Well...I like Call to Power myself, but I wouldn't say that I like it SO much better than Civ 3 that Civ 3 is "only a cheap sequel". Civ 3 is still a good game, it's just that CTP is more my style. (My username here at the forums came from my best Civ game ever, which was a Call to Power one--"Scheherezade the Civ Lord!"
That's the ONLY time I've ever gotten a title that sounds so cool at the end of the game. Because normally I'm not very _good_ at these games.
)
See, I know about the legal dealie...sort of...but to me, I never really thought of Call to Power as being "just some side-thing". To me, it _is_ part of the Civilisation series. Sure, it's got some differences in the rules and so forth, but _so do all the OTHER games in the series, to each other_. Civ 2 has tweaked rules and ways things work and AI and graphics as compared to Civ 1. Civ 3 has all the above things tweaked a bit as compared to the other two. So...sure, CTP is different from the others, but I never thought it was SO different that it didn't even _count_ as part of the same series! I thought it was just the same old ordinary amount of difference...if that made any sense at all.
The main reason I like Call to Power and think it's really cool? Simple. I can say it in five words:
FUTURE TECHS THAT REALLY WORK.
If _only_ the other Civ games would go on into the year _3000_, and have future techs that actually DO things, instead of just adding to your score...! Then they'd be _perfect_ and we wouldn't even need Call to Power (although I still think it's a great game). That's like, the main flaw of the original Civ games...they end just as things are starting to get interesting. Yes, there's Alpha Centauri, which you can think of as a _timeline_ sequel, if you want (because at the end of the original Civ 1 they were trying to get to...guess where! to colonise a new planet.
) but it's not quite the same, Alpha Centauri is like, colder and more complex and strange, what with all the ways you can customise your units and that...what I want is a _Civ_ game that doesn't stop right when things are starting to get futuristic.
And THAT would be Call to Power.
Call to Power has future techs that actually _mean_ something! You can make actual futuristic cities, improvements, wonders, units...and _see_ them in front of your eyes, and USE them, in practical ways that actually affect game-play! It's wonderful. For me, a science-fiction lover, it's like the one, main, missing piece of the Civilisation puzzle has FINALLY been found and put in. It's not just the cities in space (I tend to call them "space stations") and the underwater cities...I like EVERYthing about the futuristic era. Including the awesome-cool Wonders such as that chip that makes you completely immune to all disease and that satellite thingie that INSTANTLY takes out everybody's nukes, everywhere. BWAHAHA.
Anyway...it's a _shame_ that Call to Power is considered to be the "weak little red-headed step-sister" or whatever of the series...because it's really a great game. It's original, it's fun, it's got _gorgeous_ graphics (and those movies! Wow! Especially the intro one) and it's got the one era the other Civ games are missing: The FUTURE!
Too bad it seems to "not count" around here...
...Notorious
