CTP is the best civ game I have ever played.

[Titi]

Originally posted by Titi
I only played a few games each of CTP and SMAC.
First, because even though there were many great ideas (public works, work hours and salaries, space and subsea cities for CTP, prototypes, differences between factions), I found them too easy.
Then and mostly because when I changed my computer, I had a new OS and both CTP and SMAC don't run under Win 2K or XP...

Wrong information here: after I upgraded both games, no more problem!

 

[gen.dragolen]

CPT the best game ever ?

Not in this reality. While it was a huge improvement over CivI, it was still not up to a decent level.
The worst part was the outright cheating by the AI. It was so bad I actually traded the game away for Mechwarrior 2.

I had too many games where the AI started lobbing nukes around. The last game I played in CTP I had the AI torn down to the point where their last 3 cities were besieged and reduced to about population level 6. My cities were 25- 35 squares away, and nukes had a max range of 20. The enemy had no submarines to transport nukes into range, because after their first attack, I cleared the oceans of enemy ships yet in 3 turns they popped out 6 nukes that take 15 turns to produce in a size 26 city when my spies said they didn't have the technology yet.

Last I could recall, there was no such thing as a terrorist with nukes in the CTP game. CivI looked terrible, but at least the AI's had to play by the same rules as the players.

I just reinstalled CTP2 after not having played it for about 2 years and I find I enjoy it, even if it is a little slow and has a clunky interface. But it is more satisfying after 2 years of CivIII. Features like trade and invisible units are sooooo nice. Now if only the diplomacy could be more like Civ III. Doing 1:1 trades for techs is not good business. And resources needed to produce units is another CivIII good idea.

Now to see who can build a game that combines the best of both games.


D

 

[SamE]

Here's my ranking of all of these games except CTP2 (haven't played):

(Civ4 - I hope)
Civ3 Conquests
Civ3 Vanilla
CTP
Civ2
Civ1

I didn't find the constant crashing of CTP too entertaining, but the graphics were pretty good (but not as good as Civ3). I liked the ideas of space cities, world pollution, potentially detrimental wonders, 100-defense leviathans, public works, and under-seabed channels. Another thing I enjoyed a lot was the futuristic "predictions" in the Civilopedia (or whatever it was called), like that the Chunnel would be blown up by terrorists in 2002.

 

[Thilips]

CTPII is better than all. Even though the bugs did get me, I found my way around those. One or two simple batch files downloaded made that easy to fix. As far as game play, CTPII is better because one the Armies are realastic. Why would I want to fight man on man if I deploy 10 to 12 units or something like 5 artillary. If I deployed 5 artillary or 12 units I want the combined fire power not just the power of one. If anything parts of CIV3 should have been added into CTPII to make a CTP3, like graphics and modification but CTP peroid has it hands down.

 

[Ekmek]

Thilips you should check out apolyton, I made a civ3 mod...

 

[Thilips]

Ekmek, what is the name of your mod ?

 

[Ekmek]

terrain
http://67.15.24.46/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96137

and

units and cities
http://67.15.24.46/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=130520

enjoy

 

[Kurioku]

I think call ta power 2 kicked some muthaf**king ass!
The diplomacy was great with threats and pacts, the army system rocked, using waves of battleships tanks and artillery with carriers and fighters was a f**king blast. They need to hurry it the hell up and make ctp 3 already. It is the next level of series. And most people who complain are just whinning ******* so don't listen to them. You're right, call to power rules.

 

[DoTheMath]

PW definately makes things a great deal easier, cities expand as population grows, and slavery makes even skimishing fun.

Unfortunetly, slavery makes the game too easy, if I'd had more sence (before aom), I'd have played on progressively larger maps, to rectify the situation.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

I both love and hate CTP.

The worst are the bugs, a few times I experienced the game crashed. In my last game it crashed everytime I touched a particular city. And reloading an old save didn't help, when I again came to THAT year, the game crashed again! I gave up. (Yes I got the 1.2 patch.)


Another thing I dislike is the weak AI. I barely find it challenging on Deity. If I survive the start on Deity I always win with ease. And I'm no civ genius, I just moved on to Civ3, Regent is at the moment my level. I think Monarch will give me a real challenge.

In CTP, if you bombard and kill all defense in AI cities, what do the AI do? Build new defenders? Often not; Instead it build an expensive fusion tank and send it alone to my land, leaving it's home country almost defenseless. If it's really lucky it pillages one tile before I kill it off.


Another bad thing is the pollution on Deity level. If I give top priority to environment cleaners and my cities is totally clean (according to the city view), they generate horrible pollution on another info screen. Even small cities with no polluting production boosters and all cleaners possible! One or two dead tiles per turn isn't unusual even in the Ecotopia government...
It angers me because it does not help no matter how hard priority I give to the environment. The only solution, and it toatally removes all pollution (except from nukes), is to build the Gaia Controller.


And the user interface is not the best, it takes too much mouse clicking to play. It hurts my hand.


This is a few of the negative sides. Very much good can be said about the game, but I think most of it is already said.


I'm now addicted to Civ3 but I know I have not played my last CTP.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

CTP is also unbelievable demanding to the hardware compared to Civ3.

Very pronounced on a pentium 3 laptop.

 

[Locutus]

CTP is also unbelievable demanding to the hardware compared to Civ3.

Very pronounced on a pentium 3 laptop.

Ehhrmm... it's just the other way around. Must be a specific problem with your laptop, 'cuz Civ3 is a huge memory & CPU hog whereas both CtP games run very smoothly. Just compare the min specs (and remember, these games were released less than a year apart, with no significant differences in the feature set -- CtP2 even offers bigger maps):

CtP2
Pentium, 166 MHz
64 MB RAM (though it actually runs fine on 32 MB, did that for over a year)
4 MB video card (min 800x600)
320 MB HDD
Windows 95+

Civ3
Pentium II, 400 MHz
128 MB RAM
16 MB RAM (min 1024x768)
1.5 GB HDD
Windows 98+

 

[Strato]

CTP was fun to some extent. A few things about it:

Good:
Graphics. Seemed really crisp, nice contrast against the ground.
The way unit support was done back then (cf Civ II)
Armies - sure, it was underdone, but still, I liked the tactical aspect.

Bad:
Trade - nuff said
Lawyers, tv evangelists, etc. What's the go with them. All of these 'support' units killed the game I thought.
Stupid AI.

 

[GermanRuler]

I'm sick of hearing people tearing down CTP without arguments. True, it was released buggy and maybe it still needed some playtesting to balance gamplay completetly: but it still blew me away. IMO, not even Civ3 compares to Civilization: Call to Power. It is definitely the best civ game I have ever played. Sid started the genre with Civ1, true. But CTP was one of those games that takes the genre and pushes it to the next level, raises it's own standards. I can't beleive how after a game like that anyone would release a civ game without space cities! Ilogical (yes, Activision included). I cannot say the same for CTP2 tho. To me, the secuel was kind of a dissapointement.
Anyway, the idea is that everyone post as short as possible good and bad things about CTP in comparison to other civ games like so:


- PUBLIC WORKS!!!
- Wages, food rations and work hours tab.
- Space cities.
- Future technologies.
- Those 0 movement tubes.
- Excelent wonders.
- Multiple units combat sistem.
- Army creation sistem.
- Many goverment types.


- A decent AI that just won't gtf out of your territory.
- Interface is 4/10 IMO.
- Units automatically loading into transports.
- Primitive diplomacy.
- No resources required for units/improvements (like Civ3).
- Lack of an official editor (like Civ3).
- Lack of unique units (like Civ3).

Rock on man! I agree with you on this one!

 

[GermanRuler]

"Civ III seems to be even more addictive for the simple fact that every game can be modified so much. " LOL, did you know CTP had a in-game "cheat mode" its basically like opening the editor program in the middle of the game

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Ehhrmm... it's just the other way around. Must be a specific problem with your laptop, 'cuz Civ3 is a huge memory & CPU hog whereas both CtP games run very smoothly. Just compare the min specs (and remember, these games were released less than a year apart, with no significant differences in the feature set -- CtP2 even offers bigger maps):

CtP2
Pentium, 166 MHz
64 MB RAM (though it actually runs fine on 32 MB, did that for over a year)
4 MB video card (min 800x600)
320 MB HDD
Windows 95+

Civ3
Pentium II, 400 MHz
128 MB RAM
16 MB RAM (min 1024x768)
1.5 GB HDD
Windows 98+

I talk about CTP 1, patch 1.2. It runs easily at the start of the game. But on a large map filled with cities, space cities and a ton of units... I tell you my 850 MHz and 320 MB machine is really struggling. My gfx card is 8 MB.
I do not use animated goods btw.

On a large Civ3 map and a ton of units I do not have this problem. And I am shutting down fewer background services when I play Civ3, than CTP.

 

[BureauBert]

Like many others I am currently unable to even test Civ4 with reasonably sized maps on my computer while CTP2 Apolyton Edition runs pretty smoothly with an ultra-gigantic (280 x 140 tiles) map and a huge amount of scripted modifications even though the Apolyton Edition is still in BETA stage .

 

[Ekmek]

- A decent AI that just won't gtf out of your territory.
- Interface is 4/10 IMO.
- Units automatically loading into transports.
- Primitive diplomacy.
- No resources required for units/improvements (like Civ3).
- Lack of an official editor (like Civ3).
- Lack of unique units (like Civ3).

Well CTP2 with the playtest and builds remedies some of these:
- the AI is better
- Rsources are in and have more diverse benefits than Civ3 or Civ4 (unique units, buildings, wonders, you can "ship" gold, food, shields, science, happiness, and slaves now and you can "build/plant" goods)
- Unique Units can have a variety of uniqueness. Either civilizationonly or by culturegroup, OR by citystyle only (meaning an aztec capturing a roman city could be legions there if thats the setting) and you can make buildings required tomake units or you may have to achieve a feat to build a type of unit not to mention resources.
- diplomacy is a bit better with the AI working deals but now we do have better diplomacy screens

 

[Zotmeister]

I like to think of Call to Power (the original *) as that pleasant hideaway, a game that only I enjoy. However, it is not unpleasant to find out that I am in fact not alone on this.

The first thing I note about Call to Power is something I've noticed hasn't been commented on yet here: Call to Power has a lot more personality than most other games of its type. It seems to directly focus on things that the "Sid" games intentionally avoid, presenting a sort of treatise on the "dark side" of civilization: slavery & abolition, fascism, biological weapons, contraception, and lawyers! lawyers! lawyers!. To be fair, SMAC comes very close, and SMAX closer still, but Call to Power actually manages to cover a lot of the elements those games do due to its progression into the future. (The AI Entity is clearly influenced by the roleplaying game Paranoia, font and all.)

Oh, and I have to set the record straight on this:

Last I could recall, there was no such thing as a terrorist with nukes in the CTP game.

There most certainly is. Spies and Cyber Ninja have the Plant Nuke option, yet another "edgier" element to the game.

I agree that a game with the best elements of both Call to Power, SMAC/X, and, say, Civ 3 would be a force to be reckoned with. But standing on their own, as they are, I'll take CtP, thank you.

...But boy does it EVER need those patches. It still holds the record for the two most stupid bugs in a released game. Activision fessed up to the nukes-not-an-act-of-war bug in the readme for 1.1, but (despite fixing it in same) they never admitted to the network-game-guaranteed-to-crash-on-setup-if-any-player-name-begins-with-'Z' bug. I guess it's just too embarassing. (I'm the one who discovered that, by the way. I discovered it the hard way, as you might imagine. The other players were joking at the time, "Maybe it's just you"... turns out it WAS just me.) Pollution calculation was FUBAR until 1.2. They did eventually finish the game, and the end result was really nice, but sheesh...
- ZM

*The sequel is crap, although I never kept it long enough to play around with mods for it. I will, however, grant it that it has one of the greatest single-theme game soundtracks ever, being right up there with, say, Parasite Eve.

 

[Ekmek]

Zotmeister,
I never heard of that crash. We are doing a lot to *fix* Ctp2 at Apolyton. Click the link in my signature to see whats going on.