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C:CTP PREVIEW
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to give you some background information.
Our extended thanks to Jerry Chen for typing this up for us!

CIVILIZATION: CALL TO POWER PREVIEW

THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION WAS OBTAINED FROM A RECENT COPY OF PCGAMER MAGAZINE.

Back in 1980, Avalon Hill bought the rights to a board game called "Civilization." Activision, then bought the rights from Avalon Hill, and Activision now claims Microprose had only purchased a one-time use of the name for the original "Sid Meier's Civ".
Note: This information is a little outdated, but still good reading!)

Anyway, now Activision will try and carry the torch for the Civ game and it appears they have taken the current Civ2, and tried to fix most of the major complaints by players, such as weak AI, and lack of battle animations.

The most obvious change would be the fact that the game now goes well into the year 3000, allowing for more star trek type techs and units, as well as govn'ts. Another change was the way units are drawn. Each unit (there were approximately 60 at the time pcgamer looked at the game) is now handrawn and then transferred to the computer. Other graphical enhancements include four different animations for each unit; a walk, an idle, a combat movement, and victory or death sequence. Most of the graphical improvements are little things, like the water shimmering off the coast, or the way a sub explodes and collapses. But don't worry, the animations don't appear to be more complex than say your average animated windows cursor, so it doesn't appear you'll need a graphics card.

Another new feature is the "maximize" feature. Say for example, you are busy building improvements, but you suddenly get sneak attacked and need to switch to making units, instead of having to cycle through every city, you just hit the "maximize" button, and order all or half of you cities to make marines. Of course, you can still do it one city at a time.

Multiplayer has been incorporated into the game, and Activision made sure they included every sort possible, from E-mail to internet play. However, the biggest complaint from Civ2 players was the way the AI cheated and failed to put up a fight. Activision set out to fix this by making the AI play by the same rules as you. Instead of the old "If A happens, then do B," they gave the AI a sort of fuzzy logic. When in situations where there is no clear right or wrong choice, it will make its best guess, and it will make decisions based on what has happened in the past.

One big setback to all this new AI and graphical improvement is that files will be in DLL format, so they are not as easy to customize, but Activision promises that it is not unchangeble, and experienced computer users will be able to change any existing unit's appearance and properties.

With the timeline extended, it allowed the designers to add many more techs and units, as well as a couple new govn't types. For example, my favorite would have to be the Eco-Topians. This is a govn't type thats sort of a mix between Green Peace Fundamentalism, the theory is that it's okay to kill others as long as you're doing it to protect the environment. Along with this govn't comes some cool weapons, such as the Eco-Terrorist, who can inject computerized viruses that will send a advanced society back to the stone age. Another equally evil unit is the Infector unit, which plants a virus that spreads along trade routes and disrupts all your commerce and decreases population.

These are not the only new features included with "Civilization:Call to Power" I'm sure, but I'm already sold, and it looks like it'll put up some strong competition to Sid Meier's AC.

Originally written by Jerry Chen for TFGC2S.
This page may be reproduced as long as it remains unchanged and there is a link to it's source  
(Apolyton Civilization Site; http://civilization.gamestats.com)

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