You don't have to play far into Call to Power 2 before you start spotting some of the changes that have been made. The most obvious of these is the addition of Mayors to your cities. This allows you to hand over the management of individual cities to the computer. Parameters can be set for the Mayor to instruct it to focus on different goals for the city including population growth, science, revenue, and expanding military resources. This is an excellent addition, particularly in the later stages of the game when your empire starts to get too large for micro-management. The only drawback of this system is that the AI tends to focus only on individual cities and does not take the goals of your empire into account. This means that you will often find yourself checking on and amending the work of your mayors. Still, a very worthwhile addition to the core game though.

The game itself starts off the same as every other version of Civilisation. Your settlers emerge out of their caves on a randomly generated map and head off to found your first city. From there you balance the production of resources, the growth of your population and the expansion of your empire.The game allows you to tinker with things like the length of your populace's working day and the amount of rations (pay) they receive to try and maximise production without causing a revolt. To ensure you have a happy population it is necessary to keep them entertained by constructing buildings such as the Arena and Theatre. Another nice addition to the gameplay is an empire-wide build manager. This allows you to construct a particular building in every one of your cities by clicking on one button rather than undergoing the time consuming task of selecting each city.