Got about 6,300 years on your hands and little to do? Maybe you should set your sites on global conquest. Yes, you too can begin life as a tiny dictator and through careful resource management, military might, strategy and luck, you can rise to emperor of the world.

Call To Power II from Activision is a civilization game played on a large scope. The second edition of the program features new strategies, including advanced diplomatic techniques, a new combat system, a new control system which actually allows your mayors to govern rather than forcing you to micromanage your civilization, and more historical scenarios.

Make this game as simple or as complicated as you want. Walk an ancient civilization through the Renaissance and into the modern era, and beyond. Not in the mood for pollution problems, or nations in the throes of bloodlust – that’s easy to remedy. As you set up your game, you can choose what features you want. Activision has put together a terrific options package for this program.

For those who have never played Call To Power, this is a turn-based civilization game. You select the nation you would like to represent (it really doesn’t matter because all nations are basically the same, only the names are different), and then guide them through discoveries in science, research new technologies, manage resources, build Wonders of the World, devise military strategy and try to either destroy your neighboring empires, or forge alliances with them. You may offer peace, and they may reject it, leaving you with the choices of doing nothing, declaring war, or placing a trade embargo on them. Unlike real life, the embargo does make some nations come around.

The graphical elements are well rendered, though perhaps not the best in the genre. The sound quality of the program is merely standard. If there is a shortcoming in the program, it is in the player interface. This program is somewhat ponderous in the way it is controlled. Though everything is at hand, the overall scheme seems ponderous, and does not conform to the majority of other civ games on the market. For example, you can click a settler, but then you have to enter the dialog box to set up where you want him to go, or what you want him to do. In Age of Empires II, from Microsoft, most of that control is done with mouse clicks.

However, once you do learn the control settings, they are easily remembered. And the fact that this is a turn-based game means you have time to learn the controls.

The game is basically a race. If your civilization develops faster, the people are loyal and happy, you are well on the way to victory.

Scenarios for this game, which are apart from the traditional empire-building game, include a nuclear détente and the Magnificent Samurai (which seems based on Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai – the original show that was remade in the U.S. as a western called The Magnificent Seven).

This program is not the best civ game on the market, but it certainly does rank up near the top. With its solid graphics, and superb options package, this product is very playable – once you learn the control hot keys.

Call To Power II is rated for Everyone, though it does contain mild animated violence. The program also supports multiplayer games through the Internet, TCP/IP, IPX and LAN. Up to four players can participate in a game of global domination.

Install: Easy.  At its lowest, Call To Power II only requires 320 megs of hard drive space. The full install is 550 megs. Both go smoothly and quickly.

Gameplay: 7.5. This is a turn-based game that builds slowly over a certain amount of turns. You can’t build too fast, but you can outstrip what you have if you don’t keep an eye on development.

Graphics: 7.5. The graphical elements in this program are solid, maybe not as detailed as Age of Empires II, but still very good.

Sound: 6. Musical blasts that announce break-throughs, and the relaxed intonations of the program announcing “building complete,” do not give this program high marks in the audio department. In fact, the sounds of this program are quite ordinary for the civilization genre.

Difficulty: 7.5. Activision has produced a program that is playable by anyone at any experience level. The options package allows gamers to manipulate the empires so much that you can create exactly the difficulty level you crave.

Concept: 7. This is a sequel, boasting a few new features, but still the same game.

Overall: 7.5. Call To Power II is a solid civ program. Allowing mayors to manage towns, thus taking the micromanagement function out of your hands, allows for greater attention to the chore of building an empire, not worrying about what is happening in towns (you still do, but not as much). It may not sport the graphical quality of Microsoft’s Age Of Empires II, but still has all the elements of a good program, built to be user-friendly.