Since those early euphoric days, time and technology has moved on, just as it does in the Civilization series. Followers enjoyed successive installments of the enduring Civilization franchise, including this latest, Call to Power II, but Meier’s hand has been noticeably absent from the tiller for some time. Meier’s most current take on this type of game is found in Alpha Centauri. More significantly, however, dozens of other development teams have taken the rudimentary building blocks of god games and brought their own unique spin to it. Among these, the Age of Empires series from Microsoft and Seven Kingdoms from Interactive Magic have stood out as particularly noteworthy. There have, of course, been other products that occasionally have excelled in the past decade as well, but chronicling them herein is less important than establishing that the field is now very crowded and player expectations have matured. Call to Power II is a good game, but pales as an example in comparison to Age of Empires.

You begin the game by selecting a Civilization to control, and are given a single settler to establish the first city for that Civilization. In the interest of handicapping, or play balance, but to the deteriment of all else, each of the Civilizations is generic. From economic development and diplomacy to the types of units one can develop — nothing sets any group of people apart. The game would have been far better if certain Civilizations were given even a slight time bonus toward the development of technologies or ideologies and their historic discoveries. The designers could have also conveyed a slightly lower bonus to those Civilizations with whom they were in contact when the development occurred. Unfortunately, we could post modifications like this all day long in the hopes that they find their way into Civilization III, but none would alter the banal similarities that remain in Call to Power II.

Developing your Civilization is a matter of settling in areas where natural resources are abundant, allowing room for the growth of your cities, and setting slider bars to allocate production to scientific research, public works or the treasury to expedite the purchase of buildings and units when the situation warrants it. Keeping your population happy is a function of the work schedule, taxation rates and the type of government currently in power (ie: some forms of government naturally experience less civil unrest than others). The stature of your Civilization, with respect to the remainder of the free and not so free world, is a factor of total population, wealth, technological research, and the actions, or inactions, you take after coming into contact with other Civilizations.

There are plenty of choices that you must make, all of which impact the final outcome, however you soon realize that the underlying aspect of these choices translates to pure spreadsheet manipulation. You can appoint mayors in each city to automate some of these tasks, which is a nice addition. Mayors can also manage growth, production, science and so forth depending upon the needs of the people or ambitions of the ruler at the time. Again, however, as an astute player, you realize that all you’re really doing when appointing a mayor is running a hedge program skewed in a particular direction to the underlying spreadsheet. And while all games have an underlying mathematical model, you usually get the impression that you are doing more than searching for the right equation for victory, unlike Call to Power II.

Multiplayer mode adds emotional variables that overlay the number crunching, so it will always be a stronger feature with greater replay value than the base game. Unfortunately, Call to Power II doesn’t develop as robust a multiplayer following as some of the other titles in this series.

Graphically, Call to Power II is better than Microsoft Excel, another popular spreadsheet, but ranks considerably lower than the standards set by Microsoft’s Age of Empires franchise. Nothing sexy or exciting happens when you construct a Wonder of the World — you can’t see it on the map — just the underlying equation of the formula and the resulting modification!

At the end of the day, Call to Power II still draws the purists and a small percentage of players who have heard, but not yet tried, Civilization. Unfortunately, this iteration is more analogous to a diluted spin–off such as Friday the 13th, Part VIII than to the impact of an original title. Those veterans of the series will find an intimate friend with known conventions and the same old plotline slightly repackaged, and no doubt you’ll view it with mixed responses. Some will be happy just to have another in the Civilization series, while others, like myself, wish for something more. Newcomers won’t be distracted and react in a negative manner by the similarities to prior releases, due to their lack of familiarity with the series. Instead, these newbies will view Call to Power II with fresh eyes, and their reactions will vary dependent upon whether or not they are familiar with some of the better aforementioned god games. Will Call to Power II maintain enough market interest to justify yet another sequel — one more worthy of the original? God, I hope so!