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Allies early in the game usually will give you plenty of gifts including their maps and gold. Later, you won't have allies no matter how nice you are
One of the most tried and true ways to write a game that sells a lot of copies is to make it the sequel to a game that sold a lot of copies. Even better is to make it the sequel to what is arguably the best game of it's genre. For turn-based strategy games, Civilization II is arguably the best ever, and so when Activision announced they were making a sequel, you could be pretty sure it was going to be popular. Although Call to Power might not be everything its precursor was, it still provides some interesting challenges.

The Ancient Age
Like all Civ-type games, you start out with a settler on an almost totally unexplored world with just enough technical know-how to build a City and a Farm or two. The first thing you should do is build your first city right where you started out. It doesn't matter if the square isn't perfect, or even very good, you need to get building immediately. You can always terraform the surrounding area later on. Next, build a Phalanx if possible or a warrior, and then fill the queue with a settler, the granary, and then a bunch more settlers. The Phalanx will protect you against barbarians, and the sure-fire way to win is to be able to out-produce everyone else, something that requires a lot of cities. In fact, to offset the massive amount of "cheating" the computer does on the highest skill level, you need roughly four times the population of the largest AI civilization.

I agree. Now if only there was some way to convince the others to follow my leadership prowess
Once your first settler is built, you need to build your second city. Look for a decent place, but don't wait too long. You want to get this city up and running since it will be building your early army. Once placed, put three Phalanxes or Warriors (they cost the same, so go with Phalanx if possible, but Warriors are fine) and the Granary in this queue. It also not a bad idea to slip in an improvement or two along the way, but make sure to the city's primary focus is building your army.

About the time you build your second city, you should be able to start researching. Your first technology should always be Domestication. This tech gives you mounted archers which are the earliest ranged units available in the game. It also doesn't hurt that they are a fairly mobile unit as well. Once you learn this technology, your second city (the military city) should add Mounted Archers to the mix of units in the queue. This adds their ranged attack to your army while they hide safely behind your Phalanxes.

Pollution causes unhappiness. Unhappiness causes riots. Riots cause revolts. So give a hoot and don't pollute!
As soon as you have three Phalanxes and three Mounted Archers, it's time to attack. Put the six units in a stack by clicking them all until they have red borders around their unit icons. Then, send them looking for the enemy. This combination of units is probably more powerful than any single unit it will encounter until the next age. It also has very good survivability since the three Archers will fire before any single unit gets to fight back. Feel free to attack enemy units with impunity, and most enemy cities as well. If you can capture a few enemy cities early on, it will pay big dividends down the road. Keep building stacks of three Phalanxes and three Archers and keep sending them after the same enemy. Once you completely conquer that one, take the entire army after the next civilization.

Your third (and all subsequent cities) in the Ancient and Renaissance ages all should follow the same pattern. As soon as you build them, build a Phalanx and then put the Granary and a Settler in the queue. As soon as you have the technology, you should also build a Marketplace and Temple in the new cities. Until the time you hit the Modern Age, your starting queue should always be Phalanx (or Musketeer) -Granary-Settler- Marketplace-Temple.

Because rivers allow the same movement as roads and boost food production, they are a great place to build a string of cities
The Confucius Academy is probably the most important wonder of the ancient world simply because it eliminates the unhappiness caused by distance, and in a rapidly expanding civilization without Railroads, distance is usually long. You should also switch governments to anything else as soon as possible since Tyranny slows down everything. If you manage to build the Hagia Sophia, you should switch to a Theocracy and start building a few Clerics to go out and convert enemy cities for extra gold. The Sphinx is also a very good wonder to have since it will reduce the cost of keeping your army in war readiness.

The Renaissance Age
The first thing you should do when you enter this age is to give yourself a public works budget of twenty. As soon as you can afford it, start putting a Farm or two with each city you have. This will speed up the growth of your cities, which is the most important thing your civilization can do in the first two ages. You are also going to want to start building roads between all your cities and toward your enemies. The roads reduce the distance between cities and the capital, which lowers crime and discontent. The roads also speed up the movement of new stacks as they head off to join your wars.

It might not have been the best place to start out, but Rome is doing a fine job of producing lots of settlers to build a powerful civilization.
As soon as you can, you will want to research Gunpowder followed by Cannon Making. These two technologies give you Musketeers and then Cannons. Once they are available, the military city should alternate between building those two units. Gunpowder also changes the defensive unit of choice for new cities to the Musketeer. They are not too expensive for a new city to build, and as soon as you research Agricultural Revolution, they are obsolete anyway. Agricultural Revolution should be next thing you research so that you can start building Mills in your cities. Once you have it, build it immediately your existing cities, including the first settler-building city and the military city (the patch lets you insert items anywhere in the queue, so put the Mill on top).

Once you have a stack of Musketeers and Cannons, send them out to join whatever war you are fighting. This stack is even better suited for conquering cities because Cannons can bombard. Position the stack in the best defensive terrain outside of a city and click the bombard icon. This brings up a crosshair cursor. Target the city, and your Cannons will pound any units hiding inside. Keep up the bombardment until you kill off all the defenders and then casually stroll in. You should also bombard any enemy units you run into outside of cities rather than attack simply to decrease the chance of your units being destroyed. If this stack gets attacked, the Cannons are a powerful ranged defender and the Musketeers will keep enemy units away from them.

The London Exchange is the most useful wonder of this age. It eliminates the maintenance costs in all your cities, which frees up quite a bit of production. Also of importance is the Emancipation Act that frees all the slaves and causes rioting and revolts in cities with slaves. The fact that this wonder will be built and will wreak havoc on slave cities is reason enough to never build a slaver unit. The Gutenberg Bible is another very useful wonder that boosts your science and production.

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST