quote:

I wish all of you a happy new year. It has been a considerably long time since I have posted to these forums, and I hope that everyone has had a sterling new year. I am here to offer you the christian perspective on call to power 2, as well as a general review of the game itself.

Initial comments: spectacular. Frankly, it has been a long while since I have had such a hard time ending a session of civilization. The Call to Power team has done an excellent job of modeling civilization, and conforming themselves to every single ideology that a player can conceive of. How does this break down for those of the christian persuasion? The televangelists are finally somewhat decent, and there are no longer the ludicrous comments originally contained in Call to Power 1. As a result, Christians should NOT boycott this game. This game allows you to build a flourishing christian empire. They allow for those whose political ideologies heavily influenced by theology to build theocracies, and expand the influence of religion abroad. While I think that even more detail can be provided in these areas, and while I think they should have been a bit more generous on the science and production side of the theocratic goverment (christian nations are well known for achieving the greatest scientific advancement), and while I also think they should have made a difference between theocracy and ecclesiocracy (a theocracy believes in the separation of church and state, but NOT God and state), all in all there are a variety of options for the player interested in pursuing civilization with a distinctly christian perspective.

They also incorporated my suggestion about a having enhanced nuclear diplomacy: way to go! This was an excellent enhancement to the game design and the advanced diplomatic option really add the edge to the game that I was looking for in the older versions. The AIs seem especially intelligent in this game as well. I wish that the instruction manual would have made clearer exactly how you destroy your reputation however. There are times when I request troops withdraw from within my borders, and when they do not comply I declare war. I am not sure if this damages my reputation, but it shouldn't since a legitmate request of troop withdrawl was made in advance. The designers do not go into detail about how the AI thinks about these things specifically. That is something that can be improved. However, nuclear treaties and advanced options more than make up for this drawback.

Finally, there is no more farfetched speculation about the future of the world. The science fiction has been toned down to a more reasonable level and an emphasis on historicity has been added. This has made the game much more enjoyable.

BOTTOM LINE: Christians and everyone else- this is definitely an excellent buy, and the best civilization game to date.