**Civilization, Call to Power 2
CTP 2 came out in 2000. The game had some good concepts but most people in the gaming community felt it was unfinished, the AI was a push over and there were a few things not finished in the game. As a result it attracted much criticism from established Civ gamers.
The Cradle Of Civilization
David Sobotka, aka Hexagonian, developed a large mod to the game in 2001. Concentrating on the Ancient and early Middle Ages, the mod filled out and improved on many parts of CTP2. The mod was called the Cradle of Civilization, or Cradle for short.
The Ages Of Man
Two years ago work began on the idea of developing Cradle to its next level. What started out as some more filling out, develped into AOM, as different to CTP2 as Civ3 was to Civ 2. Some elements were retained but many new concepts were developed. AOM was approached from the whole game view, it was designed to be less abstract, a little more historical and accurate, and to provide a new experience for civ style gaming
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From a gameplay point of view, a philosohpy was developed to reward good planning and achievement while making it difficult for overly aggressive or "seat of the pants" play. The approach was to see what the game needed to achieve this, rather than to simply see what could be added to the game. As a studier of history, I wanted to include major features or events that were present throughout history. Succession, sieges, natural disasters, more complex trade and major historical events were added as these had a major effect on the course of history and give AOM a real sense of history. A couple of other annoying omissions from other major Civ games were fixed, notably you can acquire advances from capturing enemy cities and when an empire surrenders to your genius and military prowess, its cities don't mysteriously turn into piles of rubble.

At one stage it was hoped to convince Activision to produce a commercial sequel to CTP2. However this did not eventuate.

I hope you enjoy this new experience in gaming. Stan Karpinski, aka stankarp with help of many others (see acknowledgements below).

Note: AOM is available for SINGLE PLAYER and ENGLISH VERSION Only