mod manager & multiplayer server in the making. Be warned it's a big read, but a nice one for CTP fans.

https://reddit.com/r/civfanatics/comments/1c97u71/civilization_call_to_power_25th_anniversary/

CTP1 in HD


CTP1 Cutscenes 4K AI upscale


CTP2 28 Player World Map

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I played the hell out of it, but once it was out of my system, I haven't played it since.

I played the Hell out of the original Call to Power as well. I got it after the Civilization released around the same time kept pissing me off with it's shitty cheating AI. I never understood why Sid Meier, with all the money his studio has, could never come up with a competent AI where the difficulty settings were just how much the AI cheats. That's not the say that Call to Power's AI doesn't cheat. I honestly don't remember. I just remember it didn't piss me off the way the mainline Civilization titles did. It could be that I was just enamored with the ability to progress beyond modern times in the game, so it was fairly refreshing not to have to buy the "sci-fi" version in addition to the Civilization game. If you ignore Alpha Centauri, Call to Power was my favorite Civilization game. Though, I also liked Galactic Civilization a lot, but I don't remember which one of those I played.

 

[Talby]

I've only played Call to Power II, but I loved it at the time because it did something I really wished Civ II had one, which is advance through multiple future eras after the modern era. (I know Civ II had some custom modes like the one that lets you colonize Alpha Centauri and the sci-fi one, but they were pretty basic by comparison) That and a banger soundtrack.