Alpha Centuari! Did you like it?

[calle-76]

I suspect that most people here have played Sid's Alpha centauri and alien crossfire. I sure did and i really LOVED it. What do you guys think was better/worse in SMAC contra civ3?

The Good:

I loved unit customisation.
The interface in general was better.
You could obsolete units.
It was story driven.
Diffrent factions played diffrently.
Cool wonder movies
Good civ balance
cool diplomacy features
Faster gameplay on larger maps.
PLANETBUSTERS

The bad:

Tooooooooooo easy! Once you learned the game you could kick the AI's butt in every way imaginable at any difficulty.
You could buy wonders!
The "end all be all" wonders. (Hunter seeker algorithm comes to mind)
Oh and did i mention it was to easy?

 

[cycle]

I enjoyed it too for reasons similar to yours except unit design. Too tedious for me.

The good :
1000% better interface.
Units order: You could do so much more with right click on units. My personal favorite : order queue for worker (build road, terraform, mine in a specific order)
2nd favorite : patrol order for fighter/ships
Different faction do play differently and are more different by nature. The gaia lover are totally different than the industrious hive.
Design your own faction within the game
Faster
Really cool story
Wonder movies !!! Yeah ! I miss them so badly in Civ 3.
Sound in general give you a much more immersive experience. I turn them off in Civ 3 and play some mp3 instead.
Ability to terraform the land. Cool !
Better 3d feeling of the landscape in general. Mountain really look like mountains.

The bad
Unit customization becomes really tedious. At some point you have so many designs, it's just crazy. Even when you can obsolite older ones.
Like all tactical 4x game, unit management is tedious in the end game. Too many units and not enough options to group them together.

 

[warpstorm]

I liked it, but it was way too easy. I never once saw the AI build a satellite or been in a game where Morgan didn't implode.

 

[Panda]

Yes it was great. And still is, though I have played it only once since Civ3 came out.

Actually, I haven't played a game with "Sid Meier's" on the cover I haven't liked But then, I have missed out on a few

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Nerve-gas pods, nerve stapling the drones, ahh the good ol' days.

 

[Hellfire]

Alpha Centauri was a civ builder's wet dream.

I love building the ultimate Civ. I got to do this in SMAC and in Civ2. You build this great ultimate civ with every advance, improvement and wonder and then bulldoze your enemies. The unit building is tedious to power gamers but I find it very very fun to design and manage units.

The plot was stellar, and I read a few bits off their website about prologues and background on the game which are very well written. They made the pot of the game into two books as well. I want to get them, but I've not found the time to read the books I have right now.

 

[DaDoo]

Alpha Centauri was fun

Unit building is very interesting. Quite confusing at the beginning and can get tedious near the end.

The command queue for the workers was great! road-farm-solar panel with just 1 single quick key. Too bad it wasn't implemented with Civ3.

It was also the first Sid game with national borders, no? Even though the AI treats your border like it's only a decoration on the ground but it's there none the less.

Each faction have their own distinct flavor and advantage. This makes playing each one feels almost like playing a different game. Very nice touch. It's more or less brought over to Civ3(within context of civ series of course).

The only beef I have about SMAC is the planet busters. Way too powerful and unbalancing. It could literally make the continent you're sitting on the only continent left on the planet and vaporize everyone else without a chance of them fighting back.

But overall, SMAC is a very enjoyable game. I still play it once in a while.

 

[Civddict]

my all games was about getting planet busters and drown 'em all in sea.
i didn't get science at all
nor unit names and purpose make sense to me- only their strenght.

 

[WickedWombat]

The ability to name landmarks! Hopefully Firaxis will implement this in the Civ 3.

 

[bbaws]

I liked the ability to raise and lower terrain and the nod toward 3d but I found that mauve colour too distracting to relly get into a game properly.

 

[Sim_One]

Better than Civ3 in just about EVERY way except:

Confusing Tech Tree
Units become obsolete too quickly--very frustrating to upgrade them all
Unit support cost minerals instead of gold
When I attack and win I don't automatically move to the square of the enemy---this making conquering cities more tedious.

 

[Panzar75]

I agree with most of what you've said.

But I always found it annoying that whatever you did, the terraforming was never complete. I didn't like that.

 

[kemal69]

Although it had no technical bearing on the game, I miss the secret project cut scenes.

Also the civs seemed to have a lot more personality than in civ3. The'ir names and faces stick in the mind, you actually can start to think of the leaders as your nemesis, or freiend. But in Ci3 I find I can't even recall the leaders names half of the time...

 

[Raw is War?]

I miss it saying 'indigenous (sp?)lifes forms' and them suddenly appearing.

 

[Panzar75]

Maybe that's why I can't make myself leave my cities undefended in Civ3? I keep one defender even in my core cities under democracy although I know there's no way possible to reach them and I have railroad... just can't seem to make myself

 

[bbaws]

panzar I do exactly the same thing. The way I rationalize it to myself is "That's my strategic reserve". Especially after the advent of RR and airports what are you losing? A turn and a half of production tops. Combine that with the knowledge that if the doo hits the air circulator you have a chance to deal with it? Profit all round, if that's the cost of security so be it, boldness is better rooted in security than dreams. Even going hollow centre you are talking a fair military asset, waiting to go, eager to go.
Upkeep be damned; a rightly confident leader is a good leader.

 

[Mad Bomber]

I never got into Alpha Centauri. Whenever I played the game I just kept thinkin'

I Won the Space Race, & now I have to start all over?


Guess I just couldn't get into the spirit o the game but who am I anyway, Kahn?, and what the *** are these creatures running aeround all over the place. After a few turns I was hoing that the Reliant would come so I could go battle Kirk for the Genisis device.

 

[Kilroy]

Yeah. No slight to Firaxis intended, but Brian Reynolds is a genius.

 

[Tsang]

To me SMAC was just not deep enough. It had a lot of nice new features and innovations, but there was not enough weapon upgrades / items to build / wonder diversity.

Also the who mindworm / fungus thing got depressing (unless you were a tree-hugger). The endless attacks, loss of tiles etc. I wished there was a way to turn it off. I never saw a mod the turned it off.

I never saw that many mods for it. Mods really make a game IMO.

The 3D landscape was great, and I liked the customizable units a lot. I thought the AI was pretty bad to combat-wise.

 

[kemal69]

Originally posted by Panzar75
Maybe that's why I can't make myself leave my cities undefended in Civ3? I keep one defender even in my core cities under democracy although I know there's no way possible to reach them and I have railroad... just can't seem to make myself

Is that why I do that...

It was always precisely when an emergency struck and you sucked defenders out of a city in the heart of your territory to save the day that a huge group of mindworms would appear...

I do the same in civ 3. I have a panic attack if I have a city undefended. Now I can tell my therapist its all the fault of those dratted mindworms.