Civilization: Call to Power

Civilization: Call to Power was created after Activision secured the rights to the Civilization brand once MicroProse let it go, and it did so before Sid Meier and his new team at Firaxis Games created the official Civilization III. It's thus a kind of parallel branch of the famous turn-based strategy series, developed not by the original authors or the people around Sid Meier, but by an internal team at Activision itself, one that nevertheless tried to build on the successful concept with its own ambitions, its own take on the series, and the nerve to go in a completely different direction in many respects.

The game extends its timeframe significantly further into the future than players were used to from the Civilization games of the time – the player can lead their civilization from prehistory and antiquity through the classic historical eras all the way to colonizing the ocean floor and, eventually, space, including entirely new units, buildings, and technologies designed specifically for these futuristic periods, such as underwater cities or space colonies. It also adds new concepts such as ongoing tracking of the population's public opinion, cultural borders influencing the behavior and loyalty of neighboring states, or the ability to build large-scale mega-projects whose significance extends beyond a single city and affects the whole civilization. The overall pace of the game is slower, and individual games, thanks to the expanded timeframe and the number of cities managed, tend to be significantly longer than in the rival series from MicroProse and later Firaxis at the time, so completing a single game from prehistory to the space age can take dozens of hours.

Why play it: Call to Power is an interesting choice for turn-based strategy fans who already know the classic Civilization games and want to try an alternative take on the genre with a longer timeframe, futuristic elements, and a differently tuned balance, albeit with the awareness that it's a branch created outside the series' main development line and without the direct involvement of its original creators.