Oct 27, 2014 - With a stronger emphasis on narrative, rigid factions and a malleable Planet, Alpha Centauri changed the Civ formula significantly and to great. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™ Planetary Pack includes the original Alpha Centauri and the expansion, Alien Crossfire. Mankind begins its most monumental task.
With his latest title, it isn't so much that Sid Meier has done it again, but rather he's done more. And more of a good thing it is indeed. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is an excellent sequel to Civilization and Civilization II with the colonization ship arriving on a strange world far from Earth and without any contact from home. Instead of these settlers from Earth arriving without incident and setting up a utopia, they break into seven factions, each with a dogma and ideology that is completely incompatible with the others.
Like Civilization, Alpha Centauri is played in turn-based sequences, mainly because there is so much to do. The units, interface and graphics are reminiscent of Sid Meier's previous games, but this is an example of 'if it isn't broken, don't fix it.' The system worked fine before and the tweaks have made it better. Bases, which are present instead of cities, are used to gather resources and also to build improvements and units. It's here that players can more closely monitor resource collection and output to determine if a base is actually using more than it is producing.
The graphics and look of Alpha Centauri are quite alien, but the game doesn't seem unlike other Sid Meier titles. The only criticism is that while the world does look different, it isn't overly alien in nature. Instead of roaming barbarian tribes, players face 'mind worms' that randomly attack bases and units. The terrain on Alpha Centauri includes mountains, oceans and areas of fungus, which need to be removed, but no sentient aliens seem to be present. Although ancient monoliths are scattered on the planet, there is no serious threat that acts as a wild card that could quickly swing allegiances or change the balance of power.
Victory in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri can be obtained by defeating all the other factions and being the supreme power on this strange new world. But players can also drive their faction toward the next phase of human evolution, the Ascent to Transcendence. It might seem like a lofty goal, but then so was getting that single stone age tribe to Alpha Centauri!
Graphics: Richly rendered.
Sound: Excellent 'other world' sounds.
Enjoyment: Sid Meier does it again.
Replay Value: The strange world can be conquered again and again.
First the Earth was formless and void, a gravitational globule in the swirling fiery mists of Sol. Then the globule formed into a molten flaming sphere in space. After that, the planet cooled. Hydrogen and oxygen combined; their molecules condensed from vapor to water, forming the Earth's oceans. In the chaotic landscape, life formed, evolved and grew. Life became more complex, more advanced. Life at last became human. Many thousands of years later, billions since the beginning, humans played through their history.
This began with a VGA slideshow intro of the formation of Earth, the start of the great Civilization. The people rejoiced and were happy, especially happy to be provided with an award-winning sequel in Civilization 2. Then Sid Meier, the great game's creator, left Microprose, and created a non-official sequel. This sequel deals with what happened to the chosen people, launched into space at the conclusion of the first two games. This is Alpha Centauri, a departure from the series more in name than gameplay.
Sometime in the near future, mankind is on the brink of self-destruction. The United Nations builds a colony space ship to carry the seeds of humanity to Alpha Centauri, a system containing a planet which has been identified as being inhabitable. Along the way, a reactor problem brings the colonists out of hibernation a wink too soon. Over the course of the next forty years, the colonists break into seven idealistic factions, each intent on creating a civilization on Alpha Centauri in their image. When the ship finally arrives at Alpha Centauri, the colonists manage to escape, one faction in each of the seven escape pods, just before the ship explodes. The split colonists have made freefall, and all contact with earth has been severed. They are all alone out there.
Aside from the circumstances of the launch (and it being under the purveyance of the United Nations), this plot line is a logical extension of one of the two 'victory' conditions found in Civilization and Civilization 2, two of the most honored games ever made. Sid Meier, together with long time partner and co-designer Brian Reynolds, have now crafted Alpha Centauri, the ' real' sequel to the Civilization games.
Alpha Centauri only strays from the Civilization formula by its set up. Instead of moving from the far past to the present as in the Civilization games, the game moves from the near future to the far future, on another world. This changes technological progress from being the tracing of the past to the present within a historical framework, to essentially discovering brand new forms of technology. As a gamer you are not certain where new technology will lead, unless you'd like to do a lot of extra reference reading in the help section of the game and manual.
![Game Game](/uploads/1/2/5/1/125139201/505812281.jpeg)
Also, since the game is more like playing life rather than retelling a story, you now have greater control over certain things. Most noticeably, you can now use technological advancements to design your own units, combining armor types, propulsion types, weapon types, special abilities, and other such traits. The units are represented in 3D, which makes them more customizable than the sprites of yore. In addition to this, infrastructure plays a bigger role in the form of terraforming. Alpha Centauri may be habitable, but it is not entirely hospitable. You must clear dangerous fungus, seed forests to remind you of home, plant farms, level or raise terrain, build mines, and construct roads in order to make this planet the garden spot of universal civilization.
There are a few other differences. Cities, or outposts as they are now called, may be built underwater, changing some of the boundaries of the game. There are also secret projects which may be conducted, like genetic experimentation of various types to alter your population for the better. These projects take the place of Civilizations' 'Wonders of the World,' but lack the grandeur of those austere structures.
The interface has also been improved, being much more comfortable and stylistic than the rather utilitarian interfaces of the Civilization games. Units are now moved via the mouse rather than manually moving them with the keypad. In addition, to ease your micro-management pains, there are now outpost governors, sort of ready made development plans for either discovery, exploration, construction, or conquest. This helpful AI does an admirable job of managing things in the absence of your expert leadership.
Graphically the game is decent, but certainly not spectacular or compelling. The feel is very similar to that of the Civilization games with the exception terrain elevation and a lot of red earth. Sound is also well done.
There are a few quirks in the formula, though. The other factions may be diplomatically irrational at best, utterly insane at worst. They have a habit of proclaiming that their units will crush your army when your forces could eat anything they send at you for lunch. Then they will most likely call you up and offer a technology trade. This is just an example of the underwhelming enemy diplomacy.
The multiplayer is also a little odd. Although this type of game might seem logical for multiplayer, it requires a lot of patience due to its turn-based nature. Fortunately, there is an option to limit turn time length, but this is still an experience pretty much exclusive to the truly devoted.
Alpha Centauri really shines in its depth. The well crafted story, admirable science-fiction world, fully realized scenario, and quality core gameplay are sure to please. In this sense, Alpha Centauri is at least as good a game as Civilization 2. But it is its great similarity that also does it the most detriment. Alpha Centauri simply does not do enough that is new; it just doesn't innovate enough to earn a higher grade. It is still a brilliant game and a definite recommendation for Civ fans, but not a revolutionary enough experience to share space with its kin on those top ten lists.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
This game has been set up to work on modern Windows (10/8/7/Vista/XP 64/32-bit) computers without problems. Please choose Download - Easy Setup (493 MB).
People who downloaded Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri have also downloaded:
Sid Meier's Civilization 3, Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, Civilization 2, Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, Sid Meier's Antietam!
Sid Meier's Civilization 3, Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, Civilization 2, Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, Sid Meier's Antietam!
This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it. |
This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you. |
Centauri α is the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus. It is a binary star system, the third brightest star in the night sky, and the extrasolar star closest to our own besides Proxima Centauri (which may or may not be gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri). In 2012 an Earth sized planet was discovered in the system.
It's a popular destination in near-future space RPGs.
But you're here because of the vidya gaem 'Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri' (SMAC), which is not only a strategy game accepted and welcome on /tg/, but the faction leaders in the game are also a meme used in mild role-playing shitposting
The Video Game[edit]
It's the spiritual successor to Civilization 2, and direct predecessor to Civilization 3 since it shares much of of the same dev team. One of the possible ending conditions of the Civilization games is to launch the first colony ship into space -- destination Alpha Centauri. Once they find a habitable planet, the team leaders suffer a political breakdown, culminating in the assassination of the colony ship's captain. Each team leader takes a part of the colony ship and some of the colonists in hibernation, and make planetfall. The game starts with your faction arriving, reviving the colonists for labour, and exploring the new world.
The game was very-well received because the physics, economy and diplomacy of the game were staggering even today. There were no mountains to speak of, what mattered was the terrain soil consistency, and its perfectly sculpted 3-D elevation: what was a 1-square mountain in Civilization series (even today), was a very large set of rocky squares forming into a mountain. Army units were modular, defining every stat with an individual component (gun(offense), armor (defense), power source(cost/HP), and movement module -foot/wheel/track/jet engine- for speed)which miraculously was well handled by the AI. Last but not least, the diplomacy system was near perfect, its properties began being used in Civilization 6 even now. Oh, and individual resource satellites(like moon miners, orbital solar pods and orbital farming greenhouses) could be built to boost EVERY city.
The expansion pack brought some nuance to the game's Fluff, but fucked the Crunch in the ass: The Progenitors who cultivated the planet's unique neural fungi are revealed to be two factions in a civil war. When our ship came in, two colony ships of each alien faction turn up as well, fight and disable each other before crashing. What we had were two BULLSHIT-grade overpowered alien races who start with a free expensive improvement in every new city, level 3 armor tech, self sustaining energy income in lieu of trade, rising with every extra building and have a 25% offense/defense bonus. If they dropped next to human players, restart or resort to every gamey tactic to steal their tech. If not, research nerve gas, helicopters and apply it liberally the moment you see their cities like an exterminator with helicopter-deployed bug spray. To top the CHEESE-cake, the worms are changed as well; they now land in massive raiding parties from aquatic worm islands, deploy spore launcher artillery to annihilate your improvements and snipe noncombatants a-la-commando, falling back to fungal tower buildings to heal up. Don't even think of playing single player with the old factions in the expansion, they will slowly be whittled away by the well-organized worm army.
Needless to say, neckbeards still cream over the game even today.
There will never be a sequel to Alpha Centauri because the intellectual property rights are a clusterfuck. But if you really want a spacey 4x game, there's still Galactic Civilizations 2, although unlike SMAC, GC2 is way, way, way the hell soft scifi and doesn't take itself seriously even for a moment (3 specific types of armor which only work for one weapon attack each, and space systems being completely intertwined in terms of distance-Failing Physics and Distance Forever). On this subject, SMAC is noted for adhering to science, or at least throwing around sciencey sounding terms quite well. Everything in the setting is just fudging with (then) current understanding of physics to do nifty things. Yes, even the psychic death worms who lay eggs in your brain. Because you can drill to Aquifer and make elaborate giant rivers to boost trade after raising a fuckhuge mountain, or make a series of hills and use the winds and the rotation of the planet to make natural rainforests. Or fuck it, build mega-sized rain condensers and echelon mirrors to channel rain and sunlight over the whole fucking continent to boost solar energy.
Alternatively, there's Civilization: Beyond Earth, which is, if not a sequel, than at least a game built with the same creative DNA with some of the same concepts, minus the government civics, plus D.I.Y civ properties(from start to endgame, choose your own bonuses to adapt on the go). Unfortunately, it's just a watered-down version of Civ V with all traces of character or complexity utterly stripped away. It is a topic of heated discussion whether the new Noblebright setting is as fun as the Grimdark/Nobledark setting of Alpha Centauri.
There's also Pandora: First Contact, which was quite good and let you shoot black holes at people, but which never really attracted much of a fan base.
The Roleplaying Game[edit]
Steve Jackson Games made a GURPS sourcebook for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The cover has a white border, which is unusual for GURPS splatbooks. You can usually find a scan of this book in 4chan's rapidshares catalog.
Some parts are pretty awesome, some are a little... meh. (The Spartans are generally crazier than they are even in the games.) It actually offers several suggestions for running a game set on Alpha Centauri, including ways to tweak the setting so that multi-faction parties are possible, though its attempts to integrate the 'tech-levels' of the game into an overall narrative are a little... over the top.
The Factions[edit]
The elegan/tg/entlefolk, fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls will sometimes post to a thread with one of the faction leader portraits and respond in-character for that faction leader. This should help you understand what the fuck they're on about.
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The expansion pack Alien Crossfire upped the ante by adding new factions so criminally unbalanced they made the others obsolete. Even so, the supercharged Mind Worm attacks in the expansion can eat these up just as well.
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Gallery[edit]
Links[edit]
You know how you said that there wouldn't be a second? Think aga- its Noblebright and meh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKew81njs5w
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