I really don't get how people actually like this series.

[steevo]

CTP2 was better than Civ II and bugs aside better than Civ III until the expansions. Legal fictions aside, CTP II has a proud place as a fun and influential successor to Civ II.

I've never had the opportunity to play the sequel, but the original civilization: call to power was the first strategy game I had ever played, got it as a gift on my 9th birthday and loved it. I'm not sure exactly how much more advanced the sequel is, but even the original cpt was significantly more advanced than civII- as a matter of fact, when I first saw civII a few years later, I was perplexed by the fact it was a clear step down because on being initially told that it was civilization II I thought it was a sequel to the game that I owned- I didn't realize it was several years older and part of a separate series.
CivIII was superior in the important sense that it had a more innovative gameplay approach when it came to elements like luxury and strategic resources, but I agree about the single-unit movement with no grouping or stacking whatsoever, it made any expansive map game tedious to move armies on by mid-game. As a matter of fact, just watching enemy armies move could be tedious on its own even with quick animation turned on, and government type among other things was sadly simplistic, civIII had like 4 types compared with 20 in ctp. Also I was spoiled by two whole future tech eras filled with as much new stuff as any of the past eras and was surprised and disappointed the first time I played civIII and didn't realize there was no future until I was pretty much there.

Of course, I later found a mod that rectified everything but the lack of multiple unit movement, and that really is a point on which CivIII shone because its editor made it extremely easy to build maps, scenarios, and mods, and that's a developer accomplishment all of its own. Also, units could be upgraded which ctp(at least the first, dunno bout the second) didn't feature and it really is anachronistic to have phalanxes left over guarding cities while humanity is building cities underwater and in outer space. I'd actually gone back and reinstalled ctp after having civIII for a while and even though there was a whole lot in it that civ III didn't have, if you had to qualify one as being superior to the other in absolute terms civ III had a leg over ctp- but nothing more.

IMO, the more famous sid series didn't outdo call to power in its entirety until civ4, however I'm just realizing that even then there were no undersea colonies or cities in earths orbit and still aren't- it was a great idea! How did it just totally slip into forgotten obscurity like that? It makes me curious as to whether or not its possible to mod civ4 to have an outer space world atop the landscape... doesn't seem that intense from a development standpoint, if I could make it and throw it on top of Rise of Mankind: a New Dawn I'd be playing the most badass civilization game of all time. When the present makes you sad, tweak the past! And civ5 certainly makes me sad.

I thought it was cool how Call to Power extended further in technology than Civ 2/3/4 did. I also liked some of the combat features. However, I despised how much they compressed and 'balanced' the tech trees. Tanks > Musketeers. I don't care if it's 'balanced', anything else is ********.

Actually, I remember distinctly that of ctp's eras (ancient, Renaissance, modern, genetic, and diamond), musketeers were in the renaissance, tanks didn't come until well into the modern age, there just wasn't any system to penalize you for following one branch of tech forward and leaving techs behind and I think researching more modern technologies didn't get correspondingly harder to discover at the rate it should have. The techs themselves weren't really compressed compared with say civ3, in fact as i recall there were quite a lot of individual techs, it was the eras they were sorted into which were really conglomerations of multiple extended periods of human history. I can't quite remember for certain this last bit, but I think the musket(? or was it just firearms? rifles? ) tech was accessible in one particular path of technological discovery quite early in the renaissance. It was generally the case that musketeers were the second new land unit made available after pikemen.
The fact that I remember any of that is remarkable, I haven't played call to power in nearly a decade. Whoah.

 

[Necropolis]

call to power 2 defualt game had 41 playable races and 1 more for non playable races such as barbarian in the dacian wars from the internet you play as the dacians and face off against romans

 

[ShadowOfDeath]

Today CTP series is a bit "ancient" - but I was really enjoing myself playing it long time ago. I found CTP by accident, CTP 1 and 2 were put as a bonus CD for one of video-game magazines and I bought it thinking "Ooooh, some kind of new Civ, interesting...". It was far later when I realised that this is not Sid-Approved Civ, but it was fun nonetheless.

The major advantage? I think space cities and ocean colonies - this is something. Something that CivIII have not. I'm fanatic of CivIII but to this day I remember raising Space Elevator wonder to the sky or sending raiding parties of orbital bombers. It was epic.

CivIII with expansions have many more options for military units, resources, buildings and CivIV gives tremendous amount of freedom to modders by scripting engine - but I still adore CTP series in some aspects. I even made o lot of my own mods for home usage with stuff like UEO wonder (United Earth Oceans - it's from SeaQuest TV Series S-F) or lot various of space-units. Also - I will never understand why Civ III wasn't equipped with Wonder-movie-player like all other civs, "Siddisized" or not. It was a lot of fun to create movies for my own wonders in CTP - I remember that I put Continental Fortress wonder into play (based on real-world Nazi Germany "Europa Fortress" fortification mega-system) and picturised it with mixtape of some WW2 videoclips from chronicle movies, while in the background there was "Likns" by Rammstein playing. It is sad that CivIII doesn't supports that kind of stuff. And as for CivIV+ (supports) - well, I'm no 3D graphic-maker, so no longer could enjoy that kind of "manufacturing"

CTP2 is somehow inferior to CTP1 since there is no space colonisation but I remember that playnig it was somehow still more satisfying. However - at that time I din't realise that something like Apolyton mods existed.

And civ5 certainly makes me sad.

Me either

 

[Nero-Angelo]

Onkel_Zorn already mentioned some of the great things in this game.
Dude, this scenario in which you are one of two continent-spanning nuclear superpowers, surrounding each other with dozens of nuc-subs, etc. - that was fun indeed

But even better than that was the scenario with the seven Samurai. Gosh, this was a little like FFH Age of Ice, but years before

I loved this series (esp CtP 2), even got a game guide for CtP because of it's sheer number of things to do and understand. No vanilla Civ get's close (but stuff like FFH is too great ).