Will there ever be a Call to Power III?

[Dutchgamer1982]

personally I find Call to Power II the best civilization game ever, and probably the best turn based strategy game ever.

Elements that count for it are :
-Public works : a LOT better solution than those pesky workers from civilizations
-the seacity's (granted alpha centauri had them too.. still I miss them)
-the spacecity's (having a second layer map, with options to bomb the surfice from space, offers all kind of tactical options)
-maglev tunnels -> no longer needing to put units in a ship to move them across contrinents, a thing much missing from civilizations.
-the ability to terraform terrain -> also great
-the way pollution was handled, destroying terrain, causing flooding, etc..
-the extended future technology's and goverments (even while all from 1 book, I liked it a lot, it sparked my interest in politicts and society much more than history did)
-the comical movies between each wonder and invention (again not a new inventium but I miss them a lot in modern titles)
Gotta love the Hippynuke, turning the greens in the military most mighty power in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxBVc2cSFeI
-the ability to quickly copy building lists, to make managing thousants of city's easy.
-the ability to have only 12 units in a stack, preventing to large stacks of doom, whlle still alowing easy unit movement and unit combinations.
-the first introduction of the army-unit before civIII did, bundling the power of multiple units into one.
-tiles always needed at least 0.1 movement, alowing both easy unit movement, while at the same time preventing railroad rushes..
-the way religions could be spread for the entire duration of the game and each city could house each relifgion in the game.. was good.

Elements that modern civ titles ruined :
-the dreaded city limit (hate that), I want unlimited numbers of city's, a game needs good managment not cutting number of city's.
-the ability to culturally push borders -> that was a good thing it should not have been removed
-the ability to build all buildings except wonders in unlimited amounts in all city's and in all ages (I do not like buildings being made unavailable after certain ages while their effects contrinue.. that messes up city standarisation)
-the hated stacks of 1 : I liked the stacks of doom much much more

Still there were things that Call to power I and II did get wrong :
-CtP II removed the space level, making it actually of less quality than I.
-the Ai generally was not advancing quick enough, so you rarely got neat space battles as would be awesome.
-trade resources could be destroyed by polution or terraforming, but not created, meaning as the game advanced most trade resources would be removed from the game
-it was not possible to terraform seatiles into other types..

And things that civilizations or alpha-centaury did better :
-the custom unit building from alpha-centaury was the best, call to power would be better if it allowed for it.
-the advisors from civilization II where splendid, pure fun! need them too.
-giving use to owning more than 1 stack of a resource, as introduced in civ 4, by making certain units and buildings require not only acces to a resource but ENOUGH acces, was a good tactical move.
-having hexagonal tiles, instead of square ones also makes sence
-alowing for creating your own religion was good, the limit to only 1 per city, and the limit in numbers of temples and cathedrals based on age and tech, certainly was not
-the ability to use cash to buy more land, and the option to pick what tile you want to expand to when culture advances enough was too.

still even with this room to improve for me Civ III remains the best civilization game, close to civ II, but call to power I hold the crown as THE BEST EVER.
I wonder are there more people feeling like me, and is there any chance I ever get my desired Call to Power III, with all the good things listed above and some extra as call to power likes to "toss in new things"

One new thing they could toss in, would be not only adding 2 layers of map, but actually alowing for a couple planets in the game.. each of 2 layers of map.
Thereby making a hyrbid between a classic TBS and a space TBS.
-> though that would extend the gameplay much much longer, enough of the simplification things to give mass-orders to hundreds of city's at the same time... as CTP always had, should fix that.

one could even imagine not playing human, but having multiple races each starting with multiple civilizations on a planets stoneage.. eventually flying to other worlds, finding them in a higher or lower state of development, but with very unique tech and opting to either ally with one or multiple cultures on such a planet, or downright invade them...
(ofcourse after you have the right tech to unlock such options)

CTP I has us clone the alien, why not have CTP III go ahead after that...
however it will go..

[Naselus]

There won't be, though it is a shame. There were several good features which should've been picked up elsewhere - the space map and the public works among them. But CTP was also buggy as hell, which didn't help much.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Naselus:

There won't be, though it is a shame. There were several good features which should've been picked up elsewhere - the space map and the public works among them. But CTP was also buggy as hell, which didn't help much.

A lot of time has passed, few people remember the original, yet RTS still is a populair genre, though nobody likes micromanegment.
One has to figure eventually SOMEONE, if anything an indie developer or a crowdproject like a variant of freeciv must put 1 and 1 together and combines all that made it great in a new jacket?

btw that complain about buggy I read a lot, but I never experienced it.
I played this game since it arrived in 1999, on multiple compluters, from win xp, to me, to win7
and it never crashed even a SINGLE time.
it never bugged even once.

It had certainly plenty imbalance options, and special units of the enemy using your own maglev to rain havoc on you was a pest...
And I also admit that it required more micromanegment than most fast paced RTS games care for, because of the isane high number of city's and units, where the trend seems to be to lower these numbers to make them more causual..

still at the same time we see slowly a revival of RTS on the way... with old titles dusted off, new expantions and titles being made... age of empires 4, warcraft 4, are not as impposible now as they were a decade ago.. on top of the indie rts..

would a call to power like game be easy enough to be done indie? not sure about that one... and like you I don't see a large studio run with it atm..

[Naselus]

If you think CTP wasn't buggy, then you weren't paying attention. It wasn't crashy, but it had fabulously bizarre screwups throughout. Border placement was insane. At times, maths didn't add up. Units would occasionally just vanish, or would become locked in place and unresponsive. Trade sometimes didn't function properly. Things would become increasingly weird and funky - especially on the space map, actually. I don't think ever ever managed to get through an entire game without some kind of bug that I just had to work around, even after the patches; and the sequel was even worse for it.


I still played it a hell of a lot back when it came out, and I do confess to re-installing it from time to time; it had a lot of good twists on the standard Civ template, most of which you've touched on in the OP. I just don't see it as a likely contender for a remake, though. It was always the least of the 3 civ games that were out at the time; AC knocked it into a cocked hat on many levels and Civ 3 was much more popular (despite being a weaker game imo). And the core of the game was itself basically a remake of Civ; it made no attempt to pretend to be anything other than a clone. While games like C&C, MOO, Warcraft, AOE or Doom were not the originators of their genres, they're remade because they came to define those genres. CTP never achieved that kind of status. Most gamers will be able to name Doom or C&C even today. Most will not recognize CTP.

I would like to see some 4X designers revist some of the ideas in it, though. Space, public works, and a complex non-military unit ecosystem were all really good ideas, even if some of them didn't even survive to the game's own sequel.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Naselus:

If you think CTP wasn't buggy, then you weren't paying attention. It wasn't crashy, but it had fabulously bizarre screwups throughout. Border placement was insane. At times, maths didn't add up. Units would occasionally just vanish, or would become locked in place and unresponsive. Trade sometimes didn't function properly. Things would become increasingly weird and funky - especially on the space map, actually. I don't think ever ever managed to get through an entire game without some kind of bug that I just had to work around, even after the patches; and the sequel was even worse for it.


I still played it a hell of a lot back when it came out, and I do confess to re-installing it from time to time; it had a lot of good twists on the standard Civ template, most of which you've touched on in the OP. I just don't see it as a likely contender for a remake, though. It was always the least of the 3 civ games that were out at the time; AC knocked it into a cocked hat on many levels and Civ 3 was much more popular (despite being a weaker game imo). And the core of the game was itself basically a remake of Civ; it made no attempt to pretend to be anything other than a clone. While games like C&C, MOO, Warcraft, AOE or Doom were not the originators of their genres, they're remade because they came to define those genres. CTP never achieved that kind of status. Most gamers will be able to name Doom or C&C even today. Most will not recognize CTP.

I would like to see some 4X designers revist some of the ideas in it, though. Space, public works, and a complex non-military unit ecosystem were all really good ideas, even if some of them didn't even survive to the game's own sequel.

never experienced a thing like you say,
-border placements, ok never placed attention to that one, if borders expanded properly, and cultural takeovers were done right... but they seemed ok to me..
-never had a single unit freeze or disapear, and i would have noticed.
-on the spacemap I also gridded along, city's at certain intervalls... yes battles there were hard because of the insane large traveling distances (0.1 movement per tile everywhere) but that was just a part of the game.. glitches there? nope, keeping TRACK of everything and entering or leaving space at the right tiles yes, very hard.
*it was possible to move certain land units though the space elivator to space.. like the idiot massive tank... thingy... that can be seen as a bug.... but I saw it as the ultimate reason to get that wonder in the first place.
*trade bugs I admit where sometimes possible, when you traded all goods to one city.. and than traded from that city to a third city, sometiles the thing glitched and you could get 1 supercity with far more than the regulair 4 of 1 type in it.. boosting economy a lot.
more an exploit than a true bug though..

I finishes dosins of games, always ending in the entire world being a massive grid with hundreds of city's all at the same intervals both on the land and space level.... turning the planet in some neat borg-sphere;)

the game did feed that need for order more than any other game;) the perfectly terraformed, maximal number of city's maximal population, every building everywhere, every tile maximal terraformed, world was totaly possible... and very often i let just 1 ai town alive and played along hundres of extra turns to get there;)

alpha centauri had moddable units counting for it, but it;s terrain modding was to complex for my taste, and making "the perfect gridworld" far to much a headache..
also the psi units were to powerfull, just using the native units once you could build them easely beat any regulair unit you could construct, and I found that lame.

Civilization III, sure it is the best civ III game and good in it's own right, but the lack of a spacelevel, the lack of future tech, and the lack of futuretech, and mostly the lack of seacity's (so not perfect griddworld(tm) makes it finish after call to power for me..

so I disagree it was the weakest/worse of the 3 civs out back than.. I absolutely loved it back than and still do. If I had to pick 1 TBS game to play or any strategy game for that matter without the option to ever play an other one it would most certainly be call to power.

thats why I am so sad CtP II was actually weaker than CtP I, and there never was a CtP III as of yet, combining what made it great with more rebalacing and more uniqueness, as well as adding some modern features..

[ashbery76]

It was a poor man's civ and nothing more.I you wanted sci fi Civ play AC.

[Naselus]

Originally posted by ashbery76:

It was a poor man's civ and nothing more.I you wanted sci fi Civ play AC.

I think that's a little harsh tbh. There were a few big names working on it, and some of the features were actually quite original or better than Civ's approach. But it was very, very consciously a Civ clone for 90% of the gameplay, which is why it's basically forgotten.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Naselus:

Originally posted by ashbery76:

It was a poor man's civ and nothing more.I you wanted sci fi Civ play AC.

I think that's a little harsh tbh. There were a few big names working on it, and some of the features were actually quite original or better than Civ's approach. But it was very, very consciously a Civ clone for 90% of the gameplay, which is why it's basically forgotten.

a lot of the original team of civ II worked on call to power.

all that was original to civilizations after II, was sid meiers, who actually didn't put any work in the games any more after II.

as such for me call to power is the last REAL civilizations... ald the "sid meiers civilizations" are the rotten clones.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by ashbery76:

It was a poor man's civ and nothing more.I you wanted sci fi Civ play AC.

AC never did it for me... for reasons listed :

*overcomplicated tile improvement.
(I find the straight terreform tile option of CtP much more satisfying than the lower/raise elevation thing of Alpha Cantaury, that while improving some tiles ruins others, aside from being way to complex)
*to powerfull psi units -> offsetting the one thing AC has counting for it, customisisable units, just spamming midnworms is OP'd
*no space level (with all the good stuff coming with it)
*no public works, and not only having workers but actually having to REDESIGN workers, even worse!
*no option to create "the perfect griddworld*

I have played plenty hours of Civilization III and call to power.
but only finished a game of 10 of alpha centauri... it just feels like the weakest of them, even though the design your own unit thing is good.

[ashbery76]

People like using workers in Civ.When you abstract that there is not great deal to do that is interesting.The only problem was micro which the new Civ is trying to solve.



Civ3 was also terrrible,lol.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by ashbery76:

People like using workers in Civ.When you abstract that there is not great deal to do that is interesting.The only problem was micro which the new Civ is trying to solve.



Civ3 was also terrrible,lol.

I like the micromanage, not the workers.

civ3 was the last good civ, just after Call to power.
4 and 5 are terrible.. (even though they have a few ok features)
can't form a defenitive opinium of after earth yet... but it aint in civ III league by far.

1 call to power I
2 civilization III
3 call to power II
4 civilization II
5 Alpha centauri
the rest all follows a long long way below that..

and not a great thing to do thats interesting, how about giving 1000 city's construction orders, and 1000 units, all in stacks of doom.
how about managing wars on two levels, space and land, with options to launch certain units to space, and drop others to earth from certain locations, and even have space bombers bombarding land based city;'s without these city's being able to do a thing against it.
How about terraforming every freaking tile in the game in a type you want it to be... thanks thousands upon thousands of clicks.. how about finetuning every one of those 1000 city's to utilise the tiles and specialists you want it too..

[Hans Lemurson]

If you like intensive micromanagment and optimization, you should try Colonization. Particularly one of the mods for the remake in the Civ4 engine, "Religions and Revolution". http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=22013

Also, I just remembered that the Apolyton community got their hands on the source code for CtP2, and went and made their own patch and updates for it, an effort that seems to have finished up in 2011. http://apolyton.net/local_links/links/c-source-code-project-303/5288

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Hans Lemurson:

If you like intensive micromanagment and optimization, you should try Colonization. Particularly one of the mods for the remake in the Civ4 engine, "Religions and Revolution". http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=22013

Also, I just remembered that the Apolyton community got their hands on the source code for CtP2, and went and made their own patch and updates for it, an effort that seems to have finished up in 2011. http://apolyton.net/local_links/links/c-source-code-project-303/5288

ah good, I visit the apolying site from time to time, though not every day... good to see they did.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Hans Lemurson:

If you like intensive micromanagment and optimization, you should try Colonization. Particularly one of the mods for the remake in the Civ4 engine, "Religions and Revolution". http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=22013

Also, I just remembered that the Apolyton community got their hands on the source code for CtP2, and went and made their own patch and updates for it, an effort that seems to have finished up in 2011. http://apolyton.net/local_links/links/c-source-code-project-303/5288

I like intensive micromanegment, but generally not like to much "free chooice" so in a civ game.. being able to place city's at exactly 5 tiles of eachother... in straight rows... making a grid around the world... not caring for land coverage.. because evenrually you'll terraform everything anyway.

not having to worry about age, because eventually you are able to build every building everywhere

and not having to worry about relifion because eventually you can have all relifgions in every city/..

and not having to worry about goverment stats because eventually you can have them all given enough culture income..

are important parts for me to enjoy gameplay...
while in early game I like meddeling micro to get the upper hand.. to be able to create this "perfect borgsphere" kind of world... long LONG after victory has been achieved... is at least as important...

just like I like RPG's better if I can play 1 char that eventually can master all weapons, all armour, everything in the game, and dislike having to pick a class that will only be able to learn certain things...
-> early game huge strategic differences by what you picked, late game universilisation everybody good in everything.. is best..

so for me a good game has tons of micromanegment early in game, like the perfect starting position the right resource control, etc.. giving you the early edge if played right.. while the effect of this becomes ever less important, and the important of just having the bigger realm with more city's and the bigger GDP becomes more important than tactics and such.

[Hans Lemurson]

And this is why I suggested Colonization. It's all about efficient labor allocation, and setting up trading networks and production chains with a multitude of different resources. A good colony is an interlocking machine of well placed and well-organized settlements.

[BlueTemplar]

Dutchgamer1982, I think that you should like this Alpha Centauri's Tactics & Action Report :
http://www.dos486.com/alpha/