Civ 4 vs. Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire

Willem · Jan 25, 2006

Wodan said:
Yes, definitely get Alien Crossfire.

Wodan

If you can find it, it's been out of print for a number of years now. I had to get mine from across the ocean in Britain, it was the only place I came across that still had a copy. And that was over 5 years ago, good luck getting it now. Maybe someone on Ebay, but forget about any regular outlets.

Slip de Garcon · Jan 25, 2006

Can you get Alien Crossfire to play on XP?

I've got SMAC to play, but installing Alien Crossfire brought up an error message saying my (very modern) CD drive was "too slow".

Apparently this is a known fault.

Oh, and yes I think SMAC is a great game, but oddly I don't play it. I've just given 2005 to Pirates! and now straight in to Civ4....

eriadoc · Jan 25, 2006

I played SMAC to death, and still do. I love that game. Most of the reasons have been mentioned. Civ4 draws greatly from SMAC and I like that a lot. Civ3 took a step back, IMO. After playing SMAC and having the level of control I wanted over formers, resources, and city management, Civ3 was a little too prohibitive for the micromanager in me. Civ4 brings that back and implements a lot of the same concepts made popular in SMAC, IMO.

Willem · Jan 25, 2006

Slip de Garcon said:
Can you get Alien Crossfire to play on XP?

I've got SMAC to play, but installing Alien Crossfire brought up an error message saying my (very modern) CD drive was "too slow".

Apparently this is a known fault.

There's a patch available at Firaxis that deals with some of the issues that were occuring when playing on XP. You might want to check that out.

eriadoc · Jan 25, 2006

A+ombomb said:
SMAC is just plain amazing, but unfortunately it is alot tougher to get MP for it. I would go civ4 simply because of this. Really though, civ4 is probably a better game, but there are still many parts of SMAC I genuinely miss, like elevation and its impact on both what the land is and how many resources it provides- what a cool idea!

And terraforming your opponent's huge city into a desert to kill the nutrients!

Astalder · Jan 25, 2006

I picked up SMAC as a Civ2 fan, but I just couldn't play it. Way too drab to look at, between that and the waiting at the end of each turn it quite literally put me to sleep. I'm pretty happy with Civ4, my biggest hangups would be game performance (I have a computer that runs DOOM 3, Call of Duty 2, and F.E.A.R. great but I can't watch any of the videos in Civ4, that's almost inexcusable) and the quality of some of the included scenarios (the American Revolution and Desert War would have been better replaced by direct rip offs from Civ2).

I'm also having some issues with Rhye's 18civ Earth map... on Noble the computer's too friggin friendly with itself, maybe between all 17 other civs combined there will be 20-30 turns of war in which I'm not involved by the end of the game. WTF?

bkwrm79 · Jan 25, 2006

I've had no trouble playing Alien Crossfire under XP. I like the expanded variety of factions.

The personalities are great. I have to agree that the AI could be better. I have seen the AI launch a great attack on me very early in the game, but if I can reach needlejets I'm set.

Smidlee · Jan 26, 2006

SMAC was just too pink for me. yuck.

Sgt Grimes · Jan 29, 2006

Slip de Garcon said:
Can you get Alien Crossfire to play on XP?

I can't comment on the Alien Crossfire Expansion, but the Planetary Pack certainly doesn't like Windows XP. I've applied the Windows XP compatibility patch, and experimented with the various operating system compatibilty modes, but the result is always the same. The game will run for a while, then crash in one of two very distinct ways.

If a wonder movie plays before the other crash type has had time to initiate, the game simply locks up at the end of the wonder movie, and displays an on screen message stating 'input signal too far away'. The other type of crash relates to teranx.icd, and is the standard Microsoft....... encountered a problem and needs to close down error.

Either way, the game is unplayable, and I'm gutted to discover this, as I love Alien Crossfire with a passion that cannot be put into words. :cry:

ACEofHeart · Jan 29, 2006

I still find SMAC the best turn-based strategy game I ever played..
If I could get it to run on XP I would still be playing it..also it doesn't run very functionally on a high end Pentium 4... (sigh) :rolleyes:

Hopefully there will be a SMAC 2 someday !!!

bkwrm79 · Jan 29, 2006

I would love a SMAC II!

History_Buff · Jan 29, 2006

Yep, SMAC/X is in my opinion the best game Firaxis have turned out, next to Pirates perhaps, which might just be because pirates are awesome

But I've succesfully gotten the Planetary Pack to run on my modern XP system. I can't remember if I applied a patch or not, but if you go into Alpha Centauri.ini or whatever it is, find the line "VoxelForceAlgorithm" is what it's called I think, then set it to =1. You'll still get an error message saying "Your CPU is not supported", but the game runs fine.

And I'm also pretty sure I heard one of the Firaxis guys say AC2 is one of the options they're considering.

Sgt Grimes · Jan 29, 2006

History_Buff said:
But I've succesfully gotten the Planetary Pack to run on my modern XP system. I can't remember if I applied a patch or not, but if you go into Alpha Centauri.ini or whatever it is, find the line "VoxelForceAlgorithm" is what it's called I think, then set it to =1. You'll still get an error message saying "Your CPU is not supported", but the game runs fine.

Thanks for the tip there History_Buff.

I've tried it, but still no joy I'm afraid. The game simply locks up while loading, though interestingly enough, with the same 'input signal too far away' error message, that I normally get at the end of a wonder movie.

Thanks again for the input though.

Sgt Grimes · Jan 29, 2006

Yay it's working!

It seems, that in addition to the Windows XP Compatibility Patch, and History_Buff's 'ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1' edit, the 'terranx.exe' executable also needs to be changed to Win98 compatibility mode.

Over three hours of gameplay, and not a single crash!

Lockesdonkey · Jan 29, 2006

I would argue (from my experience with Alpha Centauri alone...I'm afraid I missed the boat on Crossfire) that Civ is the better game overall, BUT it is solely on account of being more recent. A good idea might be to sort of schedule yourself, one week (or day or month) Civ, the next AC, the next Civ, the next AC, and so on and so forth. It's not too difficult, really...and if your schedule means you have to interrupt your game, I find that that's a good thing--you've had a week to mull over potential strats.

Civ 4 vs. Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire

Willem

Deity

Slip de Garcon

Warlord

eriadoc

Chieftain

Willem

Deity

eriadoc

Chieftain

Astalder

Chieftain

bkwrm79

Prince

Smidlee

Deity

Sgt Grimes

Chieftain

ACEofHeart

Warlord

bkwrm79

Prince

History_Buff

Deity

Sgt Grimes

Chieftain

Sgt Grimes

Chieftain

Lockesdonkey

Liberal Jihadist

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