Review: Civilization:Call To Power

As promised, we've taken a look under the hood and banged the tires on Lokisoft's port of Civilization:CTP to Linux. I've given my thoughts below, and included a review from James Brief-click below for the details. If you know you want it now, buy it at Handeye.com. Hemos spouts off about 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 CTP

Civilization: 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

Comments

Re:Save your $$$ if you're a Civ 2 freak

[Phil Gregory]

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... :)

Why can't I custom name a civ anymore?

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.

Where are the old wonders and most of the old technologies?
Where are the catapults?

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 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).

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.

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)

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

The cost to convert BACK a city is rapacious, and they can just try to re-convert it again the NEXT TURN. UGH!

Converting in the first place a city is expensive, too, although I don't remember the cost at the moment.

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.

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.

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.

I liked it, and I think it is a worth successor to CivII


--Phil (And boy, do I love those building queues.) blockquote

Open source alternatives

[Jules Bean]

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