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Review: Civilization:Call To Power
I should be upfront about my past history with Civilization(s). My name is Hemos (well, Jeff, but...) and I have a problem. I play(ed) Civilization constantly. For Civilization, CivNet, and Civ2 pets wouldn't get fed, girlfriends were ignored, phone calls not returned, and loved ones, well, unloved. Heck, I even liked playing Colonization. I think that the Civ family is some of the best game programming every done, and I was extremely happy to get the beta copies of Civ:CTP.
Lokisoft has done a good job of porting to Linux. They haven't done just a straight port, but have taken into account the difference in UI from Windows -> Linux. I actually got to use all my mouse buttons, and felt like something that had been designed for my X desktop, not something that someone had kludged together hoping to make a few bucks. That's a very good thing, and I hope that the other game companes take a note from that playbook, and do similar work.
So, What the Heck is New?
Civ:CTP has a distinguished pedigree, and that cuts both ways. Because they've got the Civilization name, they are judged different then other games. They also had a problem in that this is the first Civilization game that Sid Meir wasn't involved in-he's formed his own compan. But more on that later. So, they've got this great name, but that also means that people have certain expectations, and that limits their ability to improvise. To wit, the major changes seem to come in how terrain enhancements are handled, and military. No longer will the Swiss Army knife of units, the Settlers, have to found new cities and plant crops-now you have Public Works amounts, and you can enhancement your landscape using that. I think it's a great addition, and addresses one of my major complaints. The military is the area that is most directly affected-it's much, much, better. Remember the big step from Civ to CivII? This is bigger. Combined Arms that actually make sense, and the ability to more realistically work with the military is great. The methods of scientific learning has been tweaked as well.
But How Different is it? And what about Alpha Centauri?
While those changes are great, and well appreciated, this isn't a whole new game. This is something that still stays true to the Civilization roots, rightly so. This contrasts with the latest effort of Sid & Brian Reynolds (Chief Designer of CivII). They've formed Firaxis, and have produced the hit game Alpha Centauri. Evidently they are even working on porting it to Linux. Alpha Centauri is truly revolutionary, but Civ:CTP is incredible. Alpha Centauri is the Shakespeare to Civ:CTP's Ben Jonson. My bottom line: Get it. It's worth. I give it a 29 on a scale of 13-32.
James Brief on CTPCivilization: Call to Power
I remember a sense of nervousness overcoming my sense of
excitement. I had in my hand the box of a sequel to my favorite game I
ever played and the successor to one of the best selling strategy games of
all time. Similar to my small fears surrounding The Phantom Menace, I
wondered "is it worth it to tamper with a classic?" Civilization: Call to
Power for Linux is not simply the newest chapter in the vastly popular
Civilization series. It does not have the Sid Meier seal of quality that
has been telling gamers for years that this game will keep you up for
hours at a time and shock you when you notice that it is 5:18 AM and you
have to get up in 42 minutes. Thankfully, due to the perseverance of the
port specialists, artists and composers at Activision and Linux porter
Loki Entertainment, Civ:CTP is one of the most beautiful games to come out
since, wellCivII!
Civ:CTP is one of the most engrossing games in years. The "let's make a
Quake clone" syndrome which seemed to plague the industry in 1997-98 is
over. Civ:CTP is as original as late 1998 titles like Halflife and
Oddworld, yet it still harkens back to its rich Civilization ancestry
while introducing entirely new features.
First off, the graphics are vastly superior to Civilization II. The
Civilization series finally reaches 16-bit graphics. Each soldier can be
seen from any perspective; you are truly immersed in a 3-D world. Not
even the hot-shot Windows based Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri boasts graphics
that compare to these. The topography can be seen with superb detail, and
get this in Civ:CTP, the mountains actually look like mountains and the
fields look like fields (instead of just brown and yellow tiles,
respectively)! And the sound is even better than CivII, which was so
amazing that I used to actually listen to the CD in my discman! Civ:CTP's
soundtrack encompasses everything from beautiful Asian instrumentals to
futuristic war chants. I have always felt that music and sound are the
foundation of any great game. Who cannot conjure up the theme to Super
Mario Bros.? My point exactly. The sounds and music in Civ:CTP mesmerize
you into the glorious world that you create.
Gameplay is vastly improved from Civilization predecessors. One of my
biggest problems with CivII was the micromanagement. At the beginning of
every turn, you had to attend to problems in nearly a dozen cities in a
moderately sized world. Civ:CTP eliminated this annoyance. Now, at the
beginning of the turn, a window comes up with a brief summary of the
progress (or problems) of all of your cities; you can select which cities
you want to tinker with and everything else will progress automatically.
Another great feature is the battle improvements. Now, you can have up to
9 units simultaneously battle a city. Cool new land, sea, and air units
make a military approach to the game the obvious choice in my opinion!
Incredibly creative units such as the lawyer (who can halt all production
in your city), ecoterrorist (who plants a virus in your city and can
destroy wonders, production and lower population) and the slaver (a portly
unit who enslaves other civilizations' settler units and raises your
population!) prove that a lot of creativity and imagination was put into
every single new unit.
While Civ:CTP should be added to the library of any computer game
enthusiast, it is not fault-proof. Sometimes, the AI is a bit too easy in
forgetting past grievances with your civilization (is this a blessing or a
bug?). Also, the expansion of the military aspect of the game into space
was an absolute thrill to me, but may be a bit too much to handle and some
necessary micromanagement might be too much for some, but not for those
used to the micromanagement of CivII. Overall though, the pros heavily
outweigh the minimal cons. Civ:CTP is a wonderful game which you will be
playing over and over (hey, I've been playing CivII until only a month
ago!) and has kept me up to all hours of the night (6:12AM is my record so
far). I couldn't be a happier insomniac!
Buy
Now at Handeye.com!
Graphics: A+
Gameplay: A
Sound: A
Music: A+
AI:A-
Replay Value: A+
Overall: A+
-James Brief
For all the people out there interested...I'm running a website dedicated to CTP for linux....it can be found hera
http://natas.kfa.cx/~civ
Is it glibc2 or libc5? Or have they included support for both? Does it run from CD or does it require some of my potential mp3 space? Is it installable for multiusers, or is it limited to one user per install?
Does it have GNOME / KDE support (adding itself to task bars / etc)?
I sent this as email to Activision a while back, but it's reasonable for this audience, as well. Note that my gripes are based on playing the Windows version-- it seems some of the UI issues may have been fixed in the Linux version.
I've been playing Activision games since the days of Pitfall Harry on the Atari 2600. I've usually been impressed. And I loved Civilization and Civilization II. So I was looking forward to Civilization: Call To Power.
Boy, was I disappointed. I suppose once every fifteen years or so, y'all are allowed to drop one. I will, however, still gripe about it.
UI gripes:
I should not have to click build, choose something, then _click build again_ to make it happen.
Sometimes, moving my last unmoved unit automagically causes a new turn to happen. Sometimes it doesn't. I've not found a rhyme or reason to this.
On the standard size map, sometimes the tile your mouse pointer is over is not the same tile the move-to line ends at. I didn't have this problem on the huge map.
It's hard to make an argument for an "intuitive" interface when everyone I know who's played the game winds up accidentally moving pieces they didn't mean to halfway across the board because they were selected, but not on screen, so they didn't have a green box or flashing cursor, and I clicked on a city I could see... It wouldn't be as bad if there were an "abort orders!" button I could mash so that my idiot unit wouldn't walk its entire movement rate, leaving the city I just took unfortified, and not have a way to get back that turn.
I may have missed building some impressive improvement that shows me the whole world a la building the Apollo project in original Civ. But space units have unlimited movement. I _can_ just wander one across the whole planet (Hey, why do they only have a sight radius of _one tile_?!) if I want to see the world. But I shouldn't have to! I'm playing a computer game so that the computer can take care of the drudgery. I shouldn't have to sweep a three-tile window across the whole planet to see it-- I shouldn't even have to drag a screen-size window across the whole planet to find the wormhole! But I do, for some reason.
Game logic gripes:
If I can't swap technologies with someone because I have no embassy, how come he can swap technologies with me?
If it's called "diplomacy", how come everything is "take it or leave it"? If he wants to swap his Communism for my Fusion, why can't I come back and say, "No, but I can give you Theology for it...."
Why are the Egyptians asking me to stop pirating their trade routes when I hadn't pirated their routes for over a hundred turns?
If I use the mouse to automove a cargo pod from point A to point B, and the line happens to cross a space city, the cargo pod stops at the city and whatever's aboard it stays at the city. And the cargo pod disappears. Sure, the unit had orders to go over there, but let's stop here instead and ditch the pod...
The units need some tweaking: So here I am, rolling along in my tank, about to assault the puny Americans with five legions in their city.
Legions. You know, footmen with swords?
The tank loses.
I did it twice more, thinking it was just bad luck. Now, admittedly, maybe I should've been picking on someone my own size... Sure, they were in the mountains. Sure, they had city walls and were fortified... But it's a friggin' TANK! How do footmen with swords kill tanks?
Along the way I picked up whatever technology it is you need to build Mechs, er, War Walkers. So I built an army of three Mechs and three Tanks. Took their puny town with ease.
Except now my tanks are gone. Vanished.
Seems that tanks aren't allowed onto mountain squares. So instead of staying behind like smart little tankers, they rolled right on into the mountains, keeled over, and died. No warning, no nothing. What really pissed me off was losing a leviathan this way. "Land, space, and air" my butt...
The AI for figuring out a trade route should not route through enemy cities. Gee, I wonder why my trade routes keep getting pirated? Oh, well, build another caravan...
I can't build roads farther than 3 tiles from a city? How do you explain I-10 through the West Texas desert?
General gripe:
I can't name my own civilization. Okay, so this is minor. I don't seem to be able to name anything, actually, but perhaps I haven't found that box.
The game tries to do some good things, but overall, I think it flops. I readily admit-- I had high expectations for this game. It's a sequel to
one of my favorite games ever, and it's done by a company that has done good stuff for many years-- perhaps my expectations were too high. On the other hand, I feel Activision's expectations for this game should have been higher, too.
-F
Several people have been asking where to find the game. It's available in several places online, but I plan to buy it from a real store. (A "brick and mortar store", as Loki puts it.) My decision was made because I think it better shows a market for Linux games that way. Not only does the company see that people buy the games, so do retailers. Anyway, according to Lokisoft's web page, CTP will be carried by Fry's, Micro Center, Best Buy, and CompUSA. CTP should be shipping to the stores this week, so they should have it on the shelves by next week at the latest. The Linux version has its own box, which looks mostly like the windows version, but has Tux in the lower left-hand corner.
--Phil (I, too, think it's a great game, and recomment it highly.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Well, I've been an avid CivII fan, and I beta tested the Linux Civ:CTP, so I've formed my own opinion about the differences. I've found that I like CTP. Since I like it, I'll gloss over your supporting statements and jump right to the negative ones... :)
Actually, you can. It involves editing some text files, but you can add your own civilizations. From poking aroung in the game directories, it seems that a lot of the configuration is done in text files, so people should be able to do some extensive tweaking of the game. They've been replaced by different wonders and technologies. This isn't a bad thing, just a different one, and, from what I've seen, the new stuff seems pretty balanced. The game is a product of the times, where most people are more familiar with mice than keyboards. You can do almost everything with a keyboard, though. Look at the "keyboard" section of the configuration menu to see what you can do. Why not? This is game that has some basis in real life, but it isn't bound to real life. (Consider that I had the same warrior unit around for thousands of years.) I don't see anything in CTP that mightn't have happened with CivII. It is an American game. Likely they picked civilization name that they thought would be more familiar to Americans. If you don't like them, you can change them. I think it adds a new element to gameplay. CTP has a lot more stealth units, leading to different strategies. Clerics are stealth units, so regular units can't see them. Check the great library for which units can see stealth units. In a number of games, I ended up surrounding my cities with cheap units like warriors or such, just to keep clerics and lawyers away. Converting in the first place a city is expensive, too, although I don't remember the cost at the moment. That's a loss I don't miss much. I never listened to my advisors, mostly because I knew what I was doing better than they. For learning CTP, I think that the tutorial does a good job of introducing all of the concepts. I liked it, and I think it is a worth successor to CivII--Phil (And boy, do I love those building queues.) blockquote
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
I went into Electronic Boutique, asked
about the Linux version, first got dumb looks,
then hostility (or maybe I read discomfort as
hostility). It was sort of weird.
The guy did end up giving me a card with
the district mgr's number or whatever, but
the thrill is gone if I have to ask for it.
I got the cold shoulder even though I was
buying $80 worth of games...
Hmm. Wonder if I'll ever shop there again?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I have this game for Windows, and it is a piece of junk. For everything they improved on Civ 2 from, they screwed something else up. (This is after about 20 hours of gameplay). I won't waste my Linux box's HD space on this turkey.
Good stuff:
You can que up city production.
The graphics are better.
The combat is better, especially the city battle screens. This may be the best improvement in the game. You can actually see the units arrayed against you!
The more government styles, and the fact that you can compare them side by side before changing.
Trade routes make sense, as only cities with goods can trade.
Space, undersea, piracy, et cetera. All nice.
Units now "see ahead", like naval units did in Civ/Civ 2.
Bad stuff:
Why can't I custom name a civ anymore?
Where are the old wonders and most of the old technologies?
Where are the catapults?
The game went from being keyboard (and mouse to move around the map) to mouse (and keyboard to do things that are too annoying to do with a mouse).
A good deal of the advances make no sense. No concieveable socitey, for example, could have knights and samauri. (I won't get into this, or how many other discrepencies there are, in comparison to Civ 2)
The opening Civs are suspect: Why is Canada in there (for example), and countries like Poland not? The pics seem to be more for the countries the expect the game to sell. (Babylon and such not withstanding)
The whole conversion thing is a serious detriment to gameplay. In one game I had 15 cities, and in but 4 turns 10 of them had been converted to the religion of another civ that I HADN'T YET SEEN! Further, I had units fortifed around the cities, so I should have seen their cleric coming.
The cost to convert BACK a city is rapacious, and they can just try to re-convert it again the NEXT TURN. UGH!
The advisors are gone. Athough fairly useless in the past, at least in Civ 2 there were amusing and (while learning the game) would let you know how you're doing.
Anyway, I can go on and on. It's really an okay game if you've never played Civ before, but I had expected much, much better.
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
70% of the reviews are all praise giving this game upper ninety percentiles and saying how its the greatest thing since linux^H^H^H^H^Hsliced bread.
10% Give it around 80-85% and staight that some units are really unbalanced. Those units are the same in all the reviews: Slaver, Evangalist and Ecoterrorist. From what I've read it sounds like they are a one unit zergling rush, they can destroy you early on, so you have to build the best defenses you can, but theres always a big chanche they won't be used. Reminds me of driving insurance...
20% of the reviews slightly to greatly bash the game, giving it a 40-60%. Mention some bugs, but nothing that sounds too bad, and I believe the patch is fixing most of them. Diplomacy is slammed, and Alpha C. is praised.
Those were for the windows versions. All linux pre/reviews have been pretty good, and it seems (looking above) they come from some serious CIV addicts.
when Push Comes to Shove
I suspect a thread such as this will emerge eventually so I'll go ahead and get the ball rolling... Note that all I have been able to play so far is the Windows versions. I have had time to play both games through quite a ways now, and I must say that I really enjoy both. Either game has things I really wish was in the other, but both didn't quite hit the spot (relative to "perfect"... which isn't really fair, but hey) Alpha Centauri was a little better put together IMO, but the whole premise wasn't very enjoyable to me. I really enjoy the tech ranges from stone age to space combat that Civilization allow more. CTP, however, seems very buggy. I notice that Activision has a patch coming out any time, but the game is pretty nasty as it is now. Matt's likes for Alpha Centauri: - Visible borders! - On the fly rendered units Matt's likes for CTP: - Realistic setting (historical rather than futuristic) This is important since it applies to all the technologies and governments - New combat interface - Public Works. This idea needs more work, but it's in the right direction. Matt's dislikes for Alpha Centauri: - Hard to relate to. The technologies are just a bit too difficult to grasp without some better descriptions. - Horrible tile graphics. I mean, these graphics really suck. Matt's dislikes for CTP: - Resource hungry! Boy, does this thing eat RAM! - Lame diplomacy. It seems like the enemy leaders have less "depth" than they used to. As well as they are more random sometimes. - No city information window! I really hate not being able to zoom in on a city and see all the neat graphs and such. The little number boxes in the tab view on the bottom is horrible. Anyway, that's my take (two cents, whatever). Matt
From what I hear, CTP is a great game. Good work, lads.
However, if you care about free software (and, if you're reading slashdot, I imagine there's a chance you do) why not think about open source alternatives?
Freeciv. OK, it's probably not as good as CTP. It's at least as good as CivII, and it has net play built in.
But more to the point - if it's not as good as CTP, then help us make it so! Contribute ideas, or better still, contribute graphics and code. FreeCiv has a modular 'ruleset' based model, so total conversions are possible with less code changing. (OK, not _no_ code changing, some things are hardwired).
Open source gaming is only just taking off - but games developed cooperatively by the community, with all those people thinking of ideas, have the potential to be out of this world..
Jules
-- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a perl script.