One nice ability of the diplomat in the game is that he can hold receptions near cities and sway government opinion toward your empire. There are the usual collections of spies of various flavors that can execute a wide variety of cloak and dagger assaults on enemy governments. The Great Library is where you'll find more detailed information Call to Power 2 's combat system is very simplistic, but effective. Units attack one at a time. This means that if you have a stack of twenty, your first unit will attack until it is dead and then the next will attack.
Bombardment is also an abstraction in the game and very simplistic.
The emphasis is on the grander strategic aspects of empire building and combat is just one of many ways to build an empire. Unlike many folks in gamedom, I can see why Call to Power 2 is a very attractive game to many fans of the genre. It allows you to execute some pretty complicated strategies but doesn't bog you down in the minutia of empire building. Some of the subtle ways that Call to Power 2 eases your ability to do grand strategy are very transparent. This may lead folks to dismiss the game as grand strategy-light.