101 ways SMAC/X is better than Civ4

[beetle]

SMAC has people playing the original game ten years after it shipped. Civ4 (vanilla) barely held peoples interest until Warlords, which most people abandoned as soon as they could for BtS. Wash, rinse, repeat.

 

[spiralx]

I think vyeh may be correct, that Evil Twin is just trolling. At the very least, Evil Twin is mistaken. Civ4 did not play fine on contemporary computers available at the time it was released.

My PC plays a huge world fine with graphics settings turned down to the minimum, and it's a 2.8GHz Duron with the least powerful graphics card that can run CIV. Certainly not even close to state of the art when CIV came out. Late turns can take a while to process, but it's about the same as AC was when it came out on the PC I had then.

Given the increased number of options and other changes available in CIV it's not surprising that it takes up more processor time. Let's see...

* More terrain types
* More options for workers
* Promotions for units
* Civics provide more complex benefits/penalties than in SMAC
* Leader traits
* Much better pathfinding/automation
* Civ borders

As for better... I still prefer SMAC over CIV, but it's close, and there's bits of CIV I'd like to see in a SMAC 2. As others have said, the atmosphere of SMAC is one of the key reasons it was and is such a great game.

 

[Cataphract887]

More terrain types

But no 3d map with changing elevation rules. Less complex in civ4.

More options for workers

Not nearly. Select a terraformer and look at its terraform menu. It can do much more than in civ4

Promotions for units

This is a watered down versian of SMACs workshop, where units can be made with promotions.

Civics provide more complex benefits/penalties than in SMAC

Flatly wrong. Each SE in SMAC gives +/- and each level of +/- gives different bonuses

Leader traits

SMAC has much more leader traits, not just the same traits over and over

Much better pathfinding/automation

Yup, thats part of why its slower

Civ borders

You may not notice this, but SMAC also has borders.


The AI in CIV4 takes alot of processor time, slowing it down.

 

[kelemvor]

LOL, how much does a Civ3 disc go for nowadays?

10 dollars at the Target bargain bin

I never got into Civ3. I didn't expect it to be similar to SMAC, but I wasn't expecting it to be a step backward from Civ2, although Civ4 is much better.

The only way we are going to see more SMAC features is if Firaxis releases a SMAC 2. The civilization series covers a much broader time frame, a broader range of tech and a broader number of civilizations. That's why its impossible to inject the personality, complexity and atmosphere into Civ that we enjoy in SMAC. Firaxis should continue the SMAC series for the hardcore fans instead of trying to lump hardcore and casual gamers into one series. Look how much market share Gal Civ2 is taking now with the abandonment of Master of Orion and SMAC franchises.

 

[Polycrates]

I fricking love Alpha Centauri, and I love Civ4, and I have spent (wasted? ) immense amounts of time on both of them.
When it was released, SMAC was undoubtedly the best of the civ-type games. Civ3 was undoubtedly a massive step backwards.
But Civ4 really is good. It's really as if they took a really good look at what works and what doesn't in these sort of games and really went to town on nailing them. Civ3 was oversimplified almost to the point of having One True Path, yet riddled with fiddly little things, so getting better was very much a matter of being more finicky with tedious micromanagement chores. Civ4 is pretty much as complex as SMAC/X (if not more so), it's just done in a more streamlined manner. Like SMAC, you can get better by delving deeper into its complexities.

That said, SMAC updated to take advantage of more recent developments would be mind-blowingly phenomenal. The setting, the factions, the ideologies, the cool tech, the fricking nerve stapling, the terraforming, Chairman Yang, etc etc, it's all way cooler than "a history of the world".

AI: Easily the biggest thing Civ4 has over SMAC is AI.
Let's face it, SMAC's AI is lousy bordering on atrocious - terraforming AI in particular (so frustrating, since it would be so easy to improve!). On the other hand, the AI in Civ4 BtS is absolutely phenomenal (though even the regular Civ4 AI was leagues ahead of SMAC). It develops well, it techs well, it expands well, it trades well, it fights REALLY well, and it's capable of being an amazingly ruthless opportunistic bastard. It's something else.

Maintenance: For me, Civ4's biggest innovation was managing to stop REXing in its tracks. More territory is still better, but the crippling maintenance costs early on mean that it's not just a race to see who can make the most settlers in the shortest time. As the game goes on, more land is better, but it's perfectly valid to stay small early on, and the colonisation process goes on for much longer, which I reckon is much more fun. It also stops the whole thing of having a massive grid of indistinguishable cities one square from each other, which I don't reckon is much fun.
And unit maintenance via civ-wide gold rather than production in a particular city is a much better way of doing things, and saves a lot of pointless micromanagement.

Air power in SMAC is too dominant, and I think the Civ4 air-war element is done much better.

Unit Workshop vs fixed units with promos: I don't think one is better than the other, but I think both work better within their respective games. Fully-customised ancient armies just don't really make sense as much as they do for more futuristic armies (when everything was really dudes on horses vs dudes with spears vs dudes with bows etc). Fixed unit types denies you the strategy of making units custom-made for your campaign, but on the other hand there's a lot of strategy in figuring the best way to work with the constraints of what you've got (especially now that units in civ4 have more specialised bonuses and penalties). And the promos are a cool way of really customising units for specific tasks (often to a greater extent than you can with the unit workshop) and also giving individual units a bit of personality. And Unique Units are really cool.
I suspect there's maybe some amalgam of the two approaches that would give the best of both worlds without being too overly micromanagement-y, but until someone figures it out, they're both pretty good

Difficulty levels: I find this complaint very odd. I've beaten Deity on Civ4, but it's very very hard. There are people who find it pretty easy, though. If there was another level above Deity that was even harder, I'm really not sure why exactly that would make the game worse. On the other hand, Transcend is really pretty easy to beat regularly, and I know a lot of people would add self-imposed rules just to make it more of a challenge. I'd like to know that however good I got, there would always be another level to challenge me, without having to resort to OCCs or whatever. And sometimes, it's just fun (and instructive!) to just see how long you can hold out against truly impossible odds.

Civics: I have to give this one to Civ4 as well, though I really loved the massive penalties that some SMAC civics would give. But the Civ4 civics mostly have a bunch more character to differentiate them and really allow for massively different tactics depending on what civics you've got running, much more than SMAC. If they had larger associated penalties (rather than just maintenance and the occasional small penalty), they'd be even better.

Resources: Bonus resources are really cool, and really add a level of depth to the game. It really helps differentiate different bits of land, too (this was a bit of a complaint of mine with SMAC - there were the occasional resource bonuses, but even prior to the advanced terraforming options, there wasn't as much differentiation of city sites).

 

[Glitch Master]

The Quotes are the best part.

And the planet busters are good.

2 things that civ3 doesn't have. I don't think that civ4 have them either.

 

[Capn Red Chops]

Because of the mind meld victory condition, Alpha had an overarching unique storyline that Civ 4 can't match.

Also the factions were opposed & gravitated together through the way they were philosophically & the way they were programmed/balanced.

There was just more soul to SMAC that isn't as deep in Civ4

Having said that, I enjoy both

Red Chops

 

[mrt144]

the real problems with smac compared to civ iv are:

1. land managment

in civ iv, the land/resources/city placing is really important. in fact i think this is what civ iv is all about for the first hundred or so years. in smax it is all about just expanding to the hilt.

2. a secret project for every building

this was ridiculous. certain buildings were stupid because there was a SP for them and often you could easily be the first to the tech for it. and if you get to the tech first you can use the loophole of...

3. using supply crawlers to do anything and everything. there are exploits in civ iv with regards to chopping, slavery, some late game wonders, but there isnt one single, common unit that the AI has no idea how to use that is in Civ IV.

4. city specialization.

theres a few more probably.

 

[happy_Alex]

Air power in SMAC is too dominant, and I think the Civ4 air-war element is done much better.

I agree with everything you said, it's a fricking awsome game , I've been playing it recently. AI is to easy, like CIVII, and you can run rings round it.
Don't agree with this bit though, I regularly win at monarch level without building a single plane, and in SMAC the importance of airpower reflects how crucial it is in RL, just look at the Gulf War One, for example...

 

[Capn Red Chops]

MrT144, I agree the fact that the AI didn't use them was a downside in SMAC, but I think they were an overall highlight & should have been included in Civ4 - IF - the AI could use them, and use them to full advantage. I usually have cities I set to produce culture if I'm going for a space race victory and have a ton of cities because they are basically redundant. Why can't you hurry non building wonders with cash eh?

Capn Red Chops

 

[akannon]

Quote: "Gaians Stepdaughters, i would like to meet everyone of them "
Who doesn't think Skye looks pretty?
Aki - Zeta: Sure, shes never in the mood, but she certainly beats looking at Catherine the great or Elizabeth
Data Angels - Datajack Sinder Roze of Trinidad, doesn't she look like Halle Berry
Colonel Corazón Santiago of Spartan Federation looks alright, but not my type cuz i think shes into the S&M thing in which i would be on the "receiving" end
...And NO, Miriam is an ugly redhead
....And NO, i am not into interspecies/bestiality relationships with any of the alien races

 

[Capn Red Chops]

akannon... go, on, admit it. You want some progenitor sexy-time.

 

[Crimson Sunrise]

I don't think that civ4 have them either.

Civ4 does have Leonard Nimoy, though. Balances it out somewhat.

I was never able to continuously play a game of this type that didn't have a plotline (like Alpha Centauri does). I was never able to suspend disbelief enough to get into the "lol rewrite simulate history LOL" stuff.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

"Oh Guardian H'mnee I'd love to tear your mandibles off with my pincers"... there's some potential there I suppose

Nah I always felt that, though they were inanimate, the faction leaders have more personality than Civ 4's which just move a bit and say some generic lines...

Stuff like "and quite frankly, Miriam's preachy Bible bashing scares me"

Sure the dialogue was planned, but it varied according to the situation, and in some places was pretty funny "have you been sniffing spores again, Cha Dawn?"

I think it's stuff like that that heps you get absorbed in a game, the generic responses in Civ 4 just seemed too... mechanical

 

[Psyonif]

Well, my reasons SMAC/X >> Civ 4 include:

1) It's in the future!!

2) Sea bases. The opportunity to actually USE those vast tracts of water, as oppose to just sail over them in boredom, is a big plus for me. Having more terrain differentiation in the sea (as they did in Call To Power) would have been a plus... having undersea tunnels so you could link your sea bases up to the Maglev network would have been a MASSIVE plus (again, as with CTP)... but Civ dosn't let you do anything other than look at the vast and desolate ocean, and wish you were playing SMAC instead.

3) Zero-movement-cost roads. Maglevs in SMAX, railroads in Civ 3... NONE in Civ 4. This is a large step backwards.

4) As Crimson Sunrise says, it's a turn-based-strategy game with a PLOT. I had been playing SMAC for about 2 years before I found the plotline when your first mindworm empath gets flamethrowered. Song of Ota Kyi. Brilliant.

5) Civ 4 dosn't have Chairman Yang.

6) Ideological wars. None of this petty jingoistic national identity rubbish; SMAC boils politics down to uncompromising struggle between fundamental philosophies. And, while the AI certainly has its problems, it knows how to take grave offense at other faction's social engineering choices.

7) In something of an agglomeration of the previous 3 points; as Peck said, the flavour of SMAC is just more absorbing than Civ.

8) Alien artefacts. In Civ 4, the tribal villages get snapped up rather quickly, and you might get the odd bronze-age technology from them, but I rarely find these particularly useful. On SMAC, there's Unity Pods on tiny islands, and in unexplored regions of the sea, that remain unclaimed for hundreds of years. I love mounting late-game exploration missions, with Trance Cruiser Transports and Empath Scout Rovers, to sail round dangerous routes looking for lost technology, and bringing the treasured artefacts back to the glorious domed cities, where my xenotechnologists sit fidgeting with impatience to hook it up to the network nodes (see? Absorbing!).

9) The Cloning Vats.

10) How you can hybrid forest everything into a homogenous green sheet instead of having to micromanage your workers to ensure you have the right amount of food coming into your cities.

11) It's in the future!!


Ah, Alpha Centauri. Best game since Sonic 1.

 

[Naiden]

SMAC has

1. the workshop
2. wider and more usefull terraforming options
3. possibility to rise and lower terrain (!!! that gives you totally new dimension of expansion and warfare)
4. social engineering, harmonized with diplomacy and overall game balance
5. probe teams and all their crazy abilities
6. sea bases, and sea-forming
7. planet and native live, that can be captured with enough Green in your faction
8. convoys. Yes, AI doesn't use them, but they are good idea for such game.
9. nice voice comments with every new building or tech
10. and it's FAST!!!!
I can't play game when it takes an hour to make five turns.

 

[Ondskan]

I've defeated diety.

 

[Crimson Sunrise]

Ironically, I am in the position of staring quizzically at people whose computers are too weak for the game they want to play. Mine is too advanced to play Alpha Centauri - even with the Windows XP compatibility patch.

 

[EnlightenmentHK]

Firstly let me say that Civ4 is the finest game the company/'s have ever produced. It is not the most innovative. (That's probably Civ2 or SMAC) In fact it didn't innovate much at all. What it did do was take the past innovations of the other civ games that worked and polished them to a fine hue, chucked the innovations that didn't work, and reworked every game concept that had potential but remained flawed.

Some people complained early about the dumbing down of combat with a single strength modifier. But between the loads of promotion possibilities, unit specific bonuses against other types of units, it did in fact incorporate the defensive and offensive particularities of various types of units well enough to enhance both gameplay and realism. Mods have even improved on this.

It added enough worker functions to give you compelling and diverse options without overburdening you with minutiae. It killed the 'expand everywhere as quickly as possible' necessity with the city upkeep setup and ensured that new cities wouldn't be 100% functionally useless just because it was far away from the capitol. Seriously, who wants to conquer a far away empire when the new city gets 100 shields, but 98 of them are red? Wonders still matter but they're no longer overpowering.


SMAC is a fine game. It was an innovative and ambitious game that tried alot of things. Some worked, some didn't. In particular its biggest failing was he micromanagement. Raise terrain, lower terrain, build a farm, build a satellite dish, farm the ocean, build something for the sentient planet. Create your own units with 10 million potential possibilities. It was seriously too much and severely bogged down the game.

What it did have was balls. The balls to be cynical. The balls to create controversial civics and game concepts. It had more personality than any Civ game ever times 10. Starting with the leaders, each a rather fanatical follower of a particularly extreme ideology. Those civics really mattered for a variety of reasons, from diplomacy to effect. And there were few of them that were self evidently better or worse than the others. Each tailored to a particular style of gameplay. It had the best quotes, the best videos and animations. Sometimes I'll play a game today just to watch them again.

With a little more polish and a bit less micromanagement, it could have been the greatest Civ game ever. I wish modern day Civ games would have some cajones, but they seem to have loaned them out permanently in order to achieve mass market appeal.

 

[The_Reckoning]

At first I hated the single combat value idea. But then it clicked, and it actually makes sense. Defenders don't literally sit there and take hits to their bodies. They fight just like the attackers, except with entrenchments and fortifications, as well as better knowledge of the terrain. I would like to see the same idea as SMAC, developing the tech for both weapons and armours, but instead a reworker combat system with rolls and modifiers. So better armoured means better chance of surviving a combat [higher health after a victory] and better weapons mean a higher chance of doing damage to the opponent. So weapon vs. armour rolls for both, with whichever coming out on top winning the round. Experience levels sway the rolls slightly, terrain bonuses or penalties modify the armour roll. Psi combat would only take into account terrain and experience, as well as whatever other modifers to psi combat exist.

I'd also like to see flamethrowers as a weapon.