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I've bought every Civilization game except the very first one. They're good games, but the one I really love is Alpha Centauri. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing---

I've bought every Civilization game except the very first one. They're good games, but the one I really love is Alpha Centauri. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing--- I got SMAC when I was in middle school. But the faction design was phenomenal, and it was great how you actually had to play the factions differently, and knowing the other factions meant you handled them differently. I started playing University of Planet and just out-teching everyone, but learning how to play the other factions was very interesting and provided a ton of replay. To me, Paradox's Stellaris is more of a spiritual successor to SMAC than Beyond Earth is. You have empires that have radically different traits, values, and governments. You actually have to play to your strengths and think about your policies. (Disclaimer: I am extremely sleep deprived from playing Stellaris the last two nights.) The Civs and Beyond Earth all play the same. The faction differences are superficial. It's bleh. //edit forgive me HN, I commented before I read. The article does address my concern: > "We found that there was a bit of a sameness to leaders as opponents," he says. "They didn’t really act as different personalities in terms of diplomacy. In Civ 6, every single leader in the game has a historical agenda. We look at something they did very well in history and we dial that up in the game world to make them a bit fanatical about it in Civilization 6. But I have very little faith that they've solved it. Having a leader that is more fanatical about something isn't the same thing as having to make hard deicisions about Values & Government trade-offs! For reference: The Alpha Centauri Social Engineering panel: http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2013/03/29/nerdiness-from-noah-alpha-centauri/jcr:content/body/inlineimage_1.img.800.png/45485743.cached.png http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/201... And wiki for details: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Social_Engineering http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Soci...

tpeo 10y ago
SMAC also had 10/10 flavor text and setting overall. It's a game that has a lot of character.
- Tossrock 10y ago
  One of my favorite stories about Alpha Centauri was from a person on the PA forums called Wallhitter: I learned the word Atrocity from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri My dad and I had a horrible discussion in the car about the word, eventually. "Dad, what's an atrocity?" "It's when someone does a horrible thing to a lot of people" "...but sometimes they're necessary, right?" "..."
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    This was pretty entertaining. I think I want to see if I can get this game now.
    - civilian 10y ago
      It's on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri https://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri and I was even able to play it on OSX--- GOG has packaged it with a Windows VM.
      - AceJohnny2 10y ago
        Furthermore, there are a series of community patches that improve the game in a number of ways, such as making it properly work in windowed mode in Windows, and give you smooth zoom: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14308.0 http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14308.0
  - B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    > "...but sometimes they're necessary, right?" Are we still talking about Caesar chopping off all those rebellious Gauls' right hands?
- civilian 10y ago
  Yeah it did. You can find the technology quotes on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ > “He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly, until at last I seized his forearm and snapped it back against itself. His training suffered while the arm healed, of course, but I felt this was a lesson he must learn early, and well.” I know that my brother had difficulty with this quote. The mental image of someone's arm being jui-jitsu'd off is pretty powerful. My brother would click "OKAY" as fast as possible to avoid listening to the quote.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Your quote is in this video, around the 4:00 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1N8_Lkeps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1N8_Lkeps
- mdemare 10y ago
  Any of you fellow SMAC fans play Beyond Earth? Is it a spiritual successor?
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    Sadly, no. BE is a dressed up Civ5.
    - douche 10y ago
      Beyond Earth is kind of sad... Civ 5 wasn't bad, but I'd rather take on Auriga in Endless Legend if I'm playing a hexagonal 4X - plus it reminds me pleasantly of Master of Magic.
  - dingbat 10y ago
    unfortunately would have to say no. bells and whistles and alien fungi but missing the spirit. Stellaris however is AMAZING.. its got the feel of original Master of Orion and old time Civs.
  - throwaway7767 10y ago
    Unlike other commenters here, I didn't dislike BE. It's a fun game, and it's worth checking out (especially with the Rising Tide expansion). It's very much trying to be a spiritual successor, but I'm not sure it really achieves the goal. The setting isn't as convincing (it's mostly Civ 5 in space, with orbital units). The factions all pretty much play the same, just with some bonuses. The biggest problem (though I suppose this has been a problem for all civ games to some extent) is that the AI is bad. It can do tactical decisions, but strategic big-picture it seems to have no clear goal. It's worth checking out, but it's only partly the spiritual successor to SMAC it tries to be. I see a lot of people here recommending Stellaris, I haven't tried it but now I think I should.
mdemare 10y ago
Oh, yeah, SMAC is the best civ ever. Man, that game had atmosphere. The faction leaders were great. And the technology! Will we have to research Alphabet for the sixth time in Civ6? Well, SMAC had us research Mind/Machine Interface, Frictionless Surfaces, Digital Sentience... And the Planet Busters! God, I'd love a SMAC 2!
zyxley 10y ago
Civ 5 did a bit of experimenting with distinctly asymmetrical nations - for example, there's Venice, which can only directly control a single city. It feels like they completely forgot about that kind of thing when they got to BE, though.
philwelch 10y ago
Here's a blog (that I found from an HN comment, interestingly!) where someone goes through and analyzes all the SMAC flavor text and writes about how well-done it was. It was interesting for me because there's a lot more depth than I realized when I first played SMAC, and the different factions all seemed to me more like caricatures than real philosophical viewpoints: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com
- AceJohnny2 10y ago
  That's an amazing series. I miss Alpha Centauri all the more, and the disappointment of BE is that much harsher.
- DanAndersen 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing this! That link does a very good job of exploring just what it was about various concepts in SMAC that made it so compelling.
CydeWeys 10y ago
I played SMAC at a similar age and similarly have great nostalgia for it. I went back to it more recently and it held up. The setting is out of this world (heh), and the unit customization options were awesome, and added a layer of depth that MOO and others have but Civ does not. That's what really did it for me. PC Gamer ranked SMAC as the best game of all time for quite some time, and deservedly so. That is not an accolade they hand out lightly.

tpeo 10y ago

SMAC also had 10/10 flavor text and setting overall. It's a game that has a lot of character.

Tossrock 10y ago
One of my favorite stories about Alpha Centauri was from a person on the PA forums called Wallhitter: I learned the word Atrocity from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri My dad and I had a horrible discussion in the car about the word, eventually. "Dad, what's an atrocity?" "It's when someone does a horrible thing to a lot of people" "...but sometimes they're necessary, right?" "..."
- wyldfire 10y ago
  This was pretty entertaining. I think I want to see if I can get this game now.
  - civilian 10y ago
    It's on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri https://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri and I was even able to play it on OSX--- GOG has packaged it with a Windows VM.
    - AceJohnny2 10y ago
      Furthermore, there are a series of community patches that improve the game in a number of ways, such as making it properly work in windowed mode in Windows, and give you smooth zoom: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14308.0 http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14308.0
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  > "...but sometimes they're necessary, right?" Are we still talking about Caesar chopping off all those rebellious Gauls' right hands?
civilian 10y ago
Yeah it did. You can find the technology quotes on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ > “He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly, until at last I seized his forearm and snapped it back against itself. His training suffered while the arm healed, of course, but I felt this was a lesson he must learn early, and well.” I know that my brother had difficulty with this quote. The mental image of someone's arm being jui-jitsu'd off is pretty powerful. My brother would click "OKAY" as fast as possible to avoid listening to the quote.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Your quote is in this video, around the 4:00 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1N8_Lkeps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1N8_Lkeps
mdemare 10y ago
Any of you fellow SMAC fans play Beyond Earth? Is it a spiritual successor?
- Paul_S 10y ago
  Sadly, no. BE is a dressed up Civ5.
  - douche 10y ago
    Beyond Earth is kind of sad... Civ 5 wasn't bad, but I'd rather take on Auriga in Endless Legend if I'm playing a hexagonal 4X - plus it reminds me pleasantly of Master of Magic.
- dingbat 10y ago
  unfortunately would have to say no. bells and whistles and alien fungi but missing the spirit. Stellaris however is AMAZING.. its got the feel of original Master of Orion and old time Civs.
- throwaway7767 10y ago
  Unlike other commenters here, I didn't dislike BE. It's a fun game, and it's worth checking out (especially with the Rising Tide expansion). It's very much trying to be a spiritual successor, but I'm not sure it really achieves the goal. The setting isn't as convincing (it's mostly Civ 5 in space, with orbital units). The factions all pretty much play the same, just with some bonuses. The biggest problem (though I suppose this has been a problem for all civ games to some extent) is that the AI is bad. It can do tactical decisions, but strategic big-picture it seems to have no clear goal. It's worth checking out, but it's only partly the spiritual successor to SMAC it tries to be. I see a lot of people here recommending Stellaris, I haven't tried it but now I think I should.

mdemare 10y ago

Oh, yeah, SMAC is the best civ ever. Man, that game had atmosphere. The faction leaders were great. And the technology! Will we have to research Alphabet for the sixth time in Civ6? Well, SMAC had us research Mind/Machine Interface, Frictionless Surfaces, Digital Sentience... And the Planet Busters! God, I'd love a SMAC 2!

zyxley 10y ago

Civ 5 did a bit of experimenting with distinctly asymmetrical nations - for example, there's Venice, which can only directly control a single city. It feels like they completely forgot about that kind of thing when they got to BE, though.

philwelch 10y ago

Here's a blog (that I found from an HN comment, interestingly!) where someone goes through and analyzes all the SMAC flavor text and writes about how well-done it was. It was interesting for me because there's a lot more depth than I realized when I first played SMAC, and the different factions all seemed to me more like caricatures than real philosophical viewpoints: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com

AceJohnny2 10y ago
That's an amazing series. I miss Alpha Centauri all the more, and the disappointment of BE is that much harsher.
DanAndersen 10y ago
Thank you for sharing this! That link does a very good job of exploring just what it was about various concepts in SMAC that made it so compelling.

CydeWeys 10y ago

I played SMAC at a similar age and similarly have great nostalgia for it. I went back to it more recently and it held up. The setting is out of this world (heh), and the unit customization options were awesome, and added a layer of depth that MOO and others have but Civ does not. That's what really did it for me. PC Gamer ranked SMAC as the best game of all time for quite some time, and deservedly so. That is not an accolade they hand out lightly.