DESCRIPTION

Starting with nothing more than a single settler, your goal in Civilization: Call to Power is to establish a group of cities and guide them through years of expansion and advancement until your civilization dominates the world. Be mindful of the other civilizations populating the planet, though; you'll either have to charm them diplomatically or destroy them utterly if you want to reach your ultimate goal.

Civilization: Call to Power - Enhanced Version DVD-ROM enhances the empire-building resource-management scheme originally made popular by Sid Meier's Civilization with animated graphics, expanded unit and advancement options, new buildings and technologies and detailed trade and diplomacy settings.

The game starts you out with a tutorial that covers the basics of gameplay. From there, you're on your own as the leader of one of forty-one different historical civilizations. Before starting, you choose the map size and shape, terrain characteristics and any special rules affecting the game world.

To keep your civilization thriving, you must maintain one of twelve different types of governments including Communism, Ecotopia and Technocracy while managing resources for up to twenty-two unique terrain types from deserts to volcanoes. Terrain improvements encompass twenty-seven different varieties from farms to fisheries to undersea mines to airbases. City improvements come in 43 different flavors including beef vats, movie palaces and incubation centers, along with the more traditional temples, granaries and city walls.

Sixty-six total units grace the game; they're what keep your civilization operational. Choose from abolitionists, archers, diplomats, pikemen, space bombers, tanks, "televangelists" and many others - all based on a certain era in history and bringing distinct benefits either for warfare, trade, transportation or espionage. Lastly, Civilization: Call to Power - Enhanced Version DVD-ROM includes 35 Wonders of the World with religious, architectural, educational and technological miracles of modernization such as the Hagia Sophia, Stonehenge, the Confucius Academy and the Internet which bestow unique advantages upon your civilization.

The DVD-ROM version includes support for Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, as well as enhanced MPEG-2 movies, a conceptual art viewer and two all-new music tracks. The game also has a number of multiplayer options for up to eight opponents including Internet, IPX and TCP/IP LAN.

Control is conducted via a point-and-click interface and gameplay progresses until one of three endgame objectives are satisfied: capture all foreign cities, synthesize an alien life form or achieve the highest score by the year 3000 AD. Note that you can play the game with a CD-ROM drive but you'll need a DVD-ROM drive and a software or hardware decoder to view the enhanced movies. ~ Gil Shif, All Game Guide